branch of a fir-tree. Immediately thereafter the whole air
around them was filled with strange and supernatural beings--witches,
devils, dwarfs, horned-owls, fire-eyed cats, and a thousand other
wretches that could not be named and described, whirled around them as
if dancing to rapid music. When the bride had looked on for a while, she
broke out into loud laughter, and at last began to dance furiously along
with them. The poor bridegroom might shout and pray as much and as
earnestly as he would, for she never attended to him, but at last
transformed herself in a manner so extraordinary that he could not
distinguish her from the other dancers. He thought, however, that he had
kept his eyes upon her, and seized on one of the dancers; but alas! it
was only a horrible spectre which held him fast, and threw its wide
waving shroud around him, so that he could not make his escape, while,
at the same time, some of the subterraneous black demons pulled at his
legs, and wanted to bear him down along with them into their bottomless
caves.

Fortunately he happened at that moment to cross himself and call on the
name of the Saviour, upon which the whole of this vile assembly fell
into confusion. They howled aloud and ran off in all directions, while
Conrad in the meantime saved himself by recrossing the frontier, and
getting under the protection of the Swedish copsewood. His beautiful
bride, however, was completely lost; and by no endeavours could he ever
obtain her again, though he often came to the Finland border, called out
her name aloud, wept and prayed, but all in vain. Many times, it is
true, he saw her floating about through the pine-trees, as if in chase,
but she was always accompanied by a train of frightful creatures, and
she herself also looked wild and disfigured. For the most part she never
noticed Conrad, but if she could not help fixing her eyes upon him, she
laughed so immoderately, and in a mood of merriment so strange and
unnatural, that he was terrified and made the sign of the cross,
whereupon she always fled away, howling, into one of the thickets.

Conrad fell more and more into melancholy abstraction, hardly ever
spoke, and though he had given over his vain walks into the forest, yet
if one asked him a question, the only answer he returned was--

"Ay, she is gone away beyond the mountains," so little did he know or
remember of any other object in the world but the lost beauty.

At last he died of grief;