ad of the tall man
then began to nod, as though to say that at length I was doing as he
wished.

'By this path I reached the end of the wood, and as the meadows and
the lake came into sight the white man vanished, and I found myself
standing near to your little cottage.'

As the knight had now finished the story of his adventure, the
fisherman began to talk to his guest of how he might return in safety
to the city and to the followers who there awaited him.

Huldbrand, listening to the old man, yet caught the soft ripple of
Undine's laughter.

'Why do you laugh, Undine?' asked the knight. 'Are you so pleased to
hear your foster-father talk of my return to the city?'

'I laugh for joy that you cannot leave us,' said the maiden. 'You have
but to look to see that you must stay.'

Huldbrand and the fisherman rose and saw that what the maiden had said
was indeed true. It would not be possible for the knight to leave the
little island until the stream had once more returned to its usual
course.

As they entered the cottage, Huldbrand whispered to the maiden,
'Undine, tell me that you are glad that I cannot yet return to the
crowded city.'

But the maiden's face was no longer glad, nor would she answer the
knight's question. She had remembered Bertalda.

When the stream had grown quiet the knight would go back to the lady
for whose sake he had undergone such strange perils. And of that time
the wilful maiden did not wish to think.

CHAPTER V

THE KNIGHT STAYS AT THE COTTAGE

Day after day the forest stream rushed wildly on. The bed along which
it thus hastened grew wider and wider, separating the island with the
fisherman's cottage yet farther from the mainland.

The knight was well pleased to linger where he was. Never had he found
the days pass by so swiftly.

He discovered an old crossbow in a corner of the cottage. When he had
mended it he would wander forth in search of birds, and if he
succeeded in bringing some down with his arrows, he would carry them
back to fill the larder of the little cottage.

And Undine, for she was pitiful, would not fail to upbraid the knight
for taking the life of the little birds, so glad, so free. Seeing them
lying there, quiet and still, she would weep.

Yet, did Huldbrand return without his prey, so wilful was the maiden
that she would blame him, and complain that she could now have nought
to eat save fish or crabs.

But the knight loved Undine's wayward wor