herman appeared one
day unexpectedly at the castle, and sternly insisted on Bertalda's
returning with him as his child. The news of Undine's disappearance
had reached him, and he had determined on no longer allowing
Bertalda to reside at the castle with the widowed knight.

"For," said he, "whether my daughter love me or no, I do not care to
know, but her honor is at stake, and where that is concerned,
nothing else is to be thought of."

This idea of the old fisherman's, and the solitude which threatened
to overwhelm the knight in all the halls and galleries of the
desolate castle, after Bertalda's departure, brought out the
feelings that had slumbered till now and which had been wholly
forgotten in his sorrow for Undine; namely, Huldbrand's affection
for the beautiful Bertalda. The fisherman had many objections to
raise against the proposed marriage. Undine had been very dear to
the old fisherman, and he felt that no one really knew for certain
whether the dear lost one were actually dead. And if her body were
truly lying cold and stiff at the bottom of the Danube, or had
floated away with the current into the ocean, even then Bertalda was
in some measure to blame for her death, and it was unfitting for her
to step into the place of the poor supplanted one. Yet the fisherman
had a strong regard for the knight also; and the entreaties of his
daughter, who had become much more gentle and submissive, and her
tears for Undine, turned the scale, and he must at length have given
his consent, for he remained at the castle without objection, and a
messenger was despatched to Father Heilmann, who had united Undine
and Huldbrand in happy days gone by, to bring him to the castle for
the second nuptials of the knight.

The holy man, however, had scarcely read the letter from the knight
of Ringstetten, than he set out on his journey to the castle, with
far greater expedition than even the messenger had used in going to
him. Whenever his breath failed in his rapid progress, or his aged
limbs ached with weariness, he would say to himself: "Perhaps the
evil may yet be prevented; fail not, my tottering frame, till you
have reached the goal!" And with renewed power he would then press
forward, and go on and on without rest or repose, until late one
evening he entered the shady court-yard of castle Ringstetten.

The betrothed pair were sitting side by side under the trees, and
the old fisherman was near them, absorbed in thought. Th