medal hanging from a rich chain on his breast, she whispered:
“Kind sir and handsome guest, why then is it that thou art come at last to our poor cottage? Hast thou wandered about the world for years and only now found thy way? Is it out of that wild forest that thou comest, my beautiful knight?”
The quick reproof of the angry beldame gave him no moment for reply. Sternly she bade the maiden behave herself seemly, and go to her work. But Undine, minding not a jot for all her words, drew a little footstool close to Huldbrand’s chair and sat down on it with her spinning. “It is here that I will work,” quoth she. The old man did, as parents are wont to do with spoilt children. He made as though he had marked naught of Undine’s wilfulness, and was beginning to talk of something else. But this the girl would not suffer. “I have asked,” said she, “our beautiful guest whence he cometh, and he hath not answered me as yet.”
“I come,” saith Huldbrand, “from the forest.”
Then said she, “Thou must tell me how you came there, for all men dread it: and what marvellous adventures befell thee, for without some strange things of the sort no man can win his way.”
Now Huldbrand shuddered at the memory, and as he looked towards the window, it seemed as though one of the weird figures he had met in the forest were pushing in his grinning face; but it was but the deep
