10 UNDINE.
" Not so, sir knight ; this is by no means a fit hour for such relations."
But Undine, in a state of high excitement, sprang up from her little stool, and cried, placing herself directly before the fisherman : " He shall not tell his story, father? he shall not? But it is my ^vill:- — he shall! — stop him who may !"
Thus speaking, she stamped her little foot vehemently on the floor, but all with an air of such comic and good- humoured simplicity, that Huldbrand now found it quite as hard to withdraw his gaze from her wild emotion, as he had before from her gentleness and beauty. The old man, on the contrary, burst out in unrestrained displeasure. He severely reproved Undine for her disobedience and her un- becoming carriage toward the stranger, and his good old wife joined him in harping on the same string.
B}' these rebukes Undine was only excited the more. " If you want to quarrel with me," she cried, " and will not let me hear what I so much desire, then sleep alone in your smoky old hut !" And swift as an arrow she shot from the door, and vanished amid the darkness of the night.
Huldbrand and the fisherman sprang from their seats, and were rushing to stop the angry girl ; but before they could reach the cottage-door, she had disappeared in the stormy darkness without : and no sound, not so much even as that of her light footstep, betrayed the course she had taken. Huldlirand threw a glance of inquiry toward his host: it almost seemed to him as if the whole of the sweet apparition, which had so suddenly plunged again amid the night, were no other than a continuation of the won- derful forms that had just played their mad pranks with liim in the forest. But the old man nmttered between his teeth :
" This is not the first time she lias treated us in this manner. Now nuist our hearts be filled with anxiety, and
