TJNDIN 10
caressing my foster-child in secret, while you suffer nie in my anxiety to wander through the night in quest of her.'"
" Not till this moment did I iind her myself, old fa- ther," cried the knight across the water.
" So much the bettei"," said the fisherman ; " but now make haste, and bring her over to me upon firm ground."
To this, however, Undine would by no means consent. She declared, that she would rather enter the wild forest itself with the beautiful stranger, than return to the cot- tage, where she was so thwarted in her wishes, and from which the knight would soon or late go away. Then throwing her arms round Huldbrand, she sung the fol- lowing verse with tne warbling sweetness of a bird :
" A Rill would leave its misty vale, And fortunes wild explore ; Weary at length it reached the main, And sought its vale no more."
Tha old fisherman wept bitterly at her song ; but his emotion seemed to awaken little or no sympathy in her. She kissed and caressed her new friend, who at last said to her : " Undine, if the distress of the old man does not touch your heart, it cannot but move mine. We ought to return to him."
She opened her large blue eyes upon him in amaze- ment, and spoke at last with a slow and doubtful accent : " If you think so, it is well ; all is right to me which you think right. But the old man over there must first give me his promise that he will allow you, without objection,
to relate what you saw in the wood, and AVell, other
things will settle themselves."
"Come — only come!" cried the fisherman to her, unable to utter another word. At the same time he stretched his arms wide over the current toward her, and to give her assurance that he would do what she required, nodded his head : this motion caused his white hair to fall sirano'ely over his face, and Huldbrand could not but re-
