“Have you come through the wild forest?”

He confessed that he had, and she instantly demanded a recital of his adventures.  With a slight shudder at his own recollections of the strange creatures he had encountered, Huldbrand consented, but a reproof from the fisherman at her obtrusiveness angered Undine.  The girl sprang up and rushed forth into the night, exclaiming, “Sleep alone in your smoky old hut!”

In great alarm, the fisherman and Huldbrand rose to follow the girl, but she had vanished in the darkness.  Remarking that she had acted so before, the old fisherman invited Huldbrand to sit by the fire and talk awhile, and began to relate how Undine had come to live with them.

The couple had lost their only child, a wonderfully beautiful little girl.  At the age of three, when sitting in her mother’s lap at the edge of the lake, she seemed to be attracted by some lovely apparition in the water, for, suddenly stretching out her hands and laughing, she had in a moment sprung into the lake.  No trace of the child could ever be found.  But the same evening a lovely little girl, three or four years old, with water streaming from her golden tresses, suddenly entered the cottage, smiling sweetly at the fisherman and his wife.  They hastily undressed the little stranger and put her to bed.  She uttered not a word, but simply smiled.  In the morning she talked a little, confusedly telling how she had been in a boat on the lake with her mother, and had fallen in, and could recollect nothing more.  She could say nothing as to who she was or whence she came.  But she talked often of golden castles and crystal domes.

While the fisherman was talking thus to the knight, he was suddenly interrupted by the noise of rushing water.  Floods seemed to be bursting forth, and he and his guest, going hastily to the door, saw by the moonlight that the brook which issued from the forest was surging in a wild torrent over its margin, while a roaring wind was lashing the lake.  In great alarm both shouted, “Undine!  Undine!” But there was no response, and the two ran off in different directions in search of the fugitive.

It was Huldbrand who discovered the girl.  Clambering down some rocks at the edge of the stream, thinking Undine might have fallen there, he was hailed by the sweet voice of the girl herself.

“Venture not,” she cried.  “The old man of the stream is full of tricks.”

Looking across at a tiny isle in the stream, the knight saw her nestling in the grass, smiling, and in an instant he had crossed.

“The fisherman is distressed at your absence,” said he.  “Let us go back.”

Looking at him with her beautiful blue eyes, the girl replied.  “If you think so, well; whatever you think is right to me.”

Taking Undine in his arms, Huldbrand bore her over the stream to the cottage, where she was received with joy.  Dawn was breaking, and breakfast was prepared under the trees.  Undine flung herself on the grass at Huldbrand’s feet, and at her renewed request the knight told the story of his forest adventures.