The knight then went on with his adventures.  “My horse was so wild, that he well-nigh rushed with me against limbs and trunks of trees.  He was dripping with sweat through terror, heat, and the violent straining of his muscles.  Still he refused to slacken his career.  At last, altogether beyond my control, he took his course directly up a stony steep, when suddenly a tall white man flashed before me, and threw himself athwart the way my mad steed was taking.  At this apparition he shuddered with new affright, and stopped trembling.  I took this chance of recovering my command of him, and now for the first time perceived that my deliverer, so far from being a white man, was only a brook of silver brightness, foaming near me in its descent from the hill, while it crossed and arrested my horse’s course with its rush of waters.”

“Thanks, thanks, dear brook!” cried Undine, clapping her little hands.  But the old man shook his head, and looked down in deep thought.

“Hardly had I well settled myself in my saddle, and got the reins in my grasp again,” Huldbrand pursued, “when a wizard-like dwarf of a man was already standing at my side, diminutive and ugly beyond conception, his complexion of a brownish-yellow, and his nose scarcely smaller than the rest of him together.  The fellow’s mouth was slit almost from ear to ear, and he showed his teeth with a grinning smile of idiot courtesy, while he overwhelmed me with bows and scrapes innumerable.  The farce now becoming excessively irksome, I thanked him in the fewest words I could well use, turned about my still trembling charger, and purposed either to seek another adventure, or, should I meet with none, to take my way back to the city; for the sun, during my wild chase, had passed the meridian, and was now hastening toward the west.  But this villain of a dwarf sprang at the same instant, and, with a turn as rapid as lightning, stood before my horse again.  ‘Clear the way there!’ I cried fiercely; ’the beast is wild, and will make nothing of running over you.’

“‘Ay, ay,’ cried the imp with a snarl, and snorting out a laugh still more frightfully idiotic; ’pay me, first pay what you owe me.  I stopped your fine little nag for you; without my help, both you and he would be now sprawling below there in that stony ravine.  Hu! from what a horrible plunge I’ve saved you!’

“‘Well, don’t make any more faces,’ said I, ’but take your money and be off, though every word you say is false.  It was the brook there, you miserable thing, and not you, that saved me,’ and at the same time I dropped a piece of gold into his wizard cap, which he had taken from his head while he was begging before me.