“Bertalda!” he cried, at first low, then louder and louder; yet she heard him not.  At last, when he uttered the dear name with an energy yet more powerful, a hollow echo from the mountain-summits around the valley returned the deadened sound, “Bertalda!” Still the sleeper continued insensible.  He stooped down; but the duskiness of the valley, and the obscurity of twilight would not allow him to distinguish her features.  While, with painful uncertainty, he was bending over her, a flash of lightning suddenly shot across the valley.  By this stream of light he saw a frightfully distorted visage close to his own, and a hoarse voice reached his ear: 

“You enamoured swain, give me a kiss!” Huldbrand sprang upon his feet with a cry of horror, and the hideous figure rose with him.

“Go home!” it cried, with a deep murmur:  “the fiends are abroad.  Go home! or I have you!” And it stretched towards him its long white arms.

“Malicious Kuhleborn!” exclaimed the knight, with restored energy; “if Kuhleborn you are, what business have you here?—­what’s your will, you goblin?  There, take your kiss!” And in fury he struck his sword at the form.  But it vanished like vapour; and a rush of water, which wetted him through and through, left him in no doubt with what foe he had been engaged.

“He wishes to frighten me back from my pursuit of Bertalda,” said he to himself.  “He imagines that I shall be terrified at his senseless tricks, and resign the poor distressed maiden to his power, so that he can wreak his vengeance upon her at will.  But that he shall not, weak spirit of the flood!  What the heart of man can do, when it exerts the full force of its will and of its noblest powers, the poor goblin cannot fathom.”

He felt the truth of his words, and that they had inspired his heart with fresh courage.  Fortune, too, appeared to favour him; for, before reaching his fastened steed, he distinctly heard the voice of Bertalda, weeping not far before him, amid the roar of the thunder and the tempest, which every moment increased.  He flew swiftly towards the sound, and found the trembling maiden, just as she was attempting to climb the steep, hoping to escape from the dreadful darkness of this valley.  He drew near her with expressions of love; and bold and proud as her resolution had so lately been, she now felt nothing but joy that the man whom she so passionately loved should rescue her from this frightful solitude, and thus call her back to the joyful life in the castle.  She followed almost unresisting, but so spent with fatigue, that the knight was glad to bring her to his horse, which he now hastily unfastened from the elm, in order to lift the fair wanderer upon him, and then to lead him carefully by the reins through the uncertain shades of the valley.