all sad thoughts behind.

At length, one fair summer evening, the travellers reached
Ringstetten. There was much to make the knight busy after his long
absence, and thus it was that Undine and Bertalda spent many days
alone together. Often they would walk in the beautiful country which
lay without the castle grounds.

One day, as they wandered along the banks of the river Danube, a tall
man came toward them, and would have spoken to Undine. But Undine,
gentle as were her ways, had no welcome for the stranger. When she saw
him, a frown crossed her sweet face and she bid him at once begone.
Shaking his head the tall man yet obeyed, and walking with hasty steps
toward a little wood, he soon disappeared.

'Is not the stranger he who spoke to you in the city, the Master of
the fountain?' cried Bertalda fearfully. She would always be afraid of
the man who had told Undine the secret of her birth.

'Fear nothing, dear Bertalda,' said Undine hastily, 'the Master of the
fountain shall not do you harm. I will tell you who he is, and then
you will no longer be afraid. His name is Kühleborn and he is my
uncle. It was he who carried you away from your mother's arms and put
me there in your place.'

Then, as Bertalda listened with wide open eyes, Undine told her of her
childhood's home in the crystal palace under the blue sea, and of the
free and careless life she had lived in the cottage by the lake. She
told her, too, of the coming of the knight, and of their wedding-day,
when she had won for herself a soul, a gift given to no Undine save