Well pleased with this answer, the knight dismounted, and together he
and the fisherman freed the white horse from its saddle and bridle,
and turned it loose into the waving meadow.

Then the old man led the stranger into the cottage.

Here, by the light of the kitchen fire, sat the fisherman's wife. She
rose, with a kind greeting for the unexpected guest. Then seating
herself again in her armchair, she pointed to an old stool with a
broken leg. 'Sit there, good knight,' she said; 'only you must sit
still, lest the broken leg prove too weak to bear you.'

Carrying the stool over beside the old woman, the knight placed it
carefully on the floor and seated himself as he was bidden. As he sat
there talking with the good old fisherman and his wife, it seemed to
him almost as though he were their son, who had come home again after
journeying in a distant land.

It was only when the knight began to speak of the wood that the
fisherman grew restless and refused to listen.

'It were wiser, Sir Knight,' he said, 'not to talk of the wood at
nightfall, or indeed to say much of it at any time.'

And then the old couple told their guest how simply they lived in the
little cottage by the lake, and they in their turn listened eagerly
while the knight told them of himself. He was named Sir Huldbrand, and
he dwelt in his castle of Ringstetten, which stood near the source of
the river Danube.