The knight was silent, and sat down absorbed in deep thought. Undine
whispered in his ear, "Would it not be better, my love, to give up
this foolish voyage, and return to Castle Ringstetten in peace?"

But Huldbrand murmured wrathfully: "So I must become a prisoner in my
own castle, and not be allowed to breathe a moment but while the
fountain is covered? Would to Heaven that your cursed kindred--"

Then Undine pressed her fair hand on his lips caressingly. He said
no more; but in silence pondered on all that Undine had before said.

Bertalda, meanwhile, had given herself up to a crowd of thronging
thoughts. Of Undine's origin she knew a good deal, but not the
whole; and the terrible Kuhleborn especially remained to her an
awful, an impenetrable mystery--never, indeed, had she once heard his
name. Musing upon these wondrous things, she unclasped, without
being fully conscious of what she was doing, a golden necklace, which
Huldbrand, on one of the preceding days of their passage, had bought
for her of a travelling trader; and she was now letting it float in
sport just over the surface of the stream, while in her dreamy mood
she enjoyed the bright reflection it threw on the water, so clear
beneath the glow of evening. That instant a huge hand flashed
suddenly up from the Danube, seized the necklace in its grasp, and
vanished with it beneath the flood. Bertalda shrieked aloud, and a
scornful laugh came pealing up from the depth of the river.

The knight could now restrain his wrath no longer. He started up,
poured forth a torrent of reproaches, heaped curses upon all who
interfered with his friends and troubled his life, and dared them
all, water-spirits or mermaids, to come within the sweep of his