he shall!--stop him who may!"

Thus speaking, she stamped her little foot vehemently on the floor,
but all with an air of such comic and good-humoured simplicity, that
Huldbrand now found it quite as hard to withdraw his gaze from her
wild emotion as he had before from her gentleness and beauty. The
old man, on the contrary, burst out in unrestrained displeasure. He
severely reproved Undine for her disobedience and her unbecoming
carriage towards the stranger, and his good old wife joined him in
harping on the same string.

By these rebukes Undine was only excited the more. "If you want to
quarrel with me," she cried, "and will not let me hear what I so much
desire, then sleep alone in your smoky old hut!" And swift as an
arrow she shot from the door, and vanished amid the darkness of the
night.

Huldbrand and the fisherman sprang from their seats, and were rushing
to stop the angry girl; but before they could reach the cottage-door,
she had disappeared in the stormy darkness without, and no sound, not
so much even as that of her light footstep, betrayed the course she
had taken. Huldbrand threw a glance of inquiry towards his host; it
almost seemed to him as if the whole of the sweet apparition, which
had so suddenly plunged again amid the night, were no other than a
continuation of the wonderful forms that had just played their mad
pranks with him in the forest. But the old man muttered between his
teeth,

"This is not the first time she has treated us in this manner. Now
must our hearts be filled with anxiety, and our eyes find no sleep