failed to find her, the more anxious and confused he became. The
impression that she was a mere phantom of the forest gained a new
ascendency over him; indeed, amid the howling of the waves and the
tempest, the crashing of the trees, and the entire change of the once
so peaceful and beautiful scene, he was tempted to view the whole
peninsula, together with the cottage and its inhabitants, as little
more than some mockery of his senses. But still he heard afar off
the fisherman's anxious and incessant shouting, "Undine!" and also
his aged wife, who was praying and singing psalms.

At length, when he drew near to the brook, which had overflowed its
banks, he perceived by the moonlight, that it had taken its wild
course directly in front of the haunted forest, so as to change the
peninsula into an island.

"Merciful God!" he breathed to himself, "if Undine has ventured a
step within that fearful wood, what will become of her? Perhaps it
was all owing to her sportive and wayward spirit, because I would
give her no account of my adventures there. And now the stream is
rolling between us, she may be weeping alone on the other side in the
midst of spectral horrors!"

A shuddering groan escaped him; and clambering over some stones and
trunks of overthrown pines, in order to step into the impetuous
current, he resolved, either by wading or swimming, to seek the
wanderer on the further shore. He felt, it is true, all the dread
and shrinking awe creeping over him which he had already suffered by
daylight among the now tossing and roaring branches of the forest.
More than all, a tall man in white, whom he knew but too well, met
his view, as he stood grinning and nodding on the grass beyond the