"Undine! for God's sake, Undine!" cried the Knight, and the old man.
No answer was to be heard; and, heedless now of any danger to
themselves, they ran off in different directions, calling her in
frantic anxiety.
III.--HOW THEY FOUND UNDINE AGAIN
The longer Huldbrand wandered in vain pursuit of Undine, the more
bewildered he became. The idea that she might be a mere spirit of the
woods, sometimes returned upon him with double force; nay, amid the
howling waves and storm, the groaning of trees, and the wild commotion
of the once-peaceful spot, he might have fancied the whole promontory,
its hut and its inhabitants, to be a delusion of magic, but that he
still heard in the distance the Fisherman's piteous cries of "Undine!"
and the old housewife's loud prayers and hymns, above the whistling of
the blast.
At last he found himself on the margin of the overflowing stream, and
saw it by the moonlight rushing violently along, close to the edge of
the mysterious forest so as to make an island of the peninsula on
which he stood. "Gracious Heaven!" thought he, "Undine may have
ventured a step or two into that awful forest--perhaps in her pretty
waywardness, just because I would not tell her my story--and the
swollen stream has cut her off, and left her weeping alone among the
spectres!" A cry of terror escaped him, and he clambered down the bank
by means of some stones and fallen trees, hoping to wade or swim
across the flood, and seek the fugitive beyond it.
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