Page:Undine (Lumley).djvu/65

 28 UNDINE.

roll on with a more impetuous sweep ; and this forced him to prolong his stay on the island. Part of the day he wandered about with an old cross-bow, which he found in a corner of the cottage and had repaired, in order to shoot the water-fowl that flew over; and all that he was lucky enough to hit, he brought home for a good roast in the kitchen. When he came in with his booty, Undine seldom failed to greet him with a scolding, because he had cruelly deprived the happy joyous little creatures of life as they were sporting above in the blue ocean of the air ; nay more, she often wept bitterly when she viewed the water- fowl dead in his hand. But at other times, when he re- turned without having shot any, she gave him a scolding equally serious, since, owing to his carelessness and Avant of skill, they must now put up with a dinner offish. Her playful taunts ever touched his heart with delight; the more so, as she generally strove to make up for her pre- tended ill-humour with endearing caresses.

The old people saw with pleasure this familiarity of Undine and Huldbrand : they looked upon them as be- trothed, or even as married, and living with them in their old age on their island, now torn off from the mainland. The loneliness of his situation strongly im])ressed also the young Huldbrand with the feeling that he was already Undine's bridegroom. It seemed to him as if, beyond those encompassing floods, there were no other world in existence, or at any rate as if he could never cross them, and again associate with the world of other men ; and when at times his grazing steed raised his head and neighed to him, seemingly inquiring after his knightly achieve- ments and reminding him of them, or when his coat-of- arms slernly shone upon him from the embroidery of his saddle 'ind the caparisons of his liorse, or when liis sword happen -id to fall from the nail on which it was hanging in the cottage, and flashed on his eye as it slipped from the pcabljard in its fall, — he quieted the doubts of his mind l)y &;iying to himself: " Undine cannot be a fisherman's daugh-