At last, when he uttered the dear name with a more powerful effort, a hollow echo from the mountain-caverns of the valley indistinctly reverberated "Bertalda!" but still the sleeper woke not.

He bent down over her; the gloom of the valley and the obscurity of approaching night would not allow him to distinguish her features.
Just as he was stooping closer over her, with a feeling of painful doubt, a flash of lightning shot across the valley, and he saw before him a frightfully distorted countenance, and a hollow voice exclaimed: "Give me a kiss, you enamoured swain!" Huldbrand sprang up with a cry of horror, and the hideous figure rose with him.

"Go home!" it murmured; "wizards are on the watch.

Go home! or I will have you!" and it stretched out its long white arms toward him.
"Malicious Kuhleborn!" cried the knight, recovering himself, "What do you concern me, you goblin?
There, take your kiss!" And he furiously hurled his sword at the figure.

But it vanished like vapor, and a gush of water which wetted him through left the knight no doubt as to the foe with whom he had been engaged.
"He wishes to frighten me back from Bertalda," said he aloud to himself; "he thinks to terrify me with his foolish tricks, and to make me give up the poor distressed girl to him, so that he can wreak his vengeance on her.