While with one hand the knight drew the steed after him by the bridle, he supported the tottering Bertalda with the other.

She exerted all the strengths in her power in order to escape speedily from this vale of terrors.

But weariness weighed her down like lead; and all her limbs trembled, partly in consequence of what she had suffered from the extreme terror which Kuhleborn had already caused her, and partly from her present fear at the roar of the tempest and thunder amid the mountain forest.
At last she slid from the arm of the knight; and sinking upon the moss, she said: "Only let me lie here, my noble lord.

I suffer the punishment due to my folly; and I must perish here through faintness and dismay." "Never, gentle lady, will I leave you," cried Huldbrand, vainly trying to restrain the furious animal he was leading, for the horse was all in a foam, and began to chafe more ungovernably than before, till the knight was glad to keep him at such a distance from the exhausted maiden as to save her from a new alarm.

But hardly had he withdrawn five steps with the frantic steed when she began to call after him in the most sorrowful accents, fearful that he would actually leave her in this horrible wilderness.