The knight felt the sense of her words rather than heard the words themselves, and answered simply to this sense.
Then the waggoner suddenly shouted, with a startling voice: "Up, my greys, up with your feet! Hey, now together!--show your spirit!--remember who you are!" The knight bent over the side of the waggon, and saw that the horses had stepped into the midst of a foaming stream, and were, indeed, almost swimming, while the wheels of the waggon were rushing round and flashing like mill-wheels; and the waggoner had got on before, to avoid the swell of the flood.
"What sort of a road is this?
It leads into the middle of the stream!" cried Huldbrand to his guide.
"Not at all, sir," returned he, with a laugh; "it is just the contrary.
The stream is running in the middle of our road.

Only look about you, and see how all is overflowed!" The whole valley, in fact, was in commotion, as the waters, suddenly raised and visibly rising, swept over it.
"It is Kuhleborn, that evil water-spirit, who wishes to drown us!" exclaimed the knight.

"Have you no charm of protection against him, friend ?" "I have one," answered the waggoner; "but I cannot and must not make use of it before you know who I am." "Is this a time for riddles ?" cried the knight.

"The flood is every moment rising higher; and what does it concern ME to know who YOU are ?" "But mayhap it does concern you, though," said the guide; "for I am Kuhleborn." Thus speaking he thrust his head into the waggon, and laughed with a distorted visage.

But the waggon remained a waggon no longer; the grey horses were horses no longer; all was transformed to foam--all sank into the waters that rushed and hissed around them; while the waggoner himself, rising in the form of a gigantic wave, dragged the vainly-struggling courser under the waters, then rose again huge as a liquid tower, swept over the heads of the floating pair, and was on the point of burying them irrecoverably beneath it.