“No,” sighed Moneta, thinking of the kind words her husband had sometimes spoken to her: “I cannot go yet.”
But the kelpie came every day, repeating the question, “Will you go now?” and she answered, “I cannot go yet.”
But at last her husband said,—
“How often the thought comes to me, If I had no wife and child, all this gold would be mine!” and he knitted his brows with a frown.
Then Moneta looked in his face, and said,—
“Dear Ivan, I have loved you truly; but you no longer care for Moneta. I will go away with the little child, and all our gold shall be yours. Farewell!”
Then she embraced him with falling tears. His heart was stirred within him; and he would have followed her, only he knew not which way she had gone.
Soon the water-kelpie came to him in the form of a horse; and ran before him, neighing fiercely, and breathing fire from his mouth. This is the way kelpies take to announce the fact that some one has gone under the water.
So the man followed the kelpie. His heart was swelling with grief; and all his love for his wife and child had come back to him.
He looked into the lake, and saw the fair city. In a transparent palace Moneta was sitting, crowned with pearls, the child sleeping on her bosom. He shouted,—