He had guessed rightly. Though the boatman had seemed courageous when speaking to the water-sprite, a secret uneasiness rankled in his heart. It was not for himself he feared, but for his only child; for he had seen the wicked glance that the waterman had cast on the girl as he disappeared beneath the stream. He consulted his wife about what they ought to do for their child's safety; for they knew well the dangers of St. John's day, which the mischance with the rudder had unhappily doubled.
In the next village lived a distant relation, and the fair gave an excellent excuse for paying her a visit. The little girl dressed herself in her best, said good-bye to her parents, and received injunctions to stay all night with her friends, and not return to the boat before morning. Joyfully she hastened along the high-road, which lay for some distance by the river-side, till she came to the place where the water-sprite sat so quietly in his summer clothes, that no one would have recognised in him the angry and revengeful spirit of the morning.
"Where are you going so briskly, fair maiden?" he asked pleasantly.
"To the village, to the dance!" answered the little one merrily; "don't you hear the music?"
"My dear child," said the water-sprite artfully, "the girls there are all so finely dressed that you in your plain clothes will look very shabby among them, and perhaps you will not even be able to get a partner. But look at this lovely ribbon, of which I have such a quantity. If you had that twined in among your golden hair, or wound as a sash round your slender waist, you would outshine all the girls at the fair."
The little one, who had thought until the old man spoke to her that she would never get soon enough to the dance, now stopped, and looked with a critical eye, first on herself, and then on the bright green ribbon, which the water-sprite was pulling in endless lengths from the river which flowed on the other side of the willows.
"Look how pretty it is!" said he, and she let him wind it, as if to try the effect, around her slender form.
But immediately she was in the old fairy's power. With a mocking laugh, he said—
"Now, my little one, thou art mine! We shall see whether thy father will say to-morrow that my authority is overthrown, and that I have no longer power to frighten a child. Come!"