giants for building his castle, and would not give it back to the river
nymphs, and how one of the giants killed the other and kept all the
treasure. Well, the Father of the Gods has been learning and thinking a
good deal since then, and he has begun to see what a great wrong he did
when he put the gold to his own uses, instead of giving it back to the
nymphs. It is no light punishment that falls on gods when they do
wrong, and he sees that for this sin he and all the other gods who live
with him in his castle must at last be destroyed utterly. Yet he still
hopes to save them if only the gold, or at least the ring, can be given
back again to the nymphs.

"Now, the giant who took all the treasure carried it away to a deep
cave in the side of a mountain, and then, by the help of the magic
helmet, he changed himself into a horrible, fierce, fiery, poisonous
dragon, so that he might stay in the cave and guard it. And there he
has stayed guarding it ever since. You will see at once that the
treasure never would do him any good in that way, but giants are
usually stupid, and he could not think of anything better to do with
it. A boy who has a penny and knows enough to buy a penny whistle with
it is richer than this dragon giant. Yet he guards the treasure pretty
well, and the Father of the Gods cannot take it away from him, and
cannot help anybody else to take it away from him, because he paid it
to him for the castle, and to touch it now would be to break his
promise. Yet he wishes that somebody, without his help, would kill the
dragon and give the gold back to its real owners. This would not really
do him any good, for his own old sin would still be just as great, and
he knows it; yet he has a strange kind of hope that it may somehow help
him. But the dragon is so big and fierce and fiery and poisonous, that
nobody could ever hope to kill him except the very greatest of heroes,
and one who simply did not know what fear meant. Even such a hero might