held in Mimer's hands. And it was parted as easily and clean
as the rippling water, and not the smallest thread was moved
out of its place.

Then back to the smithy Siegfried went again; and his forge
glowed with a brighter fire, and his hammer rang upon the
anvil with a cheerier sound, than ever before. But he
suffered none to come near, and no one ever knew what
witchery he used. But some of his fellow-pupils afterwards
told how, in the dusky twilight, they had seen a one-eyed
man, long-bearded, and clad in a cloud-gray kirtle, and
wearing a sky-blue hood, talking with Siegfried at the
smithy door. And they said that the stranger's face was at
once pleasant and fearful to look upon, and that his one eye
shone in the gloaming like the evening star, and that, when
he had placed in Siegfried's hands bright shards, like
pieces of a broken sword, he faded suddenly from their
sight, and was seen no more.

For seven weeks the lad wrought day and night at his forge;
and then, pale and haggard, but with a pleased smile upon
his face, he stood before Mimer, with the gleaming sword in
his hands. "It is finished," he said. "Behold the glittering
terror!--the blade Balmung. Let us try its edge, and prove
its temper once again, that so we may know whether you can
place your trust in it."

And Mimer looked long at the ruddy hilts of the weapon, and
at the mystic runes that were scored upon its sides, and at
the keen edge, which gleamed like a ray of sunlight in the