until the morning dawns. If, by that time, the gold is not
here, you may do with us as you please."

Hreidmar and the two young men agreed to Odin's offer; and,
lots being cast, it fell to Loki to go and fetch the
treasure. When he had been loosed from the cords which bound
him, Loki donned his magic shoes, which had carried him over
land and sea from the farthest bounds of the mid-world, and
hastened away upon his errand. And he sped with the
swiftness of light, over the hills and the wooded slopes,
and the deep dark valleys, and the fields and forests and
sleeping hamlets, until he came to the place where dwelt the
swarthy elves and the cunning dwarf Andvari. There the River
Rhine, no larger than a meadow-brook, breaks forth from
beneath a mountain of ice, which the Frost giants and blind
old Hoder, the Winter-king, had built long years before; for
they had vainly hoped that they might imprison the river at
its fountain-head. But the baby-brook had eaten its way
beneath the frozen mass, and had sprung out from its prison,
and gone on, leaping and smiling, and kissing the sunlight,
in its ever-widening course towards Burgundy and the sea.

Loki came to this place, because he knew that here was the
home of the elves who had laid up the greatest hoard of
treasures ever known in the mid-world. He scanned with
careful eyes the mountain-side, and the deep, rocky caverns,
and the dark gorge through which the little river rushed;
but in the dim moonlight not a living being could he see,
save a lazy salmon swimming in the quieter eddies of the
stream. Any one but Loki would have lost all hope of finding