rd Gram in two pieces?"

"True enough," she said.

So Sigurd said, "Deliver them into my hands, for I would have them."

She said he looked like to win great fame, and gave him the sword.
Therewith went Sigurd to Regin, and bade him make a good sword thereof
as he best might; Regin grew wroth thereat, but went into the smithy
with the pieces of the sword, thinking well meanwhile that Sigurd pushed
his head far enow into the matter of smithying. So he made a sword, and
as he bore it forth from the forge, it seemed to the smiths as though
fire burned along the edges thereof. Now he bade Sigurd take the sword,
and said he knew not how to make a sword if this one failed. Then Sigurd
smote it into the anvil, and cleft it down to the stock thereof, and
neither burst the sword nor brake it. Then he praised the sword much,
and thereafter went to the river with a lock of wool, and threw it up
against the stream, and it fell asunder when it met the sword. Then was
Sigurd glad, and went home.

But Regin said, "Now whereas I have made the sword for thee, belike thou
wilt hold to thy troth given, and wilt go meet Fafnir?"

"Surely will I hold thereto," said Sigurd, "yet first must I avenge my
father."

Now Sigurd the older he grew, the more he grew in the love of all men,
so that every child loved him well.

CHAPTER XVI. The prophecy of Grifir.

There was a man hight Grifir,(1) who was Sigurd's mother's brother, and
a little after the forging of the sword Sigurd went to Grifir, because
he was a man who knew things to come, and what was fated to men: of him
Sigurd asked diligently how his life should go; but Grifir was long
or he spake, yet at the last, by reason of Sigurd's exceeding great
prayers, he told him all his life and the fate thereof, even as
afterwards came to pass. So when Grifir had told him all even as he
would, he went back home; and a little after he and Regin met.

Then said Regin, "Go thou and slay Fafnir, even as thou hast given thy
word."

Sigurd said, "That work shall be wrought; but another is first to be
done, the avenging of Sigmund the king and the other of my kinsmen who
fell in that their last fight."

ENDNOTES:
(1) Called "Gripir" in the Edda.

CHAPTER XVII. Of Sigurd's Avenging of Sigmund his Father.

Now Sigurd went to the kings, and spake thus--

"Here have I abode a space with you, and I owe you thanks and reward,
for great love and many gifts and all due honour; but n