a horrible evil?"

"Why is the hoard of Andvari more thine than Fafnir's?"

"He is a monster, and he keeps the treasure but to gloat upon its
glittering richness. I will use it to make myself a name upon the earth.
I will not hoard it away. But I am weak, and he is strong and terrible.
Will you help me?"

"To-morrow," said Siegfried, "be ready to go with me to the Glittering
Heath. The treasure shall be thine, and also the curse."

"And also the curse," echoed Regin.

Adventure IV. Fafnir, the Dragon.

Regin took up his harp, and his fingers smote the strings; and the music
which came forth sounded like the wail of the winter's wind through
the dead treetops of the forest. And the song which he sang was full of
grief and wild hopeless yearning for the things which were not to be.
When he had ceased, Siegfried said,--

"That was indeed a sorrowful song for one to sing who sees his hopes so
nearly realized. Why are you so sad? Is it because you fear the curse
which you have taken upon yourself? or is it because you know not what
you will do with so vast a treasure, and its possession begins already
to trouble you?"

"Oh, many are the things I will do with that treasure!" answered Regin;
and his eyes flashed wildly, and his face grew red and pale. "I will
turn winter into summer; I will make the desert-places glad; I will
bring back the golden age; I will make myself a god: for mine shall be
the wisdom and the gathered wealth of the world. And yet I fear"--

"What do you fear?"

"The ring, the ring--it is accursed! The Norns, too, have spoken, and my
doom is known. I cannot escape it."

"The Norns have woven the woof of every man's life," answered Siegfried.
"To-morrow we fare to the Glittering Heath, and the end shall be as the
Norns have spoken."

And so, early the next morning, Siegfried mounted Greyfell, and rode
out towards the desert-land that lay beyond the forest and the barren
mountain-range; and Regin, his eyes flashing with desire, and his feet
never tiring, trudged by his side. For seven days they wended their
way through the thick greenwood, sleeping at night on the bare ground
beneath the trees, while the wolves and other wild beasts of the forest
filled the air with their hideous howlings. But no evil creature dared
come near them, for fear of the shining beams of light which fell
from Greyfell's gleaming mane. On the eighth day they came to the open
country and to the hills, where