d as you
want,--a blade that no war coat can foil. Give me but leave to try!"

The other pupils laughed in scorn, but Mimer checked them. "You hear
how this boy can talk: we will see what he can do. He is the king's
son, and we know that he has uncommon talent. He shall make the sword;
but if, upon trial, it fail, I will make him rue the day."

Then Siegfried went to his task. And for seven days and seven nights
the sparks never stopped flying from his forge; and the ringing of his
anvil, and the hissing of the hot metal as he tempered it, were heard
continuously. On the eighth day the sword was fashioned, and Siegfried
brought it to Mimer.

The smith felt the razor edge of the bright weapon, and said, "This
seems, indeed, a fair fire edge. Let us make a trial of its keenness."

Then a thread of wool as light as thistle-down was thrown upon water,
and, as it floated there, Mimer struck it with the sword. The
glittering blade cleft the thread in twain, and the pieces floated
undisturbed upon the surface of the liquid.

"Well done!" cried the delighted smith. "Never have I seen a keener
edge. If its temper is as true as its sharpness would lead us to
believe, it will indeed serve me well."

But Siegfried took the sword again, and broke it into many pieces; and
for three days he welded it in a white-hot fire, and tempered it with
milk and oatmeal. Then, in sight of the sneering apprentices, a light
ball of fine-spun wool was cast upon the flowing water of the brook;
and it was caught in the swift eddies of the stream, and whirled about
until it met the bared blade of the sword, which was held in
Siegfried's hands. And the ball 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. 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