“Who among you is skilful enough to forge such a sword?” he asked,

One after another, the pupils shook their heads.  And the foreman of the apprentices said, “I have heard much about that wonderful armor, and its extreme hardness, and I doubt if any skill can make a sword with edge so sharp and true as to cut into it.  The best that can be done is to try to make another war coat whose temper shall equal that of Amilias’s armor.”

Then the lad Siegfried quickly said, “I will make such a sword 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, like pieces of a broken sword, he faded suddenly from their sight, and was seen no more.