“They went and the Gold abided:  but the words Allfather spake,
    I call them back full often for that golden even’s sake,
    Yet little that hour I heard them, save as wind across the lea;
    For the gold shone up on Reidmar and on Fafnir’s face and on me. 
    And sore I loved that treasure:  so I wrapped my heart in guile,
    And sleeked my tongue with sweetness, and set my face in a smile,
    And I bade my father keep it, the more part of the gold,
    Yet give good store to Fafnir for his goodly help and bold,
    And deal me a little handful for my smithying-help that day. 
    But no little I desired, though for little I might pray;
    And prayed I for much or for little, he answered me no more
    Than the shepherd answers the wood-wolf who howls at the yule-tide
      door: 
    But good he ever deemed it to sit on his ivory throne,
    And stare on the red rings’ glory, and deem he was ever alone: 
    And never a word spake Fafnir, but his eyes waxed red and grim
    As he looked upon our father, and noted the ways of him.

    “The night waned into the morning, and still above the Hoard
    Sat Reidmar clad in purple; but Fafnir took his sword,
    And I took my smithying-hammer, and apart in the world we went;
    But I came aback in the even, and my heart was heavy and spent;
    And I longed, but fear was upon me and I durst not go to the Gold;
    So I lay in the house of my toil mid the things I had fashioned of old;
    And methought as I lay in my bed ’twixt waking and slumber of night
    That I heard the tinkling metal and beheld the hall alight,
    But I slept and dreamed of the Gods, and the things that never have
      slept,
    Till I woke to a cry and a clashing and forth from the bed I leapt,
    And there by the heaped-up Elf-gold my brother Fafnir stood,
    And there at his feet lay Reidmar and reddened the Treasure with blood: 
    And e’en as I looked on his eyen they glazed and whitened with death,
    And forth on the torch-litten hall he shed his latest breath.

    “But I looked on Fafnir and trembled for he wore the Helm of Dread,
    And his sword was bare in his hand, and the sword and the hand were red
    With the blood of our father Reidmar, and his body was wrapped in gold,
    With the ruddy-gleaming mailcoat of whose fellow hath nought been told,
    And it seemed as I looked upon him that he grew beneath mine eyes: 
    And then in the mid-hall’s silence did his dreadful voice arise: 

    “’I have slain my father Reidmar, that I alone might keep
    The Gold of the darksome places, the Candle of the Deep. 
    I am such as the Gods have made me, lest the Dwarf-kind people the
      earth,
    Or mingle their ancient wisdom with its short-lived latest birth. 
    I shall dwell alone henceforward,