, as he looked in he saw, meeting his
glance from beneath the gold, the red nose and sharp eyes of his old
friend of the mug, a thousand times redder and sharper than ever he had
seen them in his life.

"Come, Gluck, my boy," said the voice out of the pot again, "I'm all
right; pour me out."

But Gluck was too much astonished to do anything of the kind.

"Pour me out, I say," said the voice rather gruffly.

Still Gluck couldn't move.

"WILL you pour me out?" said the voice passionately. "I'm too hot."

By a violent effort Gluck recovered the use of his limbs, took hold of
the crucible, and sloped it, so as to pour out the gold. But instead
of a liquid stream there came out, first a pair of pretty little yellow
legs, then some coat tails, then a pair of arms stuck akimbo, and
finally the well-known head of his friend the mug--all which articles,
uniting as they rolled out, stood up energetically on the floor in the
shape of a little golden dwarf about a foot and a half high.

"That's right!" said the dwarf, stretching out first his legs and then
his arms, and then shaking his head up and down and as far round as it
would go, for five minutes without stopping, apparently with the view
of ascertaining if he were quite correctly put together, while Gluck
stood contemplating him in speechless amazement. He was dressed in a
slashed doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture that the prismatic
colors gleamed over it as if on a surface of mother-of-pearl; and over
this brilliant doublet his hair and beard fell full halfway to the
ground in waving curls, so exquisitely delicate that Gluck could hardly
tell where they ended; they seemed to melt into air. The features of
the face, however, were by no means finished with the same delicacy;
they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to coppery in complexion,
and indicative, in expression, of a very pertinacious and intractable
disposition in their small proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his
self-examination, he turned his small, sharp eyes full on Gluck and
stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it wouldn't,
Gluck, my boy," said the little man.

This was certainly rather an abrupt and unconnected mode of commencing
conversation. It might indeed be supposed to refer to the course of
Gluck's thoughts, which had first produced the dwarf's observations out
of the pot; but whatever it referred to, Gluck had no inclination to
dispute the dictum.

"