ittering
golden scales, and its staring ruby eyes.

"Alas!" answered he, "a curse rests upon it,--the curse which Andvari
the ancient laid upon it when Loki tore it from his hand. A miser's
heart--selfish, cold, snaky--is bred in its owner's being; and he
thenceforth lives a very serpent's life. Or, should he resist its
influence, then death through the guile of pretended friends is sure to
be his fate."

"Then why," asked the queen,--"why do you keep it yourself? Why do you
risk its bane? Why not give it to your sworn foe, or cast it into the
sea, or melt it in the fire, and thus escape the curse?"

Siegfried answered by telling how, when in the heyday of his youth, he
had slain Fafnir, the keeper of this hoard, upon the Glittering Heath;
and how, while still in the narrow trench which he had dug, the blood of
the horrid beast had flown in upon him, and covered him up.

"And this I have been told by Odin's birds," he went on to say, "that
every part of my body that was touched by the slimy flood was made
forever proof against sword and spear, and sharp weapons of every kind.
Hence I have no cause to fear the stroke, either of open foes or of
traitorous false friends."

"But was all of your body covered with the dragon's blood? Was there no
small spot untouched?" asked the queen, more anxious now than she had
ever seemed to be before she had known aught of her husband's strange
security from wounds.

"Only one very little spot between the shoulders was left untouched,"
answered Siegfried. "I afterwards found a lime-leaf sticking there, and
I know that the slimy blood touched not that spot. But then who fears a
thrust in the back? None save cowards are wounded there."

"Ah!" said the queen, toying tremulously with the fatal ring, "that
little lime-leaf may yet bring us unutterable woe."

But Siegfried laughed at her fears; and he took the serpent-ring, and
slipped it upon his forefinger, and said that he would wear it there,
bane or no bane, so long as Odin would let him live.

Then, after another long look at the heaps of glittering gold and
priceless gem-stones, the company turned, and followed Alberich back,
through the gloomy entranceway and the narrow door, to the open air
again. And mounting their steeds, which stood ready, they started
homewards. But, at the outer gate, Siegfried paused, and said to the
dwarf at parting,--

"Hearken, Alberich! The Hoard of Andvari is no longer mine. I have made
a pres