ps as they fall. When the basin is filled, and she
turns to empty it in the tar-black river that flows through that home
of horrors, the terrible venom falls upon his unprotected face, and Loki
writhes and shrieks in fearful agony, until the earth around him
shakes and trembles, and the mountains spit forth fire, and fumes of
sulphur-smoke.

And there the Mischief-maker, the spirit of evil, shall lie in torment
until the last great day and the dread twilight of all mid-world things.
How strange and how sad, that, while Loki lies thus bound and harmless,
evil still walks the earth, and that so much mischief and such dire
disasters were prepared for Siegfried and the folk of Nibelungen Land!

Adventure XVIII. How the Mischief Began to Brew.

One day a party of strangers came to Siegfried's Nibelungen dwelling,
and asked to speak with the king.

"Who are you? and what is your errand?" asked the porter at the gate.

"Our errand is to the king, and he will know who we are when he sees
us," was the answer.

When Siegfried was told of the strange men who waited below, and of
the strange way in which they had answered the porter's question, he
asked,--

"From what country seem they to have come? For surely their dress and
manners will betray something of that matter to you. Are they South-land
folk, or East-land folk? Are they from the mountains, or from the sea?"

"They belong to none of the neighbor-lands," answered the earl who had
brought the word to the king. "No such men live upon our borders. They
seem to have come from a far-off land; for they are travel-worn, and
their sea-stained clothing betokens a people from the south. They are
tall and dark, and their hair is black, and they look much like those
Rhineland warriors who came hither with our lady the queen. And they
carry a blood-red banner with a golden dragon painted upon it."

"Oh, they must be from Burgundy!" cried the queen, who had overheard
these words. And she went at once to the window to see the strangers,
who were waiting in the courtyard below.

There, indeed, she saw thirty tall Burgundians, clad in the gay costume
of Rhineland, now faded and worn with long travel. But all save one were
young, and strangers to Kriemhild. That one was their leader,--an old
man with a kind face, and a right noble bearing.

"See!" said the queen to Siegfried: "there is our brave captain Gere,
who, ever since my childhood, has been the trustiest man i