eps down from Niflheim, and brings
ruin and death in its wake. She felt that she had been cruelly wronged
in some way, and that her life had been wrecked, and she rested not
until she had learned the truth.

It was Hagen who at last told her the story of the cruel deceit that
had made her Gunther's wife; and then her wrath and her shame knew no
bounds.

"Woe betide the day!" she cried,--"woe betide the day that brought me to
Rhineland, and made me the wife of a weakling and coward, and the jest
of him who might have done nobler things!"

Hagen smiled. He had long waited for this day.

"It was Siegfried, and Siegfried alone, who plotted to deceive you,"
he said. "Had it not been for him, you might still have been the happy
maiden-queen of Isenland. And now he laughs at you, and urges his queen,
Kriemhild, to scorn you as she would an underling."

"I know it, I know it," returned the queen in distress. "And yet how
grandly noble is the man! How he rushed through the flames to awaken me,
when no one else could save! How brave, how handsome,--and yet he has
been my bane. I can have no peace while he lives."

Hagen smiled again, and a strange light gleamed from his dark eye. Then
he said, "Truly handsome and brave is he, but a viler traitor was never
born. He even now plots to seize this kingdom, and to add it to his
domain. Why else should he bring so great a retinue of Nibelungen
warriors to Burgundy? I will see King Gunther at once, and we will put
an end to his wicked projects."

"Do even so, good Hagen," said Brunhild. "Take him from my path, and
bring low the haughty pride of his wife, and I shall be content."

"That I will do!" cried Hagen. "That I will do! Gunther is and shall be
the king without a peer; and no one shall dare dispute the worth and the
queenly beauty of his wife."

Then the wily chief sought Gunther, and with cunning words poisoned his
weak mind. The feeble old king was easily made to believe that Siegfried
was plotting against his life, and seeking to wrest the kingdom from
him. And he forgot the many kind favors he had received at the hero's
hand. He no longer remembered how Siegfried had slain the terror of the
Glittering Heath, and freed the Burgundians from many a fear; and how
he had routed the warlike hosts of the North-land, and made prisoners
of their kings; and how he had brought his voyage to Isenland to a happy
and successful ending. He forgot, also, that Siegfried was his sister