d; for, while the brothers were away from the burgh, he caused the
great Hoard to be carried to the river, at a place called Lochheim,
and sunk, fathoms deep, beneath the water. And then, for fear of the
vengeance which might be wreaked upon him, he fled from Rhineland, and
hid himself for a while among the mountains and the barren hill-country
of the South.

And this was the end of the fated Hoard of Andvari.

The After Word.

Such is the story of Siegfried (or Sigurd), as we gather it from various
German and Scandinavian legends. In this recital I have made no attempt
to follow any one of the numerous originals, but have selected here
and there such incidents as best suited my purpose in constructing one
connected story which would convey to your minds some notion of the
beauty and richness of our ancient myths. In doing this, I have drawn,
now from the Volsunga Saga, now from the Nibelungen Lied, now from one
of the Eddas, and now from some of the minor legends relating to the
great hero of the North. These ancient stories, although differing
widely in particulars, have a certain general relationship and agreement
which proves beyond doubt a common origin. "The primeval myth," says
Thomas Carlyle, "whether it were at first philosophical truth, or
historical incident, floats too vaguely on the breath of men: each has
the privilege of inventing, and the far wider privilege of borrowing
and new modelling from all that preceded him. Thus, though tradition
may have but one root, it grows, like a banian, into a whole overarching
labyrinth of trees."

If you would follow the tradition of Siegfried to the end; if you would
learn how, after the great Hoard had been buried in the Rhine, the curse
of the dwarf Andvari still followed those who had possessed it, and how
Kriemhild wreaked a terrible vengeance upon Siegfried's murderers,--you
must read the original story as related in the Volsung Myth or in the
Nibelungen Song. Our story ends with Siegfried.

The episodes which I have inserted here and there--the stories of AEgir,
and of Balder, and of Idun, and of Thor--do not, as you may know, belong
properly to the legend of Siegfried; but I have thrown them in, in order
to acquaint you with some of the most beautiful mythical conceptions of
our ancestors.

A grand old people were those early kinsmen of ours,--not at all so
savage and inhuman as our histories would sometimes make us believe. For
however mistak