, like
pieces of a broken sword, he faded suddenly from their sight, and was
seen no more.

For seven weeks the lad wrought day and night at his forge; and then,
pale and haggard, but with a pleased smile upon his face, he stood
before Mimer, with the sword in his hands. "It is finished," he said.
"Behold the glittering terror!--the blade Balmung. Let us try its edge
and prove its temper once again, that so we may know whether you can
place your trust in it."

Mimer looked long at the ruddy hilt of the weapon, and at the mystic
runes that were scored upon its sides, and at the keen edge, which
looked like a ray of sunlight in the gathering gloom of the evening.
But no word came from his lips, and his eyes were dim and dazed; and he
seemed as one lost in thoughts of days long past and gone.

Siegfried raised the blade high over his head; and the gleaming edge
flashed hither and thither, like the lightning's play when Thor rides
over the storm clouds. Then suddenly it fell upon the master's anvil,
and the solid block of iron was cleft in two; but the blade was no whit
dulled by the stroke, and the line of light which marked the edge was
brighter than before.

Then to the brook they went; and a great pack of wool, the fleeces of
ten sheep, was brought, and thrown upon the swirling water. As the
stream bore the bundle downwards, Mimer held the sword in its way. And
the whole was divided as easily and as clean as the woollen ball or the
slender woollen thread had been cleft before.

"Now, indeed," cried Mimer, "I no longer fear to meet that upstart,
Amilias. If his war coat can withstand the stroke of such a sword as
Balmung, then I shall not be ashamed to be his underling. But, if this
good blade is what it seems to be, it will not fail me; and I, Mimer
the Old, shall still be called the wisest and greatest of smiths."

He sent word at once to Amilias, in Burgundyland, to meet him on a day,
and settle forever the question as to which of the two should be the
master, and which the underling. And heralds proclaimed it in every
town and dwelling. When the time which had been set drew near, Mimer,
bearing the sword Balmung, and followed by all his pupils and
apprentices, wended his way toward the place of meeting. Through the
forest they went, and then along the banks of the sluggish river, for
many a league, to the height of land which marked the line between
Siegfried's country and the country of the Burgundi