“Guard well your head, O Dwarf! I leave it to him who knows not fear.”
Smiling quietly, the Wanderer disappeared in the wood’s depths, and thunder and lightning followed him as he went.
Mime was left—puzzled, despairing, terror-stricken. His vivid imagination began to conjure up before him visions of Fafner, the Dragon, and he had fallen behind the anvil, so great was his fear, when Siegfried came hastily in, asking once more for the sword.
Mime, creeping out from behind the anvil, could not at once collect his scattered wits, and merely muttered:
“Only he who has never felt fear can forge Nothung anew. My wits are too wise for that job.”
Finally, as Siegfried demanded why he had not worked at the sword, he said, slowly:
“I was fearing for your sake.”
“Fearing!” said Siegfried. “What do you mean by fearing?”
Mime described the tremblings, shudderings, and quakings aroused by fear, and Siegfried remarked, as he finished:
“All that must seem very queer. I rather think I should like to feel all that—but how shall I learn?”