The youth's eyes shone: he was proud of his ability to outstrip all with whom he had raced, and he could not resist this idea.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the pair still deep in their reminiscences. With a sudden impulse he thrust the leg bone beneath his skin coat, and went quietly out into the darkness. Gently he chipped off a piece of the bone and sucked out the marrow. It was delicious, as Loki had said, and his excited imagination made him fancy he could already feel a waxing of vigor in his muscles. Yet it was with a guilty feeling that he stole back and hid the fractured piece at the bottom of one of the piles. Well pleased was Loki, for he believed he had without danger to himself sown enmity between these two defenders of Asgard.
Presently all went to bed. Silence fell upon the great hall and the sleeping-rooms; but Thialfi trembled and started and tossed, a prey to terrifying dreams.
It was still dark within the hall when Thor rose, though outside the dawn light began to show in the east. He kindled the fire on the spreading hearth, and the leaping flames soon brightened the place. Thialfi awoke. From his couch he could see past the drawn skin curtain into the large apartment. A feeling of
panic crept over him as he saw the huge distorted shadow which the fire threw against the wall, now shrinking, now shooting up to monstrousness. For the shadow was busy with something that lay beside the hearth—and the youth remembered only too well that all was not right with the contents of those skins.
Thor placed the two goats' pelts before him. He took out his great hammer, Miolnir, and waved it solemnly over the piles, muttering potent words. Thialfi stretched forward breathlessly to see.
What was his amazement when the bundles of dead bones began to stir. The hides moved and stretched and rounded. Before his unbelieving eyes the two trim goats stood up alive, vigorous and handsome as ever.
But no! One was not as he had been. The poor creature was lame; it limped, dragging one hind leg, as it moved.
Thialfi crouched down again, trembling, as he saw the big man bend swiftly to examine the injured leg.
Then there was a roar of anger which shook the beams. Everybody was running in. Miolnir was out once more, not to restore life this time—far from it: Thor was vowing vengeance and threatening to destroy his friend Egil and the whole household for the injury done to this cherished possession; his red hair stood out like flames about his massive head; he gripped the terrible hammer so hard that the joints of his fingers showed white in the firelight.