“What will you have to work with?” they asked.
“Oh, anything at all,” said Teddy, “if it is no more than an old nail, so that it is something to begin with.”
The dwarfs laughed, and picking up an old nail that was on the floor they laid it upon the anvil.
Then Teddy raised the hammer, and the ruby of the ring he wore throbbed and burned until his hand was hot, and his arm was so strong that the hammer was like a feather in his grasp.
As he beat and turned the nail he sang, and it seemed to him that the fire sang with him, clear and thin, and sounding like the voice of the Counterpane Fairy,—
“Hammer and turn!
The fire must burn,
The coals must glow,
The bellows blow.
Beat, good hammer, loud and fast;
So the chain will be made at last.
“Clankety-clink!
We forge the link.
My hammer bold,
This chain must hold.
The snow shall melt, the ice fly fast,
For the magic chain is wrought at last.”
With these words Teddy threw down the hammer and lifted the chain he had made, and it was as thin as a hair, as light as a breath, and yet so strong that no power on earth could break it.
The dwarfs sprang forward with a shout and caught the chain in their crooked fingers. “Wonderful! wonderful!” they cried. “It is indeed the magic chain that we have been trying to make for all these years. Who are you, wonderful stranger, for there is no smith among all the dwarfs who can do what you have done?”
Then without a word Teddy raised his hand, and held it up with the palm turned toward them so that they saw the ruby in his ring, and when they saw it they shouted again in their wonder and joy. “It is King Fireheart himself come back to rule the country!”
Then all the dwarfs, even from the farthest forges, came running up and gathered about the archway of the forge where Teddy stood, and when they saw that it was indeed King Fireheart they shouted and leaped and threw their caps up into the air.