and cut off Sif's golden hair. When Sif woke up and saw that her hair was gone, she cried and cried. Then she ran to hide. She did not want Thor to see her. When Thor came home, he could not find Sif. "Sif! Sif!" he called, "Where are you?" But Sif did not answer. Thor looked all around the house. At last, he found her crying. "Oh, Thor, look, all my hair is gone! Somebody has cut it off. It was a man. He ran away with it."

Then Thor was very angry. He said, "I know it was Loki. He is always getting into mischief. Just wait until I get him!" And Thor went out to find Loki. Pretty soon he found him. Thor said, "Did you cut off Sif's hair?" Loki said, "Yes, I did." "Then you must pay for cutting off my wife's hair," said Thor. "All right," said Loki, "I will get you something better than the hair."

Loki went down, down into the ground to the home of the dwarfs. It was very dark down there. The only light came from the dwarfs' fires. The dwarfs were ugly little black men. They were not any bigger than your thumb. They had crooked backs and crooked legs. Their eyes looked like black beads. Loki said, "Can you make me a gold crown that will grow like real hair?" The dwarfs said, "Yes, we can." So the busy little dwarfs worked all night.

When morning came the dwarfs gave Loki his crown of golden hair. They gave him a spear and a ship, too. Loki took the things up to Asgard, where the gods all lived. Then the gods all came up to him. He showed them the things. The gods said, "They are very wonderful." And Loki said, "Oh, nobody else can make such things as my little dwarfs." A little dwarf, named Brok, was standing nearby. He heard Loki say that. Then he stepped up and said, "My brother can make just as good things as these." Loki laughed and said, "If you can get three things as wonderful as these, I will give you my head."

Brok went down into the ground where his little dwarfs were working. Brok's brother was named Sindre. He said to his brother, "Loki says that you can't make such nice things as his dwarfs can. He said that he would give me his head if I could get him such wonderful things as his." This made the dwarfs angry. Their eyes grew big. They said, "He will see what we can do." Sindre wanted to know what the wonderful things were. Brok said, "Loki has a golden crown that will grow like real hair. A ship that can go anywhere. A spear that never misses the mark." "We will show him," said the dwarfs.

The dwarfs soon had the fires burning. Then Sindre put a pigskin into the fire. He gave the bellows to Brok and said, 

 Prev. P 7/29 next