the points; and then he put back the leg safe and sound on the horse
again. And when he was done with that leg, he took the other fore-leg
and did the same with it; and when he was done with that, he took the
hind-legs--first, the off, and then the near leg, and laid them in
the furnace, making the shoes red-hot, turning up the ends; filing
the heads of the nails, and clenching the points; and after all was
done, putting the legs on the horse again. All the while, the Smith
stood by and looked on.

'You're not so bad a smith after all', said he.

'Oh, you think so, do you?' said our Lord.

A little while after came the Smith's mother to the forge, and called
him to come home and eat his dinner; she was an old, old woman with
an ugly crook on her back, and wrinkles in her face, and it was as
much as she could do to crawl along.

'Mark now, what you see', said our Lord.

Then he took the woman and laid her in the furnace, and smithied a
lovely young maiden out of her.

'Well', said the Smith, 'I say now, as I said before, you are not
such a bad smith after all. There it stands over my door. _Here
dwells the Master over all Masters_; but for all that, I say right
out, one learns as long as one lives'; and with that he walked off to
his house and ate his dinner.

So after dinner, just after he had got back to his forge, a man came