There were some very queer things about these gods. We might suppose these powerful beings would be perfectly formed, but they were not. Heimdall, as we have seen, had false teeth; Tyr had but one hand; Widar was dumb; Hoder was blind; and the great Odin himself had but one eye. And it seems, too, that they did not know everything there was to be known, as the following story will show you. There lived in the world, in those days, a very wise man, named Kvasir. He noticed how much trouble men had in expressing their thoughts in any way but speech. If one wanted to send a message to another he could only make a rude drawing on a piece of stone to represent what he wanted to say, or paint it in certain colors that stood for certain things. There was not much of this done, for not only was this process troublesome, but it was easy to misunderstand these messages; and they caused a great deal of confusion, and many quarrels, and much fighting. Kvasir wanted to remedy this; and, after a great deal of hard study, and many experiments he invented the art of writing. He also invented poetry. He called his verses _runes_, and he wrote them on beech bark, which he made into tablets. The gods had never thought of doing anything like this. There is no knowing how much Kvasir would have done if he had lived longer. Perhaps he would have invented printing and paper; which, as matters turned out, nobody thought of doing until many hundred years later. But this wise and good man was killed by two wicked dwarfs. They did this in order to steal from him this treasure of poetry, and the art of writing. You may wonder how they were going to get at the treasure, for, after they had killed him, there could be no more poetry; and they could not pick it out of his brain as a thief takes a pocket-book out of the pocket. But these dwarfs were magicians, and such people, you know, have a pretty good idea what they are about. They collected his blood, and mixed it with honey in three separate proportions. These they put into three jars which they closely sealed, and buried in a cave which had never been seen either by gods or men. These three compounds were Logic, Eloquence, and Poetry. We shall never know what the dwarfs were going to do with them, for I am happy to say that they were not allowed to keep them. [Illustration: THE THREE PRECIOUS JARS.] Odin’s two ravens had witnessed the whole performance of the dwarfs, and the sensible birds concluded this must be a great treasure, or it would not be worth so much trouble. So they flew straight to Odin, and told him all about it. Odin sent the squirrel up the tree Ygdrasil with an order for the eagle to leave his post, to fly to the cave, and to bring the jars to him.