the Council must consider, and at once." The
priestess was facing the nobles. "Now, friends of mine, and friends of
Lugur, must all feud, all rancour, between us end." She glanced
swiftly at Lugur. "The _ladala_ are stirring, and the Silent Ones
threaten. Yet fear not--for are we not strong under the Shining One?
And now--leave us."

Her hand dropped to the table, and she gave, evidently, a signal, for
in marched a dozen or more of the green dwarfs.

"Take these two to their place," she commanded, pointing to us.

The green dwarfs clustered about us. Without another look at the
priestess O'Keefe marched beside me, between them, from the chamber.
And it was not until we had reached the pillared entrance that Larry
spoke.

"I hate to talk like that to a woman, Doc," he said, "and a pretty
woman, at that. But first she played me with a marked deck, and then
not only pinched all the chips, but drew a gun on me. What the
hell! she nearly had me--_married_--to her. I don't know what the stuff
was she gave me; but, take it from me, if I had the recipe for that
brew I could sell it for a thousand dollars a jolt at Forty-second and
Broadway.

"One jigger of it, and you forget there is a trouble in the world;
three of them, and you forget there is a world. No excuse for it, Doc;
and I don't care what you say or what Lakla may say--it wasn't my
fault, and I don't hold it up against myself for a damn."

"I must admit that I'm a bit uneasy about her threats," I said,
ignoring all this. He stopped abruptly.

"What're you afraid of?"

"Mostly," I answered dryly, "I have no desire to dance with the
Shining One!"

"Listen to me, Goodwin," He took up his walk impatiently. "I've all
the love and admiration for you in the world; but this place has got
your nerve. Hereafter one Larry O'Keefe, of Ireland and the little old
U. S. A., leads this party. Nix on the tremolo stop, nix on the
superstition! I'm the works. Get me?"

"Yes, I get you!" I exclaimed testily enough. "But to use your own
phrase, kindly can the repeated references to superstition."

"Why should I?" He was almost wrathful. "You scientific people build
up whole philosophies on the basis of things you never saw, and you
scoff at people who believe in other things that you think _they_ never
saw and that don't come under what you label scientific. You talk
about paradoxes--why, your scientist, who thinks he is the most
skeptical, the most materialistic aggre