y muscles.
The next day I wrestled with a great dwarf they called Valdor. He was
a mighty man, and long we struggled, and at last I broke his back. And
Lugur was pleased, so that I sat with him at feast and with the
Russian, too. And again, not knowing that I understood them, they
talked.

"The Russian had gone fast and far. They talked of Lugur as emperor
of all Europe, and Marakinoff under him. They spoke of the green light
that shook life from the oldster; and Lugur said that the secret of it
had been the Ancient Ones' and that the Council had not too much of
it. But the Russian said that among his race were many wise men who
could make more once they had studied it.

"And the next day I wrestled with a great dwarf named Tahola, mightier
far than Valdor. Him I threw after a long, long time, and his back
also I broke. Again Lugur was pleased. And again we sat at table, he
and the Russian and I. This time they spoke of something these
_Trolde_ have which opens up a _Svaelc_--abysses into which all in its
range drops up into the sky!"

"What!" I exclaimed.

"I know about them," said Larry. "Wait!"

"Lugur had drunk much," went on Olaf. "He was boastful. The Russian
pressed him to show this thing. After a while the red one went out and
came back with a little golden box. He and the Russian went into the
garden. I followed them. There was a _lille Hoj_--a mound--of stones
in that garden on which grew flowers and trees.

"Lugur pressed upon the box, and a spark no bigger than a sand grain
leaped out and fell beside the stones. Lugur pressed again, and a blue
light shot from the box and lighted on the spark. The spark that had
been no bigger than a grain of sand grew and grew as the blue struck
it. And then there was a sighing, a wind blew--and the stones and the
flowers and the trees were not. They were _forsvinde_--vanished!

"Then Lugur, who had been laughing, grew quickly sober; for he thrust
the Russian back--far back. And soon down into the garden came
tumbling the stones and the trees, but broken and shattered, and
falling as though from a great height. And Lugur said that of _this_
something they had much, for its making was a secret handed down by
their own forefathers and not by the Ancient Ones.

"They feared to use it, he said, for a spark thrice as large as that
he had used would have sent all that garden falling upward and might
have opened a way to the outside before--he said just this--'_before