we are ready to go out into it!_'

"The Russian questioned much, but Lugur sent for more drink and grew
merrier and threatened him, and the Russian was silent through fear.
Thereafter I listened when I could, and little more I learned, but
that little enough. _Ja!_ Lugur is hot for conquest; so Yolara and so
the Council. They tire of it here and the Silent Ones make their minds
not too easy, no, even though they jeer at them! And this they plan--to
rule our world with their Shining Devil."

The Norseman was silent for a moment; then voice deep, trembling--

"Trolldom is awake; Helvede crouches at Earth Gate whining to be
loosed into a world already devil ridden! And we are but three!"

I felt the blood drive out of my heart. But Larry's was the fighting
face of the O'Keefes of a thousand years. Rador glanced at him, arose,
stepped through the curtains; returned swiftly with the Irishman's
uniform.

"Put it on," he said, bruskly; again fell back into his silence and
whatever O'Keefe had been about to say was submerged in his wild and
joyful whoop. He ripped from him glittering tunic and leg swathings.

"Richard is himself again!" he shouted; and each garment as he donned
it, fanned his old devil-may-care confidence to a higher flame. The
last scrap of it on, he drew himself up before us.

"Bow down, ye divils!" he cried. "Bang your heads on the floor and do
homage to Larry the First, Emperor of Great Britain, Autocrat of all
Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales, and adjacent waters and
islands! Kneel, ye scuts, kneel."

"Larry," I cried, "are you going crazy?"

"Not a bit of it," he said. "I'm that and more if Comrade Marakinoff
is on the level. Whoop! Bring forth the royal jewels an' put a whole
new bunch of golden strings in Tara's harp an' down with the Sassenach
forever! Whoop!"

He did a wild jig.

"Lord how good the old togs feel," he grinned. "The touch of 'em has
gone to my head. But it's straight stuff I'm telling you about my
empire."

He sobered.

"Not that it's not serious enough at that. A lot that Olaf's told us
I've surmised from hints dropped by Yolara. But I got the full key to
it from the Red himself when he stopped me just before--before"--he
reddened--"well, just before I acquired that brand-new brand of souse.

"Maybe he had a hint--maybe he just surmised that I knew a lot more
than I did. And he thought Yolara and I were going to be loving little
turtle doves. Also he figur