before the shrine of his saint. And--I am
not ashamed to tell it--I joined him; and with us knelt Lakla and
Olaf and Rador.

The mist of fiery opal swirled up about the Three; hid them.

And with a long, deep, joyous sigh Lakla took Larry's hand, drew him
to his feet, and silently we followed them out of that hall of wonder.

But why, in going, did the thought come to me that from where the
Three sat throned they ever watched the cavern mouth that was the door
into their abode; and looked down ever into the unfathomable depth in
which glowed and pulsed that mystic flower, colossal, awesome, of
green flame that had seemed to me fire of life itself?

CHAPTER XXVI

The Wooing of Lakla

I had slept soundly and dreamlessly; I wakened quietly in the great
chamber into which Rador had ushered O'Keefe and myself after that
culminating experience of crowded, nerve-racking hours--the facing of
the Three.

Now, lying gazing upward at the high-vaulted ceiling, I heard Larry's
voice:

"They look like birds." Evidently he was thinking of the Three; a
silence--then: "Yes, they look like _birds_--and they look, and it's
meaning no disrespect to them I am at all, they look like
_lizards_"--and another silence--"they look like some sort of gods, and,
by the good sword-arm of Brian Boru, they look human, too! And it's
_none_ of them they are either, so what--what the--what the sainted St.
Bridget are they?" Another short silence, and then in a tone of awed
and absolute conviction: "That's it, sure! That's what they are--it
all hangs in--they couldn't be anything else--"

He gave a whoop; a pillow shot over and caught me across the head.

"Wake up!" shouted Larry. "Wake up, ye seething caldron of fossilized
superstitions! Wake up, ye bogy-haunted man of scientific unwisdom!"

Under pillow and insults I bounced to my feet, filled for a moment
with quite real wrath; he lay back, roaring with laughter, and my
anger was swept away.

"Doc," he said, very seriously, after this, "I know who the Three
are!"

"Yes?" I queried, with studied sarcasm.

"Yes?" he mimicked. "Yes! Ye--ye" He paused under the menace of my
look, grinned. "Yes, I know," he continued. "They're of the Tuatha De,
the old ones, the great people of Ireland, _that's_ who they are!"

I knew, of course, of the Tuatha De Danann, the tribes of the god
Danu, the half-legendary, half-historical clan who found their home in
Erin some four thousand years before