"_Did_ you woo her, even as she said?" she asked.

The Irishman flushed miserably.

"I did not," he said. "I was pleasant to her, of course, because I
thought it would bring me quicker to you, darlin'."

She looked at him doubtfully; then--

"I think you must have been _very_--pleasant!" was all she said--and
leaning, kissed him forgivingly straight on the lips. An extremely
direct maiden was Lakla, with a truly sovereign contempt for anything
she might consider non-essentials; and at this moment I decided she
was wiser even than I had thought her.

He stumbled, feet vanishing; reached down and picked up something that
in the grasping turned his hand to air.

"One of the invisible cloaks," he said to me. "There must be quite a
lot of them about--I guess Yolara brought her full staff of murderers.
They're a bit shopworn, probably--but we're considerably better off
with 'em in our hands than in hers. And they may come in handy--who
knows?"

There was a choking rattle at my feet; half the head of a dwarf raised
out of vacancy; beat twice upon the floor in death throes; fell back.
Lakla shivered; gave a command. The frog-men moved about; peering here
and there; lifting unseen folds revealing in stark rigidity torn form
after form of the priestess's men.

Lakla had been right--her _Akka_ were thorough fighters!

She called, and to her came the frog-woman who was her attendant. To
her the handmaiden spoke, pointing to the batrachians who stood, paws
and forearms melted beneath the robes they had gathered. She took them
and passed out--more grotesque than ever, shattering into streaks of
vacancies, reappearing with flickers of shining scale and yellow gems
as the tattered pennants of invisibility fluttered about her.

The frog-men reached down, swung each a dead dwarf in his arms, and
filed, booming triumphantly away.

And then I remembered the cone of the _Keth_ which had slipped from
Yolara's hand; knew it had been that for which her wild eyes searched.
But look as closely as we might, search in every nook and corner as we
did, we could not find it. Had the dying hand of one of her men
clutched it and had it been borne away with them? With the thought
Larry and I raced after the scaled warriors, searched every body they
carried. It was not there. Perhaps the priestess had found it,
retrieved it swiftly without our seeing.

Whatever was true--the cone was gone. And what a weapon that one
little holder of t