ht not be broken.

"Then they passed--to a far land they had chosen where the Shining One
could not go, beyond the Black Precipices of Doul, a green land--"

"Ireland!" interrupted Larry, with conviction, "I knew it."

"Since then time upon time had passed," she went on, unheeding. "The
people called this place Muria after their sunken land and soon they
forgot where had been the passage the _Taithu_ had sealed. The moon
king became the Voice of the Dweller and always with the Voice is a
woman of the moon king's kin who is its priestess.

"And many have been the journeys upward of the Shining One, through
the Moon Pool--returning with still others in its coils.

"And now again has it grown restless, longing for the wider spaces.
It has spoken to Yolara and to Lugur even as it did to the dead
_Taithu_, promising them dominion. And it has grown stronger, drawing
to itself power to go far on the moon stream where it will. Thus was
it able to seize your friend, Goodwin, and Olaf's wife and babe--and
many more. Yolara and Lugur plan to open way to earth face; to depart
with their court and under the Shining One grasp the world!

"And this is the tale the Silent Ones bade me tell you--and it is
done."

Breathlessly I had listened to the stupendous epic of a long-lost
world. Now I found speech to voice the question ever with me, the
thing that lay as close to my heart as did the welfare of Larry,
indeed the whole object of my quest--the fate of Throckmartin and
those who had passed with him into the Dweller's lair; yes, and of
Olaf's wife, too.

"Lakla," I said, "the friend who drew me here and those he loved who
went before him--can we not save them?"

"The Three say no, Goodwin." There was again in her eyes the pity with
which she had looked upon Olaf. "The Shining One--_feeds_--upon the
flame of life itself, setting in its place its own fires and its own
will. Its slaves are only shells through which it gleams. Death, say
the Three, is the best that can come to them; yet will that be a boon
great indeed."

"But they have souls, _mavourneen_," Larry said to her. "And they're
alive still--in a way. Anyhow, their souls have not gone from them."

I caught a hope from his words--sceptic though I am--holding that the
existence of soul has never been proved by dependable laboratory
methods--for they recalled to me that when I had seen Throckmartin,
Edith had been close beside him.

"It was days after his wife was t