"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 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.