ty devil lady's got the wrong slant. When you've had a pal
standing beside you one moment--full of life, and joy, and power, and
potentialities, telling what he's going to do to make the world hum
when he gets through the slaughter, just running over with zip and pep
of life, Doc--and the next instant, right in the middle of a laugh--a
piece of damned shell takes off half his head and with it joy and
power and all the rest of it"--his face twitched--"well, old man, in
the face of _that_ mystery a disappearing act such as the devil lady
treated us to doesn't make much of a dent. Not on me. But by the
brogans of Brian Boru--if we could have had some of that stuff to turn
on during the war--oh, boy!"

He was silent, evidently contemplating the idea with vast pleasure.
And as for me, at that moment my last doubt of Larry O'Keefe vanished,
I saw that he did believe, really believed, in his banshees, his
leprechauns and all the old dreams of the Gael--but only within the
limits of Ireland.

In one drawer of his mind was packed all his superstition, his
mysticism, and what of weakness it might carry. But face him with any
peril or problem and the drawer closed instantaneously leaving a mind
that was utterly fearless, incredulous, and ingenious; swept clean of
all cobwebs by as fine a skeptic broom as ever brushed a brain.

"Some stuff!" Deepest admiration was in his voice. "If we'd only had
it when the war was on--imagine half a dozen of us scooting over the
enemy batteries and the gunners underneath all at once beginning to
shake themselves to pieces! Wow!" His tone was rapturous.

"It's easy enough to explain, Larry," I said. "The effect, that
is--for what the green ray is made of I don't know, of course. But
what it does, clearly, is stimulate atomic vibration to such a pitch
that the cohesion between the particles of matter is broken and the
body flies to bits--just as a fly-wheel does when its speed gets so
great that the particles of which _it_ is made can't hold together."

"Shake themselves to pieces is right, then!" he exclaimed.

"Absolutely right," I nodded. "Everything in Nature vibrates. And
all matter--whether man or beast or stone or metal or vegetable--is
made up of vibrating molecules, which are made up of vibrating atoms
which are made up of truly infinitely small particles of electricity
called electrons, and electrons, the base of all matter, are
themselves perhaps only a vibration of the mysterio