thed as we
were, leaning forward, his eyes eager behind his glasses; but if he
saw us he gave no sign.

"And there's Olaf!" said O'Keefe.

Beneath the carved stall in which sat the Russian was an aperture and
within it was Huldricksson. Unprotected by pillars or by grills,
opening clear upon the platform, near him stretched the trail of
flowers up to the great dais which Lugur and Yolara the priestess
guarded. He sat alone, and my heart went out to him.

O'Keefe's face softened.

"Bring him here," he said to Rador.

The green dwarf was looking at the Norseman, too, a shade of pity upon
his mocking face. He shook his head.

"Wait!" he said. "You can do nothing now--and it may be there will be
no need to do anything," he added; but I could feel that there was
little of conviction in his words.

CHAPTER XIX

The Madness of Olaf

Yolara threw her white arms high. From the mountainous tiers came a
mighty sigh; a rippling ran through them. And upon the moment, before
Yolara's arms fell, there issued, apparently from the air around us, a
peal of sound that might have been the shouting of some playful god
hurling great suns through the net of stars. It was like the deepest
notes of all the organs in the world combined in one; summoning,
majestic, cosmic!

It held within it the thunder of the spheres rolling through the
infinite, the birth-song of suns made manifest in the womb of space;
echoes of creation's supernal chord! It shook the body like a pulse
from the heart of the universe--pulsed--and died away.

On its death came a blaring as of all the trumpets of conquering hosts
since the first Pharaoh led his swarms--triumphal, compelling!
Alexander's clamouring hosts, brazen-throated wolf-horns of Caesar's
legions, blare of trumpets of Genghis Khan and his golden horde,
clangor of the locust levies of Tamerlane, bugles of Napoleon's
armies--war-shout of all earth's conquerors! And it died!

Fast upon it, a throbbing, muffled tumult of harp sounds, mellownesses
of myriads of wood horns, the subdued sweet shrilling of multitudes of
flutes, Pandean pipings--inviting, carrying with them the calling of
waterfalls in the hidden places, rushing brooks and murmuring forest
winds--calling, calling, languorous, lulling, dripping into the brain
like the very honeyed essence of sound.

And after them a silence in which the memory of the music seemed to
beat, to beat ever more faintly, through every quivering nerve.