All the mockery, the malice, the hint of callous indifference that I had noted in the other dwarfish men were there, too--but intensified, touched with the satanic.
The woman spoke again.
"Who are you strangers, and how came you here ?" She turned to Rador.
"Or is it that they do not understand our tongue ?" "One understands and speaks it--but very badly, O Yolara," answered the green dwarf.
"Speak, then, that one of you," she commanded.
But it was Marakinoff who found his voice first, and I marvelled at the fluency, so much greater than mine, with which he spoke.
"We came for different purposes.

I to seek knowledge of a kind; he"-- pointing to me "of another.

This man"-- he looked at Olaf--"to find a wife and child." The grey-blue eyes had been regarding O'Keefe steadily and with plainly increasing interest.
"And why did _you_ come ?" she asked him.

"Nay--I would have him speak for himself, if he can," she stilled Marakinoff peremptorily.
When Larry spoke it was haltingly, in the tongue that was strange to him, searching for the proper words.
"I came to help these men--and because something I could not then understand called me, O lady, whose eyes are like forest pools at dawn," he answered; and even in the unfamiliar words there was a touch of the Irish brogue, and little merry lights danced in the eyes Larry had so apostrophized.
"I could find fault with your speech, but none with its burden," she said.

"What forest pools are I know not, and the dawn has not shone upon the people of Lora these many sais of laya.[1] But I sense what you mean!" The eyes deepened to blue as she regarded him.