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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lost Prince, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Lost Prince
+
+Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+Posting Date: August 12, 2008 [EBook #384]
+Release Date: January, 1996
+[Last updated: December 9, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST PRINCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST PRINCE
+
+Francis Hodgson Burnett
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+      I  The New Lodgers at No. 7 Philibert Place
+     II  A Young Citizen of the World
+    III  The Legend of the Lost Prince
+     IV  The Rat
+      V  "Silence Is Still the Order"
+     VI  The Drill and the Secret Party
+    VII  "The Lamp Is Lighted!"
+   VIII  An Exciting Game
+     IX  "It Is Not a Game"
+      X  The Rat--and Samavia
+     XI  Come with Me
+    XII  Only Two Boys
+   XIII  Loristan Attends a Drill of the Squad
+    XIV  Marco Does Not Answer
+     XV  A Sound in a Dream
+    XVI  The Rat to the Rescue
+   XVII  "It Is a Very Bad Sign"
+  XVIII  "Cities and Faces"
+    XIX  "That Is One!"
+     XX  Marco Goes to the Opera
+    XXI  "Help!"
+   XXII  A Night Vigil
+  XXIII  The Silver Horn
+   XXIV  "How Shall We Find Him?"
+    XXV  A Voice in the Night
+   XXVI  Across the Frontier
+  XXVII  "It is the Lost Prince!  It Is Ivor!"
+ XXVIII  "Extra!  Extra!  Extra!"
+   XXIX  'Twixt Night and Morning
+    XXX  The Game Is at an End
+   XXXI  "The Son of Stefan Loristan"
+
+
+
+
+THE LOST PRINCE
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE NEW LODGERS AT NO. 7 PHILIBERT PLACE
+
+There are many dreary and dingy rows of ugly houses in certain parts of
+London, but there certainly could not be any row more ugly or dingier
+than Philibert Place.  There were stories that it had once been more
+attractive, but that had been so long ago that no one remembered the
+time.  It stood back in its gloomy, narrow strips of uncared-for, smoky
+gardens, whose broken iron railings were supposed to protect it from
+the surging traffic of a road which was always roaring with the rattle
+of busses, cabs, drays, and vans, and the passing of people who were
+shabbily dressed and looked as if they were either going to hard work
+or coming from it, or hurrying to see if they could find some of it to
+do to keep themselves from going hungry.  The brick fronts of the
+houses were blackened with smoke, their windows were nearly all dirty
+and hung with dingy curtains, or had no curtains at all; the strips of
+ground, which had once been intended to grow flowers in, had been
+trodden down into bare earth in which even weeds had forgotten to grow.
+One of them was used as a stone-cutter's yard, and cheap monuments,
+crosses, and slates were set out for sale, bearing inscriptions
+beginning with "Sacred to the Memory of."  Another had piles of old
+lumber in it, another exhibited second-hand furniture, chairs with
+unsteady legs, sofas with horsehair stuffing bulging out of holes in
+their covering, mirrors with blotches or cracks in them.  The insides
+of the houses were as gloomy as the outside.  They were all exactly
+alike.  In each a dark entrance passage led to narrow stairs going up
+to bedrooms, and to narrow steps going down to a basement kitchen.  The
+back bedroom looked out on small, sooty, flagged yards, where thin cats
+quarreled, or sat on the coping of the brick walls hoping that sometime
+they might feel the sun; the front rooms looked over the noisy road,
+and through their windows came the roar and rattle of it.  It was
+shabby and cheerless on the brightest days, and on foggy or rainy ones
+it was the most forlorn place in London.
+
+At least that was what one boy thought as he stood near the iron
+railings watching the passers-by on the morning on which this story
+begins, which was also the morning after he had been brought by his
+father to live as a lodger in the back sitting-room of the house No. 7.
+
+He was a boy about twelve years old, his name was Marco Loristan, and
+he was the kind of boy people look at a second time when they have
+looked at him once.  In the first place, he was a very big boy--tall
+for his years, and with a particularly strong frame. His shoulders were
+broad and his arms and legs were long and powerful.  He was quite used
+to hearing people say, as they glanced at him, "What a fine, big lad!"
+And then they always looked again at his face.  It was not an English
+face or an American one, and was very dark in coloring.  His features
+were strong, his black hair grew on his head like a mat, his eyes were
+large and deep set, and looked out between thick, straight, black
+lashes.  He was as un-English a boy as one could imagine, and an
+observing person would have been struck at once by a sort of SILENT
+look expressed by his whole face, a look which suggested that he was
+not a boy who talked much.
+
+This look was specially noticeable this morning as he stood before the
+iron railings.  The things he was thinking of were of a kind likely to
+bring to the face of a twelve-year-old boy an unboyish expression.
+
+He was thinking of the long, hurried journey he and his father and
+their old soldier servant, Lazarus, had made during the last few
+days--the journey from Russia.  Cramped in a close third-class railway
+carriage, they had dashed across the Continent as if something
+important or terrible were driving them, and here they were, settled in
+London as if they were going to live forever at No. 7 Philibert Place.
+He knew, however, that though they might stay a year, it was just as
+probable that, in the middle of some night, his father or Lazarus might
+waken him from his sleep and say, "Get up--dress yourself quickly.  We
+must go at once."  A few days later, he might be in St. Petersburg,
+Berlin, Vienna, or Budapest, huddled away in some poor little house as
+shabby and comfortless as No. 7 Philibert Place.
+
+He passed his hand over his forehead as he thought of it and watched
+the busses.  His strange life and his close association with his father
+had made him much older than his years, but he was only a boy, after
+all, and the mystery of things sometimes weighed heavily upon him, and
+set him to deep wondering.
+
+In not one of the many countries he knew had he ever met a boy whose
+life was in the least like his own.  Other boys had homes in which they
+spent year after year; they went to school regularly, and played with
+other boys, and talked openly of the things which happened to them, and
+the journeys they made.  When he remained in a place long enough to
+make a few boy-friends, he knew he must never forget that his whole
+existence was a sort of secret whose safety depended upon his own
+silence and discretion.
+
+This was because of the promises he had made to his father, and they
+had been the first thing he remembered.  Not that he had ever regretted
+anything connected with his father.  He threw his black head up as he
+thought of that.  None of the other boys had such a father, not one of
+them.  His father was his idol and his chief.  He had scarcely ever
+seen him when his clothes had not been poor and shabby, but he had also
+never seen him when, despite his worn coat and frayed linen, he had not
+stood out among all others as more distinguished than the most
+noticeable of them.  When he walked down a street, people turned to
+look at him even oftener than they turned to look at Marco, and the boy
+felt as if it was not merely because he was a big man with a handsome,
+dark face, but because he looked, somehow, as if he had been born to
+command armies, and as if no one would think of disobeying him.  Yet
+Marco had never seen him command any one, and they had always been
+poor, and shabbily dressed, and often enough ill-fed.  But whether they
+were in one country or another, and whatsoever dark place they seemed
+to be hiding in, the few people they saw treated him with a sort of
+deference, and nearly always stood when they were in his presence,
+unless he bade them sit down.
+
+"It is because they know he is a patriot, and patriots are respected,"
+the boy had told himself.
+
+He himself wished to be a patriot, though he had never seen his own
+country of Samavia.  He knew it well, however.  His father had talked
+to him about it ever since that day when he had made the promises.  He
+had taught him to know it by helping him to study curious detailed maps
+of it--maps of its cities, maps of its mountains, maps of its roads.
+He had told him stories of the wrongs done its people, of their
+sufferings and struggles for liberty, and, above all, of their
+unconquerable courage.  When they talked together of its history,
+Marco's boy-blood burned and leaped in his veins, and he always knew,
+by the look in his father's eyes, that his blood burned also.  His
+countrymen had been killed, they had been robbed, they had died by
+thousands of cruelties and starvation, but their souls had never been
+conquered, and, through all the years during which more powerful
+nations crushed and enslaved them, they never ceased to struggle to
+free themselves and stand unfettered as Samavians had stood centuries
+before.
+
+"Why do we not live there," Marco had cried on the day the promises
+were made.  "Why do we not go back and fight?  When I am a man, I will
+be a soldier and die for Samavia."
+
+"We are of those who must LIVE for Samavia--working day and night," his
+father had answered; "denying ourselves, training our bodies and souls,
+using our brains, learning the things which are best to be done for our
+people and our country.  Even exiles may be Samavian soldiers--I am
+one, you must be one."
+
+"Are we exiles?" asked Marco.
+
+"Yes," was the answer.  "But even if we never set foot on Samavian
+soil, we must give our lives to it.  I have given mine since I was
+sixteen.  I shall give it until I die."
+
+"Have you never lived there?" said Marco.
+
+A strange look shot across his father's face.
+
+"No," he answered, and said no more.  Marco watching him, knew he must
+not ask the question again.
+
+The next words his father said were about the promises.  Marco was
+quite a little fellow at the time, but he understood the solemnity of
+them, and felt that he was being honored as if he were a man.
+
+"When you are a man, you shall know all you wish to know," Loristan
+said.  "Now you are a child, and your mind must not be burdened.  But
+you must do your part.  A child sometimes forgets that words may be
+dangerous.  You must promise never to forget this.  Wheresoever you
+are; if you have playmates, you must remember to be silent about many
+things.  You must not speak of what I do, or of the people who come to
+see me.  You must not mention the things in your life which make it
+different from the lives of other boys.  You must keep in your mind
+that a secret exists which a chance foolish word might betray.  You are
+a Samavian, and there have been Samavians who have died a thousand
+deaths rather than betray a secret.  You must learn to obey without
+question, as if you were a soldier.  Now you must take your oath of
+allegiance."
+
+He rose from his seat and went to a corner of the room.  He knelt down,
+turned back the carpet, lifted a plank, and took something from beneath
+it.  It was a sword, and, as he came back to Marco, he drew it out from
+its sheath.  The child's strong, little body stiffened and drew itself
+up, his large, deep eyes flashed.  He was to take his oath of
+allegiance upon a sword as if he were a man.  He did not know that his
+small hand opened and shut with a fierce understanding grip because
+those of his blood had for long centuries past carried swords and
+fought with them.
+
+Loristan gave him the big bared weapon, and stood erect before him.
+
+"Repeat these words after me sentence by sentence!" he commanded.
+
+And as he spoke them Marco echoed each one loudly and clearly.
+
+"The sword in my hand--for Samavia!
+
+"The heart in my breast--for Samavia!
+
+"The swiftness of my sight, the thought of my brain, the life of my
+life--for Samavia.
+
+"Here grows a man for Samavia.
+
+"God be thanked!"
+
+Then Loristan put his hand on the child's shoulder, and his dark face
+looked almost fiercely proud.
+
+"From this hour," he said, "you and I are comrades at arms."
+
+And from that day to the one on which he stood beside the broken iron
+railings of No. 7 Philibert Place, Marco had not forgotten for one hour.
+
+
+
+II
+
+A YOUNG CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
+
+He had been in London more than once before, but not to the lodgings in
+Philibert Place.  When he was brought a second or third time to a town
+or city, he always knew that the house he was taken to would be in a
+quarter new to him, and he should not see again the people he had seen
+before.  Such slight links of acquaintance as sometimes formed
+themselves between him and other children as shabby and poor as himself
+were easily broken.  His father, however, had never forbidden him to
+make chance acquaintances.  He had, in fact, told him that he had
+reasons for not wishing him to hold himself aloof from other boys.  The
+only barrier which must exist between them must be the barrier of
+silence concerning his wanderings from country to country.  Other boys
+as poor as he was did not make constant journeys, therefore they would
+miss nothing from his boyish talk when he omitted all mention of his.
+When he was in Russia, he must speak only of Russian places and Russian
+people and customs.  When he was in France, Germany, Austria, or
+England, he must do the same thing. When he had learned English,
+French, German, Italian, and Russian he did not know.  He had seemed to
+grow up in the midst of changing tongues which all seemed familiar to
+him, as languages are familiar to children who have lived with them
+until one scarcely seems less familiar than another.  He did remember,
+however, that his father had always been unswerving in his attention to
+his pronunciation and method of speaking the language of any country
+they chanced to be living in.
+
+"You must not seem a foreigner in any country," he had said to him.
+"It is necessary that you should not.  But when you are in England, you
+must not know French, or German, or anything but English."
+
+Once, when he was seven or eight years old, a boy had asked him what
+his father's work was.
+
+"His own father is a carpenter, and he asked me if my father was one,"
+Marco brought the story to Loristan.  "I said you were not.  Then he
+asked if you were a shoemaker, and another one said you might be a
+bricklayer or a tailor--and I didn't know what to tell them."  He had
+been out playing in a London street, and he put a grubby little hand on
+his father's arm, and clutched and almost fiercely shook it.  "I wanted
+to say that you were not like their fathers, not at all.  I knew you
+were not, though you were quite as poor.  You are not a bricklayer or a
+shoemaker, but a patriot--you could not be only a bricklayer--you!"  He
+said it grandly and with a queer indignation, his black head held up
+and his eyes angry.
+
+Loristan laid his hand against his mouth.
+
+"Hush! hush!" he said.  "Is it an insult to a man to think he may be a
+carpenter or make a good suit of clothes?  If I could make our clothes,
+we should go better dressed.  If I were a shoemaker, your toes would
+not be making their way into the world as they are now."  He was
+smiling, but Marco saw his head held itself high, too, and his eyes
+were glowing as he touched his shoulder.  "I know you did not tell them
+I was a patriot," he ended.  "What was it you said to them?"
+
+"I remembered that you were nearly always writing and drawing maps, and
+I said you were a writer, but I did not know what you wrote--and that
+you said it was a poor trade.  I heard you say that once to Lazarus.
+Was that a right thing to tell them?"
+
+"Yes.  You may always say it if you are asked.  There are poor fellows
+enough who write a thousand different things which bring them little
+money.  There is nothing strange in my being a writer."
+
+So Loristan answered him, and from that time if, by any chance, his
+father's means of livelihood were inquired into, it was simple enough
+and true enough to say that he wrote to earn his bread.
+
+In the first days of strangeness to a new place, Marco often walked a
+great deal.  He was strong and untiring, and it amused him to wander
+through unknown streets, and look at shops, and houses, and people.  He
+did not confine himself to the great thoroughfares, but liked to branch
+off into the side streets and odd, deserted-looking squares, and even
+courts and alleyways.  He often stopped to watch workmen and talk to
+them if they were friendly.  In this way he made stray acquaintances in
+his strollings, and learned a good many things.  He had a fondness for
+wandering musicians, and, from an old Italian who had in his youth been
+a singer in opera, he had learned to sing a number of songs in his
+strong, musical boy-voice.  He knew well many of the songs of the
+people in several countries.
+
+It was very dull this first morning, and he wished that he had
+something to do or some one to speak to.  To do nothing whatever is a
+depressing thing at all times, but perhaps it is more especially so
+when one is a big, healthy boy twelve years old. London as he saw it in
+the Marylebone Road seemed to him a hideous place.  It was murky and
+shabby-looking, and full of dreary-faced people.  It was not the first
+time he had seen the same things, and they always made him feel that he
+wished he had something to do.
+
+Suddenly he turned away from the gate and went into the house to speak
+to Lazarus.  He found him in his dingy closet of a room on the fourth
+floor at the back of the house.
+
+"I am going for a walk," he announced to him.  "Please tell my father
+if he asks for me.  He is busy, and I must not disturb him."
+
+Lazarus was patching an old coat as he often patched things--even shoes
+sometimes.  When Marco spoke, he stood up at once to answer him.  He
+was very obstinate and particular about certain forms of manner.
+Nothing would have obliged him to remain seated when Loristan or Marco
+was near him.  Marco thought it was because he had been so strictly
+trained as a soldier.  He knew that his father had had great trouble to
+make him lay aside his habit of saluting when they spoke to him.
+
+"Perhaps," Marco had heard Loristan say to him almost severely, once
+when he had forgotten himself and had stood at salute while his master
+passed through a broken-down iron gate before an equally
+broken-down-looking lodging-house--"perhaps you can force yourself to
+remember when I tell you that it is not safe--IT IS NOT SAFE!  You put
+us in danger!"
+
+It was evident that this helped the good fellow to control himself.
+Marco remembered that at the time he had actually turned pale, and had
+struck his forehead and poured forth a torrent of Samavian dialect in
+penitence and terror.  But, though he no longer saluted them in public,
+he omitted no other form of reverence and ceremony, and the boy had
+become accustomed to being treated as if he were anything but the
+shabby lad whose very coat was patched by the old soldier who stood "at
+attention" before him.
+
+"Yes, sir," Lazarus answered.  "Where was it your wish to go?"
+
+Marco knitted his black brows a little in trying to recall distinct
+memories of the last time he had been in London.
+
+"I have been to so many places, and have seen so many things since I
+was here before, that I must begin to learn again about the streets and
+buildings I do not quite remember."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Lazarus.  "There HAVE been so many.  I also forget.
+You were but eight years old when you were last here."
+
+"I think I will go and find the royal palace, and then I will walk
+about and learn the names of the streets," Marco said.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Lazarus, and this time he made his military salute.
+
+Marco lifted his right hand in recognition, as if he had been a young
+officer.  Most boys might have looked awkward or theatrical in making
+the gesture, but he made it with naturalness and ease, because he had
+been familiar with the form since his babyhood. He had seen officers
+returning the salutes of their men when they encountered each other by
+chance in the streets, he had seen princes passing sentries on their
+way to their carriages, more august personages raising the quiet,
+recognizing hand to their helmets as they rode through applauding
+crowds.  He had seen many royal persons and many royal pageants, but
+always only as an ill-clad boy standing on the edge of the crowd of
+common people. An energetic lad, however poor, cannot spend his days in
+going from one country to another without, by mere every-day chance,
+becoming familiar with the outer life of royalties and courts. Marco
+had stood in continental thoroughfares when visiting emperors rode by
+with glittering soldiery before and behind them, and a populace
+shouting courteous welcomes.  He knew where in various great capitals
+the sentries stood before kingly or princely palaces.  He had seen
+certain royal faces often enough to know them well, and to be ready to
+make his salute when particular quiet and unattended carriages passed
+him by.
+
+"It is well to know them.  It is well to observe everything and to
+train one's self to remember faces and circumstances," his father had
+said.  "If you were a young prince or a young man training for a
+diplomatic career, you would be taught to notice and remember people
+and things as you would be taught to speak your own language with
+elegance.  Such observation would be your most practical accomplishment
+and greatest power.  It is as practical for one man as another--for a
+poor lad in a patched coat as for one whose place is to be in courts.
+As you cannot be educated in the ordinary way, you must learn from
+travel and the world.  You must lose nothing--forget nothing."
+
+It was his father who had taught him everything, and he had learned a
+great deal.  Loristan had the power of making all things interesting to
+fascination.  To Marco it seemed that he knew everything in the world.
+They were not rich enough to buy many books, but Loristan knew the
+treasures of all great cities, the resources of the smallest towns.
+Together he and his boy walked through the endless galleries filled
+with the wonders of the world, the pictures before which through
+centuries an unbroken procession of almost worshiping eyes had passed
+uplifted.  Because his father made the pictures seem the glowing,
+burning work of still-living men whom the centuries could not turn to
+dust, because he could tell the stories of their living and laboring to
+triumph, stories of what they felt and suffered and were, the boy
+became as familiar with the old masters--Italian, German, French,
+Dutch, English, Spanish--as he was with most of the countries they had
+lived in.  They were not merely old masters to him, but men who were
+great, men who seemed to him to have wielded beautiful swords and held
+high, splendid lights.  His father could not go often with him, but he
+always took him for the first time to the galleries, museums,
+libraries, and historical places which were richest in treasures of
+art, beauty, or story.  Then, having seen them once through his eyes,
+Marco went again and again alone, and so grew intimate with the wonders
+of the world.  He knew that he was gratifying a wish of his father's
+when he tried to train himself to observe all things and forget
+nothing.  These palaces of marvels were his school-rooms, and his
+strange but rich education was the most interesting part of his life.
+In time, he knew exactly the places where the great Rembrandts,
+Vandykes, Rubens, Raphaels, Tintorettos, or Frans Hals hung; he knew
+whether this masterpiece or that was in Vienna, in Paris, in Venice, or
+Munich, or Rome. He knew stories of splendid crown jewels, of old
+armor, of ancient crafts, and of Roman relics dug up from beneath the
+foundations of old German cities.  Any boy wandering to amuse himself
+through museums and palaces on "free days" could see what he saw, but
+boys living fuller and less lonely lives would have been less likely to
+concentrate their entire minds on what they looked at, and also less
+likely to store away facts with the determination to be able to recall
+at any moment the mental shelf on which they were laid.  Having no
+playmates and nothing to play with, he began when he was a very little
+fellow to make a sort of game out of his rambles through
+picture-galleries, and the places which, whether they called themselves
+museums or not, were storehouses or relics of antiquity.  There were
+always the blessed "free days," when he could climb any marble steps,
+and enter any great portal without paying an entrance fee.  Once
+inside, there were plenty of plainly and poorly dressed people to be
+seen, but there were not often boys as young as himself who were not
+attended by older companions.  Quiet and orderly as he was, he often
+found himself stared at.  The game he had created for himself was as
+simple as it was absorbing.  It was to try how much he could remember
+and clearly describe to his father when they sat together at night and
+talked of what he had seen.  These night talks filled his happiest
+hours.  He never felt lonely then, and when his father sat and watched
+him with a certain curious and deep attention in his dark, reflective
+eyes, the boy was utterly comforted and content.  Sometimes he brought
+back rough and crude sketches of objects he wished to ask questions
+about, and Loristan could always relate to him the full, rich story of
+the thing he wanted to know.  They were stories made so splendid and
+full of color in the telling that Marco could not forget them.
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE LEGEND OF THE LOST PRINCE
+
+As he walked through the streets, he was thinking of one of these
+stories.  It was one he had heard first when he was very young, and it
+had so seized upon his imagination that he had asked often for it.  It
+was, indeed, a part of the long-past history of Samavia, and he had
+loved it for that reason.  Lazarus had often told it to him, sometimes
+adding much detail, but he had always liked best his father's version,
+which seemed a thrilling and living thing.  On their journey from
+Russia, during an hour when they had been forced to wait in a cold
+wayside station and had found the time long, Loristan had discussed it
+with him.  He always found some such way of making hard and comfortless
+hours easier to live through.
+
+"Fine, big lad--for a foreigner," Marco heard a man say to his
+companion as he passed them this morning.  "Looks like a Pole or a
+Russian."
+
+It was this which had led his thoughts back to the story of the Lost
+Prince.  He knew that most of the people who looked at him and called
+him a "foreigner" had not even heard of Samavia. Those who chanced to
+recall its existence knew of it only as a small fierce country, so
+placed upon the map that the larger countries which were its neighbors
+felt they must control and keep it in order, and therefore made
+incursions into it, and fought its people and each other for
+possession.  But it had not been always so.  It was an old, old
+country, and hundreds of years ago it had been as celebrated for its
+peaceful happiness and wealth as for its beauty.  It was often said
+that it was one of the most beautiful places in the world.  A favorite
+Samavian legend was that it had been the site of the Garden of Eden.
+In those past centuries, its people had been of such great stature,
+physical beauty, and strength, that they had been like a race of noble
+giants.  They were in those days a pastoral people, whose rich crops
+and splendid flocks and herds were the envy of less fertile countries.
+Among the shepherds and herdsmen there were poets who sang their own
+songs when they piped among their sheep upon the mountain sides and in
+the flower-thick valleys.  Their songs had been about patriotism and
+bravery, and faithfulness to their chieftains and their country.  The
+simple courtesy of the poorest peasant was as stately as the manner of
+a noble.  But that, as Loristan had said with a tired smile, had been
+before they had had time to outlive and forget the Garden of Eden.
+Five hundred years ago, there had succeeded to the throne a king who
+was bad and weak.  His father had lived to be ninety years old, and his
+son had grown tired of waiting in Samavia for his crown. He had gone
+out into the world, and visited other countries and their courts.  When
+he returned and became king, he lived as no Samavian king had lived
+before.  He was an extravagant, vicious man of furious temper and
+bitter jealousies.  He was jealous of the larger courts and countries
+he had seen, and tried to introduce their customs and their ambitions.
+He ended by introducing their worst faults and vices.  There arose
+political quarrels and savage new factions.  Money was squandered until
+poverty began for the first time to stare the country in the face.  The
+big Samavians, after their first stupefaction, broke forth into furious
+rage.  There were mobs and riots, then bloody battles.  Since it was
+the king who had worked this wrong, they would have none of him.  They
+would depose him and make his son king in his place.  It was at this
+part of the story that Marco was always most deeply interested.  The
+young prince was totally unlike his father.  He was a true royal
+Samavian.  He was bigger and stronger for his age than any man in the
+country, and he was as handsome as a young Viking god.  More than this,
+he had a lion's heart, and before he was sixteen, the shepherds and
+herdsmen had already begun to make songs about his young valor, and his
+kingly courtesy, and generous kindness.  Not only the shepherds and
+herdsmen sang them, but the people in the streets. The king, his
+father, had always been jealous of him, even when he was only a
+beautiful, stately child whom the people roared with joy to see as he
+rode through the streets.  When he returned from his journeyings and
+found him a splendid youth, he detested him.  When the people began to
+clamor and demand that he himself should abdicate, he became insane
+with rage, and committed such cruelties that the people ran mad
+themselves.  One day they stormed the palace, killed and overpowered
+the guards, and, rushing into the royal apartments, burst in upon the
+king as he shuddered green with terror and fury in his private room.
+He was king no more, and must leave the country, they vowed, as they
+closed round him with bared weapons and shook them in his face. Where
+was the prince?  They must see him and tell him their ultimatum.  It
+was he whom they wanted for a king.  They trusted him and would obey
+him.  They began to shout aloud his name, calling him in a sort of
+chant in unison, "Prince Ivor--Prince Ivor--Prince Ivor!"  But no
+answer came.  The people of the palace had hidden themselves, and the
+place was utterly silent.
+
+The king, despite his terror, could not help but sneer.
+
+"Call him again," he said.  "He is afraid to come out of his hole!"
+
+A savage fellow from the mountain fastnesses struck him on the mouth.
+
+"He afraid!" he shouted.  "If he does not come, it is because thou hast
+killed him--and thou art a dead man!"
+
+This set them aflame with hotter burning.  They broke away, leaving
+three on guard, and ran about the empty palace rooms shouting the
+prince's name.  But there was no answer.  They sought him in a frenzy,
+bursting open doors and flinging down every obstacle in their way.  A
+page, found hidden in a closet, owned that he had seen His Royal
+Highness pass through a corridor early in the morning.  He had been
+softly singing to himself one of the shepherd's songs.
+
+And in this strange way out of the history of Samavia, five hundred
+years before Marco's day, the young prince had walked--singing softly
+to himself the old song of Samavia's beauty and happiness.  For he was
+never seen again.
+
+In every nook and cranny, high and low, they sought for him, believing
+that the king himself had made him prisoner in some secret place, or
+had privately had him killed.  The fury of the people grew to frenzy.
+There were new risings, and every few days the palace was attacked and
+searched again.  But no trace of the prince was found.  He had vanished
+as a star vanishes when it drops from its place in the sky.  During a
+riot in the palace, when a last fruitless search was made, the king
+himself was killed.  A powerful noble who headed one of the uprisings
+made himself king in his place.  From that time, the once splendid
+little kingdom was like a bone fought for by dogs.  Its pastoral peace
+was forgotten.  It was torn and worried and shaken by stronger
+countries.  It tore and worried itself with internal fights.  It
+assassinated kings and created new ones.  No man was sure in his youth
+what ruler his maturity would live under, or whether his children would
+die in useless fights, or through stress of poverty and cruel, useless
+laws.  There were no more shepherds and herdsmen who were poets, but on
+the mountain sides and in the valleys sometimes some of the old songs
+were sung. Those most beloved were songs about a Lost Prince whose name
+had been Ivor.  If he had been king, he would have saved Samavia, the
+verses said, and all brave hearts believed that he would still return.
+In the modern cities, one of the jocular cynical sayings was, "Yes,
+that will happen when Prince Ivor comes again."
+
+In his more childish days, Marco had been bitterly troubled by the
+unsolved mystery.  Where had he gone--the Lost Prince?  Had he been
+killed, or had he been hidden away in a dungeon?  But he was so big and
+brave, he would have broken out of any dungeon. The boy had invented
+for himself a dozen endings to the story.
+
+"Did no one ever find his sword or his cap--or hear anything or guess
+anything about him ever--ever--ever?" he would say restlessly again and
+again.
+
+One winter's night, as they sat together before a small fire in a cold
+room in a cold city in Austria, he had been so eager and asked so many
+searching questions, that his father gave him an answer he had never
+given him before, and which was a sort of ending to the story, though
+not a satisfying one:
+
+"Everybody guessed as you are guessing.  A few very old shepherds in
+the mountains who like to believe ancient histories relate a story
+which most people consider a kind of legend.  It is that almost a
+hundred years after the prince was lost, an old shepherd told a story
+his long-dead father had confided to him in secret just before he died.
+The father had said that, going out in the early morning on the
+mountain side, he had found in the forest what he at first thought to
+be the dead body of a beautiful, boyish, young huntsman.  Some enemy
+had plainly attacked him from behind and believed he had killed him.
+He was, however, not quite dead, and the shepherd dragged him into a
+cave where he himself often took refuge from storms with his flocks.
+Since there was such riot and disorder in the city, he was afraid to
+speak of what he had found; and, by the time he discovered that he was
+harboring the prince, the king had already been killed, and an even
+worse man had taken possession of his throne, and ruled Samavia with a
+blood-stained, iron hand.  To the terrified and simple peasant the
+safest thing seemed to get the wounded youth out of the country before
+there was any chance of his being discovered and murdered outright, as
+he would surely be.  The cave in which he was hidden was not far from
+the frontier, and while he was still so weak that he was hardly
+conscious of what befell him, he was smuggled across it in a cart
+loaded with sheepskins, and left with some kind monks who did not know
+his rank or name.  The shepherd went back to his flocks and his
+mountains, and lived and died among them, always in terror of the
+changing rulers and their savage battles with each other. The
+mountaineers said among themselves, as the generations succeeded each
+other, that the Lost Prince must have died young, because otherwise he
+would have come back to his country and tried to restore its good,
+bygone days."
+
+"Yes, he would have come," Marco said.
+
+"He would have come if he had seen that he could help his people,"
+Loristan answered, as if he were not reflecting on a story which was
+probably only a kind of legend.  "But he was very young, and Samavia
+was in the hands of the new dynasty, and filled with his enemies.  He
+could not have crossed the frontier without an army.  Still, I think he
+died young."
+
+It was of this story that Marco was thinking as he walked, and perhaps
+the thoughts that filled his mind expressed themselves in his face in
+some way which attracted attention.  As he was nearing Buckingham
+Palace, a distinguished-looking well-dressed man with clever eyes
+caught sight of him, and, after looking at him keenly, slackened his
+pace as he approached him from the opposite direction.  An observer
+might have thought he saw something which puzzled and surprised him.
+Marco didn't see him at all, and still moved forward, thinking of the
+shepherds and the prince.  The well-dressed man began to walk still
+more slowly.  When he was quite close to Marco, he stopped and spoke to
+him--in the Samavian language.
+
+"What is your name?" he asked.
+
+Marco's training from his earliest childhood had been an extraordinary
+thing.  His love for his father had made it simple and natural to him,
+and he had never questioned the reason for it. As he had been taught to
+keep silence, he had been taught to control the expression of his face
+and the sound of his voice, and, above all, never to allow himself to
+look startled.  But for this he might have started at the extraordinary
+sound of the Samavian words suddenly uttered in a London street by an
+English gentleman.  He might even have answered the question in
+Samavian himself.  But he did not.  He courteously lifted his cap and
+replied in English:
+
+"Excuse me?"
+
+The gentleman's clever eyes scrutinized him keenly.  Then he also spoke
+in English.
+
+"Perhaps you do not understand?  I asked your name because you are very
+like a Samavian I know," he said.
+
+"I am Marco Loristan," the boy answered him.
+
+The man looked straight into his eyes and smiled.
+
+"That is not the name," he said.  "I beg your pardon, my boy."
+
+He was about to go on, and had indeed taken a couple of steps away,
+when he paused and turned to him again.
+
+"You may tell your father that you are a very well-trained lad. I
+wanted to find out for myself."  And he went on.
+
+Marco felt that his heart beat a little quickly.  This was one of
+several incidents which had happened during the last three years, and
+made him feel that he was living among things so mysterious that their
+very mystery hinted at danger.  But he himself had never before seemed
+involved in them.  Why should it matter that he was well-behaved?  Then
+he remembered something.  The man had not said "well-behaved," he had
+said "well-TRAINED." Well-trained in what way?  He felt his forehead
+prickle slightly as he thought of the smiling, keen look which set
+itself so straight upon him.  Had he spoken to him in Samavian for an
+experiment, to see if he would be startled into forgetting that he had
+been trained to seem to know only the language of the country he was
+temporarily living in?  But he had not forgotten. He had remembered
+well, and was thankful that he had betrayed nothing.  "Even exiles may
+be Samavian soldiers.  I am one.  You must be one," his father had said
+on that day long ago when he had made him take his oath.  Perhaps
+remembering his training was being a soldier.  Never had Samavia needed
+help as she needed it to-day.  Two years before, a rival claimant to
+the throne had assassinated the then reigning king and his sons, and
+since then, bloody war and tumult had raged.  The new king was a
+powerful man, and had a great following of the worst and most
+self-seeking of the people.  Neighboring countries had interfered for
+their own welfare's sake, and the newspapers had been full of stories
+of savage fighting and atrocities, and of starving peasants.
+
+Marco had late one evening entered their lodgings to find Loristan
+walking to and fro like a lion in a cage, a paper crushed and torn in
+his hands, and his eyes blazing.  He had been reading of cruelties
+wrought upon innocent peasants and women and children.  Lazarus was
+standing staring at him with huge tears running down his cheeks.  When
+Marco opened the door, the old soldier strode over to him, turned him
+about, and led him out of the room.
+
+"Pardon, sir, pardon!" he sobbed.  "No one must see him, not even you.
+He suffers so horribly."
+
+He stood by a chair in Marco's own small bedroom, where he half pushed,
+half led him.  He bent his grizzled head, and wept like a beaten child.
+
+"Dear God of those who are in pain, assuredly it is now the time to
+give back to us our Lost Prince!" he said, and Marco knew the words
+were a prayer, and wondered at the frenzied intensity of it, because it
+seemed so wild a thing to pray for the return of a youth who had died
+five hundred years before.
+
+When he reached the palace, he was still thinking of the man who had
+spoken to him.  He was thinking of him even as he looked at the
+majestic gray stone building and counted the number of its stories and
+windows.  He walked round it that he might make a note in his memory of
+its size and form and its entrances, and guess at the size of its
+gardens.  This he did because it was part of his game, and part of his
+strange training.
+
+When he came back to the front, he saw that in the great entrance court
+within the high iron railings an elegant but quiet-looking closed
+carriage was drawing up before the doorway.  Marco stood and watched
+with interest to see who would come out and enter it. He knew that
+kings and emperors who were not on parade looked merely like
+well-dressed private gentlemen, and often chose to go out as simply and
+quietly as other men.  So he thought that, perhaps, if he waited, he
+might see one of those well-known faces which represent the highest
+rank and power in a monarchical country, and which in times gone by had
+also represented the power over human life and death and liberty.
+
+"I should like to be able to tell my father that I have seen the King
+and know his face, as I know the faces of the czar and the two
+emperors."
+
+There was a little movement among the tall men-servants in the royal
+scarlet liveries, and an elderly man descended the steps attended by
+another who walked behind him.  He entered the carriage, the other man
+followed him, the door was closed, and the carriage drove through the
+entrance gates, where the sentries saluted.
+
+Marco was near enough to see distinctly.  The two men were talking as
+if interested.  The face of the one farthest from him was the face he
+had often seen in shop-windows and newspapers. The boy made his quick,
+formal salute.  It was the King; and, as he smiled and acknowledged his
+greeting, he spoke to his companion.
+
+"That fine lad salutes as if he belonged to the army," was what he
+said, though Marco could not hear him.
+
+His companion leaned forward to look through the window.  When he
+caught sight of Marco, a singular expression crossed his face.
+
+"He does belong to an army, sir," he answered, "though he does not know
+it.  His name is Marco Loristan."
+
+Then Marco saw him plainly for the first time.  He was the man with the
+keen eyes who had spoken to him in Samavian.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE RAT
+
+Marco would have wondered very much if he had heard the words, but, as
+he did not hear them, he turned toward home wondering at something
+else.  A man who was in intimate attendance on a king must be a person
+of importance.  He no doubt knew many things not only of his own
+ruler's country, but of the countries of other kings.  But so few had
+really known anything of poor little Samavia until the newspapers had
+begun to tell them of the horrors of its war--and who but a Samavian
+could speak its language?  It would be an interesting thing to tell his
+father--that a man who knew the King had spoken to him in Samavian, and
+had sent that curious message.
+
+Later he found himself passing a side street and looked up it. It was
+so narrow, and on either side of it were such old, tall, and
+sloping-walled houses that it attracted his attention.  It looked as if
+a bit of old London had been left to stand while newer places grew up
+and hid it from view.  This was the kind of street he liked to pass
+through for curiosity's sake.  He knew many of them in the old quarters
+of many cities.  He had lived in some of them.  He could find his way
+home from the other end of it.  Another thing than its queerness
+attracted him.  He heard a clamor of boys' voices, and he wanted to see
+what they were doing.  Sometimes, when he had reached a new place and
+had had that lonely feeling, he had followed some boyish clamor of play
+or wrangling, and had found a temporary friend or so.
+
+Half-way to the street's end there was an arched brick passage. The
+sound of the voices came from there--one of them high, and thinner and
+shriller than the rest.  Marco tramped up to the arch and looked down
+through the passage.  It opened on to a gray flagged space, shut in by
+the railings of a black, deserted, and ancient graveyard behind a
+venerable church which turned its face toward some other street.  The
+boys were not playing, but listening to one of their number who was
+reading to them from a newspaper.
+
+Marco walked down the passage and listened also, standing in the dark
+arched outlet at its end and watching the boy who read.  He was a
+strange little creature with a big forehead, and deep eyes which were
+curiously sharp.  But this was not all.  He had a hunch back, his legs
+seemed small and crooked.  He sat with them crossed before him on a
+rough wooden platform set on low wheels, on which he evidently pushed
+himself about.  Near him were a number of sticks stacked together as if
+they were rifles.  One of the first things that Marco noticed was that
+he had a savage little face marked with lines as if he had been angry
+all his life.
+
+"Hold your tongues, you fools!" he shrilled out to some boys who
+interrupted him.  "Don't you want to know anything, you ignorant swine?"
+
+He was as ill-dressed as the rest of them, but he did not speak in the
+Cockney dialect.  If he was of the riffraff of the streets, as his
+companions were, he was somehow different.
+
+Then he, by chance, saw Marco, who was standing in the arched end of
+the passage.
+
+"What are you doing there listening?" he shouted, and at once stooped
+to pick up a stone and threw it at him.  The stone hit Marco's
+shoulder, but it did not hurt him much.  What he did not like was that
+another lad should want to throw something at him before they had even
+exchanged boy-signs.  He also did not like the fact that two other boys
+promptly took the matter up by bending down to pick up stones also.
+
+He walked forward straight into the group and stopped close to the
+hunchback.
+
+"What did you do that for?" he asked, in his rather deep young voice.
+
+He was big and strong-looking enough to suggest that he was not a boy
+it would be easy to dispose of, but it was not that which made the
+group stand still a moment to stare at him.  It was something in
+himself--half of it a kind of impartial lack of anything like
+irritation at the stone-throwing.  It was as if it had not mattered to
+him in the least.  It had not made him feel angry or insulted.  He was
+only rather curious about it.  Because he was clean, and his hair and
+his shabby clothes were brushed, the first impression given by his
+appearance as he stood in the archway was that he was a young "toff"
+poking his nose where it was not wanted; but, as he drew near, they saw
+that the well-brushed clothes were worn, and there were patches on his
+shoes.
+
+"What did you do that for?" he asked, and he asked it merely as if he
+wanted to find out the reason.
+
+"I'm not going to have you swells dropping in to my club as if it was
+your own," said the hunchback.
+
+"I'm not a swell, and I didn't know it was a club," Marco answered.  "I
+heard boys, and I thought I'd come and look.  When I heard you reading
+about Samavia, I wanted to hear."
+
+He looked at the reader with his silent-expressioned eyes.
+
+"You needn't have thrown a stone," he added.  "They don't do it at
+men's clubs.  I'll go away."
+
+He turned about as if he were going, but, before he had taken three
+steps, the hunchback hailed him unceremoniously.
+
+"Hi!" he called out.  "Hi, you!"
+
+"What do you want?" said Marco.
+
+"I bet you don't know where Samavia is, or what they're fighting
+about."  The hunchback threw the words at him.
+
+"Yes, I do.  It's north of Beltrazo and east of Jiardasia, and they are
+fighting because one party has assassinated King Maran, and the other
+will not let them crown Nicola Iarovitch.  And why should they?  He's a
+brigand, and hasn't a drop of royal blood in him."
+
+"Oh!" reluctantly admitted the hunchback.  "You do know that much, do
+you?  Come back here."
+
+Marco turned back, while the boys still stared.  It was as if two
+leaders or generals were meeting for the first time, and the rabble,
+looking on, wondered what would come of their encounter.
+
+"The Samavians of the Iarovitch party are a bad lot and want only bad
+things," said Marco, speaking first.  "They care nothing for Samavia.
+They only care for money and the power to make laws which will serve
+them and crush everybody else.  They know Nicola is a weak man, and
+that, if they can crown him king, they can make him do what they like."
+
+The fact that he spoke first, and that, though he spoke in a steady
+boyish voice without swagger, he somehow seemed to take it for granted
+that they would listen, made his place for him at once.  Boys are
+impressionable creatures, and they know a leader when they see him.
+The hunchback fixed glittering eyes on him. The rabble began to murmur.
+
+"Rat! Rat!" several voices cried at once in good strong Cockney.  "Arst
+'im some more, Rat!"
+
+"Is that what they call you?" Marco asked the hunchback.
+
+"It's what I called myself," he answered resentfully.  "'The Rat.'
+Look at me!  Crawling round on the ground like this!  Look at me!"
+
+He made a gesture ordering his followers to move aside, and began to
+push himself rapidly, with queer darts this side and that round the
+inclosure.  He bent his head and body, and twisted his face, and made
+strange animal-like movements.  He even uttered sharp squeaks as he
+rushed here and there--as a rat might have done when it was being
+hunted.  He did it as if he were displaying an accomplishment, and his
+followers' laughter was applause.
+
+"Wasn't I like a rat?" he demanded, when he suddenly stopped.
+
+"You made yourself like one on purpose," Marco answered.  "You do it
+for fun."
+
+"Not so much fun," said The Rat.  "I feel like one.  Every one's my
+enemy.  I'm vermin.  I can't fight or defend myself unless I bite.  I
+can bite, though."  And he showed two rows of fierce, strong, white
+teeth, sharper at the points than human teeth usually are.  "I bite my
+father when he gets drunk and beats me.  I've bitten him till he's
+learned to remember."  He laughed a shrill, squeaking laugh.  "He
+hasn't tried it for three months--even when he was drunk--and he's
+always drunk." Then he laughed again still more shrilly.  "He's a
+gentleman," he said.  "I'm a gentleman's son.  He was a Master at a big
+school until he was kicked out--that was when I was four and my mother
+died.  I'm thirteen now.  How old are you?"
+
+"I'm twelve," answered Marco.
+
+The Rat twisted his face enviously.
+
+"I wish I was your size!  Are you a gentleman's son?  You look as if
+you were."
+
+"I'm a very poor man's son," was Marco's answer.  "My father is a
+writer."
+
+"Then, ten to one, he's a sort of gentleman," said The Rat. Then quite
+suddenly he threw another question at him.  "What's the name of the
+other Samavian party?"
+
+"The Maranovitch.  The Maranovitch and the Iarovitch have been fighting
+with each other for five hundred years.  First one dynasty rules, and
+then the other gets in when it has killed somebody as it killed King
+Maran," Marco answered without hesitation.
+
+"What was the name of the dynasty that ruled before they began
+fighting?  The first Maranovitch assassinated the last of them," The
+Rat asked him.
+
+"The Fedorovitch," said Marco.  "The last one was a bad king."
+
+"His son was the one they never found again," said The Rat. "The one
+they call the Lost Prince."
+
+Marco would have started but for his long training in exterior
+self-control.  It was so strange to hear his dream-hero spoken of in
+this back alley in a slum, and just after he had been thinking of him.
+
+"What do you know about him?" he asked, and, as he did so, he saw the
+group of vagabond lads draw nearer.
+
+"Not much.  I only read something about him in a torn magazine I found
+in the street," The Rat answered.  "The man that wrote about him said
+he was only part of a legend, and he laughed at people for believing in
+him.  He said it was about time that he should turn up again if he
+intended to.  I've invented things about him because these chaps like
+to hear me tell them.  They're only stories."
+
+"We likes 'im," a voice called out, "becos 'e wos the right sort; 'e'd
+fight, 'e would, if 'e was in Samavia now."
+
+Marco rapidly asked himself how much he might say.  He decided and
+spoke to them all.
+
+"He is not part of a legend.  He's part of Samavian history," he said.
+"I know something about him too."
+
+"How did you find it out?" asked The Rat.
+
+"Because my father's a writer, he's obliged to have books and papers,
+and he knows things.  I like to read, and I go into the free libraries.
+You can always get books and papers there.  Then I ask my father
+questions.  All the newspapers are full of things about Samavia just
+now."  Marco felt that this was an explanation which betrayed nothing.
+It was true that no one could open a newspaper at this period without
+seeing news and stories of Samavia.
+
+The Rat saw possible vistas of information opening up before him.
+
+"Sit down here," he said, "and tell us what you know about him.  Sit
+down, you fellows."
+
+There was nothing to sit on but the broken flagged pavement, but that
+was a small matter.  Marco himself had sat on flags or bare ground
+often enough before, and so had the rest of the lads.  He took his
+place near The Rat, and the others made a semicircle in front of them.
+The two leaders had joined forces, so to speak, and the followers fell
+into line at "attention."
+
+Then the new-comer began to talk.  It was a good story, that of the
+Lost Prince, and Marco told it in a way which gave it reality.  How
+could he help it?  He knew, as they could not, that it was real.  He
+who had pored over maps of little Samavia since his seventh year, who
+had studied them with his father, knew it as a country he could have
+found his way to any part of if he had been dropped in any forest or
+any mountain of it.  He knew every highway and byway, and in the
+capital city of Melzarr could almost have made his way blindfolded.  He
+knew the palaces and the forts, the churches, the poor streets and the
+rich ones.  His father had once shown him a plan of the royal palace
+which they had studied together until the boy knew each apartment and
+corridor in it by heart.  But this he did not speak of.  He knew it was
+one of the things to be silent about.  But of the mountains and the
+emerald velvet meadows climbing their sides and only ending where huge
+bare crags and peaks began, he could speak.  He could make pictures of
+the wide fertile plains where herds of wild horses fed, or raced and
+sniffed the air; he could describe the fertile valleys where clear
+rivers ran and flocks of sheep pastured on deep sweet grass.  He could
+speak of them because he could offer a good enough reason for his
+knowledge of them.  It was not the only reason he had for his
+knowledge, but it was one which would serve well enough.
+
+"That torn magazine you found had more than one article about Samavia
+in it," he said to The Rat.  "The same man wrote four. I read them all
+in a free library.  He had been to Samavia, and knew a great deal about
+it.  He said it was one of the most beautiful countries he had ever
+traveled in--and the most fertile.  That's what they all say of it."
+
+The group before him knew nothing of fertility or open country. They
+only knew London back streets and courts.  Most of them had never
+traveled as far as the public parks, and in fact scarcely believed in
+their existence.  They were a rough lot, and as they had stared at
+Marco at first sight of him, so they continued to stare at him as he
+talked.  When he told of the tall Samavians who had been like giants
+centuries ago, and who had hunted the wild horses and captured and
+trained them to obedience by a sort of strong and gentle magic, their
+mouths fell open.  This was the sort of thing to allure any boy's
+imagination.
+
+"Blimme, if I wouldn't 'ave liked ketchin' one o' them 'orses," broke
+in one of the audience, and his exclamation was followed by a dozen of
+like nature from the others.  Who wouldn't have liked "ketchin' one"?
+
+When he told of the deep endless-seeming forests, and of the herdsmen
+and shepherds who played on their pipes and made songs about high deeds
+and bravery, they grinned with pleasure without knowing they were
+grinning.  They did not really know that in this neglected,
+broken-flagged inclosure, shut in on one side by smoke-blackened,
+poverty-stricken houses, and on the other by a deserted and forgotten
+sunken graveyard, they heard the rustle of green forest boughs where
+birds nested close, the swish of the summer wind in the river reeds,
+and the tinkle and laughter and rush of brooks running.
+
+They heard more or less of it all through the Lost Prince story,
+because Prince Ivor had loved lowland woods and mountain forests and
+all out-of-door life.  When Marco pictured him tall and strong-limbed
+and young, winning all the people when he rode smiling among them, the
+boys grinned again with unconscious pleasure.
+
+"Wisht 'e 'adn't got lost!" some one cried out.
+
+When they heard of the unrest and dissatisfaction of the Samavians,
+they began to get restless themselves.  When Marco reached the part of
+the story in which the mob rushed into the palace and demanded their
+prince from the king, they ejaculated scraps of bad language.  "The old
+geezer had got him hidden somewhere in some dungeon, or he'd killed him
+out an' out--that's what he'd been up to!" they clamored.  "Wisht the
+lot of us had been there then--wisht we 'ad.  We'd 'ave give' 'im wot
+for, anyway!"
+
+"An' 'im walkin' out o' the place so early in the mornin' just singin'
+like that!  'E 'ad 'im follered an' done for!" they decided with
+various exclamations of boyish wrath.  Somehow, the fact that the
+handsome royal lad had strolled into the morning sunshine singing made
+them more savage.  Their language was extremely bad at this point.
+
+But if it was bad here, it became worse when the old shepherd found the
+young huntsman's half-dead body in the forest.  He HAD "bin 'done for'
+IN THE BACK!  'E'd bin give' no charnst. G-r-r-r!" they groaned in
+chorus.  "Wisht THEY'D bin there when 'e'd bin 'it!  They'd 'ave done
+fur somebody" themselves.  It was a story which had a queer effect on
+them.  It made them think they saw things; it fired their blood; it set
+them wanting to fight for ideals they knew nothing about--adventurous
+things, for instance, and high and noble young princes who were full of
+the possibility of great and good deeds. Sitting upon the broken
+flagstones of the bit of ground behind the deserted graveyard, they
+were suddenly dragged into the world of romance, and noble young
+princes and great and good deeds became as real as the sunken
+gravestones, and far more interesting.
+
+And then the smuggling across the frontier of the unconscious prince in
+the bullock cart loaded with sheepskins!  They held their breaths.
+Would the old shepherd get him past the line! Marco, who was lost in
+the recital himself, told it as if he had been present.  He felt as if
+he had, and as this was the first time he had ever told it to thrilled
+listeners, his imagination got him in its grip, and his heart jumped in
+his breast as he was sure the old man's must have done when the guard
+stopped his cart and asked him what he was carrying out of the country.
+He knew he must have had to call up all his strength to force his voice
+into steadiness.
+
+And then the good monks!  He had to stop to explain what a monk was,
+and when he described the solitude of the ancient monastery, and its
+walled gardens full of flowers and old simples to be used for healing,
+and the wise monks walking in the silence and the sun, the boys stared
+a little helplessly, but still as if they were vaguely pleased by the
+picture.
+
+And then there was no more to tell--no more.  There it broke off, and
+something like a low howl of dismay broke from the semicircle.
+
+"Aw!" they protested, "it 'adn't ought to stop there!  Ain't there no
+more?  Is that all there is?"
+
+"It's all that was ever known really.  And that last part might only be
+a sort of story made up by somebody.  But I believe it myself."
+
+The Rat had listened with burning eyes.  He had sat biting his
+finger-nails, as was a trick of his when he was excited or angry.
+
+"Tell you what!" he exclaimed suddenly.  "This was what happened.  It
+was some of the Maranovitch fellows that tried to kill him.  They meant
+to kill his father and make their own man king, and they knew the
+people wouldn't stand it if young Ivor was alive.  They just stabbed
+him in the back, the fiends!  I dare say they heard the old shepherd
+coming, and left him for dead and ran."
+
+"Right, oh!  That was it!" the lads agreed.  "Yer right there, Rat!"
+
+"When he got well," The Rat went on feverishly, still biting his nails,
+"he couldn't go back.  He was only a boy.  The other fellow had been
+crowned, and his followers felt strong because they'd just conquered
+the country.  He could have done nothing without an army, and he was
+too young to raise one.  Perhaps he thought he'd wait till he was old
+enough to know what to do.  I dare say he went away and had to work for
+his living as if he'd never been a prince at all.  Then perhaps
+sometime he married somebody and had a son, and told him as a secret
+who he was and all about Samavia."  The Rat began to look vengeful.
+"If I'd bin him I'd have told him not to forget what the Maranovitch
+had done to me.  I'd have told him that if I couldn't get back the
+throne, he must see what he could do when he grew to be a man. And I'd
+have made him swear, if he got it back, to take it out of them or their
+children or their children's children in torture and killing.  I'd have
+made him swear not to leave a Maranovitch alive.  And I'd have told him
+that, if he couldn't do it in his life, he must pass the oath on to his
+son and his son's son, as long as there was a Fedorovitch on earth.
+Wouldn't you?" he demanded hotly of Marco.
+
+Marco's blood was also hot, but it was a different kind of blood, and
+he had talked too much to a very sane man.
+
+"No," he said slowly.  "What would have been the use?  It wouldn't have
+done Samavia any good, and it wouldn't have done him any good to
+torture and kill people.  Better keep them alive and make them do
+things for the country.  If you're a patriot, you think of the
+country."  He wanted to add "That's what my father says," but he did
+not.
+
+"Torture 'em first and then attend to the country," snapped The Rat.
+"What would you have told your son if you'd been Ivor?"
+
+"I'd have told him to learn everything about Samavia--and all the
+things kings have to know--and study things about laws and other
+countries--and about keeping silent--and about governing himself as if
+he were a general commanding soldiers in battle--so that he would never
+do anything he did not mean to do or could be ashamed of doing after it
+was over.  And I'd have asked him to tell his son's sons to tell their
+sons to learn the same things. So, you see, however long the time was,
+there would always be a king getting ready for Samavia--when Samavia
+really wanted him. And he would be a real king."
+
+He stopped himself suddenly and looked at the staring semicircle.
+
+"I didn't make that up myself," he said.  "I have heard a man who reads
+and knows things say it.  I believe the Lost Prince would have had the
+same thoughts.  If he had, and told them to his son, there has been a
+line of kings in training for Samavia for five hundred years, and
+perhaps one is walking about the streets of Vienna, or Budapest, or
+Paris, or London now, and he'd be ready if the people found out about
+him and called him."
+
+"Wisht they would!" some one yelled.
+
+"It would be a queer secret to know all the time when no one else knew
+it," The Rat communed with himself as it were, "that you were a king
+and you ought to be on a throne wearing a crown. I wonder if it would
+make a chap look different?"
+
+He laughed his squeaky laugh, and then turned in his sudden way to
+Marco:
+
+"But he'd be a fool to give up the vengeance.  What is your name?"
+
+"Marco Loristan.  What's yours?  It isn't The Rat really."
+
+"It's Jem RATcliffe.  That's pretty near.  Where do you live?"
+
+"No. 7 Philibert Place."
+
+"This club is a soldiers' club," said The Rat.  "It's called the Squad.
+I'm the captain.  'Tention, you fellows!  Let's show him."
+
+The semicircle sprang to its feet.  There were about twelve lads
+altogether, and, when they stood upright, Marco saw at once that for
+some reason they were accustomed to obeying the word of command with
+military precision.
+
+"Form in line!" ordered The Rat.
+
+They did it at once, and held their backs and legs straight and their
+heads up amazingly well.  Each had seized one of the sticks which had
+been stacked together like guns.
+
+The Rat himself sat up straight on his platform.  There was actually
+something military in the bearing of his lean body.  His voice lost its
+squeak and its sharpness became commanding.
+
+He put the dozen lads through the drill as if he had been a smart young
+officer.  And the drill itself was prompt and smart enough to have done
+credit to practiced soldiers in barracks.  It made Marco involuntarily
+stand very straight himself, and watch with surprised interest.
+
+"That's good!" he exclaimed when it was at an end.  "How did you learn
+that?"
+
+The Rat made a savage gesture.
+
+"If I'd had legs to stand on, I'd have been a soldier!" he said.  "I'd
+have enlisted in any regiment that would take me.  I don't care for
+anything else."
+
+Suddenly his face changed, and he shouted a command to his followers.
+
+"Turn your backs!" he ordered.
+
+And they did turn their backs and looked through the railings of the
+old churchyard.  Marco saw that they were obeying an order which was
+not new to them.  The Rat had thrown his arm up over his eyes and
+covered them.  He held it there for several moments, as if he did not
+want to be seen.  Marco turned his back as the rest had done.  All at
+once he understood that, though The Rat was not crying, yet he was
+feeling something which another boy would possibly have broken down
+under.
+
+"All right!" he shouted presently, and dropped his ragged-sleeved arm
+and sat up straight again.
+
+"I want to go to war!" he said hoarsely.  "I want to fight!  I want to
+lead a lot of men into battle!  And I haven't got any legs.  Sometimes
+it takes the pluck out of me."
+
+"You've not grown up yet!" said Marco.  "You might get strong. No one
+knows what is going to happen.  How did you learn to drill the club?"
+
+"I hang about barracks.  I watch and listen.  I follow soldiers. If I
+could get books, I'd read about wars.  I can't go to libraries as you
+can.  I can do nothing but scuffle about like a rat."
+
+"I can take you to some libraries," said Marco.  "There are places
+where boys can get in.  And I can get some papers from my father."
+
+"Can you?" said The Rat.  "Do you want to join the club?"
+
+"Yes!" Marco answered.  "I'll speak to my father about it."
+
+He said it because the hungry longing for companionship in his own mind
+had found a sort of response in the queer hungry look in The Rat's
+eyes.  He wanted to see him again.  Strange creature as he was, there
+was attraction in him.  Scuffling about on his low wheeled platform, he
+had drawn this group of rough lads to him and made himself their
+commander.  They obeyed him; they listened to his stories and harangues
+about war and soldiering; they let him drill them and give them orders.
+Marco knew that, when he told his father about him, he would be
+interested.  The boy wanted to hear what Loristan would say.
+
+"I'm going home now," he said.  "If you're going to be here to-morrow,
+I will try to come."
+
+"We shall be here," The Rat answered.  "It's our barracks."
+
+Marco drew himself up smartly and made his salute as if to a superior
+officer.  Then he wheeled about and marched through the brick archway,
+and the sound of his boyish tread was as regular and decided as if he
+had been a man keeping time with his regiment.
+
+"He's been drilled himself," said The Rat.  "He knows as much as I do."
+
+And he sat up and stared down the passage with new interest.
+
+
+
+V
+
+"SILENCE IS STILL THE ORDER"
+
+They were even poorer than usual just now, and the supper Marco and his
+father sat down to was scant enough.  Lazarus stood upright behind his
+master's chair and served him with strictest ceremony.  Their poor
+lodgings were always kept with a soldierly cleanliness and order.  When
+an object could be polished it was forced to shine, no grain of dust
+was allowed to lie undisturbed, and this perfection was not attained
+through the ministrations of a lodging house slavey.  Lazarus made
+himself extremely popular by taking the work of caring for his master's
+rooms entirely out of the hands of the overburdened maids of all work.
+He had learned to do many things in his young days in barracks.  He
+carried about with him coarse bits of table-cloths and towels, which he
+laundered as if they had been the finest linen.  He mended, he patched,
+he darned, and in the hardest fight the poor must face--the fight with
+dirt and dinginess--he always held his own.  They had nothing but dry
+bread and coffee this evening, but Lazarus had made the coffee and the
+bread was good.
+
+As Marco ate, he told his father the story of The Rat and his
+followers.  Loristan listened, as the boy had known he would, with the
+far-off, intently-thinking smile in his dark eyes.  It was a look which
+always fascinated Marco because it meant that he was thinking so many
+things.  Perhaps he would tell some of them and perhaps he would not.
+His spell over the boy lay in the fact that to him he seemed like a
+wonderful book of which one had only glimpses.  It was full of pictures
+and adventures which were true, and one could not help continually
+making guesses about them.  Yes, the feeling that Marco had was that
+his father's attraction for him was a sort of spell, and that others
+felt the same thing.  When he stood and talked to commoner people, he
+held his tall body with singular quiet grace which was like power.  He
+never stirred or moved himself as if he were nervous or uncertain.  He
+could hold his hands (he had beautiful slender and strong hands) quite
+still; he could stand on his fine arched feet without shuffling them.
+He could sit without any ungrace or restlessness.  His mind knew what
+his body should do, and gave it orders without speaking, and his fine
+limbs and muscles and nerves obeyed.  So he could stand still and at
+ease and look at the people he was talking to, and they always looked
+at him and listened to what he said, and somehow, courteous and
+uncondescending as his manner unfailingly was, it used always to seem
+to Marco as if he were "giving an audience" as kings gave them.
+
+He had often seen people bow very low when they went away from him, and
+more than once it had happened that some humble person had stepped out
+of his presence backward, as people do when retiring before a
+sovereign.  And yet his bearing was the quietest and least assuming in
+the world.
+
+"And they were talking about Samavia?  And he knew the story of the
+Lost Prince?" he said ponderingly.  "Even in that place!"
+
+"He wants to hear about wars--he wants to talk about them," Marco
+answered.  "If he could stand and were old enough, he would go and
+fight for Samavia himself."
+
+"It is a blood-drenched and sad place now!" said Loristan. "The people
+are mad when they are not heartbroken and terrified."
+
+Suddenly Marco struck the table with a sounding slap of his boy's hand.
+He did it before he realized any intention in his own mind.
+
+"Why should either one of the Iarovitch or one of the Maranovitch be
+king!" he cried.  "They were only savage peasants when they first
+fought for the crown hundreds of years ago.  The most savage one got
+it, and they have been fighting ever since.  Only the Fedorovitch were
+born kings.  There is only one man in the world who has the right to
+the throne--and I don't know whether he is in the world or not.  But I
+believe he is!  I do!"
+
+Loristan looked at his hot twelve-year-old face with a reflective
+curiousness.  He saw that the flame which had leaped up in him had
+leaped without warning--just as a fierce heart-beat might have shaken
+him.
+
+"You mean--?" he suggested softly.
+
+"Ivor Fedorovitch.  King Ivor he ought to be.  And the people would
+obey him, and the good days would come again."
+
+"It is five hundred years since Ivor Fedorovitch left the good monks."
+Loristan still spoke softly.
+
+"But, Father," Marco protested, "even The Rat said what you said--that
+he was too young to be able to come back while the Maranovitch were in
+power.  And he would have to work and have a home, and perhaps he is as
+poor as we are.  But when he had a son he would call him Ivor and TELL
+him--and his son would call HIS son Ivor and tell HIM--and it would go
+on and on.  They could never call their eldest sons anything but Ivor.
+And what you said about the training would be true.  There would always
+be a king being trained for Samavia, and ready to be called."  In the
+fire of his feelings he sprang from his chair and stood upright. "Why!
+There may be a king of Samavia in some city now who knows he is king,
+and, when he reads about the fighting among his people, his blood gets
+red-hot.  They're his own people--his very own!  He ought to go to
+them--he ought to go and tell them who he is!  Don't you think he
+ought, Father?"
+
+"It would not be as easy as it seems to a boy," Loristan answered.
+"There are many countries which would have something to say--Russia
+would have her word, and Austria, and Germany; and England never is
+silent.  But, if he were a strong man and knew how to make strong
+friends in silence, he might sometime be able to declare himself
+openly."
+
+"But if he is anywhere, some one--some Samavian--ought to go and look
+for him.  It ought to be a Samavian who is very clever and a patriot--"
+He stopped at a flash of recognition.  "Father!" he cried out.
+"Father!  You--you are the one who could find him if any one in the
+world could.  But perhaps--" and he stopped a moment again because new
+thoughts rushed through his mind. "Have YOU ever looked for him?" he
+asked hesitating.
+
+Perhaps he had asked a stupid question--perhaps his father had always
+been looking for him, perhaps that was his secret and his work.
+
+But Loristan did not look as if he thought him stupid.  Quite the
+contrary.  He kept his handsome eyes fixed on him still in that curious
+way, as if he were studying him--as if he were much more than twelve
+years old, and he were deciding to tell him something.
+
+"Comrade at arms," he said, with the smile which always gladdened
+Marco's heart, "you have kept your oath of allegiance like a man.  You
+were not seven years old when you took it.  You are growing older.
+Silence is still the order, but you are man enough to be told more."
+He paused and looked down, and then looked up again, speaking in a low
+tone.  "I have not looked for him," he said,  "because--I believe I
+know where he is."
+
+Marco caught his breath.
+
+"Father!" He said only that word.  He could say no more.  He knew he
+must not ask questions.  "Silence is still the order." But as they
+faced each other in their dingy room at the back of the shabby house on
+the side of the roaring common road--as Lazarus stood stock-still
+behind his father's chair and kept his eyes fixed on the empty coffee
+cups and the dry bread plate, and everything looked as poor as things
+always did--there was a king of Samavia--an Ivor Fedorovitch with the
+blood of the Lost Prince in his veins--alive in some town or city this
+moment!  And Marco's own father knew where he was!
+
+He glanced at Lazarus, but, though the old soldier's face looked as
+expressionless as if it were cut out of wood, Marco realized that he
+knew this thing and had always known it.  He had been a comrade at arms
+all his life.  He continued to stare at the bread plate.
+
+Loristan spoke again and in an even lower voice.  "The Samavians who
+are patriots and thinkers," he said, "formed themselves into a secret
+party about eighty years ago.  They formed it when they had no reason
+for hope, but they formed it because one of them discovered that an
+Ivor Fedorovitch was living.  He was head forester on a great estate in
+the Austrian Alps.  The nobleman he served had always thought him a
+mystery because he had the bearing and speech of a man who had not been
+born a servant, and his methods in caring for the forests and game were
+those of a man who was educated and had studied his subject.  But he
+never was familiar or assuming, and never professed superiority over
+any of his fellows.  He was a man of great stature, and was
+extraordinarily brave and silent.  The nobleman who was his master made
+a sort of companion of him when they hunted together. Once he took him
+with him when he traveled to Samavia to hunt wild horses.  He found
+that he knew the country strangely well, and that he was familiar with
+Samavian hunting and customs. Before he returned to Austria, the man
+obtained permission to go to the mountains alone.  He went among the
+shepherds and made friends among them, asking many questions.
+
+"One night around a forest fire he heard the songs about the Lost
+Prince which had not been forgotten even after nearly five hundred
+years had passed.  The shepherds and herdsmen talked about Prince Ivor,
+and told old stories about him, and related the prophecy that he would
+come back and bring again Samavia's good days.  He might come only in
+the body of one of his descendants, but it would be his spirit which
+came, because his spirit would never cease to love Samavia.  One very
+old shepherd tottered to his feet and lifted his face to the myriad
+stars bestrewn like jewels in the blue sky above the forest trees, and
+he wept and prayed aloud that the great God would send their king to
+them.  And the stranger huntsman stood upright also and lifted his face
+to the stars.  And, though he said no word, the herdsman nearest to him
+saw tears on his cheeks--great, heavy tears.  The next day, the
+stranger went to the monastery where the order of good monks lived who
+had taken care of the Lost Prince.  When he had left Samavia, the
+secret society was formed, and the members of it knew that an Ivor
+Fedorovitch had passed through his ancestors' country as the servant of
+another man.  But the secret society was only a small one, and, though
+it has been growing ever since and it has done good deeds and good work
+in secret, the huntsman died an old man before it was strong enough
+even to dare to tell Samavia what it knew."
+
+"Had he a son?" cried Marco.  "Had he a son?"
+
+"Yes.  He had a son.  His name was Ivor.  And he was trained as I told
+you.  That part I knew to be true, though I should have believed it was
+true even if I had not known.  There has ALWAYS been a king ready for
+Samavia--even when he has labored with his hands and served others.
+Each one took the oath of allegiance."
+
+"As I did?" said Marco, breathless with excitement.  When one is twelve
+years old, to be so near a Lost Prince who might end wars is a
+thrilling thing.
+
+"The same," answered Loristan.
+
+Marco threw up his hand in salute.
+
+"'Here grows a man for Samavia!  God be thanked!'" he quoted. "And HE
+is somewhere?  And you know?"
+
+Loristan bent his head in acquiescence.
+
+"For years much secret work has been done, and the Fedorovitch party
+has grown until it is much greater and more powerful than the other
+parties dream.  The larger countries are tired of the constant war and
+disorder in Samavia.  Their interests are disturbed by them, and they
+are deciding that they must have peace and laws which can be counted
+on.  There have been Samavian patriots who have spent their lives in
+trying to bring this about by making friends in the most powerful
+capitals, and working secretly for the future good of their own land.
+Because Samavia is so small and uninfluential, it has taken a long time
+but when King Maran and his family were assassinated and the war broke
+out, there were great powers which began to say that if some king of
+good blood and reliable characteristics were given the crown, he should
+be upheld."
+
+"HIS blood,"--Marco's intensity made his voice drop almost to a
+whisper,--"HIS blood has been trained for five hundred years, Father!
+If it comes true--" though he laughed a little, he was obliged to wink
+his eyes hard because suddenly he felt tears rush into them, which no
+boy likes--"the shepherds will have to make a new song--it will have to
+be a shouting one about a prince going away and a king coming back!"
+
+"They are a devout people and observe many an ancient rite and
+ceremony.  They will chant prayers and burn altar-fires on their
+mountain sides," Loristan said.  "But the end is not yet--the end is
+not yet.  Sometimes it seems that perhaps it is near--but God knows!"
+
+Then there leaped back upon Marco the story he had to tell, but which
+he had held back for the last--the story of the man who spoke Samavian
+and drove in the carriage with the King.  He knew now that it might
+mean some important thing which he could not have before suspected.
+
+"There is something I must tell you," he said.
+
+He had learned to relate incidents in few but clear words when he
+related them to his father.  It had been part of his training. Loristan
+had said that he might sometime have a story to tell when he had but
+few moments to tell it in--some story which meant life or death to some
+one.  He told this one quickly and well. He made Loristan see the
+well-dressed man with the deliberate manner and the keen eyes, and he
+made him hear his voice when he said, "Tell your father that you are a
+very well-trained lad."
+
+"I am glad he said that.  He is a man who knows what training is," said
+Loristan.  "He is a person who knows what all Europe is doing, and
+almost all that it will do.  He is an ambassador from a powerful and
+great country.  If he saw that you are a well-trained and fine lad, it
+might--it might even be good for Samavia."
+
+"Would it matter that _I_ was well-trained?  COULD it matter to
+Samavia?" Marco cried out.
+
+Loristan paused for a moment--watching him gravely--looking him
+over--his big, well-built boy's frame, his shabby clothes, and his
+eagerly burning eyes.
+
+He smiled one of his slow wonderful smiles.
+
+"Yes.  It might even matter to Samavia!" he answered.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE DRILL AND THE SECRET PARTY
+
+Loristan did not forbid Marco to pursue his acquaintance with The Rat
+and his followers.
+
+"You will find out for yourself whether they are friends for you or
+not," he said.  "You will know in a few days, and then you can make
+your own decision.  You have known lads in various countries, and you
+are a good judge of them, I think.  You will soon see whether they are
+going to be MEN or mere rabble.  The Rat now--how does he strike you?"
+
+And the handsome eyes held their keen look of questioning.
+
+"He'd be a brave soldier if he could stand," said Marco, thinking him
+over.  "But he might be cruel."
+
+"A lad who might make a brave soldier cannot be disdained, but a man
+who is cruel is a fool.  Tell him that from me," Loristan answered.
+"He wastes force--his own and the force of the one he treats cruelly.
+Only a fool wastes force."
+
+"May I speak of you sometimes?" asked Marco.
+
+"Yes.  You will know how.  You will remember the things about which
+silence is the order."
+
+"I never forget them," said Marco.  "I have been trying not to, for
+such a long time."
+
+"You have succeeded well, Comrade!" returned Loristan, from his
+writing-table, to which he had gone and where he was turning over
+papers.
+
+A strong impulse overpowered the boy.  He marched over to the table and
+stood very straight, making his soldierly young salute, his whole body
+glowing.
+
+"Father!" he said, "you don't know how I love you!  I wish you were a
+general and I might die in battle for you.  When I look at you, I long
+and long to do something for you a boy could not do. I would die of a
+thousand wounds rather than disobey you--or Samavia!"
+
+He seized Loristan's hand, and knelt on one knee and kissed it. An
+English or American boy could not have done such a thing from
+unaffected natural impulse.  But he was of warm Southern blood.
+
+"I took my oath of allegiance to you, Father, when I took it to
+Samavia.  It seems as if you were Samavia, too," he said, and kissed
+his hand again.
+
+Loristan had turned toward him with one of the movements which were
+full of dignity and grace.  Marco, looking up at him, felt that there
+was always a certain remote stateliness in him which made it seem quite
+natural that any one should bend the knee and kiss his hand.
+
+A sudden great tenderness glowed in his father's face as he raised the
+boy and put his hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Comrade," he said, "you don't know how much I love you--and what
+reason there is that we should love each other!  You don't know how I
+have been watching you, and thanking God each year that here grew a man
+for Samavia.  That I know you are--a MAN, though you have lived but
+twelve years.  Twelve years may grow a man--or prove that a man will
+never grow, though a human thing he may remain for ninety years.  This
+year may be full of strange things for both of us.  We cannot know WHAT
+I may have to ask you to do for me--and for Samavia.  Perhaps such a
+thing as no twelve-year-old boy has ever done before."
+
+"Every night and every morning," said Marco, "I shall pray that I may
+be called to do it, and that I may do it well."
+
+"You will do it well, Comrade, if you are called.  That I could make
+oath," Loristan answered him.
+
+
+The Squad had collected in the inclosure behind the church when Marco
+appeared at the arched end of the passage.  The boys were drawn up with
+their rifles, but they all wore a rather dogged and sullen look.  The
+explanation which darted into Marco's mind was that this was because
+The Rat was in a bad humor.  He sat crouched together on his platform
+biting his nails fiercely, his elbows on his updrawn knees, his face
+twisted into a hideous scowl.  He did not look around, or even look up
+from the cracked flagstone of the pavement on which his eyes were fixed.
+
+Marco went forward with military step and stopped opposite to him with
+prompt salute.
+
+"Sorry to be late, sir," he said, as if he had been a private speaking
+to his colonel.
+
+"It's 'im, Rat!  'E's come, Rat!" the Squad shouted.  "Look at 'im!"
+
+But The Rat would not look, and did not even move.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Marco, with less ceremony than a private
+would have shown.  "There's no use in my coming here if you don't want
+me."
+
+"'E's got a grouch on 'cos you're late!" called out the head of the
+line.  "No doin' nothin' when 'e's got a grouch on."
+
+"I sha'n't try to do anything," said Marco, his boy-face setting itself
+into good stubborn lines.  "That's not what I came here for.  I came to
+drill.  I've been with my father.  He comes first.  I can't join the
+Squad if he doesn't come first. We're not on active service, and we're
+not in barracks."
+
+Then The Rat moved sharply and turned to look at him.
+
+"I thought you weren't coming at all!" he snapped and growled at once.
+"My father said you wouldn't.  He said you were a young swell for all
+your patched clothes.  He said your father would think he was a swell,
+even if he was only a penny-a-liner on newspapers, and he wouldn't let
+you have anything to do with a vagabond and a nuisance.  Nobody begged
+you to join.  Your father can go to blazes!"
+
+"Don't you speak in that way about my father," said Marco, quite
+quietly, "because I can't knock you down."
+
+"I'll get up and let you!" began The Rat, immediately white and raging.
+"I can stand up with two sticks.  I'll get up and let you!"
+
+"No, you won't," said Marco.  "If you want to know what my father said,
+I can tell you.  He said I could come as often as I liked--till I found
+out whether we should be friends or not.  He says I shall find that out
+for myself."
+
+It was a strange thing The Rat did.  It must always be remembered of
+him that his wretched father, who had each year sunk lower and lower in
+the under-world, had been a gentleman once, a man who had been familiar
+with good manners and had been educated in the customs of good
+breeding.  Sometimes when he was drunk, and sometimes when he was
+partly sober, he talked to The Rat of many things the boy would
+otherwise never have heard of.  That was why the lad was different from
+the other vagabonds.  This, also, was why he suddenly altered the whole
+situation by doing this strange and unexpected thing.  He utterly
+changed his expression and voice, fixing his sharp eyes shrewdly on
+Marco's.  It was almost as if he were asking him a conundrum.  He knew
+it would have been one to most boys of the class he appeared outwardly
+to belong to. He would either know the answer or he wouldn't.
+
+"I beg your pardon," The Rat said.
+
+That was the conundrum.  It was what a gentleman and an officer would
+have said, if he felt he had been mistaken or rude.  He had heard that
+from his drunken father.
+
+"I beg yours--for being late," said Marco.
+
+That was the right answer.  It was the one another officer and
+gentleman would have made.  It settled the matter at once, and it
+settled more than was apparent at the moment.  It decided that Marco
+was one of those who knew the things The Rat's father had once
+known--the things gentlemen do and say and think.  Not another word was
+said.  It was all right.  Marco slipped into line with the Squad, and
+The Rat sat erect with his military bearing and began his drill:
+
+"Squad!
+
+"'Tention!
+
+"Number!
+
+"Slope arms!
+
+"Form fours!
+
+"Right!
+
+"Quick march!
+
+"Halt!
+
+"Left turn!
+
+"Order arms!
+
+"Stand at ease!
+
+"Stand easy!"
+
+They did it so well that it was quite wonderful when one considered the
+limited space at their disposal.  They had evidently done it often, and
+The Rat had been not only a smart, but a severe, officer.  This morning
+they repeated the exercise a number of times, and even varied it with
+Review Drill, with which they seemed just as familiar.
+
+"Where did you learn it?" The Rat asked, when the arms were stacked
+again and Marco was sitting by him as he had sat the previous day.
+
+"From an old soldier.  And I like to watch it, as you do."
+
+"If you were a young swell in the Guards, you couldn't be smarter at
+it," The Rat said.  "The way you hold yourself!  The way you stand!
+You've got it!  Wish I was you!  It comes natural to you."
+
+"I've always liked to watch it and try to do it myself.  I did when I
+was a little fellow," answered Marco.
+
+"I've been trying to kick it into these chaps for more than a year,"
+said The Rat.  "A nice job I had of it!  It nearly made me sick at
+first."
+
+The semicircle in front of him only giggled or laughed outright. The
+members of it seemed to take very little offense at his cavalier
+treatment of them.  He had evidently something to give them which was
+entertaining enough to make up for his tyranny and indifference.  He
+thrust his hand into one of the pockets of his ragged coat, and drew
+out a piece of newspaper.
+
+"My father brought home this, wrapped round a loaf of bread," he said.
+"See what it says there!"
+
+He handed it to Marco, pointing to some words printed in large letters
+at the head of a column.  Marco looked at it and sat very still.
+
+The words he read were:  "The Lost Prince."
+
+"Silence is still the order," was the first thought which flashed
+through his mind.  "Silence is still the order."
+
+"What does it mean?" he said aloud.
+
+"There isn't much of it.  I wish there was more," The Rat said
+fretfully.  "Read and see.  Of course they say it mayn't be true--but I
+believe it is.  They say that people think some one knows where he
+is--at least where one of his descendants is. It'd be the same thing.
+He'd be the real king.  If he'd just show himself, it might stop all
+the fighting.  Just read."
+
+Marco read, and his skin prickled as the blood went racing through his
+body.  But his face did not change.  There was a sketch of the story of
+the Lost Prince to begin with.  It had been regarded by most people,
+the article said, as a sort of legend.  Now there was a definite rumor
+that it was not a legend at all, but a part of the long past history of
+Samavia.  It was said that through the centuries there had always been
+a party secretly loyal to the memory of this worshiped and lost
+Fedorovitch.  It was even said that from father to son, generation
+after generation after generation, had descended the oath  of fealty to
+him and his descendants.  The people had made a god of him, and now,
+romantic as it seemed, it was beginning to be an open secret that some
+persons believed that a descendant had been found--a Fedorovitch worthy
+of his young ancestor--and that a certain Secret Party also held that,
+if he were called back to the throne of Samavia, the interminable wars
+and bloodshed would reach an end.
+
+The Rat had begun to bite his nails fast.
+
+"Do you believe he's found?" he asked feverishly.  "DON'T YOU? I do!"
+
+"I wonder where he is, if it's true?  I wonder!  Where?" exclaimed
+Marco.  He could say that, and he might seem as eager as he felt.
+
+The Squad all began to jabber at once.  "Yus, where wos'e? There is no
+knowin'.  It'd be likely to be in some o' these furrin places.
+England'd be too far from Samavia.  'Ow far off wos Samavia?  Wos it in
+Roosha, or where the Frenchies were, or the Germans?  But wherever 'e
+wos, 'e'd be the right sort, an' 'e'd be the sort a chap'd turn and
+look at in the street."
+
+The Rat continued to bite his nails.
+
+"He might be anywhere," he said, his small fierce face glowing.
+
+"That's what I like to think about.  He might be passing in the street
+outside there; he might be up in one of those houses," jerking his head
+over his shoulder toward the backs of the inclosing dwellings.
+"Perhaps he knows he's a king, and perhaps he doesn't.  He'd know if
+what you said yesterday was true--about the king always being made
+ready for Samavia."
+
+"Yes, he'd know," put in Marco.
+
+"Well, it'd be finer if he did," went on The Rat.  "However poor and
+shabby he was, he'd know the secret all the time.  And if people
+sneered at him, he'd sneer at them and laugh to himself.  I dare say
+he'd walk tremendously straight and hold his head up.  If I was him,
+I'd like to make people suspect a bit that I wasn't like the common lot
+o' them."  He put out his hand and pushed Marco excitedly.  "Let's work
+out plots for him!" he said.  "That'd be a splendid game!  Let's
+pretend we're the Secret Party!"
+
+He was tremendously excited.  Out of the ragged pocket he fished a
+piece of chalk.  Then he leaned forward and began to draw something
+quickly on the flagstones closest to his platform.  The Squad leaned
+forward also, quite breathlessly, and Marco leaned forward.  The chalk
+was sketching a roughly outlined map, and he knew what map it was,
+before The Rat spoke.
+
+"That's a map of Samavia," he said.  "It was in that piece of magazine
+I told you about--the one where I read about Prince Ivor.  I studied it
+until it fell to pieces.  But I could draw it myself by that time, so
+it didn't matter.  I could draw it with my eyes shut.  That's the
+capital city," pointing to a spot. "It's called Melzarr.  The palace is
+there.  It's the place where the first of the Maranovitch  killed the
+last of the Fedorovitch--the bad chap that was Ivor's  father.  It's
+the palace Ivor wandered out of singing the shepherds'  song that early
+morning.  It's where the throne is that his descendant would sit upon
+to be crowned--that he's GOING to sit upon.  I believe  he is!  Let's
+swear he shall!"  He flung down his piece of chalk and  sat up. "Give
+me two sticks.  Help me to get up."
+
+Two of the Squad sprang to their feet and came to him.  Each snatched
+one of the sticks from the stacked rifles, evidently knowing what he
+wanted.  Marco rose too, and watched with sudden, keen curiosity.  He
+had thought that The Rat could not stand up, but it seemed that he
+could, in a fashion of his own, and he was going to do it.  The boys
+lifted him by his arms, set him against the stone coping of the iron
+railings of the churchyard, and put a stick in each of his hands.  They
+stood at his side, but he supported himself.
+
+"'E could get about if 'e 'ad the money to buy crutches!" said one
+whose name was Cad, and he said it quite proudly.  The queer thing that
+Marco had noticed was that the ragamuffins were proud of The Rat, and
+regarded him as their lord and master.  "--'E could get about an' stand
+as well as any one," added the other, and he said it in the tone of one
+who boasts.  His name was Ben.
+
+"I'm going to stand now, and so are the rest of you," said The Rat.
+"Squad!  'Tention!  You at the head of the line," to Marco.   They were
+in line in a moment--straight, shoulders back, chins up.   And Marco
+stood at the head.
+
+"We're going to take an oath," said The Rat.  "It's an oath of
+allegiance.  Allegiance means faithfulness to a thing--a king or a
+country.  Ours means allegiance to the King of Samavia.  We don't know
+where he is, but we swear to be faithful to him, to fight for him, to
+plot for him, to DIE for him, and to bring him back to his throne!"
+The way in which he flung up his head when he said the word "die" was
+very fine indeed.  "We are the Secret Party.  We will work in the dark
+and find out things--and run risks--and collect an army no one will
+know anything about until it is strong enough to suddenly rise at a
+secret signal, and overwhelm the Maranovitch and Iarovitch, and seize
+their forts and citadels.  No one even knows we are alive.  We are a
+silent, secret thing that never speaks aloud!"
+
+Silent and secret as they were, however, they spoke aloud at this
+juncture.  It was such a grand idea for a game, and so full of possible
+larks, that the Squad broke into a howl of an exultant cheer.
+
+"Hooray!" they yelled.  "Hooray for the oath of 'legiance! 'Ray! 'ray!
+'ray!"
+
+"Shut up, you swine!" shouted The Rat.  "Is that the way you keep
+yourself secret?  You'll call the police in, you fools! Look at HIM!"
+pointing to Marco.  "He's got some sense."
+
+Marco, in fact, had not made any sound.
+
+"Come here, you Cad and Ben, and put me back on my wheels," raged the
+Squad's commander.  "I'll not make up the game at all. It's no use with
+a lot of fat-head, raw recruits like you."
+
+The line broke and surrounded him in a moment, pleading and urging.
+
+"Aw, Rat!  We forgot.  It's the primest game you've ever thought out!
+Rat!  Rat!  Don't get a grouch on!  We'll keep still, Rat! Primest lark
+of all 'll be the sneakin' about an' keepin' quiet. Aw, Rat!  Keep it
+up!"
+
+"Keep it up yourselves!" snarled The Rat.
+
+"Not another cove of us could do it but you!  Not one!  There's no
+other cove could think it out.  You're the only chap that can think out
+things.  You thought out the Squad!  That's why you're captain!"
+
+This was true.  He was the one who could invent entertainment for them,
+these street lads who had nothing.  Out of that nothing he could create
+what excited them, and give them something to fill empty, useless,
+often cold or wet or foggy, hours.  That made him their captain and
+their pride.
+
+The Rat began to yield, though grudgingly.  He pointed again to Marco,
+who had not moved, but stood still at attention.
+
+"Look at HIM!" he said.  "He knows enough to stand where he's put until
+he's ordered to break line.  He's a soldier, he is--not a raw recruit
+that don't know the goose-step.  He's been in barracks before."
+
+But after this outburst, he deigned to go on.
+
+"Here's the oath," he said.  "We swear to stand any torture and submit
+in silence to any death rather than betray our secret and our king.  We
+will obey in silence and in secret.  We will swim through seas of blood
+and fight our way through lakes of fire, if we are ordered.  Nothing
+shall bar our way.  All we do and say and think is for our country and
+our king.  If any of you have anything to say, speak out before you
+take the oath."
+
+He saw Marco move a little, and he made a sign to him.
+
+"You," he said.  "Have you something to say?"
+
+Marco turned to him and saluted.
+
+"Here stand ten men for Samavia.  God be thanked!" he said.  He dared
+say that much, and he felt as if his father himself would have told him
+that they were the right words.
+
+The Rat thought they were.  Somehow he felt that they struck home.  He
+reddened with a sudden emotion.
+
+"Squad!" he said.  "I'll let you give three cheers on that. It's for
+the last time.  We'll begin to be quiet afterward."
+
+And to the Squad's exultant relief he led the cheer, and they were
+allowed to make as much uproar as they liked.  They liked to make a
+great deal, and when it was at an end, it had done them good and made
+them ready for business.
+
+The Rat opened the drama at once.  Never surely had there ever before
+been heard a conspirator's whisper as hollow as his.
+
+"Secret Ones," he said, "it is midnight.  We meet in the depths of
+darkness.  We dare not meet by day.  When we meet in the daytime, we
+pretend not to know each other.  We are meeting now in a Samavian city
+where there is a fortress.  We shall have to take it when the secret
+sign is given and we make our rising. We are getting everything ready,
+so that, when we find the king, the secret sign can be given."
+
+"What is the name of the city we are in?" whispered Cad.
+
+"It is called Larrina.  It is an important seaport.  We must take it as
+soon as we rise.  The next time we meet I will bring a dark lantern and
+draw a map and show it to you."
+
+It would have been a great advantage to the game if Marco could have
+drawn for them the map he could have made, a map which would have shown
+every fortress--every stronghold and every weak place. Being a boy, he
+knew what excitement would have thrilled each breast, how they would
+lean forward and pile question on question, pointing to this place and
+to that.  He had learned to draw the map before he was ten, and he had
+drawn it again and again because there had been times when his father
+had told him that changes had taken place.  Oh, yes! he could have
+drawn a map which would have moved them to a frenzy of joy.  But he sat
+silent and listened, only speaking when he asked a question, as if he
+knew nothing more about Samavia than The Rat did.  What a Secret Party
+they were!  They drew themselves together in the closest of circles;
+they spoke in unearthly whispers.
+
+"A sentinel ought to be posted at the end of the passage," Marco
+whispered.
+
+"Ben, take your gun!" commanded The Rat.
+
+Ben rose stealthily, and, shouldering his weapon, crept on tiptoe to
+the opening.  There he stood on guard.
+
+"My father says there's been a Secret Party in Samavia for a hundred
+years," The Rat whispered.
+
+"Who told him?" asked Marco.
+
+"A man who has been in Samavia," answered The Rat.  "He said it was the
+most wonderful Secret Party in the world, because it has worked and
+waited so long, and never given up, though it has had no reason for
+hoping.  It began among some shepherds and charcoal-burners who bound
+themselves by an oath to find the Lost Prince and bring him back to the
+throne.  There were too few of them to do anything against the
+Maranovitch, and when the first lot found they were growing old, they
+made their sons take the same oath.  It has been passed on from
+generation to generation, and in each generation the band has grown.
+No one really knows how large it is now, but they say that there are
+people in nearly all the countries in Europe who belong to it in dead
+secret, and are sworn to help it when they are called.  They are only
+waiting.  Some are rich people who will give money, and some are poor
+ones who will slip across the frontier to fight or to help to smuggle
+in arms.  They even say that for all these years there have been arms
+made in caves in the mountains, and hidden there year after year.
+There are men who are called Forgers of the Sword, and they, and their
+fathers, and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers have always made
+swords and stored them in caverns no one knows of, hidden caverns
+underground."
+
+Marco spoke aloud the thought which had come into his mind as he
+listened, a thought which brought fear to him.  "If the people in the
+streets talk about it, they won't be hidden long."
+
+"It isn't common talk, my father says.  Only very few have guessed, and
+most of them think it is part of the Lost Prince legend," said The Rat.
+"The Maranovitch and Iarovitch laugh at it.  They have always been
+great fools.  They're too full of their own swagger to think anything
+can interfere with them."
+
+"Do you talk much to your father?" Marco asked him.
+
+The Rat showed his sharp white teeth in a grin.
+
+"I know what you're thinking of," he said.  "You're remembering that I
+said he was always drunk.  So he is, except when he's only HALF drunk.
+And when he's HALF drunk, he's the most splendid talker  in London.  He
+remembers everything he has ever learned or read or heard since he was
+born.  I get him going and listen.  He wants to talk and I want to
+hear.  I found out almost everything I know in that way.  He didn't
+know he was teaching me, but he was.  He goes back into being a
+gentleman when he's half drunk."
+
+"If--if you care about the Samavians, you'd better ask him not to tell
+people about the Secret Party and the Forgers of the Sword," suggested
+Marco.
+
+The Rat started a little.
+
+"That's true!" he said.  "You're sharper than I am.  It oughtn't to be
+blabbed about, or the Maranovitch might hear enough to make them stop
+and listen.  I'll get him to promise. There's one queer thing about
+him," he added very slowly, as if he were thinking it over, "I suppose
+it's part of the gentleman that's left in him.  If he makes a promise,
+he never breaks it, drunk or sober."
+
+"Ask him to make one," said Marco.  The next moment he changed the
+subject because it seemed the best thing to do.  "Go on and tell us
+what our own Secret Party is to do.  We're forgetting," he whispered.
+
+The Rat took up his game with renewed keenness.  It was a game which
+attracted him immensely because it called upon his imagination and held
+his audience spellbound, besides plunging him into war and strategy.
+
+"We're preparing for the rising," he said.  "It must come soon.  We've
+waited so long.  The caverns are stacked with arms. The Maranovitch and
+the Iarovitch are fighting and using all their soldiers, and now is our
+time."  He stopped and thought, his elbows on his knees.  He began to
+bite his nails again.
+
+"The Secret Signal must be given," he said.  Then he stopped again, and
+the Squad held its breath and pressed nearer with a softly shuffling
+sound.  "Two of the Secret Ones must be chosen by lot and sent forth,"
+he went on; and the Squad almost brought ruin and disgrace upon itself
+by wanting to cheer again, and only just stopping itself in time.
+"Must be chosen BY LOT," The Rat repeated, looking from one face to
+another.  "Each one will take his life in his hand  when he goes forth.
+He may have to die a thousand deaths, but he must go.  He must steal in
+silence and disguise from one country to another.  Wherever there is
+one of the Secret Party, whether he is in a hovel or on a throne, the
+messengers must go to him in darkness and stealth and give him the
+sign.  It will mean, 'The hour has come.  God save Samavia!'"
+
+"God save Samavia!" whispered the Squad, excitedly.  And, because they
+saw Marco raise his hand to his forehead, every one of them saluted.
+
+They all began to whisper at once.
+
+"Let's draw lots now.  Let's draw lots, Rat.  Don't let's 'ave no
+waitin'."
+
+The Rat began to look about him with dread anxiety.  He seemed to be
+examining the sky.
+
+"The darkness is not as thick as it was," he whispered. "Midnight has
+passed.  The dawn of day will be upon us.  If any one has a piece of
+paper or a string, we will draw the lots before we part."
+
+Cad had a piece of string, and Marco had a knife which could be used to
+cut it into lengths.  This The Rat did himself.  Then, after shutting
+his eyes and mixing them, he held them in his hand ready for the
+drawing.
+
+"The Secret One who draws the longest lot is chosen.  The Secret One
+who draws the shortest is chosen," he said solemnly.
+
+The drawing was as solemn as his tone.  Each boy wanted to draw either
+the shortest lot or the longest one.  The heart of each thumped
+somewhat as he drew his piece of string.
+
+When the drawing was at an end, each showed his lot.  The Rat had drawn
+the shortest piece of string, and Marco had drawn the longest one.
+
+"Comrade!" said The Rat, taking his hand.  "We will face death and
+danger together!"
+
+"God save Samavia!" answered Marco.
+
+And the game was at an end for the day.  The primest thing, the Squad
+said, The Rat had ever made up for them.  "'E wos a wonder, he wos!"
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"THE LAMP IS LIGHTED!"
+
+On his way home, Marco thought of nothing but the story he must tell
+his father, the story the stranger who had been to Samavia had told The
+Rat's father.  He felt that it must be a true story and not merely an
+invention.  The Forgers of the Sword must be real men, and the hidden
+subterranean caverns stacked through the centuries with arms must be
+real, too.  And if they were real, surely his father was one of those
+who knew the secret.  His thoughts ran very fast.  The Rat's boyish
+invention of the rising was only part of a game, but how natural it
+would be that sometime--perhaps before long--there would be a real
+rising! Surely there would be one if the Secret Party had grown so
+strong, and if many weapons  and secret friends in other countries were
+ready and waiting.  During all these years, hidden work and preparation
+would have been going on continually, even though it was preparation
+for an unknown day.  A party which had lasted so long--which passed its
+oath on from generation to generation--must be of a deadly
+determination.
+
+What might it not have made ready in its caverns and secret
+meeting-places!  He longed to reach home and tell his father, at once,
+all he had heard.  He recalled to mind, word for word, all that The Rat
+had been told, and even all he had added in his game, because--well,
+because that seemed so real too, so real that it actually might be
+useful.
+
+But when he reached No. 7 Philibert Place, he found Loristan and
+Lazarus very much absorbed in work.  The door of the back sitting-room
+was locked when he first knocked on it, and locked again as soon as he
+had entered.  There were many papers on the table, and they were
+evidently studying them.  Several of them were maps.  Some were road
+maps, some maps of towns and cities, and some of fortifications; but
+they were all maps of places in Samavia.  They were usually kept in a
+strong box, and when they were taken out to be studied, the door was
+always kept locked.
+
+Before they had their evening meal, these were all returned to the
+strong box, which was pushed into a corner and had newspapers piled
+upon it.
+
+"When he arrives," Marco heard Loristan say to Lazarus, "we can show
+him clearly what has been planned.  He can see for himself."
+
+His father spoke scarcely at all during the meal, and, though it was
+not the habit of Lazarus to speak at such times unless spoken to, this
+evening it seemed to Marco that he LOOKED more silent than he had ever
+seen him look before.  They were plainly both thinking anxiously of
+deeply serious things.  The story of the stranger who had been to
+Samavia must not be told yet.  But it was one which would keep.
+
+Loristan did not say anything until Lazarus had removed the things from
+the table and made the room as neat as possible. While  that was being
+done, he sat with his forehead resting on his hand, as if absorbed in
+thought.  Then he made a gesture to Marco.
+
+"Come here, Comrade," he said.
+
+Marco went to him.
+
+"To-night some one may come to talk with me about grave things," he
+said.  "I think he will come, but I cannot be quite sure.  It is
+important that he should know that, when he comes, he will find me
+quite alone.  He will come at a late hour, and Lazarus will open the
+door quietly that no one may hear.  It is important that no one should
+see him.  Some one must go and walk on the opposite side of the street
+until he appears.  Then the one who goes to give warning must cross the
+pavement before him and say in a low voice, 'The Lamp is lighted!' and
+at once turn quietly away."
+
+What boy's heart would not have leaped with joy at the mystery of it!
+Even a common and dull boy who knew nothing of Samavia would have felt
+jerky.  Marco's voice almost shook with the thrill of his feeling.
+
+"How shall I know him?" he said at once.  Without asking at all, he
+knew he was the "some one" who was to go.
+
+"You have seen him before," Loristan answered.  "He is the man who
+drove in the carriage with the King."
+
+"I shall know him," said Marco.  "When shall I go?"
+
+"Not until it is half-past one o'clock.  Go to bed and sleep until
+Lazarus calls you."  Then he added, "Look well at his face before you
+speak.  He will probably not be dressed as well as he was when you saw
+him first."
+
+Marco went up-stairs to his room and went to bed as he was told, but it
+was hard to go to sleep.  The rattle and roaring of the road did not
+usually keep him awake, because he had lived in the poorer quarter of
+too many big capital cities not to be accustomed to noise.  But
+to-night it seemed to him that, as he lay and looked out at the
+lamplight, he heard every bus and cab which went past.  He could not
+help thinking of the people who were in them, and on top of them, and
+of the people who were hurrying along on the pavement outside the
+broken iron railings. He was wondering what they would think if they
+knew that things connected with the battles they read of in the daily
+papers were going on in one of the shabby houses they scarcely gave a
+glance to as they went by them.  It must be something connected with
+the war, if a man who was a great diplomat and the companion of kings
+came in secret to talk alone with a patriot who was a Samavian.
+Whatever his father was doing was for the good of Samavia, and perhaps
+the Secret Party knew he was doing it.  His heart almost beat aloud
+under his shirt as he lay on the lumpy mattress thinking it over.  He
+must indeed look well at the stranger before he even moved toward him.
+He must be sure he was the right man.  The game he had amused himself
+with so long--the game of trying to remember pictures and people and
+places clearly and in detail--had been a wonderful training.  If he
+could draw, he knew he could have made a sketch of the keen-eyed,
+clever, aquiline face with the well-cut and delicately close mouth,
+which looked as if it had been shut upon secrets always--always.  If he
+could draw, he found himself saying again.  He COULD draw, though
+perhaps only roughly.  He had often amused himself by making sketches
+of things he wanted to ask questions about.  He had even drawn people's
+faces in his untrained way, and his father had said that he had a crude
+gift for catching a likeness.  Perhaps he could make a sketch of this
+face which would show his father that he knew and would recognize it.
+
+He jumped out of bed and went to a table near the window.  There was
+paper and a pencil lying on it.  A street lamp exactly opposite threw
+into the room quite light enough for him to see by.  He half knelt by
+the table and began to draw.  He worked for about twenty minutes
+steadily, and he tore up two or three unsatisfactory sketches.  The
+poor drawing would not matter if he could catch that subtle look which
+was not slyness but something more dignified and important.  It was not
+difficult to get the marked, aristocratic outline of the features.  A
+common-looking man with less pronounced profile would have been less
+easy to draw in one sense.  He gave his mind wholly to the recalling of
+every detail which had photographed itself on his memory through its
+trained habit.  Gradually he saw that the likeness was becoming
+clearer.  It was not long before it was clear enough to be a striking
+one.  Any one who knew the man would recognize it. He got up, drawing a
+long and joyful breath.
+
+He did not put on his shoes, but crossed his room as noiselessly as
+possible, and as noiselessly opened the door.  He made no ghost of a
+sound when he went down the stairs.  The woman who kept the
+lodging-house had gone to bed, and so had the other lodgers and the
+maid of all work.  All the lights were out except the one he saw a
+glimmer of under the door of his father's room. When he had been a mere
+baby, he had been taught to make a special sign on the door when he
+wished to speak to Loristan.  He stood still outside the back
+sitting-room and made it now.  It was a low scratching sound--two
+scratches and a soft tap. Lazarus opened the door and looked troubled.
+
+"It is not yet time, sir," he said very low.
+
+"I know," Marco answered.  "But I must show something to my father."
+Lazarus let him in, and Loristan turned round from his writing-table
+questioningly.
+
+Marco went forward and laid the sketch down before him.
+
+"Look at it," he said.  "I remember him well enough to draw that.  I
+thought of it all at once--that I could make a sort of picture.  Do you
+think it is like him?" Loristan examined it closely.
+
+"It is very like him," he answered.  "You have made me feel entirely
+safe.  Thanks, Comrade.  It was a good idea."
+
+There was relief in the grip he gave the boy's hand, and Marco turned
+away with an exultant feeling.  Just as he reached the door, Loristan
+said to him:
+
+"Make the most of this gift.  It is a gift.  And it is true your mind
+has had good training.  The more you draw, the better.  Draw everything
+you can."
+
+Neither the street lamps, nor the noises, nor his thoughts kept Marco
+awake when he went back to bed.  But before he settled himself upon his
+pillow he gave himself certain orders.  He had both read, and heard
+Loristan say, that the mind can control the body when people once find
+out that it can do so.  He had tried experiments himself, and had found
+out some curious things.  One was that if he told himself to remember a
+certain thing at a certain time, he usually found that he DID remember
+it. Something in his brain seemed to remind him.  He had often tried
+the experiment of telling himself to awaken at a particular hour, and
+had awakened almost exactly at the moment by the clock.
+
+"I will sleep until one o'clock," he said as he shut his eyes. "Then I
+will awaken and feel quite fresh.  I shall not be sleepy at all."
+
+He slept as soundly as a boy can sleep.  And at one o'clock exactly he
+awakened, and found the street lamp still throwing its light through
+the window.  He knew it was one o'clock, because there was a cheap
+little round clock on the table, and he could see the time.  He was
+quite fresh and not at all sleepy.  His experiment had succeeded again.
+
+He got up and dressed.  Then he went down-stairs as noiselessly as
+before.  He carried his shoes in his hands, as he meant to put them on
+only when he reached the street.  He made his sign at his father's
+door, and it was Loristan who opened it.
+
+"Shall I go now?" Marco asked.
+
+"Yes.  Walk slowly to the other side of the street.  Look in every
+direction.  We do not know where he will come from.  After you have
+given him the sign, then come in and go to bed again."
+
+Marco saluted as a soldier would have done on receiving an order.
+
+Then, without a second's delay, he passed noiselessly out of the house.
+
+Loristan turned back into the room and stood silently in the center of
+it.  The long lines of his handsome body looked particularly erect and
+stately, and his eyes were glowing as if something deeply moved him.
+
+"There grows a man for Samavia," he said to Lazarus, who watched him.
+"God be thanked!"
+
+Lazarus's voice was low and hoarse, and he saluted quite reverently.
+
+"Your--sir!" he said.  "God save the Prince!"
+
+"Yes," Loristan answered, after a moment's hesitation,--"when he is
+found."  And he went back to his table smiling his beautiful smile.
+
+
+The wonder of silence in the deserted streets of a great city, after
+midnight has hushed all the roar and tumult to rest, is an almost
+unbelievable thing.  The stillness in the depths of a forest or on a
+mountain top is not so strange.  A few hours ago, the tumult was
+rushing past; in a few hours more, it will be rushing past again.
+
+But now the street is a naked thing; a distant policeman's tramp on the
+bare pavement has a hollow and almost fearsome sound.  It seemed
+especially so to Marco as he crossed the road.  Had it ever been so
+empty and deadly silent before?  Was it so every night?  Perhaps it
+was, when he was fast asleep on his lumpy mattress with the light from
+a street lamp streaming into the room.  He listened for the step of the
+policeman on night-watch, because he did not wish to be seen.  There
+was a jutting wall where he could stand in the shadow while the man
+passed.  A policeman would stop to look questioningly at a boy who
+walked up and down the pavement at half-past one in the morning.  Marco
+could wait until he had gone by, and then come out into the light and
+look up and down the road and the cross streets.
+
+He heard his approaching footsteps in a few minutes, and was safely in
+the shadows before he could be seen.  When the policeman passed, he
+came out and walked slowly down the road, looking on each side, and now
+and then looking back.  At first no one was in sight.  Then a late
+hansom-cab came tinkling along. But the people in it were returning
+from some festivity, and were laughing and talking, and noticed nothing
+but their own joking. Then there was silence again, and for a long
+time, as it seemed to Marco, no one was to be seen.  It was not really
+so long as it appeared, because he was anxious.  Then a very early
+vegetable-wagon on the way from the country to Covent Garden Market
+came slowly lumbering by with its driver almost asleep on his piles of
+potatoes and cabbages.  After it had passed, there was stillness and
+emptiness once more, until the policeman showed himself again on his
+beat, and Marco slipped into the shadow of the wall as he had done
+before.
+
+When he came out into the light, he had begun to hope that the time
+would not seem long to his father.  It had not really been long, he
+told himself, it had only seemed so.  But his father's anxiousness
+would be greater than his own could be.  Loristan knew all that
+depended on the coming of this great man who sat side by side with a
+king in his carriage and talked to him as if he knew him well.
+
+"It might be something which all Samavia is waiting to know--at least
+all the Secret Party," Marco thought.  "The Secret Party is
+Samavia,"--he started at the sound of footsteps.  "Some one is coming!"
+he said.  "It is a man."
+
+It was a man who was walking up the road on the same side of the
+pavement as his own.  Marco began to walk toward him quietly but rather
+rapidly.  He thought it might be best to appear as if he were some boy
+sent on a midnight errand--perhaps to call a doctor.  Then, if it was a
+stranger he passed, no suspicion would be aroused.  Was this man as
+tall as the one who had driven with the King?  Yes, he was about the
+same height, but he was too far away to be recognizable otherwise.  He
+drew nearer, and Marco noticed that he also seemed slightly to hasten
+his footsteps. Marco went on.  A little nearer, and he would be able to
+make sure.  Yes, now he was near enough.  Yes, this man was the same
+height and not unlike in figure, but he was much younger.  He was not
+the one who had been in the carriage with His Majesty.  He was not more
+than thirty years old.  He began swinging his cane and whistling a
+music-hall song softly as Marco passed him without changing his pace.
+
+It was after the policeman had walked round his beat and disappeared
+for the third time, that Marco heard footsteps echoing at some distance
+down a cross street.  After listening to make sure that they were
+approaching instead of receding in another direction, he placed himself
+at a point where he could watch the length of the thoroughfare.  Yes,
+some one was coming. It was a man's figure again.  He was able to place
+himself rather in the shadow so that the person approaching would not
+see that he was being watched.  The solitary walker reached a
+recognizable distance in about two minutes' time.  He was dressed in an
+ordinary shop-made suit of clothes which was rather shabby and quite
+unnoticeable in its appearance.  His common hat was worn so that it
+rather shaded his face.  But even before he had crossed to Marco's side
+of the road, the boy had clearly recognized him. It was the man who had
+driven with the King!
+
+Chance was with Marco.  The man crossed at exactly the place which made
+it easy for the boy to step lightly from behind him, walk a few paces
+by his side, and then pass directly before him across the pavement,
+glancing quietly up into his face as he said in a low voice but
+distinctly, the words "The Lamp is lighted," and without pausing a
+second walk on his way down the road.  He did not slacken his pace or
+look back until he was some distance away.  Then he glanced over his
+shoulder, and saw that the figure had crossed the street and was inside
+the railings.  It was all right.  His father would not be disappointed.
+The great man had come.
+
+He walked for about ten minutes, and then went home and to bed. But he
+was obliged to tell himself to go to sleep several times before his
+eyes closed for the rest of the night.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+AN EXCITING GAME
+
+Loristan referred only once during the next day to what had happened.
+
+"You did your errand well.  You were not hurried or nervous," he said.
+"The Prince was pleased with your calmness."
+
+No more was said.  Marco knew that the quiet mention of the stranger's
+title had been made merely as a designation.  If it was necessary to
+mention him again in the future, he could be referred to as "the
+Prince."  In various Continental countries there were many princes who
+were not royal or even serene highnesses--who were merely princes as
+other nobles were dukes or barons.  Nothing special was revealed when a
+man was spoken of as a prince.  But though nothing was said on the
+subject of the incident, it was plain that much work was being done by
+Loristan and Lazarus.  The sitting-room door was locked, and the maps
+and documents, usually kept in the iron box, were being used.
+
+Marco went to the Tower of London and spent part of the day in living
+again the stories which, centuries past, had been inclosed within its
+massive and ancient stone walls.  In this way, he had throughout
+boyhood become intimate with people who to most boys seemed only the
+unreal creatures who professed to be alive in school-books of history.
+He had learned to know them as men and women because he had stood in
+the palaces they had been born in and had played in as children, had
+died in at the end.  He had seen the dungeons they had been imprisoned
+in, the blocks on which they had laid their heads, the battlements on
+which they had fought to defend their fortressed towers, the thrones
+they had sat upon, the crowns they had worn, and the jeweled scepters
+they had held.  He had stood before their portraits and had gazed
+curiously at their "Robes of Investiture," sewn with tens of thousands
+of seed-pearls.  To look at a man's face and feel his pictured eyes
+follow you as you move away from him, to see the strangely splendid
+garments he once warmed with his living flesh, is to realize that
+history is not a mere lesson in a school-book, but is a relation of the
+life stories of men and women who saw strange and splendid days, and
+sometimes suffered strange and terrible things.
+
+There were only a few people who were being led about sight-seeing. The
+man in the ancient Beef-eaters' costume, who was their guide, was
+good-natured, and evidently fond of talking.  He was a big and stout
+man, with a large face and a small, merry eye.  He was rather like
+pictures of Henry the Eighth, himself, which Marco remembered having
+seen.  He was specially talkative when he stood by the tablet that
+marks the spot where stood the block on which Lady Jane Grey had laid
+her young head.  One of the sightseers who knew little of English
+history had asked some questions about the reasons for her execution.
+
+"If her father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland, had left that young
+couple alone--her and her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley--they'd have
+kept their heads on.  He was bound to make her a queen, and Mary Tudor
+was bound to be queen herself.  The duke wasn't clever enough to manage
+a conspiracy and work up the people.  These Samavians we're reading
+about in the papers would have done it better.  And they're
+half-savages."
+
+"They had a big battle outside Melzarr yesterday," the sight-seer
+standing next to Marco said to the young woman who was his companion.
+"Thousands of 'em killed.  I saw it in big letters on the boards as I
+rode on the top of the bus.  They're just slaughtering each other,
+that's what they're doing."
+
+The talkative Beef-eater heard him.
+
+"They can't even bury their dead fast enough," he said. "There'll be
+some sort of plague breaking out and sweeping into the countries
+nearest them.  It'll end by spreading all over Europe as it did in the
+Middle Ages.  What the civilized countries have got to do is to make
+them choose a decent king and begin to behave themselves."
+
+"I'll tell my father that too," Marco thought.  "It shows that
+everybody is thinking and talking of Samavia, and that even the common
+people know it must have a real king.  This must be THE TIME!"  And
+what he meant was that this must be the time for which the Secret Party
+had waited and worked so long--the time for the Rising.  But his father
+was out when he went back to Philibert Place, and Lazarus looked more
+silent than ever as he stood behind his chair and waited on him through
+his insignificant meal.  However plain and scant the food they had to
+eat, it was always served with as much care and ceremony as if it had
+been a banquet.
+
+"A man can eat dry bread and drink cold water as if he were a
+gentleman," his father had said long ago.  "And it is easy to form
+careless habits.  Even if one is hungry enough to feel ravenous, a man
+who has been well bred will not allow himself to look so.  A dog may, a
+man may not.  Just as a dog may howl when he is angry or in pain and a
+man may not."
+
+It was only one of the small parts of the training which had quietly
+made the boy, even as a child, self-controlled and courteous,  had
+taught him ease and grace of boyish carriage, the habit of holding his
+body well and his head erect, and had given him a certain look of young
+distinction which, though it assumed nothing, set him apart from boys
+of carelessly awkward bearing.
+
+"Is there a newspaper here which tells of the battle, Lazarus?" he
+asked, after he had left the table.
+
+"Yes, sir," was the answer.  "Your father said that you might read it.
+It is a black tale!" he added, as he handed him the paper.
+
+It was a black tale.  As he read, Marco felt as if he could scarcely
+bear it.  It was as if Samavia swam in blood, and as if the other
+countries must stand aghast before such furious cruelties.
+
+"Lazarus," he said, springing to his feet at last, his eyes burning,
+"something must stop it!  There must be something strong enough. The
+time has come.  The time has come."  And he walked up and down the room
+because he was too excited to stand still.
+
+How Lazarus watched him!  What a strong and glowing feeling there was
+in his own restrained face!
+
+"Yes, sir.  Surely the time has come," he answered.  But that was all
+he said, and he turned and went out of the shabby back sitting-room at
+once.  It was as if he felt it were wiser to go before he lost power
+over himself and said more.
+
+Marco made his way to the meeting-place of the Squad, to which The Rat
+had in the past given the name of the Barracks.  The Rat was sitting
+among his followers, and he had been reading the morning paper to them,
+the one which contained the account of the battle of Melzarr.  The
+Squad had become the Secret Party, and each member of it was thrilled
+with the spirit of dark plot and adventure.  They all whispered when
+they spoke.
+
+"This is not the Barracks now," The Rat said.  "It is a subterranean
+cavern.  Under the floor of it thousands of swords and guns are buried,
+and it is piled to the roof with them. There is only a small place left
+for us to sit and plot in.  We crawl in through a hole, and the hole is
+hidden by bushes."
+
+To the rest of the boys this was only an exciting game, but Marco knew
+that to The Rat it was more.  Though The Rat knew none of the things he
+knew, he saw that the whole story seemed to him a real thing.  The
+struggles of Samavia, as he had heard and read of them in the
+newspapers, had taken possession of him.  His passion for soldiering
+and warfare and his curiously mature brain had led him into following
+every detail he could lay hold of.  He had listened to all he had heard
+with remarkable results.  He remembered things older people forgot
+after they had mentioned them.  He forgot nothing.  He had drawn on the
+flagstones a map of Samavia which Marco saw was actually correct, and
+he had made a rough sketch of Melzarr and the battle which had had such
+disastrous results.
+
+"The Maranovitch had possession of Melzarr," he explained with feverish
+eagerness.  "And the Iarovitch attacked them from here," pointing with
+his finger.  "That was a mistake.  I should have attacked them from a
+place where they would not have been expecting it.  They expected
+attack on their fortifications, and they were ready to defend them.  I
+believe the enemy could have stolen up in the night and rushed in
+here," pointing again. Marco thought he was right.  The Rat had argued
+it all out, and had studied Melzarr as he might have studied a puzzle
+or an arithmetical problem.  He was very clever, and as sharp as his
+queer face looked.
+
+"I believe you would make a good general if you were grown up," said
+Marco.  "I'd like to show your maps to my father and ask him if he
+doesn't think your stratagem would have been a good one."
+
+"Does he know much about Samavia?" asked The Rat.
+
+"He has to read the newspapers because he writes things," Marco
+answered.  "And every one is thinking about the war.  No one can help
+it."
+
+The Rat drew a dingy, folded paper out of his pocket and looked it over
+with an air of reflection.
+
+"I'll make a clean one," he said.  "I'd like a grown-up man to look at
+it and see if it's all right.  My father was more than half-drunk when
+I was drawing this, so I couldn't ask him questions.  He'll kill
+himself before long.  He had a sort of fit last night."
+
+"Tell us, Rat, wot you an' Marco'll 'ave ter do.  Let's 'ear wot you've
+made up," suggested Cad.  He drew closer, and so did the rest of the
+circle, hugging their knees with their arms.
+
+"This is what we shall have to do," began The Rat, in the hollow
+whisper of a Secret Party.  "THE HOUR HAS COME.  To all the Secret Ones
+in Samavia, and to the friends of the Secret Party in every country,
+the sign must be carried.  It must be carried by some one who could not
+be suspected.  Who would suspect two boys--and one of them a cripple?
+The best thing of all for us is that I am a cripple.  Who would suspect
+a cripple? When my father is drunk and beats me, he does it because I
+won't go out and beg in the streets and bring him the money I get.  He
+says that people will nearly always give money to a cripple.  I won't
+be a beggar for him--the swine--but I will be one for Samavia and the
+Lost Prince.  Marco shall pretend to be my brother and take care of me.
+I say," speaking to Marco with a sudden change of voice, "can you sing
+anything?  It doesn't matter how you do it."
+
+"Yes, I can sing," Marco replied.
+
+"Then Marco will pretend he is singing to make people give him money.
+I'll get a pair of crutches somewhere, and part of the time I will go
+on crutches and part of the time on my platform. We'll live like
+beggars and go wherever we want to.  I can whiz past a man and give the
+sign and no one will know.  Some times Marco can give it when people
+are dropping money into his cap. We can pass from one country to
+another and rouse everybody who is of the Secret Party.  We'll work our
+way into Samavia, and we'll be only two boys--and one a cripple--and
+nobody will think we could be doing anything.  We'll beg in great
+cities and on the highroad."
+
+"Where'll you get the money to travel?" said Cad.
+
+"The Secret Party will give it to us, and we sha'n't need much. We
+could beg enough, for that matter.  We'll sleep under the stars, or
+under bridges, or archways, or in dark corners of streets.  I've done
+it myself many a time when my father drove me out of doors.  If it's
+cold weather, it's bad enough but if it's fine weather, it's better
+than sleeping in the kind of place I'm used to.  Comrade," to Marco,
+"are you ready?"
+
+He said "Comrade" as Loristan did, and somehow Marco did not resent it,
+because he was ready to labor for Samavia.  It was only a game, but it
+made them comrades--and was it really only a game, after all?  His
+excited voice and his strange, lined face made it singularly unlike one.
+
+"Yes, Comrade, I am ready," Marco answered him.
+
+"We shall be in Samavia when the fighting for the Lost Prince begins."
+The Rat carried on his story with fire.  "We may see a battle.  We
+might do something to help.  We might carry messages under a rain of
+bullets--a rain of bullets!"  The thought so elated him that he forgot
+his whisper and his voice rang out fiercely.  "Boys have been in
+battles before.  We might find the Lost King--no, the Found King--and
+ask him to let us be his servants.  He could send us where he couldn't
+send bigger people.  I could say to him, 'Your Majesty, I am called
+"The Rat," because I can creep through holes and into corners and dart
+about.  Order me into any danger and I will obey you.  Let me die like
+a soldier if I can't live like one.'"
+
+Suddenly he threw his ragged coat sleeve up across his eyes.  He had
+wrought himself up tremendously with the picture of the rain of
+bullets.  And he felt as if he saw the King who had at last been found.
+The next moment he uncovered his face.
+
+"That's what we've got to do," he said.  "Just that, if you want to
+know.  And a lot more.  There's no end to it!"
+
+Marco's thoughts were in a whirl.  It ought not to be nothing but a
+game.  He grew quite hot all over.  If the Secret Party wanted to send
+messengers no one would think of suspecting, who could be more
+harmless-looking than two vagabond boys wandering about picking up
+their living as best they could, not seeming to belong to any one?  And
+one a cripple.  It was true--yes, it was true, as The Rat said, that
+his being a cripple made him look safer than any one else.  Marco
+actually put his forehead in his hands and pressed his temples.
+
+"What's the matter?" exclaimed The Rat.  "What are you thinking about?"
+
+"I'm thinking what a general you would make.  I'm thinking that it
+might all be real--every word of it.  It mightn't be a game at all,"
+said Marco.
+
+"No, it mightn't," The Rat answered.  "If I knew where the Secret
+Party was, I'd like to go and tell them about it.  What's that!" he
+said, suddenly turning his head toward the street. "What are they
+calling out?"
+
+Some newsboy with a particularly shrill voice was shouting out
+something at the topmost of his lungs.
+
+Tense and excited, no member of the circle stirred or spoke for a few
+seconds.  The Rat listened, Marco listened, the whole Squad listened,
+pricking up their ears.
+
+"Startling news from Samavia," the newsboy was shrilling out. "Amazing
+story!  Descendant of the Lost Prince found! Descendant of the Lost
+Prince found!"
+
+"Any chap got a penny?" snapped The Rat, beginning to shuffle toward
+the arched passage.
+
+"I have!" answered Marco, following him.
+
+"Come on!" The Rat yelled.  "Let's go and get a paper!"  And he whizzed
+down the passage with his swiftest rat-like dart, while the Squad
+followed him, shouting and tumbling over each other.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+"IT IS NOT A GAME"
+
+Loristan walked slowly up and down the back sitting-room and listened
+to Marco, who sat by the small fire and talked.
+
+"Go on," he said, whenever the boy stopped.  "I want to hear it all.
+He's a strange lad, and it's a splendid game."
+
+Marco was telling him the story of his second and third visits to the
+inclosure behind the deserted church-yard.  He had begun at the
+beginning, and his father had listened with a deep interest.
+
+A year later, Marco recalled this evening as a thrilling memory, and as
+one which would never pass away from him throughout his life.  He would
+always be able to call it all back.  The small and dingy back room, the
+dimness of the one poor gas-burner, which was all they could afford to
+light, the iron box pushed into the corner with its maps and plans
+locked safely in it, the erect bearing and actual beauty of the tall
+form, which the shabbiness of worn and mended clothes could not hide or
+dim.  Not even rags and tatters could have made Loristan seem
+insignificant or undistinguished.  He was always the same.  His eyes
+seemed darker and more wonderful than ever in their remote
+thoughtfulness and interest as he spoke.
+
+"Go on," he said.  "It is a splendid game.  And it is curious. He has
+thought it out well.  The lad is a born soldier."
+
+"It is not a game to him," Marco said.  "And it is not a game to me.
+The Squad is only playing, but with him it's quite different.  He knows
+he'll never really get what he wants, but he feels as if this was
+something near it.  He said I might show you the map he made.  Father,
+look at it."
+
+He gave Loristan the clean copy of The Rat's map of Samavia.  The city
+of Melzarr was marked with certain signs.  They were to show at what
+points The Rat--if he had been a Samavian general--would have attacked
+the capital.  As Marco pointed them out, he explained The Rat's reasons
+for his planning.
+
+Loristan held the paper for some minutes.  He fixed his eyes on it
+curiously, and his black brows drew themselves together.
+
+"This is very wonderful!" he said at last.  "He is quite right.  They
+might have got in there, and for the very reasons he hit on.  How did
+he learn all this?"
+
+"He thinks of nothing else now," answered Marco.  "He has always
+thought of wars and made plans for battles.  He's not like the rest of
+the Squad.  His father is nearly always drunk, but he is very well
+educated, and, when he is only half drunk, he likes to talk."
+
+The Rat asks him questions then, and leads him on until he finds out a
+great deal.  Then he begs old newspapers, and he hides himself in
+corners and listens to what people are saying.  He says he lies awake
+at night thinking it out, and he thinks about it all the day.  That was
+why he got up the Squad.
+
+Loristan had continued examining the paper.
+
+"Tell him," he said, when he refolded and handed it back, "that I
+studied his map, and he may be proud of it.  You may also tell him--"
+and he smiled quietly as he spoke--"that in my opinion he is right.
+The Iarovitch would have held Melzarr to-day if he had led them."
+
+Marco was full of exultation.
+
+"I thought you would say he was right.  I felt sure you would. That is
+what makes me want to tell you the rest," he hurried on.
+
+"If you think he is right about the rest too--"  He stopped awkwardly
+because of a sudden wild thought which rushed upon him. "I don't know
+what you will think," he stammered.  "Perhaps it will seem to you as if
+the game--as if that part of it could--could only be a game."
+
+He was so fervent in spite of his hesitation that Loristan began to
+watch him with sympathetic respect, as he always did when the boy was
+trying to express something he was not sure of.  One of the great bonds
+between them was that Loristan was always interested in his boyish
+mental processes--in the way in which his thoughts led him to any
+conclusion.
+
+"Go on," he said again.  "I am like The Rat and I am like you. It has
+not seemed quite like a game to me, so far."
+
+He sat down at the writing-table and Marco, in his eagerness, drew
+nearer and leaned against it, resting on his arms and lowering his
+voice, though it was always their habit to speak at such a pitch that
+no one outside the room they were in could distinguish what they said.
+
+"It is The Rat's plan for giving the signal for a Rising," he said.
+
+Loristan made a slight movement.
+
+"Does he think there will be a Rising?" he asked.
+
+"He says that must be what the Secret Party has been preparing for all
+these years.  And it must come soon.  The other nations see that the
+fighting must be put an end to even if they have to stop it themselves.
+And if the real King is found--but when The Rat bought the newspaper
+there was nothing in it about where he was.  It was only a sort of
+rumor.  Nobody seemed to know anything." He stopped a few seconds, but
+he did not utter the words which were in his mind.  He did not say:
+"But YOU know."
+
+"And The Rat has a plan for giving the signal?" Loristan said.
+
+Marco forgot his first feeling of hesitation.  He began to see the plan
+again as he had seen it when The Rat talked.  He began to speak as The
+Rat had spoken, forgetting that it was a game. He made even a clearer
+picture than The Rat had made of the two vagabond boys--one of them a
+cripple--making their way from one place to another, quite free to
+carry messages or warnings where they chose, because they were so
+insignificant and poor-looking that no one could think of them as
+anything but waifs and strays, belonging to nobody and blown about by
+the wind of poverty and chance.  He felt as if he wanted to convince
+his father that the plan was a possible one.  He did not quite know why
+he felt so anxious to win his approval of the scheme--as if it were
+real--as if it could actually be done.  But this feeling was what
+inspired him to enter into new details and suggest possibilities.
+
+"A boy who was a cripple and one who was only a street singer and a
+sort of beggar could get almost anywhere," he said. "Soldiers would
+listen to a singer if he sang good songs--and they might not be afraid
+to talk before him.  A strolling singer and a cripple would perhaps
+hear a great many things it might be useful for the Secret Party to
+know.  They might even hear important things.  Don't you think so?"
+
+Before he had gone far with his story, the faraway look had fallen upon
+Loristan's face--the look Marco had known so well all his life.  He sat
+turned a little sidewise from the boy, his elbow resting on the table
+and his forehead on his hand.  He looked down at the worn carpet at his
+feet, and so he looked as he listened to the end.  It was as if some
+new thought were slowly growing in his mind as Marco went on talking
+and enlarging on The Rat's plan.  He did not even look up or change his
+position as he answered, "Yes.  I think so."
+
+But, because of the deep and growing thought in his face, Marco's
+courage increased.  His first fear that this part of the planning might
+seem so bold and reckless that it would only appear to belong to a
+boyish game, gradually faded away for some strange reason.  His father
+had said that the first part of The Rat's imaginings had not seemed
+quite like a game to him, and now--even now--he was not listening as if
+he were listening to the details of mere exaggerated fancies.  It was
+as if the thing he was hearing was not wildly impossible.  Marco's
+knowledge of Continental countries and of methods of journeying helped
+him to enter into much detail and give realism to his plans.
+
+"Sometimes we could pretend we knew nothing but English," he said.
+"Then, though The Rat could not understand, I could.  I should always
+understand in each country.  I know the cities and the places we should
+want to go to.  I know how boys like us live, and so we should not do
+anything which would make the police angry or make people notice us.
+If any one asked questions, I would let them believe that I had met The
+Rat by chance, and we had made up our minds to travel together because
+people gave more money to a boy who sang if he was with a cripple.
+There was a boy who used to play the guitar in the streets of Rome, and
+he always had a lame girl with him, and every one knew it was for that
+reason.  When he played, people looked at the girl and were sorry for
+her and gave her soldi. You remember."
+
+"Yes, I remember.  And what you say is true," Loristan answered.
+
+Marco leaned forward across the table so that he came closer to him.
+The tone in which the words were said made his courage leap like a
+flame.  To be allowed to go on with this boldness was to feel that he
+was being treated almost as if he were a man.  If his father had wished
+to stop him, he could have done it with one quiet glance, without
+uttering a word.  For some wonderful reason he did not wish him to
+cease talking.  He was willing to hear what he had to say--he was even
+interested.
+
+"You are growing older," he had said the night he had revealed the
+marvelous secret.  "Silence is still the order, but you are man enough
+to be told more."
+
+Was he man enough to be thought worthy to help Samavia in any small
+way--even with boyish fancies which might contain a germ of some
+thought which older and wiser minds might make useful?  Was he being
+listened to because the plan, made as part of a game, was not an
+impossible one--if two boys who could be trusted could be found?  He
+caught a deep breath as he went on, drawing still nearer and speaking
+so low that his tone was almost a whisper.
+
+"If the men of the Secret Party have been working and thinking for so
+many years--they have prepared everything.  They know by this time
+exactly what must be done by the messengers who are to give the signal.
+They can tell them where to go and how to know the secret friends who
+must be warned.  If the orders could be written and given to--to some
+one who has--who has learned to remember things!"  He had begun to
+breathe so quickly that he stopped for a moment.
+
+Loristan looked up.  He looked directly into his eyes.
+
+"Some one who has been TRAINED to remember things?" he said.
+
+"Some one who has been trained," Marco went on, catching his breath
+again.  "Some one who does not forget--who would never forget--never!
+That one, even if he were only twelve--even if he were only ten--could
+go and do as he was told."
+
+Loristan put his hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Comrade," he said, "you are speaking as if you were ready to go
+yourself."
+
+Marco's eyes looked bravely straight into his, but he said not one word.
+
+"Do you know what it would mean, Comrade?" his father went on. "You are
+right.  It is not a game.  And you are not thinking of it as one.  But
+have you thought how it would be if something betrayed you--and you
+were set up against a wall to be SHOT?"
+
+Marco stood up quite straight.  He tried to believe he felt the wall
+against his back.
+
+"If I were shot, I should be shot for Samavia," he said.  "And for YOU,
+Father."
+
+Even as he was speaking, the front door-bell rang and Lazarus evidently
+opened it.  He spoke to some one, and then they heard his footsteps
+approaching the back sitting-room.
+
+"Open the door," said Loristan, and Marco opened it.
+
+"There is a boy who is a cripple here, sir," the old soldier said.  "He
+asked to see Master Marco."
+
+"If it is The Rat," said Loristan, "bring him in here.  I wish to see
+him."
+
+Marco went down the passage to the front door.  The Rat was there, but
+he was not upon his platform.  He was leaning upon an old pair of
+crutches, and Marco thought he looked wild and strange.  He was white,
+and somehow the lines of his face seemed twisted in a new way.  Marco
+wondered if something had frightened him, or if he felt ill.
+
+"Rat," he began, "my father--"
+
+"I've come to tell you about MY father," The Rat broke in without
+waiting to hear the rest, and his voice was as strange as his pale
+face.  "I don't know why I've come, but I--I just wanted to.  He's
+dead!"
+
+"Your father?" Marco stammered.  "He's--"
+
+"He's dead," The Rat answered shakily.  "I told you he'd kill himself.
+He had another fit and he died in it.  I knew he would, one of these
+days.  I told him so.  He knew he would himself.  I stayed with him
+till he was dead--and then I got a bursting headache and I felt
+sick--and I thought about you."
+
+Marco made a jump at him because he saw he was suddenly shaking as if
+he were going to fall.  He was just in time, and Lazarus, who had been
+looking on from the back of the passage, came forward.  Together they
+held him up.
+
+"I'm not going to faint," he said weakly, "but I felt as if I was.  It
+was a bad fit, and I had to try and hold him.  I was all by myself.
+The people in the other attic thought he was only drunk, and they
+wouldn't come in.  He's lying on the floor there, dead."
+
+"Come and see my father," Marco said.  "He'll tell us what do do.
+Lazarus, help him."
+
+"I can get on by myself," said The Rat.  "Do you see my crutches?  I
+did something for a pawnbroker last night, and he gave them to me for
+pay."
+
+But though he tried to speak carelessly, he had plainly been horribly
+shaken and overwrought.  His queer face was yellowish white still, and
+he was trembling a little.
+
+Marco led the way into the back sitting-room.  In the midst of its
+shabby gloom and under the dim light Loristan was standing in one of
+his still, attentive attitudes.  He was waiting for them.
+
+"Father, this is The Rat," the boy began.  The Rat stopped short and
+rested on his crutches, staring at the tall, reposeful figure with
+widened eyes.
+
+"Is that your father?" he said to Marco.  And then added, with a jerky
+half-laugh, "He's not much like mine, is he?"
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE RAT--AND SAMAVIA
+
+What The Rat thought when Loristan began to speak to him, Marco
+wondered.  Suddenly he stood in an unknown world, and it was Loristan
+who made it so because its poverty and shabbiness had no power to touch
+him.  He looked at the boy with calm and clear eyes, he asked him
+practical questions gently, and it was plain that he understood many
+things without asking questions at all. Marco thought that perhaps he
+had, at some time, seen drunken men die, in his life in strange places.
+He seemed to know the terribleness of the night through which The Rat
+had passed.  He made him sit down, and he ordered Lazarus to bring him
+some hot coffee and simple food.
+
+"Haven't had a bite since yesterday," The Rat said, still staring at
+him.  "How did you know I hadn't?"
+
+"You have not had time," Loristan answered.
+
+Afterward he made him lie down on the sofa.
+
+"Look at my clothes," said The Rat.
+
+"Lie down and sleep," Loristan replied, putting his hand on his
+shoulder and gently forcing him toward the sofa.  "You will sleep a
+long time.  You must tell me how to find the place where your father
+died, and I will see that the proper authorities are notified."
+
+"What are you doing it for?"  The Rat asked, and then he added, "sir."
+
+"Because I am a man and you are a boy.  And this is a terrible thing,"
+Loristan answered him.
+
+He went away without saying more, and The Rat lay on the sofa staring
+at the wall and thinking about it until he fell asleep. But, before
+this happened, Marco had quietly left him alone.  So, as Loristan had
+told him he would, he slept deeply and long; in fact, he slept through
+all the night.
+
+
+When he awakened it was morning, and Lazarus was standing by the side
+of the sofa looking down at him.
+
+"You will want to make yourself clean," he said.  "It must be done."
+
+"Clean!" said The Rat, with his squeaky laugh.  "I couldn't keep clean
+when I had a room to live in, and now where am I to wash myself?"  He
+sat up and looked about him.
+
+"Give me my crutches," he said.  "I've got to go.  They've let me sleep
+here all night.  They didn't turn me into the street.  I don't know why
+they didn't.  Marco's father--he's the right sort. He looks like a
+swell."
+
+"The Master," said Lazarus, with a rigid manner, "the Master is a great
+gentleman.  He would turn no tired creature into the street.  He and
+his son are poor, but they are of those who give. He desires to see and
+talk to you again.  You are to have bread and coffee with him and the
+young Master.  But it is I who tell you that you cannot  sit at table
+with them until you are clean. Come with me," and he handed him his
+crutches.  His manner was authoritative, but it was the manner of a
+soldier; his somewhat stiff and erect movements were those of a
+soldier, also, and The Rat liked them because they made him feel as if
+he were in barracks.  He did not know what was going to happen, but he
+got up and followed him on his crutches.
+
+Lazarus took him to a closet under the stairs where a battered tin bath
+was already full of hot water, which the old soldier himself had
+brought in pails.  There were soap and coarse, clean towels on a wooden
+chair, and also there was a much worn but clean suit of clothes.
+
+"Put these on when you have bathed," Lazarus ordered, pointing to them.
+"They belong to the young Master and will be large for you, but they
+will be better than your own."  And then he went out of the closet and
+shut the door.
+
+It was a new experience for The Rat.  So long as he remembered, he had
+washed his face and hands--when he had washed them at all--at an iron
+tap set in the wall of a back street or court in some slum.  His father
+and himself had long ago sunk into the world where to wash one's self
+is not a part of every-day life. They had lived amid dirt and foulness,
+and when his father had been in a maudlin state, he had sometimes cried
+and talked of the long-past days when he had shaved every morning and
+put on a clean shirt.
+
+To stand even in the most battered of tin baths full of clean hot water
+and to splash and scrub with a big piece of flannel and plenty of soap
+was a marvelous thing.  The Rat's tired body responded to the novelty
+with a curious feeling of freshness and comfort.
+
+"I dare say swells do this every day," he muttered.  "I'd do it myself
+if I was a swell.  Soldiers have to keep themselves so clean they
+shine."
+
+When, after making the most of his soap and water, he came out of the
+closet under the stairs, he was as fresh as Marco himself; and, though
+his clothes had been built for a more stalwart body, his recognition of
+their cleanliness filled him with pleasure. He  wondered if by any
+effort he could keep himself clean when he went  out into the world
+again and had to sleep in any hole the police did not order him out of.
+
+He wanted to see Marco again, but he wanted more to see the tall man
+with the soft dark eyes and that queer look of being a swell in spite
+of his shabby clothes and the dingy place he lived in. There was
+something about him which made you keep on looking at him, and wanting
+to know what he was thinking of, and why you felt as if you'd take
+orders from him as you'd take orders from your general, if you were a
+soldier.  He looked, somehow, like a soldier, but as if he were
+something more--as if people had taken orders from him all his life,
+and always would take orders from him.  And yet he had that quiet voice
+and those fine, easy movements, and he was not a soldier at all, but
+only a poor man who wrote things for papers which did not pay him well
+enough to give him and his son a comfortable living.  Through all the
+time of his seclusion with the battered bath and the soap and water,
+The Rat thought of him, and longed to have another look at him and hear
+him speak again.  He did not see any reason why he should have let him
+sleep on his sofa or why he should give him a breakfast before he
+turned him out to face the world.  It was first-rate of him to do it.
+The Rat felt that when he was turned out, after he had had the coffee,
+he should want to hang about the neighborhood just on the chance of
+seeing him pass by sometimes.  He did not know what he was going to do.
+The parish officials would by this time have taken his dead father, and
+he would not see him again.  He did not want to see him again.  He had
+never seemed like a father.  They had never cared anything for each
+other.  He had only been a wretched outcast whose best hours had been
+when he had drunk too much to be violent and brutal.  Perhaps, The Rat
+thought, he would be driven to going about on his platform on the
+pavements and begging, as his father had tried to force him to do.
+Could he sell newspapers?  What could a crippled lad do unless he
+begged or sold papers?
+
+Lazarus was waiting for him in the passage.  The Rat held back a little.
+
+"Perhaps they'd rather not eat their breakfast with me," he hesitated.
+"I'm not--I'm not the kind they are.  I could swallow the coffee out
+here and carry the bread away with me. And you could thank him for me.
+I'd want him to know I thanked him."
+
+Lazarus also had a steady eye.  The Rat realized that he was looking
+him over as if he were summing him up.
+
+"You may not be the kind they are, but you may be of a kind the Master
+sees good in.  If he did not see something, he would not ask you to sit
+at his table.  You are to come with me."
+
+The Squad had seen good in The Rat, but no one else had. Policemen had
+moved him on whenever they set eyes on him, the wretched women of the
+slums had regarded him as they regarded his darting, thieving namesake;
+loafing or busy men had seen in him a young nuisance to be kicked or
+pushed out of the way.  The Squad had not called "good" what they saw
+in him.  They would have yelled with laughter if they had heard any one
+else call it so. "Goodness" was not considered an attraction in their
+world.
+
+The Rat grinned a little and wondered what was meant, as he followed
+Lazarus into the back sitting-room.
+
+It was as dingy and gloomy as it had looked the night before, but by
+the daylight The Rat saw how rigidly neat it was, how well swept and
+free from any speck of dust, how the poor windows had been cleaned and
+polished, and how everything was set in order. The coarse linen cloth
+on the table was fresh and spotless, so was the cheap crockery, the
+spoons shone with brightness.
+
+Loristan was standing on the hearth and Marco was near him.  They were
+waiting for their vagabond guest as if he had been a gentleman.
+
+The Rat hesitated and shuffled at the door for a moment, and then it
+suddenly occurred to him to stand as straight as he could and salute.
+When he found himself in the presence of Loristan, he felt as if he
+ought to do something, but he did not know what.
+
+Loristan's recognition of his gesture and his expression as he moved
+forward lifted from The Rat's shoulders a load which he himself had not
+known lay there.  Somehow he felt as if something new had happened to
+him, as if he were not mere "vermin," after all, as if he need not be
+on the defensive--even as if he need not feel so much in the dark, and
+like a thing there was no place in the world for.  The mere straight
+and far-seeing look of this man's eyes seemed to make a place somewhere
+for what he looked at.  And yet what he said was quite simple.
+
+"This is well," he said.  "You have rested.  We will have some food,
+and then we will talk together."  He made a slight gesture in the
+direction of the chair at the right hand of his own place.
+
+The Rat hesitated again.  What a swell he was!  With that wave of the
+hand he made you feel as if you were a fellow like himself, and he was
+doing you some honor.
+
+"I'm not--"  The Rat broke off and jerked his head toward Marco.  "He
+knows--" he ended, "I've never sat at a table like this before."
+
+"There is not much on it."  Loristan made the slight gesture toward the
+right-hand seat again and smiled.  "Let us sit down."
+
+The Rat obeyed him and the meal began.  There were only bread and
+coffee and a little butter before them.  But Lazarus presented the cups
+and plates on a small japanned tray as if it were a golden salver.
+When he was not serving, he stood upright behind his master's chair, as
+though he wore royal livery of scarlet and gold.  To the boy who had
+gnawed a bone or munched a crust wheresoever he found them, and with no
+thought but of the appeasing of his own wolfish hunger, to watch the
+two with whom he sat eat their simple food was a new thing.  He knew
+nothing of the every-day decencies of civilized people.  The Rat liked
+to look at them, and he found himself trying to hold his cup as
+Loristan did, and to sit and move as Marco was sitting and
+moving--taking his bread or butter, when it was held at his side by
+Lazarus, as if it were a simple thing to be waited upon. Marco had had
+things handed to him all his life, and it did not make him feel
+awkward.  The Rat knew that his own father had once lived like this.
+He himself would have been at ease if chance had treated him fairly.
+It made him scowl to think of it.  But in a few minutes Loristan began
+to talk about the copy of the map of Samavia.  Then The Rat forgot
+everything else and was ill at ease no more.  He did not know that
+Loristan was leading him on to explain his theories about the country
+and the people and the war.  He found himself telling all that he had
+read, or overheard, or THOUGHT as he lay awake in his garret.  He had
+thought out a great many things in a way not at all like a boy's. His
+strangely concentrated and over-mature mind had been full of military
+schemes which Loristan listened to with curiosity and also with
+amazement.  He had become extraordinarily clever in one direction
+because he had fixed all his mental powers on one thing.  It seemed
+scarcely natural that an untaught vagabond lad should know so much and
+reason so clearly.  It was at least extraordinarily interesting.  There
+had been no skirmish, no attack, no battle which he had not led and
+fought in his own imagination, and he had made scores of rough queer
+plans of all that had been or should have been done.  Lazarus listened
+as attentively as his master, and once Marco saw him exchange a
+startled, rapid glance with Loristan.  It was at a moment when The Rat
+was sketching with his finger on the cloth an attack which OUGHT to
+have been made but was not.  And Marco knew at once that the quickly
+exchanged look meant "He is right!  If it had been done, there would
+have been victory instead of disaster!"
+
+It was a wonderful meal, though it was only of bread and coffee. The
+Rat knew he should never be able to forget it.
+
+Afterward, Loristan told him of what he had done the night before.  He
+had seen the parish authorities and all had been done which a city
+government provides in the case of a pauper's death.
+
+His father would be buried in the usual manner.  "We will follow him,"
+Loristan said in the end.  "You and I and Marco and Lazarus."
+
+The Rat's mouth fell open.
+
+"You--and Marco--and Lazarus!" he exclaimed, staring.  "And me!  Why
+should any of us go?  I don't want to.  He wouldn't have followed me if
+I'd been the one."
+
+Loristan remained silent for a few moments.
+
+"When a life has counted for nothing, the end of it is a lonely thing,"
+he said at last.  "If it has forgotten all respect for itself, pity is
+all that one has left to give.  One would like to give SOMETHING to
+anything so lonely."  He said the last brief sentence  after a pause.
+
+"Let us go," Marco said suddenly; and he caught The Rat's hand.
+
+The Rat's own movement was sudden.  He slipped from his crutches to a
+chair, and sat and gazed at the worn carpet as if he were not looking
+at it at all, but at something a long way off.  After a while he looked
+up at Loristan.
+
+"Do you know what I thought of, all at once?" he said in a shaky voice.
+"I thought of that 'Lost Prince' one.  He only lived once.  Perhaps he
+didn't live a long time.  Nobody knows. But it's five hundred years
+ago, and, just because he was the kind he was, every one that remembers
+him thinks of something fine.  It's queer, but it does you good just to
+hear his name. And if he has been training kings for Samavia all these
+centuries--they may have been poor and nobody may have known about
+them, but they've been KINGS.  That's what HE did--just by being alive
+a few years.  When I think of him and then think of--the other--there's
+such an awful difference that--yes--I'm sorry.  For the first time.
+I'm his son and I can't care about him; but he's too lonely--I want to
+go."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+	   
+So it was that when the forlorn derelict was carried to the graveyard
+where nameless burdens on the city were given to the earth, a curious
+funeral procession followed him.  There were two tall and soldierly
+looking men and two boys, one of whom walked on crutches, and behind
+them were ten other boys who walked two by two.  These ten were a
+queer, ragged lot; but they had respectfully sober faces, held their
+heads and their shoulders well, and walked with a remarkably regular
+marching step.
+
+It was the Squad; but they had left their "rifles" at home.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+"COME WITH ME"
+
+When they came back from the graveyard, The Rat was silent all the way.
+He was thinking of what had happened and of what lay before him.  He
+was, in fact, thinking chiefly that nothing lay before him--nothing.
+The certainty of that gave his sharp, lined face new lines and
+sharpness which made it look pinched and hard.
+
+He had nothing before but a corner in a bare garret in which he could
+find little more than a leaking roof over his head--when he was not
+turned out into the street.  But, if policemen asked him where he
+lived, he could say he lived in Bone Court with his father.  Now he
+couldn't say it.
+
+He got along very well on his crutches, but he was rather tired when
+they reached the turn in the street which led in the direction of his
+old haunts.  At any rate, they were haunts he knew, and he belonged to
+them more than he belonged elsewhere. The Squad stopped at this
+particular corner because it led to such homes as they possessed.  They
+stopped in a body and looked at The Rat, and The Rat stopped also.  He
+swung himself to Loristan's side, touching his hand to his forehead.
+
+"Thank you, sir," he said.  "Line and salute, you chaps!" And the Squad
+stood in line and raised their hands also.  "Thank you, sir.  Thank
+you, Marco.  Good-by."
+
+"Where are you going?" Loristan asked.
+
+"I don't know yet," The Rat answered, biting his lips.
+
+He and Loristan looked at each other a few moments in silence. Both of
+them were thinking very hard.  In The Rat's eyes there was a kind of
+desperate adoration.  He did not know what he should do when this man
+turned and walked away from him.  It would be as if the sun itself had
+dropped out of the heavens--and The Rat had not thought of what the sun
+meant before.
+
+But Loristan did not turn and walk away.  He looked deep into the lad's
+eyes as if he were searching to find some certainty.  Then he said in a
+low voice, "You know how poor I am."
+
+"I--I don't care!" said The Rat.  "You--you're like a king to me.  I'd
+stand up and be shot to bits if you told me to do it."
+
+"I am so poor that I am not sure I can give you enough dry bread to
+eat--always.  Marco and Lazarus and I are often hungry. Sometimes you
+might have nothing to sleep on but the floor.  But I can find a PLACE
+for you if I take you with me," said Loristan.  "Do you know what I
+mean by a PLACE?"
+
+"Yes, I do," answered The Rat.  "It's what I've never had before--sir."
+
+What he knew was that it meant some bit of space, out of all the world,
+where he would have a sort of right to stand, howsoever poor and bare
+it might be.
+
+"I'm not used to beds or to food enough," he said.  But he did not dare
+to insist too much on that "place."  It seemed too great a thing to be
+true.
+
+Loristan took his arm.
+
+"Come with me," he said.  "We won't part.  I believe you are to be
+trusted."
+
+The Rat turned quite white in a sort of anguish of joy.  He had never
+cared for any one in his life.  He had been a sort of young Cain, his
+hand against every man and every man's hand against him.  And during
+the last twelve hours he had plunged into a tumultuous ocean of boyish
+hero-worship.  This man seemed like a sort of god to him.  What he had
+said and done the day before, in what had been really The Rat's hours
+of extremity, after that appalling night--the way he had looked into
+his face and understood it all, the talk at the table when he had
+listened to him seriously, comprehending and actually respecting his
+plans and rough maps; his silent companionship as they followed the
+pauper hearse together--these things were enough to make the lad
+longingly ready to be any sort of servant or slave to him if he might
+see and be spoken to by him even once or twice a day.
+
+The Squad wore a look of dismay for a moment, and Loristan saw it.
+
+"I am going to take your captain with me," he said.  "But he will come
+back to Barracks.  So will Marco."
+
+"Will yer go on with the game?" asked Cad, as eager spokesman. "We want
+to go on being the 'Secret Party.'"
+
+"Yes, I'll go on," The Rat answered.  "I won't give it up. There's a
+lot in the papers to-day."
+
+So they were pacified and went on their way, and Loristan and Lazarus
+and Marco and The Rat went on theirs also.
+
+"Queer thing is," The Rat thought as they walked together, "I'm a bit
+afraid to speak to him unless he speaks to me first. Never felt that
+way before with any one."
+
+He had jeered at policemen and had impudently chaffed "swells," but he
+felt a sort of secret awe of this man, and actually liked the feeling.
+
+"It's as if I was a private and he was commander-in-chief," he thought.
+"That's it."
+
+Loristan talked to him as they went.  He was simple enough in his
+statements of the situation.  There was an old sofa in Marco's bedroom.
+It was narrow and hard, as Marco's bed itself was, but The Rat could
+sleep upon it.  They would share what food they had.  There were
+newspapers and magazines to be read.  There were papers and pencils to
+draw new maps and plans of battles. There was even an old map of
+Samavia of Marco's which the two boys could study together as an aid to
+their game.  The Rat's eyes began to have points of fire in them.
+
+"If I could see the papers every morning, I could fight the battles on
+paper by night," he said, quite panting at the incredible vision of
+splendor.  Were all the kingdoms of the earth going to be given to him?
+Was he going to sleep without a drunken father near him?
+
+Was he going to have a chance to wash himself and to sit at a table and
+hear people say "Thank you," and "I beg pardon," as if they were using
+the most ordinary fashion of speech?  His own father, before he had
+sunk into the depths, had lived and spoken in this way.
+
+"When I have time, we will see who can draw up the best plans,"
+Loristan said.
+
+"Do you mean that you'll look at mine then--when you have time?" asked
+The Rat, hesitatingly.  "I wasn't expecting that."
+
+"Yes," answered Loristan, "I'll look at them, and we'll talk them over."
+
+As they went on, he told him that he and Marco could do many things
+together.  They could go to museums and galleries, and Marco could show
+him what he himself was familiar with.
+
+"My father said you wouldn't let him come back to Barracks when you
+found out about it," The Rat said, hesitating again and growing hot
+because he remembered so many ugly past days. "But--but I swear I won't
+do him any harm, sir.  I won't!"
+
+"When I said I believed you could be trusted, I meant several things,"
+Loristan answered him.  "That was one of them.  You're a new recruit.
+You and Marco are both under a commanding officer."  He said the words
+because he knew they would elate him and stir his blood.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+"ONLY TWO BOYS"
+
+The words did elate him, and his blood was stirred by them every time
+they returned to his mind.  He remembered them through the days and
+nights that followed.  He sometimes, indeed, awakened from his deep
+sleep on the hard and narrow sofa in Marco's room, and found that he
+was saying them half aloud to himself.  The hardness of the sofa did
+not prevent his resting as he had never rested before in his life.  By
+contrast with the past he had known, this poor existence was comfort
+which verged on luxury. He got into the battered tin bath every
+morning, he sat at the clean table, and could look at Loristan and
+speak to him and hear his voice.  His chief trouble was that he could
+hardly keep his eyes off him, and he was a little afraid  he might be
+annoyed. But he could not bear to lose a look or a movement.
+
+At the end of the second day, he found his way, at some trouble, to
+Lazarus's small back room at the top of the house.
+
+"Will you let me come in and talk a bit?" he said.
+
+When he went in, he was obliged to sit on the top of Lazarus's wooden
+box because there was nothing else for him.
+
+"I want to ask you," he plunged into his talk at once, "do you think he
+minds me looking at him so much?  I can't help it--but if he hates
+it--well--I'll try and keep my eyes on the table."
+
+"The Master is used to being looked at," Lazarus made answer. "But it
+would be well to ask himself.  He likes open speech."
+
+"I want to find out everything he likes and everything he doesn't
+like," The Rat said.  "I want--isn't there anything--anything you'd let
+me do for him?  It wouldn't matter what it was.  And he needn't know
+you are not doing it.  I know you wouldn't be willing to give up
+anything particular.  But you wait on him night and day.  Couldn't you
+give up something to me?"
+
+Lazarus pierced him with keen eyes.  He did not answer for several
+seconds.
+
+"Now and then," he said gruffly at last, "I'll let you brush his boots.
+But not every day--perhaps once a week."
+
+"When will you let me have my first turn?" The Rat asked.
+
+Lazarus reflected.  His shaggy eyebrows drew themselves down over his
+eyes as if this were a question of state.
+
+"Next Saturday," he conceded.  "Not before.  I'll tell him when you
+brush them."
+
+"You needn't," said The Rat.  "It's not that I want him to know.  I
+want to know myself that I'm doing something for him. I'll find out
+things that I can do without interfering with you. I'll think them out."
+
+"Anything any one else did for him would be interfering with me," said
+Lazarus.
+
+It was The Rat's turn to reflect now, and his face twisted itself into
+new lines and wrinkles.
+
+"I'll tell you before I do anything," he said, after he had thought it
+over.  "You served him first."
+
+"I have served him ever since he was born," said Lazarus.
+
+"He's--he's yours," said The Rat, still thinking deeply.
+
+"I am his," was Lazarus's stern answer.  "I am his--and the young
+Master's."
+
+"That's it," The Rat said.  Then a squeak of a half-laugh broke from
+him.  "I've never been anybody's," he added.
+
+His sharp eyes caught a passing look on Lazarus's face.  Such a queer,
+disturbed, sudden look.  Could he be rather sorry for him?
+
+Perhaps the look meant something like that.
+
+"If you stay near him long enough--and it needn't be long--you will be
+his too.  Everybody is."
+
+The Rat sat up as straight as he could.  "When it comes to that," he
+blurted out, "I'm his now, in my way.  I was his two minutes after he
+looked at me with his queer, handsome eyes. They're queer because they
+get you, and you want to follow him. I'm going to follow."
+
+That night Lazarus recounted to his master the story of the scene.  He
+simply repeated word for word what had been said, and Loristan listened
+gravely.
+
+"We have not had time to learn much of him yet," he commented. "But
+that is a faithful soul, I think."
+
+A few days later, Marco missed The Rat soon after their breakfast hour.
+He had gone out without saying anything to the household. He did not
+return for several hours, and when he came back he looked tired.  In
+the afternoon he fell asleep on his sofa in Marco's room and slept
+heavily.  No one asked him any questions as he volunteered no
+explanation.  The next day he went out again in the same mysterious
+manner, and the next and the next.  For an entire week he went out and
+returned with the tired look; but he did not explain until one morning,
+as he lay on his sofa before getting up, he said to Marco:
+
+"I'm practicing walking with my crutches.  I don't want to go about
+like a rat any more.  I mean to be as near like other people as I can.
+I walk farther every morning.  I began with two miles.  If I practice
+every day, my crutches will be like legs."
+
+"Shall I walk with you?" asked Marco.
+
+"Wouldn't you mind walking with a cripple?"
+
+"Don't call yourself that," said Marco.  "We can talk together, and try
+to remember everything we see as we go along."
+
+"I want to learn to remember things.  I'd like to train myself in that
+way too," The Rat answered.  "I'd give anything to know some of the
+things your father taught you.  I've got a good memory.  I remember a
+lot of things I don't want to remember. Will you go this morning?"
+
+That morning they went, and Loristan was told the reason for their
+walk.  But though he knew one reason, he did not know all about it.
+When The Rat was allowed his "turn" of the boot-brushing, he told more
+to Lazarus.
+
+"What I want to do," he said, "is not only walk as fast as other people
+do, but faster.  Acrobats train themselves to do anything.  It's
+training that does it.  There might come a time when he might need some
+one to go on an errand quickly, and I'm going to be ready.  I'm going
+to train myself until he needn't think of me as if I were only a
+cripple who can't do things and has to be taken care of.  I want him to
+know that I'm really as strong as Marco, and where Marco can go I can
+go."
+
+"He" was what he always said, and Lazarus always understood without
+explanation.
+
+"'The Master' is your name for him," he had explained at the beginning.
+"And I can't call him just 'Mister' Loristan.  It sounds like cheek.
+If he was called 'General' or 'Colonel' I could stand it--though it
+wouldn't be quite right.  Some day I shall find a name.  When I speak
+to him, I say 'Sir.'"
+
+The walks were taken every day, and each day were longer.  Marco found
+himself silently watching The Rat with amazement at his determination
+and endurance.  He knew that he must not speak of what he could not
+fail to see as they walked.  He must not tell him that he looked tired
+and pale and sometimes desperately fatigued.  He had inherited from his
+father the tact which sees what people do not wish to be reminded of.
+He knew that for some reason of his own The Rat had determined to do
+this thing at any cost to himself.  Sometimes his face grew white and
+worn and he breathed hard, but  he never rested more than a few
+minutes, and never turned back or shortened a walk they had planned.
+
+"Tell me something about Samavia, something to remember," he would say,
+when he looked his worst.  "When I begin to try to remember, I
+forget--other things."
+
+So, as they went on their way, they talked, and The Rat committed
+things to memory.  He was quick at it, and grew quicker every day.
+They invented a game of remembering faces they passed. Both would learn
+them by heart, and on their return home Marco would draw them.  They
+went to the museums and galleries and learned things there, making from
+memory lists and descriptions which at night they showed to Loristan,
+when he was not too busy to talk to them.
+
+As the days passed, Marco saw that The Rat was gaining strength. This
+exhilarated him greatly.  They often went to Hampstead Heath and walked
+in the wind and sun.  There The Rat would go through curious exercises
+which he believed would develop his muscles. He began to look less
+tired during and after his journey.  There were even fewer wrinkles on
+his face, and his sharp eyes looked less fierce.  The talks between the
+two boys were long and curious.  Marco soon realized that The Rat
+wanted to learn--learn--learn.
+
+"Your father can talk to you almost as if you were twenty years old,"
+he said once.  "He knows you can understand what he's saying.  If he
+were to talk to me, he'd always have to remember that I was only a rat
+that had lived in gutters and seen nothing else."
+
+They were talking in their room, as they nearly always did after they
+went to bed and the street lamp shone in and lighted their bare little
+room.  They often sat up clasping their knees, Marco on his poor bed,
+The Rat on his hard sofa, but neither of them conscious either of the
+poorness or hardness, because to each one the long unknown sense of
+companionship was such a satisfying thing.  Neither of them had ever
+talked intimately to another boy, and now they were together day and
+night.  They revealed their thoughts to each other; they told each
+other things it had never before occurred to either to think of telling
+any one.  In fact, they found out about themselves, as they talked,
+things they had not quite known before.  Marco had  gradually
+discovered that the admiration The Rat had for his father was an
+impassioned and curious feeling which possessed him entirely.  It
+seemed to Marco that it was beginning to be like a sort of religion.
+He evidently thought of him every moment.  So when he spoke of
+Loristan's knowing him to be only a rat of the gutter, Marco felt he
+himself was fortunate in remembering something he could say.
+
+"My father said yesterday that you had a big brain and a strong will,"
+he answered from his bed.  "He said that you had a wonderful memory
+which only needed exercising.  He said it after he looked over the list
+you made of the things you had seen in the Tower."
+
+The Rat shuffled on his sofa and clasped his knees tighter.
+
+"Did he?  Did he?" he said.
+
+He rested his chin upon his knees for a few minutes and stared straight
+before him.  Then he turned to the bed.
+
+"Marco," he said, in a rather hoarse voice, a queer voice; "are you
+jealous?"
+
+"Jealous," said Marco; "why?"
+
+"I mean, have you ever been jealous?  Do you know what it is like?"
+
+"I don't think I do," answered Marco, staring a little.
+
+"Are you ever jealous of Lazarus because he's always with your
+father--because he's with him oftener than you are--and knows about his
+work--and can do things for him you can't?  I mean, are you jealous
+of--your father?"
+
+Marco loosed his arms from his knees and lay down flat on his pillow.
+
+"No, I'm not.  The more people love and serve him, the better," he
+said.  "The only thing I care for is--is him.  I just care for HIM.
+Lazarus does too.  Don't you?"
+
+The Rat was greatly excited internally.  He had been thinking of this
+thing a great deal.  The thought had sometimes terrified him.  He might
+as well have it out now if he could.  If he could get at the truth,
+everything would be easier.  But would Marco really tell him?
+
+"Don't you mind?" he said, still hoarse and eager--"don't you mind how
+much I care for him?  Could it ever make you feel savage?  Could it
+ever set you thinking I was nothing but--what I am--and  that it was
+cheek of me to push myself in and fasten on to a gentleman who only
+took me up for charity?  Here's the living truth," he ended in an
+outburst; "if I were you and you were me, that's what I should be
+thinking.  I know it is.  I couldn't help it.  I should see every low
+thing there was in you, in your manners and your voice and your looks.
+I should see nothing but the contrast between you and me and between
+you and him.  I should be so jealous that I should just rage.  I should
+HATE you--and I should DESPISE you!"
+
+He had wrought himself up to such a passion of feeling that he set
+Marco thinking that what he was hearing meant strange and strong
+emotions such as he himself had never experienced.  The Rat had been
+thinking over all this in secret for some time, it was evident.  Marco
+lay still a few minutes and thought it over. Then he found something to
+say, just as he had found something before.
+
+"You might, if you were with other people who thought in the same way,"
+he said, "and if you hadn't found out that it is such a mistake to
+think in that way, that it's even stupid.  But, you see, if you were I,
+you would have lived with my father, and he'd have told you what he
+knows--what he's been finding out all his life."
+
+"What's he found out?"
+
+"Oh!" Marco answered, quite casually, "just that you can't set savage
+thoughts loose in the world, any more than you can let loose savage
+beasts with hydrophobia.  They spread a sort of rabies, and they always
+tear and worry you first of all."
+
+"What do you mean?"  The Rat gasped out.
+
+"It's like this," said Marco, lying flat and cool on his hard pillow
+and looking at the reflection of the street lamp on the ceiling.  "That
+day I turned into your Barracks, without knowing that you'd think I was
+spying, it made you feel savage, and you threw the stone at me.  If it
+had made me feel savage and I'd rushed in and fought, what would have
+happened to all of us?"
+
+The Rat's spirit of generalship gave the answer.
+
+"I should have called on the Squad to charge with fixed bayonets.
+They'd have half killed you.  You're a strong chap, and you'd have hurt
+a lot of them."
+
+A note of terror broke into his voice.  "What a fool I should have
+been!" he cried out.  "I should never have come here!  I should never
+have known HIM!"  Even by the light of the street lamp Marco could see
+him begin to look almost ghastly.
+
+"The Squad could easily have half killed me," Marco added. "They could
+have quite killed me, if they had wanted to do it. And who would have
+got any good out of it?  It would only have been a street-lads'
+row--with the police and prison at the end of it."
+
+"But because you'd lived with him," The Rat pondered, "you walked in as
+if you didn't mind, and just asked why we did it, and looked like a
+stronger chap than any of us--and different--different.  I wondered
+what was the matter with you, you were so cool and steady.  I know now.
+It was because you were like him.  He'd taught you.  He's like a
+wizard."
+
+"He knows things that wizards think they know, but he knows them
+better," Marco said.  "He says they're not queer and unnatural. They're
+just simple laws of nature.  You have to be either on one side or the
+other, like an army.  You choose your side.  You either build up or
+tear down.  You either keep in the light where you can see, or you
+stand in the dark and fight everything that comes near you, because you
+can't see and you think it's an enemy.  No, you wouldn't have been
+jealous if you'd been I and I'd been you."
+
+"And you're NOT?"  The Rat's sharp voice was almost hollow. "You'll
+swear you're not?"
+
+"I'm not," said Marco.
+
+The Rat's excitement even increased a shade as he poured forth his
+confession.
+
+"I was afraid," he said.  "I've been afraid every day since I came
+here.  I'll tell you straight out.  It seemed just natural that you and
+Lazarus wouldn't stand me, just as I wouldn't have stood you.  It
+seemed just natural that you'd work together to throw me out.  I knew
+how I should have worked myself.  Marco--I said I'd tell you straight
+out--I'm jealous of you.  I'm jealous of Lazarus.  It makes me wild
+when I see you both knowing all about him, and fit and ready to do
+anything he wants done.  I'm not ready and I'm not fit."
+
+"You'd do anything he wanted done, whether you were fit and ready or
+not," said Marco.  "He knows that."
+
+"Does he?  Do you think he does?" cried The Rat.  "I wish he'd try me.
+I wish he would."
+
+Marco turned over on his bed and rose up on his elbow so that he faced
+The Rat on his sofa.
+
+"Let us WAIT," he said in a whisper.  "Let us WAIT."
+
+There was a pause, and then The Rat whispered also.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For him to find out that we're fit to be tried.  Don't you see what
+fools we should be if we spent our time in being jealous, either of us.
+We're only two boys.  Suppose he saw we were only two silly fools.
+When you are jealous of me or of Lazarus, just go and sit down in a
+still place and think of HIM.  Don't think about yourself or about us.
+He's so quiet that to think about him makes you quiet yourself.  When
+things go wrong or when I'm lonely, he's taught me to sit down and make
+myself think of things I like--pictures, books, monuments, splendid
+places.  It pushes the other things out and sets your mind going
+properly. He doesn't know I nearly always think of him.  He's the best
+thought himself.  You try it.  You're not really jealous.  You only
+THINK you are.  You'll find that out if you always stop yourself in
+time.  Any one can be such a fool if he lets himself. And he can always
+stop it if he makes up his mind.  I'm not jealous.  You must let that
+thought alone.  You're not jealous yourself.  Kick that thought into
+the street."
+
+The Rat caught his breath and threw his arms up over his eyes. "Oh,
+Lord!  Oh, Lord!" he said; "if I'd lived near him always as you have.
+If I just had."
+
+"We're both living near him now," said Marco.  "And here's something to
+think of," leaning more forward on his elbow. "The kings who were being
+made ready for Samavia have waited all these years; WE can make
+ourselves ready and wait so that, if just two boys are wanted to do
+something--just two boys--we can step out of the ranks when the call
+comes and say 'Here!'  Now let's lie down and think of it until we go
+to sleep."
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+LORISTAN ATTENDS A DRILL OF THE SQUAD, AND MARCO MEETS A SAMAVIAN
+
+The Squad was not forgotten.  It found that Loristan himself would have
+regarded neglect as a breach of military duty.
+
+"You must remember your men," he said, two or three days after The Rat
+became a member of his household.  "You must keep up their drill.
+Marco tells me it was very smart.  Don't let them get slack."
+
+"His men!"  The Rat felt what he could not have put into words.
+
+He knew he had worked, and that the Squad had worked, in their hidden
+holes and corners.  Only hidden holes and corners had been possible for
+them because they had existed in spite of the protest of their world
+and the vigilance of its policemen.  They had tried  many refuges
+before they found the Barracks.  No one but resented the existence of a
+troop of noisy vagabonds.  But somehow this man knew that there had
+evolved from it something more than mere noisy play, that he, The Rat,
+had MEANT order and discipline.
+
+"His men!"  It made him feel as if he had had the Victoria Cross
+fastened on his coat.  He had brain enough to see many things, and he
+knew that it was in this way that Loristan was finding him his "place."
+He knew how.
+
+When they went to the Barracks, the Squad greeted them with a
+tumultuous welcome which expressed a great sense of relief. Privately
+the members had been filled with fears which they had talked over
+together in deep gloom.  Marco's father, they decided, was too big a
+swell to let the two come back after he had seen the sort the Squad was
+made up of.  He might be poor just now, toffs sometimes lost their
+money for a bit, but you could see what he was, and fathers like him
+weren't going to let their sons make friends with "such as us."  He'd
+stop the drill and the "Secret Society" game.  That's what he'd do!
+
+But The Rat came swinging in on his secondhand crutches looking as if
+he had been made a general, and Marco came with him; and the drill the
+Squad was put through was stricter and finer than any drill they had
+ever known.
+
+"I wish my father could have seen that," Marco said to The Rat.
+
+The Rat turned red and white and then red again, but he said not a
+single word.  The mere thought was like a flash of fire passing through
+him.  But no fellow could hope for a thing as big as that.  The Secret
+Party, in its subterranean cavern, surrounded by its piled arms, sat
+down to read the morning paper.
+
+The war news was bad to read.  The Maranovitch held the day for the
+moment, and while they suffered and wrought cruelties in the capital
+city, the Iarovitch suffered and wrought cruelties in the country
+outside.  So fierce and dark was the record that Europe stood aghast.
+
+The Rat folded his paper when he had finished, and sat biting his
+nails.  Having done this for a few minutes, he began to speak in his
+dramatic and hollow Secret Party whisper.
+
+"The hour has come," he said to his followers.  "The messengers must go
+forth.  They know nothing of what they go for; they only know that they
+must obey.  If they were caught and tortured, they could betray nothing
+because they know nothing but that, at certain places, they must utter
+a certain word.  They carry no papers.  All commands they must learn by
+heart.  When the sign is given, the Secret Party will know what to
+do--where to meet and where to attack."
+
+He drew plans of the battle on the flagstones, and he sketched an
+imaginary route which the two messengers were to follow.  But his
+knowledge of the map of Europe was not worth much, and he turned to
+Marco.
+
+"You know more about geography that I do.  You know more about
+everything," he said.  "I only know Italy is at the bottom and Russia
+is at one side and England's at the other.  How would the Secret
+Messengers go to Samavia?  Can you draw the countries they'd have to
+pass through?"
+
+Because any school-boy who knew the map could have done the same thing,
+Marco drew them.  He also knew the stations the Secret Two would arrive
+at and leave by when they entered a city, the streets they would walk
+through and the very uniforms they would see; but of these things he
+said nothing.  The reality his knowledge gave to the game was, however,
+a thrilling thing.  He wished he could have been free to explain to The
+Rat the things he knew.  Together they could have worked out so many
+details of travel and possible adventure that it would have been almost
+as if they had set out on their journey in fact.
+
+As it was, the mere sketching of the route fired The Rat's imagination.
+He forged ahead with the story of adventure, and filled it with such
+mysterious purport and design that the Squad at times gasped for
+breath.  In his glowing version the Secret Two entered cities by
+midnight and sang and begged at palace gates where kings driving
+outward paused to listen and were given the Sign.
+
+"Though it would not always be kings," he said.  "Sometimes it would be
+the poorest people.  Sometimes they might seem to be beggars like
+ourselves, when they were only Secret Ones disguised.  A  great lord
+might wear poor clothes and pretend to be a workman, and we should only
+know him by the signs we had learned by heart.  When we were sent to
+Samavia, we should be obliged to creep in through some back part of the
+country where no fighting was being done and where no one would attack.
+Their generals are not clever enough to protect the parts which are
+joined to friendly countries, and they have not forces enough. Two boys
+could find a way in if they thought it out."
+
+He became possessed by the idea of thinking it out on the spot. He drew
+his rough map of Samavia on the flagstones with his chalk.
+
+"Look here," he said to Marco, who, with the elated and thrilled Squad,
+bent over it in a close circle of heads. "Beltrazo is here and
+Carnolitz is here--and here is Jiardasia. Beltrazo and Jiardasia are
+friendly, though they don't take sides.  All the fighting is going on
+in the country about Melzarr.  There is no reason why they should
+prevent single travelers from coming in across the frontiers of
+friendly neighbors.  They're not fighting with the countries outside,
+they are fighting with themselves."  He paused a moment and thought.
+
+"The article in that magazine said something about a huge forest on the
+eastern frontier.  That's here.  We could wander into a forest and stay
+there until we'd planned all we wanted to do. Even the people who had
+seen us would forget about us.  What we have to do is to make people
+feel as if we were nothing--nothing."
+
+They were in the very midst of it, crowded together, leaning over,
+stretching necks and breathing quickly with excitement, when Marco
+lifted his head.  Some mysterious impulse made him do it in spite of
+himself.
+
+"There's my father!" he said.
+
+The chalk dropped, everything dropped, even Samavia.  The Rat was up
+and on his crutches as if some magic force had swung him there.  How he
+gave the command, or if he gave it at all, not even he himself knew.
+But the Squad stood at salute.
+
+Loristan was standing at the opening of the archway as Marco had stood
+that first day.  He raised his right hand in return salute and came
+forward.
+
+"I was passing the end of the street and remembered the Barracks was
+here," he explained.  "I thought I should like to look at your men,
+Captain."
+
+He smiled, but it was not a smile which made his words really a joke.
+He looked down at the chalk map drawn on the flagstones.
+
+"You know that map well," he said.  "Even I can see that it is Samavia.
+What is the Secret Party doing?"
+
+"The messengers are trying to find a way in," answered Marco.
+
+"We can get in there," said The Rat, pointing with a crutch. "There's a
+forest where we could hide and find out things."
+
+"Reconnoiter," said Loristan, looking down.  "Yes.  Two stray boys
+could be very safe in a forest.  It's a good game."
+
+That he should be there!  That he should, in his own wonderful way,
+have given them such a thing as this.  That he should have cared enough
+even to look up the Barracks, was what The Rat was thinking.  A batch
+of ragamuffins they were and nothing else, and he standing looking at
+them with his fine smile.  There was something about him which made him
+seem even splendid.  The Rat's heart thumped with startled joy.
+
+"Father," said Marco, "will you watch The Rat drill us?  I want you to
+see how well it is done."
+
+"Captain, will you do me that honor?" Loristan said to The Rat, and to
+even these words he gave the right tone, neither jesting nor too
+serious.  Because it was so right a tone, The Rat's pulses beat only
+with exultation.  This god of his had looked at his maps, he had talked
+of his plans, he had come to see the soldiers who were his work!  The
+Rat began his drill as if he had been reviewing an army.
+
+What Loristan saw done was wonderful in its mechanical exactness.
+
+The Squad moved like the perfect parts of a perfect machine. That they
+could so do it in such space, and that they should have accomplished
+such precision, was an extraordinary testimonial to the military
+efficiency and curious qualities of this one hunchbacked, vagabond
+officer.
+
+"That is magnificent!" the spectator said, when it was over. "It could
+not be better done.  Allow me to congratulate you."
+
+He shook The Rat's hand as if it had been a man's, and, after he had
+shaken it, he put his own hand lightly on the boy's shoulder and let it
+rest there as he talked a few minutes to them all.
+
+He kept his talk within the game, and his clear comprehension of it
+added a flavor which even the dullest member of the Squad was elated
+by.  Sometimes you couldn't understand toffs when they made a shy at
+being friendly, but you could understand him, and he stirred up your
+spirits.  He didn't make jokes with you, either, as if a chap had to be
+kept grinning.  After the few minutes were over, he went away.  Then
+they sat down again in their circle and talked about him, because they
+could talk and think about nothing else.  They stared at Marco
+furtively, feeling as if he were a creature of another world because he
+had lived with this man.  They stared at The Rat in a new way also. The
+wonderful-looking hand had rested on his shoulder, and he had been told
+that what he had done was magnificent.
+
+"When you said you wished your father could have seen the drill," said
+The Rat, "you took my breath away.  I'd never have had the cheek to
+think of it myself--and I'd never have dared to let you ask him, even
+if you wanted to do it.  And he came himself!  It struck me dumb."
+
+"If he came," said Marco, "it was because he wanted to see it."
+
+When they had finished talking, it was time for Marco and The Rat to go
+on their way.  Loristan had given The Rat an errand.  At a certain hour
+he was to present himself at a certain shop and receive a package.
+
+"Let him do it alone," Loristan said to Marco.  "He will be better
+pleased.  His desire is to feel that he is trusted to do things alone."
+
+So they parted at a street corner, Marco to walk back to No. 7
+Philibert Place, The Rat to execute his commission.  Marco turned into
+one of the better streets, through which he often passed on his way
+home.  It was not a fashionable quarter, but it contained some
+respectable houses in whose windows here and there were to be seen neat
+cards bearing the word "Apartments," which meant that the owner of the
+house would let to lodgers his drawing-room or sitting-room suite.
+
+As Marco walked up the street, he saw some one come out of the door of
+one of the houses and walk quickly and lightly down the pavement.  It
+was a young woman wearing an elegant though quiet dress, and a hat
+which looked as if it had been bought in Paris or Vienna.  She had, in
+fact, a slightly foreign air, and it was this, indeed, which made Marco
+look at her long enough to see that she was also a graceful and lovely
+person.  He wondered what her nationality was.  Even at some yards'
+distance he could see that she had long dark eyes and a curved mouth
+which seemed to be smiling to itself.  He thought she might be Spanish
+or Italian.
+
+He was trying to decide which of the two countries she belonged to, as
+she drew near to him, but quite suddenly the curved mouth ceased
+smiling as her foot seemed to catch in a break in the pavement, and she
+so lost her balance that she would have fallen if he had not leaped
+forward and caught her.
+
+She was light and slender, and he was a strong lad and managed to
+steady her.  An expression of sharp momentary anguish crossed her face.
+
+"I hope you are not hurt," Marco said.
+
+She bit her lip and clutched his shoulder very hard with her slim hand.
+
+"I have twisted my ankle," she answered.  "I am afraid I have twisted
+it badly.  Thank you for saving me.  I should have had a bad fall."
+
+Her long, dark eyes were very sweet and grateful.  She tried to smile,
+but there was such distress under the effort that Marco was afraid she
+must have hurt herself very much.
+
+"Can you stand on your foot at all?" he asked.
+
+"I can stand a little now," she said, "but I might not be able to stand
+in a few minutes.  I must get back to the house while I can bear to
+touch the ground with it.  I am so sorry.  I am afraid I shall have to
+ask you to go with me.  Fortunately it is only a few yards away."
+
+"Yes," Marco answered.  "I saw you come out of the house.  If you will
+lean on my shoulder, I can soon help you back.  I am glad to do it.
+Shall we try now?"
+
+She had a gentle and soft manner which would have appealed to any boy.
+Her voice was musical and her enunciation exquisite.
+
+Whether she was Spanish or Italian, it was easy to imagine her a person
+who did not always live in London lodgings, even of the better class.
+
+"If you please," she answered him.  "It is very kind of you. You are
+very strong, I see.  But I am glad to have only a few steps to go."
+
+She rested on his shoulder as well as on her umbrella, but it was plain
+that every movement gave her intense pain.  She caught her lip with her
+teeth, and Marco thought she turned white.  He could not help liking
+her.  She was so lovely and gracious and brave. He could not bear to
+see the suffering in her face.
+
+"I am so sorry!" he said, as he helped her, and his boy's voice had
+something of the wonderful sympathetic tone of Loristan's. The
+beautiful lady herself remarked it, and thought how unlike it was to
+the ordinary boy-voice.
+
+"I have a latch-key," she said, when they stood on the low step.
+
+She found the latch-key in her purse and opened the door.  Marco helped
+her into the entrance-hall.  She sat down at once in a chair near the
+hat-stand.  The place was quite plain and old-fashioned inside.
+
+"Shall I ring the front-door bell to call some one?" Marco inquired.
+
+"I am afraid that the servants are out," she answered.  "They had a
+holiday.  Will you kindly close the door?  I shall be obliged to ask
+you to help me into the sitting-room at the end of the hall.  I shall
+find all I want there--if you will kindly hand me a few things.  Some
+one may come in presently--perhaps one of the other lodgers--and, even
+if I am alone for an hour or so, it will not really matter."
+
+"Perhaps I can find the landlady," Marco suggested.  The beautiful
+person smiled.
+
+"She has gone to her sister's wedding.  That is why I was going out to
+spend the day myself.  I arranged the plan to accommodate her.  How
+good you are!  I shall be quite comfortable directly, really.  I can
+get to my easy-chair in the sitting-room now I have rested a little."
+
+Marco helped her to her feet, and her sharp, involuntary exclamation of
+pain made him wince internally.  Perhaps it was a worse sprain than she
+knew.
+
+The house was of the early-Victorian London order.  A "front lobby"
+with a dining-room on the right hand, and a "back lobby," after the
+foot of the stairs was passed, out of which opened the basement kitchen
+staircase and a sitting-room looking out on a gloomy flagged back yard
+inclosed by high walls.  The sitting-room was rather gloomy itself, but
+there were a few luxurious things among the ordinary furnishings.
+There was an easy-chair with a small table near it, and on the table
+were a silver lamp and some rather elegant trifles.  Marco helped his
+charge to the easy-chair and put a cushion from the sofa under her
+foot.  He did it very gently, and, as he rose after doing it, he saw
+that the long, soft dark eyes were looking at him in a curious way.
+
+"I must go away now," he said, "but I do not like to leave you.  May I
+go for a doctor?"
+
+"How dear you are!" she exclaimed.  "But I do not want one, thank you.
+I know exactly what to do for a sprained ankle.  And perhaps mine is
+not really a sprain.  I am going to take off my shoe and see."
+
+"May I help you?" Marco asked, and he kneeled down again and carefully
+unfastened her shoe and withdrew it from her foot.  It was a slender
+and delicate foot in a silk stocking, and she bent and gently touched
+and rubbed it.
+
+"No," she said, when she raised herself, "I do not think it is a
+sprain.  Now that the shoe is off and the foot rests on the cushion, it
+is much more comfortable, much more.  Thank you, thank you.  If you had
+not been passing I might have had a dangerous fall."
+
+"I am very glad to have been able to help you," Marco answered, with an
+air of relief.  "Now I must go, if you think you will be all right."
+
+"Don't go yet," she said, holding out her hand.  "I should like to know
+you a little better, if I may.  I am so grateful.  I should like to
+talk to you.  You have such beautiful manners for a boy," she ended,
+with a pretty, kind laugh, "and I believe I know where you got them
+from."
+
+"You are very kind to me," Marco answered, wondering if he did not
+redden a little.  "But I must go because my father will--"
+
+"Your father would let you stay and talk to me," she said, with even a
+prettier kindliness than before.  "It is from him you have inherited
+your beautiful manner.  He was once a friend of mine.  I hope he is my
+friend still, though perhaps he has forgotten me."
+
+All that Marco had ever learned and all that he had ever trained
+himself to remember, quickly rushed back upon him now, because he had a
+clear and rapidly working brain, and had not lived the ordinary boy's
+life.  Here was a beautiful lady of whom he knew nothing at all but
+that she had twisted her foot in the street and he had helped her back
+into her house.  If silence was still the order, it was not for him to
+know things or ask questions or answer them.  She might be the
+loveliest lady in the world and his father her dearest friend, but,
+even if this were so, he could best serve them both by obeying her
+friend's commands with all courtesy, and forgetting no instruction he
+had given.
+
+"I do not think my father ever forgets any one," he answered.
+
+"No, I am sure he does not," she said softly.  "Has he been to Samavia
+during the last three years?"
+
+Marco paused a moment.
+
+"Perhaps I am not the boy you think I am," he said.  "My father has
+never been to Samavia."
+
+"He has not?  But--you are Marco Loristan?"
+
+"Yes.  That is my name."
+
+Suddenly she leaned forward and her long lovely eyes filled with fire.
+
+"Then you are a Samavian, and you know of the disasters overwhelming
+us.  You know all the hideousness and barbarity of what is being done.
+Your father's son must know it all!"
+
+"Every one knows it," said Marco.
+
+"But it is your country--your own!  Your blood must burn in your veins!"
+
+Marco stood quite still and looked at her.  His eyes told whether his
+blood burned or not, but he did not speak.  His look was answer enough,
+since he did not wish to say anything.
+
+"What does your father think?  I am a Samavian myself, and I think
+night and day.  What does he think of the rumor about the descendant of
+the Lost Prince?  Does he believe it?"
+
+Marco was thinking very rapidly.  Her beautiful face was glowing with
+emotion, her beautiful voice trembled.  That she should be a Samavian,
+and love Samavia, and pour her feeling forth even to a boy, was deeply
+moving to him.  But howsoever one was moved, one must remember that
+silence was still the order.  When one was very young, one must
+remember orders first of all.
+
+"It might be only a newspaper story," he said.  "He says one cannot
+trust such things.  If you know him, you know he is very calm."
+
+"Has he taught you to be calm too?" she said pathetically. "You are
+only a boy.  Boys are not calm.  Neither are women when their hearts
+are wrung.  Oh, my Samavia!  Oh, my poor little country!  My brave,
+tortured country!" and with a sudden sob she covered her face with her
+hands.
+
+A great lump mounted to Marco's throat.  Boys could not cry, but he
+knew what she meant when he said her heart was wrung.
+
+When she lifted her head, the tears in her eyes made them softer than
+ever.
+
+"If I were a million Samavians instead of one woman, I should know what
+to do!" she cried.  "If your father were a million Samavians, he would
+know, too.  He would find Ivor's descendant, if he is on the earth, and
+he would end all this horror!"
+
+"Who would not end it if they could?" cried Marco, quite fiercely.
+
+"But men like your father, men who are Samavians, must think night and
+day about it as I do," she impetuously insisted. "You see, I cannot
+help pouring my thoughts out even to a boy--because he is a Samavian.
+Only Samavians care.  Samavia seems so little and unimportant to other
+people.  They don't even seem to know that the blood she is pouring
+forth pours from human veins and beating human hearts.  Men like your
+father must think, and plan, and  feel that they must--must find a way.
+Even a woman feels it.  Even a boy must.  Stefan Loristan cannot be
+sitting quietly at home, knowing that Samavian hearts are being shot
+through and Samavian blood poured forth.  He cannot think and say
+NOTHING!"
+
+Marco started in spite of himself.  He felt as if his father had been
+struck in the face.  How dare she say such words!  Big as he was,
+suddenly he looked bigger, and the beautiful lady saw that he did.
+
+"He is my father," he said slowly.
+
+She was a clever, beautiful person, and saw that she had made a great
+mistake.
+
+"You must forgive me," she exclaimed.  "I used the wrong words because
+I was excited.  That is the way with women.  You must see that I meant
+that I knew he was giving his heart and strength, his whole being, to
+Samavia, even though he must stay in London."
+
+She started and turned her head to listen to the sound of some one
+using the latch-key and opening the front door.  The some one came in
+with the heavy step of a man.
+
+"It is one of the lodgers," she said.  "I think it is the one who lives
+in the third floor sitting-room."
+
+"Then you won't be alone when I go," said Marco.  "I am glad some one
+has come.  I will say good-morning.  May I tell my father your name?"
+
+"Tell me that you are not angry with me for expressing myself so
+awkwardly," she said.
+
+"You couldn't have meant it.  I know that," Marco answered boyishly.
+"You couldn't."
+
+"No, I couldn't," she repeated, with the same emphasis on the words.
+
+She took a card from a silver case on the table and gave it to him.
+
+"Your father will remember my name," she said.  "I hope he will let me
+see him and tell him how you took care of me."
+
+She shook his hand warmly and let him go.  But just as he reached the
+door she spoke again.
+
+"Oh, may I ask you to do one thing more before you leave me?" she said
+suddenly.  "I hope you won't mind.  Will you run up-stairs into the
+drawing-room and bring me the purple book from the small table?  I
+shall not mind being alone if I have something to read."
+
+"A purple book?  On a small table?" said Marco.
+
+"Between the two long windows," she smiled back at him.
+
+The drawing-room of such houses as these is always to be reached by one
+short flight of stairs.
+
+Marco ran up lightly.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+MARCO DOES NOT ANSWER
+
+By the time he turned the corner of the stairs, the beautiful lady had
+risen from her seat in the back room and walked into the dining-room at
+the front.  A heavily-built, dark-bearded man was standing inside the
+door as if waiting for her.
+
+"I could do nothing with him," she said at once, in her soft voice,
+speaking quite prettily and gently, as if what she said was the most
+natural thing in the world.  "I managed the little trick of the
+sprained foot really well, and got him into the house.  He is an
+amiable boy with perfect manners, and I thought it might be easy to
+surprise him into saying more than he knew he was saying.  You can
+generally do that with children and young things.  But he either knows
+nothing or has been trained to hold his tongue.  He's not stupid, and
+he's of a high spirit.  I made a pathetic little scene about Samavia,
+because I saw he could be worked up.  It did work him up.  I tried him
+with the Lost Prince rumor; but, if there is truth in it, he does not
+or will not know.  I tried to make him lose his temper and betray
+something in defending his father, whom he thinks a god, by the way.
+But I made a mistake.  I saw that.  It's a pity.  Boys can sometimes be
+made to tell anything."  She spoke very quickly under her breath.  The
+man spoke quickly too.
+
+"Where is he?" he asked.
+
+"I sent him up to the drawing-room to look for a book.  He will look
+for a few minutes.  Listen.  He's an innocent boy.  He sees me only as
+a gentle angel.  Nothing will SHAKE him so much as to hear me tell him
+the truth suddenly.  It will be such a shock to him that perhaps you
+can do something with him then.  He may lose his hold on himself.  He's
+only a boy."
+
+"You're right," said the bearded man.  "And when he finds out he is not
+free to go, it may alarm him and we may get something worth while."
+
+"If we could find out what is true, or what Loristan thinks is true, we
+should have a clue to work from," she said.
+
+"We have not much time," the man whispered.  "We are ordered to Bosnia
+at once.  Before midnight we must be on the way."
+
+"Let us go into the other room.  He is coming."
+
+When Marco entered the room, the heavily-built man with the pointed
+dark beard was standing by the easy-chair.
+
+"I am sorry I could not find the book," he apologized.  "I looked on
+all the tables."
+
+"I shall be obliged to go and search for it myself," said the Lovely
+Person.
+
+She rose from her chair and stood up smiling.  And at her first
+movement Marco saw that she was not disabled in the least.
+
+"Your foot!" he exclaimed.  "It's better?"
+
+"It wasn't hurt," she answered, in her softly pretty voice and with her
+softly pretty smile.  "I only made you think so."
+
+It was part of her plan to spare him nothing of shock in her sudden
+transformation.  Marco felt his breath leave him for a moment.
+
+"I made you believe I was hurt because I wanted you to come into the
+house with me," she added.  "I wished to find out certain things I am
+sure you know."
+
+"They were things about Samavia," said the man.  "Your father knows
+them, and you must know something of them at least.  It is necessary
+that we should hear what you can tell us.  We shall not allow you to
+leave the house until you have answered certain questions I shall ask
+you."
+
+Then Marco began to understand.  He had heard his father speak of
+political spies, men and women who were paid to trace the people that
+certain governments or political parties desired to have followed and
+observed.  He knew it was their work to search out secrets, to disguise
+themselves and live among innocent people as if they were merely
+ordinary neighbors.
+
+They must be spies who were paid to follow his father because he was a
+Samavian and a patriot.  He did not know that they had taken the house
+two months before, and had accomplished several things during their
+apparently innocent stay in it.  They had discovered Loristan and had
+learned to know his outgoings and incomings, and also the outgoings and
+incomings of Lazarus, Marco, and The Rat.  But they meant, if possible,
+to learn other things.  If the boy could be startled and terrified into
+unconscious revelations, it might prove well worth their while to have
+played this bit of melodrama before they locked the front door behind
+them and hastily crossed the Channel, leaving their landlord to
+discover for himself that the house had been vacated.
+
+In Marco's mind strange things were happening.  They were spies! But
+that was not all.  The Lovely Person had been right when she said that
+he would receive a shock.  His strong young chest swelled.  In all his
+life, he had never come face to face with black treachery before.  He
+could not grasp it.  This gentle and friendly being with the grateful
+soft voice and grateful soft eyes had betrayed--BETRAYED him!  It
+seemed impossible to believe it, and yet the smile on her curved mouth
+told him that it was true.  When he had sprung to help her, she had
+been playing a trick!  When he had been sorry for her pain and had
+winced at the sound of her low exclamation, she had been deliberately
+laying a trap to harm him.  For a few seconds he was stunned--perhaps,
+if he had not been his father's son, he might have been stunned only.
+But he was more.  When the first seconds had passed, there arose slowly
+within him a sense of something like high, remote disdain.  It grew in
+his deep boy's eyes as he gazed directly into the pupils of the long
+soft dark ones.  His body felt as if it were growing taller.
+
+"You are very clever," he said slowly.  Then, after a second's pause,
+he added, "I was too young to know that there was any one
+so--clever--in the world."
+
+The Lovely Person laughed, but she did not laugh easily.  She spoke to
+her companion.
+
+"A grand seigneur!" she said.  "As one looks at him, one half believes
+it is true."
+
+The man with the beard was looking very angry.  His eyes were savage
+and his dark skin reddened.  Marco thought that he looked at him as if
+he hated him, and was made fierce by the mere sight of him, for some
+mysterious reason.
+
+"Two days before you left Moscow," he said, "three men came to see your
+father.  They looked like peasants.  They talked to him for more than
+an hour.  They brought with them a roll of parchment.  Is that not
+true?"
+
+"I know nothing," said Marco.
+
+"Before you went to Moscow, you were in Budapest.  You went there from
+Vienna.  You were there for three months, and your father saw many
+people.  Some of them came in the middle of the night."
+
+"I know nothing," said Marco.
+
+"You have spent your life in traveling from one country to another,"
+persisted the man.  "You know the European languages as if you were a
+courier, or the _portier_ in a Viennese hotel.  Do you not?"
+
+Marco did not answer.
+
+The Lovely Person began to speak to the man rapidly in Russian.
+
+"A spy and an adventurer Stefan Loristan has always been and always
+will be," she said.  "We know what he is.  The police in every capital
+in Europe know him as a sharper and a vagabond, as well as a spy.  And
+yet, with all his cleverness, he does not seem to have money.  What did
+he do with the bribe the Maranovitch gave him for betraying what he
+knew of the old fortress?  The boy doesn't even suspect him.  Perhaps
+it's true that he knows nothing.  Or perhaps it is true that he has
+been so ill-treated and flogged from his babyhood that he dare not
+speak. There is a cowed look in his eyes in spite of his childish
+swagger.  He's been both starved and beaten."
+
+The outburst was well done.  She did not look at Marco as she poured
+forth her words.  She spoke with the abruptness and impetuosity of a
+person whose feelings had got the better of her. If Marco was sensitive
+about his father, she felt sure that his youth would make his face
+reveal something if his tongue did not--if he understood Russian, which
+was one of the things it would be useful to find out, because it was a
+fact which would verify many other things.
+
+Marco's face disappointed her.  No change took place in it, and the
+blood did not rise to the surface of his skin.  He listened with an
+uninterested air, blank and cold and polite.  Let them say what they
+chose.
+
+The man twisted his pointed beard and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"We have a good little wine-cellar downstairs," he said.  "You are
+going down into it, and you will probably stay there for some time if
+you do not make up your mind to answer my questions.  You think that
+nothing can happen to you in a house in a London street where policemen
+walk up and down.  But you are mistaken. If you yelled now, even if any
+one chanced to hear you, they would only think you were a lad getting a
+thrashing he deserved. You can yell as much as you like in the black
+little wine-cellar, and no one will hear at all.  We only took this
+house for three months, and we shall leave it to-night without
+mentioning the fact to any one.  If we choose to leave you in the
+wine-cellar, you will wait there until somebody begins to notice that
+no one goes in and out, and chances to mention it to the
+landlord--which few people would take the trouble to do.  Did you come
+here from Moscow?"
+
+"I know nothing," said Marco.
+
+"You might remain in the good little black cellar an unpleasantly long
+time before you were found," the man went on, quite coolly.  "Do you
+remember the peasants who came to see your father two nights before you
+left?"
+
+"I know nothing," said Marco.
+
+"By the time it was discovered that the house was empty and people came
+in to make sure, you might be too weak to call out and attract their
+attention.  Did you go to Budapest from Vienna, and were you there for
+three months?" asked the inquisitor.
+
+"I know nothing," said Marco.
+
+"You are too good for the little black cellar," put in the Lovely
+Person.  "I like you.  Don't go into it!"
+
+"I know nothing," Marco answered, but the eyes which were like
+Loristan's gave her just such a look as Loristan would have given her,
+and she felt it.  It made her uncomfortable.
+
+"I don't believe you were ever ill-treated or beaten," she said.  "I
+tell you, the little black cellar will be a hard thing.  Don't go
+there!"
+
+And this time Marco said nothing, but looked at her still as if he were
+some great young noble who was very proud.
+
+He knew that every word the bearded man had spoken was true.  To cry
+out would be of no use.  If they went away and left him behind them,
+there was no knowing how many days would pass before the people of the
+neighborhood would begin to suspect that the place had been deserted,
+or how long it would be before it occurred to some one to give warning
+to the owner.  And in the meantime, neither his father nor Lazarus nor
+The Rat would have the faintest reason for guessing where he was.  And
+he would be sitting alone in the dark in the wine-cellar.  He did not
+know in the least what to do about this thing.  He only knew that
+silence was still the order.
+
+"It is a jet-black little hole," the man said.  "You might crack your
+throat in it, and no one would hear.  Did men come to talk with your
+father in the middle of the night when you were in Vienna?"
+
+"I know nothing," said Marco.
+
+"He won't tell," said the Lovely Person.  "I am sorry for this boy."
+
+"He may tell after he has sat in the good little black wine-cellar for
+a few hours," said the man with the pointed beard.  "Come with me!"
+
+He put his powerful hand on Marco's shoulder and pushed him before him.
+Marco made no struggle.  He remembered what his father had said about
+the game not being a game.  It wasn't a game now, but somehow he had a
+strong haughty feeling of not being afraid.
+
+He was taken through the hallway, toward the rear, and down the
+commonplace flagged steps which led to the basement.  Then he was
+marched through a narrow, ill-lighted, flagged passage to a door in the
+wall.  The door was not locked and stood a trifle ajar. His companion
+pushed it farther open and showed part of a wine-cellar which was so
+dark that it was only the shelves nearest the door that Marco could
+faintly see.  His captor pushed him in and shut the door.  It was as
+black a hole as he had described. Marco stood still in the midst of
+darkness like black velvet. His guard turned the key.
+
+"The peasants who came to your father in Moscow spoke Samavian and were
+big men.  Do you remember them?" he asked from outside.
+
+"I know nothing," answered Marco.
+
+"You are a young fool," the voice replied.  "And I believe you know
+even more than we thought.  Your father will be greatly troubled when
+you do not come home.  I will come back to see you in a few hours, if
+it is possible.  I will tell you, however, that I have had disturbing
+news which might make it necessary for us to leave the house in a
+hurry.  I might not have time to come down here again before leaving."
+
+Marco stood with his back against a bit of wall and remained silent.
+
+There was stillness for a few minutes, and then there was to be heard
+the sound of footsteps marching away.
+
+When the last distant echo died all was quite silent, and Marco drew a
+long breath.  Unbelievable as it may appear, it was in one sense almost
+a breath of relief.  In the rush of strange feeling which had swept
+over him when he found himself facing the astounding situation
+up-stairs, it had not been easy to realize what his thoughts really
+were; there were so many of them and they came so fast.  How could he
+quite believe the evidence of his eyes and ears?  A few minutes, only a
+few minutes, had changed his prettily grateful and kindly acquaintance
+into a subtle and cunning creature whose love for Samavia had been part
+of a plot to harm it and to harm his father.
+
+What did she and her companion want to do--what could they do if they
+knew the things they were trying to force him to tell?
+
+Marco braced his back against the wall stoutly.
+
+"What will it be best to think about first?"
+
+This he said because one of the most absorbingly fascinating things he
+and his father talked about together was the power of the thoughts
+which human beings allow to pass through their minds--the strange
+strength of them.  When they talked of this, Marco felt as if he were
+listening to some marvelous Eastern story of magic which was true.  In
+Loristan's travels, he had visited the far Oriental countries, and he
+had seen and learned many things which seemed marvels, and they had
+taught him deep thinking.  He had known, and reasoned through days with
+men who believed that when they desired a thing, clear and exalted
+thought would bring it to them.  He had discovered why they believed
+this, and had learned to understand their profound arguments.
+
+What he himself believed, he had taught Marco quite simply from his
+childhood.  It was this: he himself--Marco, with the strong boy-body,
+the thick mat of black hair, and the patched clothes--was the magician.
+He held and waved his wand himself--and his wand was his own Thought.
+When special privation or anxiety beset them, it was their rule to say,
+"What will it be best to think about first?" which was Marco's reason
+for saying it to himself now as he stood in the darkness which was like
+black velvet.
+
+He waited a few minutes for the right thing to come to him.
+
+"I will think of the very old hermit who lived on the ledge of the
+mountains in India and who let my father talk to him through all one
+night," he said at last.  This had been a wonderful story and one of
+his favorites.  Loristan had traveled far to see this ancient Buddhist,
+and what he had seen and heard during that one night had made changes
+in his life.  The part of the story which came back to Marco now was
+these words:
+
+"Let pass through thy mind, my son, only the image thou wouldst desire
+to see a truth.  Meditate only upon the wish of thy heart, seeing first
+that it can injure no man and is not ignoble.  Then will it take
+earthly form and draw near to thee.  This is the law of that which
+creates."
+
+"I am not afraid," Marco said aloud.  "I shall not be afraid. In some
+way I shall get out."
+
+This was the image he wanted most to keep steadily in his mind--that
+nothing could make him afraid, and that in some way he would get out of
+the wine-cellar.
+
+He thought of this for some minutes, and said the words over several
+times.  He felt more like himself when he had done it.
+
+"When my eyes are accustomed to the darkness, I shall see if there is
+any little glimmer of light anywhere," he said next.
+
+He waited with patience, and it seemed for some time that he saw no
+glimmer at all.  He put out his hands on either side of him, and found
+that, on the side of the wall against which he stood, there seemed to
+be no shelves.  Perhaps the cellar had been used for other purposes
+than the storing of wine, and, if that was true, there might be
+somewhere some opening for ventilation.  The air was not bad, but then
+the door had not been shut tightly when the man opened it.
+
+"I am not afraid," he repeated.  "I shall not be afraid.  In some way I
+shall get out."
+
+He would not allow himself to stop and think about his father waiting
+for his return.  He knew that would only rouse his emotions and weaken
+his courage.  He began to feel his way carefully along the wall.  It
+reached farther than he had thought it would.
+
+The cellar was not so very small.  He crept round it gradually, and,
+when he had crept round it, he made his way across it, keeping his
+hands extended before him and setting down each foot cautiously.  Then
+he sat down on the stone floor and thought again, and what he thought
+was of the things the old Buddhist had told his father, and that there
+was a way out of this place for him, and he should somehow find it,
+and, before too long a time had passed, be walking in the street again.
+
+It was while he was thinking in this way that he felt a startling
+thing.  It seemed almost as if something touched him.  It made him
+jump, though the touch was so light and soft that it was scarcely a
+touch at all, in fact he could not be sure that he had not imagined it.
+He stood up and leaned against the wall again. Perhaps the suddenness
+of his movement placed him at some angle he had not reached before, or
+perhaps his eyes had become more completely accustomed to the darkness,
+for, as he turned his head to listen, he made a discovery: above the
+door there was a place where the velvet blackness was not so dense.
+There was something like a slit in the wall, though, as it did not open
+upon daylight but upon the dark passage, it was not light it admitted
+so much as a lesser shade of darkness.  But even that was better than
+nothing, and Marco drew another long breath.
+
+"That is only the beginning.  I shall find a way out," he said.
+
+"I SHALL."
+
+He remembered reading a story of a man who, being shut by accident in a
+safety vault, passed through such terrors before his release that he
+believed he had spent two days and nights in the place when he had been
+there only a few hours.
+
+"His thoughts did that.  I must remember.  I will sit down again and
+begin thinking of all the pictures in the cabinet rooms of the Art
+History Museum in Vienna.  It will take some time, and then there are
+the others," he said.
+
+It was a good plan.  While he could keep his mind upon the game which
+had helped him to pass so many dull hours, he could think of nothing
+else, as it required close attention--and perhaps, as the day went on,
+his captors would begin to feel that it was not safe to run the risk of
+doing a thing as desperate as this would be.  They might think better
+of it before they left the house at least.  In any case, he had learned
+enough from Loristan to realize that only harm could come from letting
+one's mind run wild.
+
+"A mind is either an engine with broken and flying gear, or a giant
+power under control," was the thing they knew.
+
+He had walked in imagination through three of the cabinet rooms and was
+turning mentally into a fourth, when he found himself starting again
+quite violently. This time it was not at a touch but at a sound. Surely
+it was a sound. And it was in the cellar with him. But it was the
+tiniest possible noise, a ghost of a squeak and a suggestion of a
+movement. It came from the opposite side of the cellar, the side where
+the shelves were. He looked across in the darkness, and in the darkness
+saw a light which there could be no mistake about. It _was_ a light, two
+lights indeed, two round phosphorescent greenish balls. They were two
+eyes staring at him. And then he heard another sound. Not a squeak this
+time, but something so homely and comfortable that he actually burst out
+laughing. It was a cat purring, a nice warm cat! And she was curled up
+on one of the lower shelves purring to some new-born kittens. He knew
+there were kittens because it was plain now what the tiny squeak had
+been, and it was made plainer by the fact that he heard another much
+more distinct one and then another. They had all been asleep when he had
+come into the cellar. If the mother had been awake, she had probably
+been very much afraid. Afterward she had perhaps come down from her
+shelf to investigate, and had passed close to him. The feeling of relief
+which came upon him at this queer and simple discovery was wonderful. It
+was so natural and comfortable an every-day thing that it seemed to make
+spies and criminals unreal, and only natural things possible. With a
+mother cat purring away among her kittens, even a dark wine-cellar was
+not so black. He got up and kneeled by the shelf. The greenish eyes did
+not shine in an unfriendly way. He could feel that the owner of them was
+a nice big cat, and he counted four round little balls of kittens. It
+was a curious delight to stroke the soft fur and talk to the mother cat.
+She answered with purring, as if she liked the sense of friendly human
+nearness. Marco laughed to himself.
+
+
+
+"It's queer what a difference it makes!" he said.  "It is almost like
+finding a window."
+
+The mere presence of these harmless living things was companionship.
+He sat down close to the low shelf and listened to the motherly
+purring, now and then speaking and putting out his hand to touch the
+warm fur.  The phosphorescent light in the green eyes was a comfort in
+itself.
+
+"We shall get out of this--both of us," he said.  "We shall not be here
+very long, Puss-cat."
+
+He was not troubled by the fear of being really hungry for some time.
+He was so used to eating scantily from necessity, and to passing long
+hours without food during his journeys, that he had proved to himself
+that fasting is not, after all, such a desperate ordeal as most people
+imagine.  If you begin by expecting to feel famished and by counting
+the hours between your meals, you will begin to be ravenous.  But he
+knew better.
+
+The time passed slowly; but he had known it would pass slowly, and he
+had made up his mind not to watch it nor ask himself questions about
+it.  He was not a restless boy, but, like his father, could stand or
+sit or lie still.  Now and then he could hear distant rumblings of
+carts and vans passing in the street. There was a certain degree of
+companionship in these also.  He kept his place near the cat and his
+hand where he could occasionally touch her.  He could lift his eyes now
+and then to the place where the dim glimmer of something like light
+showed itself.
+
+Perhaps the stillness, perhaps the darkness, perhaps the purring of the
+mother cat, probably all three, caused his thoughts to begin to travel
+through his mind slowly and more slowly.  At last they ceased and he
+fell asleep.  The mother cat purred for some time, and then fell asleep
+herself.
+
+
+
+XV
+
+A SOUND IN A DREAM
+
+Marco slept peacefully for several hours.  There was nothing to awaken
+him during that time.  But at the end of it, his sleep was penetrated
+by a definite sound.  He had dreamed of hearing a voice at a distance,
+and, as he tried in his dream to hear what it said, a brief metallic
+ringing sound awakened him outright. It was over by the time he was
+fully conscious, and at once he realized that the voice of his dream
+had been a real one, and was speaking still.  It was the Lovely
+Person's voice, and she was speaking rapidly, as if she were in the
+greatest haste.  She was speaking through the door.
+
+"You will have to search for it," was all he heard.  "I have not  a
+moment!"  And, as he listened to her hurriedly departing feet, there
+came to him with their hastening echoes the words, "You are too good
+for the cellar.  I like you!"
+
+He sprang to the door and tried it, but it was still locked.  The feet
+ran up the cellar steps and through the upper hall, and the front door
+closed with a bang.  The two people had gone away, as they had
+threatened.  The voice had been excited as well as hurried.  Something
+had happened to frighten them, and they had left the house in great
+haste.
+
+Marco turned and stood with his back against the door.  The cat had
+awakened and she was gazing at him with her green eyes.  She began to
+purr encouragingly.  She really helped Marco to think. He was thinking
+with all his might and trying to remember.
+
+"What did she come for?  She came for something," he said to himself.
+"What did she say?  I only heard part of it, because I was asleep.  The
+voice in the dream was part of it.  The part I heard was, 'You will
+have to search for it.  I have not a moment.'  And as she ran down the
+passage, she called back, 'You are too good for the cellar.  I like
+you.'"  He said the words over and over again and tried to recall
+exactly how they had sounded, and also to recall the voice which had
+seemed to be part of a dream but had been a real thing.  Then he began
+to try his favorite experiment.  As he often tried the experiment of
+commanding his mind to go to sleep, so he frequently experimented on
+commanding it to work for him--to help him to remember, to understand,
+and to argue about things clearly.
+
+"Reason this out for me," he said to it now, quite naturally and
+calmly.  "Show me what it means."
+
+What did she come for?  It was certain that she was in too great a
+hurry to be able, without a reason, to spare the time to come. What was
+the reason?  She had said she liked him.  Then she came because she
+liked him.  If she liked him, she came to do something which was not
+unfriendly.  The only good thing she could do for him was something
+which would help him to get out of the cellar.  She had said twice that
+he was too good for the cellar.  If he had  been awake, he would have
+heard all she said and have understood what she wanted him to do or
+meant to do for him.  He must not stop even to think of that.  The
+first words he had heard--what had they been?  They had been less clear
+to him than her last because he had heard them only as he was
+awakening. But he thought he was sure that they had been, "You will
+have to search for it."  Search for it.  For what?  He thought and
+thought.  What must he search for?
+
+He sat down on the floor of the cellar and held his head in his hands,
+pressing his eyes so hard that curious lights floated before them.
+
+"Tell me!  Tell me!" he said to that part of his being which the
+Buddhist anchorite had said held all knowledge and could tell a man
+everything if he called upon it in the right spirit.
+
+And in a few minutes, he recalled something which seemed so much a part
+of his sleep that he had not been sure that he had not dreamed it.  The
+ringing sound!  He sprang up on his feet with a little gasping shout.
+The ringing sound!  It had been the ring of metal, striking as it fell.
+Anything made of metal might have sounded like that.  She had thrown
+something made of metal into the cellar.  She had thrown it through the
+slit in the bricks near the door.  She liked him, and said he was too
+good for his prison.  She had thrown to him the only thing which could
+set him free.  She had thrown him the KEY of the cellar!
+
+For a few minutes the feelings which surged through him were so full of
+strong excitement that they set his brain in a whirl.  He knew what his
+father would say--that would not do.  If he was to think, he must hold
+himself still and not let even joy overcome him.  The key was in the
+black little cellar, and he must find it in the dark.  Even the woman
+who liked him enough to give him a chance of freedom knew that she must
+not open the door and let him out.  There must be a delay.  He would
+have to find the key himself, and it would be sure to take time.  The
+chances were that they would be at a safe enough distance before he
+could get out.
+
+"I will kneel down and crawl on my hands and knees," he said.
+
+"I will crawl back and forth and go over every inch of the floor with
+my hands until I find it.  If I go over every inch, I shall find it."
+
+So he kneeled down and began to crawl, and the cat watched him and
+purred.
+
+"We shall get out, Puss-cat," he said to her.  "I told you we should."
+
+He crawled from the door to the wall at the side of the shelves, and
+then he crawled back again.  The key might be quite a small one, and it
+was necessary that he should pass his hands over every inch, as he had
+said.  The difficulty was to be sure, in the darkness, that he did not
+miss an inch.  Sometimes he was not sure enough, and then he went over
+the ground again.  He crawled backward and forward, and he crawled
+forward and backward.  He crawled crosswise and lengthwise, he crawled
+diagonally, and he crawled round and round.  But he did not find the
+key.  If he had had only a little light, but he had none.  He was so
+absorbed in his search that he did not know he had been engaged in it
+for several hours, and that it was the middle of the night.  But at
+last he realized that he must stop for a rest, because his knees were
+beginning to feel bruised, and the skin of his hands was sore as a
+result of the rubbing on the flags.  The cat and her kittens had gone
+to sleep and awakened again two or three times.
+
+"But it is somewhere!" he said obstinately.  "It is inside the cellar.
+I heard something fall which was made of metal.  That was the ringing
+sound which awakened me."
+
+When he stood up, he found his body ached and he was very tired. He
+stretched himself and exercised his arms and legs.
+
+"I wonder how long I have been crawling about," he thought. "But the
+key is in the cellar.  It is in the cellar."
+
+He sat down near the cat and her family, and, laying his arm on the
+shelf above her, rested his head on it.  He began to think of another
+experiment.
+
+"I am so tired, I believe I shall go to sleep again.  'Thought which
+Knows All'"--he was quoting something the hermit had said to Loristan
+in their midnight talk--"Thought which Knows All! Show me this little
+thing.  Lead me to it when I awake."
+
+And he did fall asleep, sound and fast.
+
+
+He did not know that he slept all the rest of the night.  But he did.
+When he awakened, it was daylight in the streets, and the milk-carts
+were beginning to jingle about, and the early postmen were knocking big
+double-knocks at front doors.  The cat may have heard the milk-carts,
+but the actual fact was that she herself was hungry and wanted to go in
+search of food.  Just as Marco lifted his head from his arm and sat up,
+she jumped down from her shelf and went to the door.  She had expected
+to find it ajar as it had been before.  When she found it shut, she
+scratched at it and was disturbed to find this of no use.  Because she
+knew Marco was in the cellar, she felt she had a friend who would
+assist her, and she miauled appealingly.
+
+This reminded Marco of the key.
+
+"I will when I have found it," he said.  "It is inside the cellar."
+
+The cat miauled again, this time very anxiously indeed.  The kittens
+heard her and began to squirm and squeak piteously.
+
+"Lead me to this little thing," said Marco, as if speaking to Something
+in the darkness about him, and he got up.
+
+He put his hand out toward the kittens, and it touched something lying
+not far from them.  It must have been lying near his elbow all night
+while he slept.
+
+It was the key!  It had fallen upon the shelf, and not on the floor at
+all.
+
+Marco picked it up and then stood still a moment.  He made the sign of
+the cross.
+
+Then he found his way to the door and fumbled until he found the
+keyhole and got the key into it.  Then he turned it and pushed the door
+open--and the cat ran out into the passage before him.
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE RAT TO THE RESCUE
+
+Marco walked through the passage and into the kitchen part of the
+basement.  The doors were all locked, and they were solid doors. He ran
+up the flagged steps and found the door at the top shut and bolted
+also, and that too was a solid door.  His jailers had plainly made sure
+that it should take time enough for him to make his way into the world,
+even after he got out of the wine-cellar.
+
+The cat had run away to some part of the place where mice were
+plentiful.  Marco was by this time rather gnawingly hungry himself.  If
+he could get into the kitchen, he might find some fragments of food
+left in a cupboard; but there was no moving the locked door.  He tried
+the outlet into the area, but that was immovable.  Then he saw near it
+a smaller door.  It was evidently the entrance to the coal-cellar under
+the pavement. This was proved by the fact that trodden coal-dust marked
+the flagstones, and near it stood a scuttle with coal in it.
+
+This coal-scuttle was the thing which might help him!  Above the area
+door was a small window which was supposed to light the entry.  He
+could not reach it, and, if he reached it, he could not open it.  He
+could throw pieces of coal at the glass and break it, and then he could
+shout for help when people passed by. They might not notice or
+understand where the shouts came from at first, but, if he kept them
+up, some one's attention would be attracted in the end.
+
+He picked a large-sized solid piece of coal out of the heap in the
+scuttle, and threw it with all his force against the grimy glass.  It
+smashed through and left a big hole.  He threw another, and the entire
+pane was splintered and fell outside into the area.  Then he saw it was
+broad daylight, and guessed that he had been shut up a good many hours.
+There was plenty of coal in the scuttle, and he had a strong arm and a
+good aim.  He smashed pane after pane, until only the framework
+remained.  When he shouted, there would be nothing between his voice
+and the street. No one could see him, but if he could do something
+which would make people slacken their pace to listen, then he could
+call out that he was in the basement of the house with the broken
+window.
+
+"Hallo!" he shouted.  "Hallo!  Hallo!  Hallo!  Hallo!"
+
+But vehicles were passing in the street, and the passers-by were
+absorbed in their own business.  If they heard a sound, they did not
+stop to inquire into it.
+
+"Hallo!  Hallo!  I am locked in!" yelled Marco, at the topmost power of
+his lungs.  "Hallo!  Hallo!"
+
+After half an hour's shouting, he began to think that he was wasting
+his strength.
+
+"They only think it is a boy shouting," he said.  "Some one will notice
+in time.  At night, when the streets are quiet, I might make  a
+policeman hear.  But my father does not know where I am.  He will be
+trying to find me--so will Lazarus--so will The Rat.  One of them might
+pass through this very street, as I did. What can I do!"
+
+A new idea flashed light upon him.
+
+"I will begin to sing a Samavian song, and I will sing it very loud.
+People nearly always stop a moment to listen to music and find out
+where it comes from.  And if any of my own people came near, they would
+stop at once--and now and then I will shout for help."
+
+Once when they had stopped to rest on Hampstead Heath, he had sung a
+valiant Samavian song for The Rat.  The Rat had wanted to hear how he
+would sing when they went on their secret journey. He wanted him to
+sing for the Squad some day, to make the thing seem real.  The Rat had
+been greatly excited, and had begged for the song often.  It was a
+stirring martial thing with a sort of trumpet call of a chorus.
+Thousands of Samavians had sung it together on their way to the
+battle-field, hundreds of years ago.
+
+He drew back a step or so, and, putting his hands on his hips, began to
+sing, throwing his voice upward that it might pass through the broken
+window.  He had a splendid and vibrant young voice, though he knew
+nothing of its fine quality.  Just now he wanted only to make it loud.
+
+In the street outside very few people were passing.  An irritable old
+gentleman who was taking an invalid walk quite jumped with annoyance
+when the song suddenly trumpeted forth.  Boys had no right to yell in
+that manner.  He hurried his step to get away from the sound.  Two or
+three other people glanced over their shoulders, but had not time to
+loiter.  A few others listened with pleasure as they drew near and
+passed on.
+
+"There's a boy with a fine voice," said one.
+
+"What's he singing?" said his companion.  "It sounds foreign."
+
+"Don't know," was the reply as they went by.  But at last a young man
+who was a music-teacher, going to give a lesson, hesitated and looked
+about him.  The song was very loud and spirited just at this moment.
+The music-teacher could not understand where it came from, and paused
+to find out.  The fact that he stopped attracted the attention of the
+next comer, who also paused.
+
+"Who's singing?" he asked.  "Where is he singing?"
+
+"I can't make out," the music-teacher laughed.  "Sounds as if it came
+out of the ground."
+
+And, because it was queer that a song should seem to be coming out of
+the ground, a costermonger stopped, and then a little boy, and then a
+workingwoman, and then a lady.
+
+There was quite a little group when another person turned the corner of
+the street.  He was a shabby boy on crutches, and he had a frantic look
+on his face.
+
+And Marco actually heard, as he drew near to the group, the tap-tap-tap
+of crutches.
+
+"It might be," he thought.  "It might be!"
+
+And he sang the trumpet-call of the chorus as if it were meant to reach
+the skies, and he sang it again and again.  And at the end of it
+shouted, "Hallo!  Hallo!  Hallo!  Hallo!  Hallo!"
+
+The Rat swung himself into the group and looked as if he had gone
+crazy.  He hurled himself against the people.
+
+"Where is he!  Where is he!" he cried, and he poured out some
+breathless words; it was almost as if he sobbed them out.
+
+"We've been looking for him all night!" he shouted.  "Where is he!
+Marco!  Marco!  No one else sings it but him.  Marco! Marco!"  And out
+of the area, as it seemed, came a shout of answer.
+
+"Rat!  Rat!  I'm here in the cellar--locked in.  I'm here!" and a big
+piece of coal came hurtling through the broken window and fell crashing
+on the area flags.  The Rat got down the steps into the area as if he
+had not been on crutches but on legs, and banged on the door, shouting
+back:
+
+"Marco!  Marco!  Here I am!  Who locked you in?  How can I get the door
+open?"
+
+Marco was close against the door inside.  It was The Rat!  It was
+The Rat!  And he would be in the street again in a few minutes. "Call a
+policeman!" he shouted through the keyhole.  "The people locked me in
+on purpose and took away the keys."
+
+Then the group of lookers-on began to get excited and press against the
+area railings and ask questions.  They could not understand what had
+happened to cause the boy with the crutches to look as if he were crazy
+with terror and relief at the same time.
+
+And the little boy ran delightedly to fetch a policeman, and found one
+in the next street, and, with some difficulty, persuaded him that it
+was his business to come and get a door open in an empty house where a
+boy who was a street singer had got locked up in a cellar.
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+"IT IS A VERY BAD SIGN"
+
+The policeman was not so much excited as out of temper.  He did not
+know what Marco knew or what The Rat knew.  Some common lad had got
+himself locked up in a house, and some one would have to go to the
+landlord and get a key from him.  He had no intention of laying himself
+open to the law by breaking into a private house with his truncheon, as
+The Rat expected him to do.
+
+"He got himself in through some of his larks, and he'll have to wait
+till he's got out without smashing locks," he growled, shaking the area
+door.  "How did you get in there?" he shouted.
+
+It was not easy for Marco to explain through a keyhole that he had come
+in to help a lady who had met with an accident.  The policeman thought
+this mere boy's talk.  As to the rest of the story, Marco knew that it
+could not be related at all without saying things which could not be
+explained to any one but his father.  He quickly made up his mind that
+he must let it be believed that he had been locked in by some queer
+accident.  It must be supposed that the people had not remembered, in
+their haste, that he had not yet left the house.
+
+When the young clerk from the house agency came with the keys, he was
+much disturbed and bewildered after he got inside.
+
+"They've made a bolt of it," he said.  "That happens now and then, but
+there's something queer about this.  What did they lock these doors in
+the basement for, and the one on the stairs?  What did they say to
+you?" he asked Marco, staring at him suspiciously.
+
+"They said they were obliged to go suddenly," Marco answered.
+
+"What were you doing in the basement?"
+
+"The man took me down."
+
+"And left you there and bolted?  He must have been in a hurry."
+
+"The lady said they had not a moment's time."
+
+"Her ankle must have got well in short order," said the young man.
+
+"I knew nothing about them," answered Marco.  "I had never seen them
+before."
+
+"The police were after them," the young man said.  "That's what I
+should say.  They paid three months' rent in advance, and they have
+only been here two.  Some of these foreign spies lurking about London;
+that's what they were."
+
+The Rat had not waited until the keys arrived.  He had swung himself at
+his swiftest pace back through the streets to No. 7 Philibert Place.
+People turned and stared at his wild pale face as he almost shot past
+them.
+
+He had left himself barely breath enough to speak with when he reached
+the house and banged on the door with his crutch to save time.
+
+Both Loristan and Lazarus came to answer.
+
+The Rat leaned against the door gasping.
+
+"He's found!  He's all right!" he panted.  "Some one had locked him in
+a house and left him.  They've sent for the keys. I'm going back.
+Brandon Terrace, No. 10."
+
+Loristan and Lazarus exchanged glances.  Both of them were at the
+moment as pale as The Rat.
+
+"Help him into the house," said Loristan to Lazarus.  "He must stay
+here and rest.  We will go."  The Rat knew it was an order.
+
+He did not like it, but he obeyed.
+
+"This is a bad sign, Master," said Lazarus, as they went out together.
+
+"It is a very bad one," answered Loristan.
+
+"God of the Right, defend us!" Lazarus groaned.
+
+"Amen!" said Loristan.  "Amen!"
+
+The group had become a small crowd by the time they reached Brandon
+Terrace.  Marco had not found it easy to leave the place because he was
+being questioned.  Neither the policeman nor the agent's clerk seemed
+willing to relinquish the idea that he could give them some information
+about the absconding pair.
+
+The entrance of Loristan produced its usual effect.  The agent's clerk
+lifted his hat, and the policeman stood straight and made salute.
+Neither of them realized that the tall man's clothes were worn and
+threadbare.  They felt only that a personage was before them, and that
+it was not possible to question his air of absolute and serene
+authority.  He laid his hand on Marco's shoulder and held it there as
+he spoke.  When Marco looked up at him and felt the closeness of his
+touch, it seemed as if it were an embrace--as if he had caught him to
+his breast.
+
+"My boy knew nothing of these people," he said.  "That I can guarantee.
+He had seen neither of them before.  His entering the house was the
+result of no boyish trick.  He has been shut up in this place for
+nearly twenty-four hours and has had no food.  I must take him home.
+This is my address."  He handed the young man a card.
+
+Then they went home together, and all the way to Philibert  Place
+Loristan's firm hand held closely to his boy's shoulder as if he could
+not endure to let him go.  But on the way they said very little.
+
+"Father," Marco said, rather hoarsely, when they first got away from
+the house in the terrace, "I can't talk well in the street. For one
+thing, I am so glad to be with you again.  It seemed as if--it might
+turn out badly."
+
+"Beloved one," Loristan said the words in their own Samavian, "until
+you are fed and at rest, you shall not talk at all."
+
+Afterward, when he was himself again and was allowed to tell his
+strange story, Marco found that both his father and Lazarus had at once
+had suspicions when he had not returned.  They knew no ordinary event
+could have kept him.  They were sure that he must have been detained
+against his will, and they were also sure that, if he had been so
+detained, it could only have been for reasons they could guess at.
+
+"This was the card that she gave me," Marco said, and he handed it to
+Loristan.  "She said you would remember the name." Loristan looked at
+the lettering with an ironic half-smile.
+
+"I never heard it before," he replied.  "She would not send me a name I
+knew.  Probably I have never seen either of them.  But I know the work
+they do.  They are spies of the Maranovitch, and suspect that I know
+something of the Lost Prince.  They believed they could terrify you
+into saying things which would be a clue. Men and women of their class
+will use desperate means to gain their end."
+
+"Might they--have left me as they threatened?" Marco asked him.
+
+"They would scarcely have dared, I think.  Too great a hue and cry
+would have been raised by the discovery of such a crime.  Too many
+detectives would have been set at work to track them."
+
+But the look in his father's eyes as he spoke, and the pressure of the
+hand he stretched out to touch him, made Marco's heart thrill.  He had
+won a new love and trust from his father.  When they sat together and
+talked that night, they were closer to each other's souls than they had
+ever been before.
+
+They sat in the firelight, Marco upon the worn hearth-rug, and they
+talked about Samavia--about the war and its heart-rending struggles,
+and about how they might end.
+
+"Do you think that some time we might be exiles no longer?" the boy
+said wistfully.  "Do you think we might go there together--and see
+it--you and I, Father?"
+
+There was a silence for a while.  Loristan looked into the sinking bed
+of red coal.
+
+"For years--for years I have made for my soul that image," he said
+slowly.  "When I think of my friend on the side of the Himalayan
+Mountains, I say, 'The Thought which Thought the World may give us that
+also!'"
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+"CITIES AND FACES"
+
+The hours of Marco's unexplained absence had been terrible to Loristan
+and to Lazarus.  They had reason for fears which it was not possible
+for them to express.  As the night drew on, the fears took stronger
+form.  They forgot the existence of The Rat, who sat biting his nails
+in the bedroom, afraid to go out lest he might lose the chance of being
+given some errand to do but also afraid to show himself lest he should
+seem in the way.
+
+"I'll stay upstairs," he had said to Lazarus.  "If you just whistle,
+I'll come."
+
+The anguish he passed through as the day went by and Lazarus went out
+and came in and he himself received no orders, could  not have been
+expressed in any ordinary words.  He writhed in his chair, he bit his
+nails to the quick, he wrought himself into a frenzy of misery and
+terror by recalling one by one all the crimes his knowledge of London
+police-courts supplied him with. He was doing nothing, yet he dare not
+leave his post.  It was his post after all, though they had not given
+it to him.  He must do something.
+
+In the middle of the night Loristan opened the door of the back
+sitting-room, because he knew he must at least go upstairs and throw
+himself upon his bed even if he could not sleep.
+
+He started back as the door opened.  The Rat was sitting huddled on the
+floor near it with his back against the wall.  He had a piece of paper
+in his hand and his twisted face was a weird thing to see.
+
+"Why are you here?" Loristan asked.
+
+"I've been here three hours, sir.  I knew you'd have to come out
+sometime and I thought you'd let me speak to you.  Will you--will you?"
+
+"Come into the room," said Loristan.  "I will listen to anything you
+want to say.  What have you been drawing on that paper?" as The Rat got
+up in the wonderful way he had taught himself.  The paper was covered
+with lines which showed it to be another of his plans.
+
+"Please look at it," he begged.  "I daren't go out lest you might want
+to send me somewhere.  I daren't sit doing nothing.  I began
+remembering and thinking things out.  I put down all the streets and
+squares he MIGHT have walked through on his way home. I've not missed
+one.  If you'll let me start out and walk through every one of them and
+talk to the policemen on the beat and look at the houses--and think out
+things and work at them--I'll not miss an inch--I'll not miss a brick
+or a flagstone--I'll--"  His voice had a hard sound but it shook, and
+he himself shook.
+
+Loristan touched his arm gently.
+
+"You are a good comrade," he said.  "It is well for us that you are
+here.  You have thought of a good thing."
+
+"May I go now?" said The Rat.
+
+"This moment, if you are ready," was the answer.  The Rat swung himself
+to the door.
+
+Loristan said to him a thing which was like the sudden lighting of a
+great light in the very center of his being.
+
+"You are one of us.  Now that I know you are doing this I may even
+sleep.  You are one of us."  And it was because he was following this
+plan that The Rat had turned into Brandon Terrace and heard the
+Samavian song ringing out from the locked basement of Number 10.
+
+"Yes, he is one of us," Loristan said, when he told this part of the
+story to Marco as they sat by the fire.  "I had not been sure before.
+I wanted to be very sure.  Last night I saw into the depths of him and
+KNEW.  He may be trusted."
+
+From that day The Rat held a new place.  Lazarus himself, strangely
+enough, did not resent his holding it.  The boy was allowed to be near
+Loristan as he had never dared to hope to be near.  It was not merely
+that he was allowed to serve him in many ways, but he was taken into
+the intimacy which had before enclosed only the three.  Loristan talked
+to him as he talked to Marco, drawing him within the circle which held
+so much that was comprehended without speech.  The Rat knew that he was
+being trained and observed and he realized it with exaltation.  His
+idol had said that he was "one of them" and he was watching and putting
+him to tests so that he might find out how much he was one of them.
+And he was doing it for some grave reason of his own.  This thought
+possessed The Rat's whole mind.  Perhaps he was wondering if he should
+find out that he was to be trusted, as a rock is to be trusted.  That
+he should even think that perhaps he might find that he was like a
+rock, was inspiration enough.
+
+"Sir," he said one night when they were alone together, because The Rat
+had been copying a road-map.  His voice was very low--"do you think
+that--sometime--you could trust me as you trust Marco?  Could it ever
+be like that--ever?"
+
+"The time has come," and Loristan's voice was almost as low as his own,
+though strong and deep feeling underlay its quiet--"the time has come
+when I can trust you with Marco--to be his companion--to care for him,
+to stand by his side at any moment. And Marco is--Marco is my son."
+That was enough to uplift The Rat to the skies.  But there was more to
+follow.
+
+"It may not be long before it may be his part to do work in which he
+will need a comrade who can be trusted--as a rock can be trusted."
+
+He had said the very words The Rat's own mind had given to him.
+
+"A Rock!  A Rock!" the boy broke out.  "Let me show you, sir. Send me
+with him for a servant.  The crutches are nothing. You've seen that
+they're as good as legs, haven't you?  I've trained myself."
+
+"I know, I know, dear lad."  Marco had told him all of it.  He gave him
+a gracious smile which seemed as if it held a sort of fine secret.
+"You shall go as his aide-de-camp.  It shall be part of the game."
+
+He had always encouraged "the game," and during the last weeks had even
+found time to help them in their plannings for the mysterious journey
+of the Secret Two.  He had been so interested that once or twice he had
+called on Lazarus as an old soldier and Samavian to give his opinions
+of certain routes--and of the customs and habits of people in towns and
+villages by the way. Here they would find simple pastoral folk who
+danced, sang after their day's work, and who would tell all they knew;
+here they would find those who served or feared the Maranovitch and who
+would not talk at all.  In one place they would meet with hospitality,
+in another with unfriendly suspicion of all strangers.  Through talk
+and stories The Rat began to know the country almost as Marco knew it.
+That was part of the game too--because it was always "the game," they
+called it.  Another part was The Rat's training of his memory, and
+bringing home his proofs of advance at night when he returned from his
+walk and could describe, or recite, or roughly sketch all he had seen
+in his passage from one place to another.  Marco's part was to recall
+and sketch faces.  Loristan one night gave him a number of photographs
+of people to commit to memory.  Under each face was written the name of
+a place.
+
+"Learn these faces," he said, "until you would know each one of them at
+once wheresoever you met it.  Fix them upon your mind, so that it will
+be impossible for you to forget them.  You must be able to sketch any
+one of them and recall the city or town or neighborhood connected with
+it."
+
+Even this was still called "the game," but Marco began to know in his
+secret heart that it was so much more, that his hand sometimes trembled
+with excitement as he made his sketches over and over again.  To make
+each one many times was the best way to imbed it in his memory.  The
+Rat knew, too, though he had no reason for knowing, but mere instinct.
+He used to lie awake in the night and think it over and remember what
+Loristan had said of the time coming when Marco might need a comrade in
+his work. What was his work to be?  It was to be something like "the
+game."  And they were being prepared for it.  And though Marco often
+lay awake on his bed when The Rat lay awake on his sofa, neither boy
+spoke to the other of the thing his mind dwelt on. And Marco worked as
+he had never worked before.  The game was very exciting when he could
+prove his prowess.  The four gathered together at night in the back
+sitting-room.  Lazarus was obliged to be with them because a second
+judge was needed.  Loristan would mention the name of a place, perhaps
+a street in Paris or a hotel in Vienna, and Marco would at once make a
+rapid sketch of the face under whose photograph the name of the
+locality had been written.  It was not long before he could begin his
+sketch without more than a moment's hesitation.  And yet even when this
+had become the case, they still played the game night after night.
+There was a great hotel near the Place de la Concorde in Paris, of
+which Marco felt he should never hear the name during all his life
+without there starting up before his mental vision a tall woman with
+fierce black eyes and a delicate high-bridged nose across which the
+strong eyebrows almost met.  In Vienna there was a palace which would
+always bring back at once a pale cold-faced man with a heavy blonde
+lock which fell over his forehead.  A certain street in Munich meant a
+stout genial old aristocrat with a sly smile; a village in Bavaria, a
+peasant with a vacant and simple countenance.  A curled  and smoothed
+man who looked like a hair-dresser brought up a place in an Austrian
+mountain town.  He knew them all as he knew his own face and No. 7
+Philibert Place.
+
+But still night after night the game was played.
+
+Then came a night when, out of a deep sleep, he was awakened by Lazarus
+touching him.  He had so long been secretly ready to answer any call
+that he sat up straight in bed at the first touch.
+
+"Dress quickly and come down stairs," Lazarus said.  "The Prince is
+here and wishes to speak with you."
+
+Marco made no answer but got out of bed and began to slip on his
+clothes.
+
+Lazarus touched The Rat.
+
+The Rat was as ready as Marco and sat upright as he had done.
+
+"Come down with the young Master," he commanded.  "It is necessary that
+you should be seen and spoken to."  And having given the order he went
+away.
+
+No one heard the shoeless feet of the two boys as they stole down the
+stairs.
+
+An elderly man in ordinary clothes, but with an unmistakable face, was
+sitting quietly talking to Loristan who with a gesture called both
+forward.
+
+"The Prince has been much interested in what I have told him of your
+game," he said in his lowest voice.  "He wishes to see you make your
+sketches, Marco."
+
+Marco looked very straight into the Prince's eyes which were fixed
+intently on him as he made his bow.
+
+"His Highness does me honor," he said, as his father might have said
+it.  He went to the table at once and took from a drawer his pencils
+and pieces of cardboard.
+
+"I should know he was your son and a Samavian," the Prince remarked.
+
+Then his keen and deep-set eyes turned themselves on the boy with the
+crutches.
+
+"This," said Loristan, "is the one who calls himself The Rat. He is one
+of us."
+
+The Rat saluted.
+
+"Please tell him, sir," he whispered, "that the crutches don't matter."
+
+"He has trained himself to an extraordinary activity," Loristan said.
+"He can do anything."
+
+The keen eyes were still taking The Rat in.
+
+"They are an advantage," said the Prince at last.
+
+Lazarus had nailed together a light, rough easel which Marco used in
+making his sketches when the game was played.  Lazarus was standing in
+state at the door, and he came forward, brought the easel from its
+corner, and arranged the necessary drawing materials upon it.
+
+Marco stood near it and waited the pleasure of his father and his
+visitor.  They were speaking together in low tones and he waited
+several minutes.  What The Rat noticed was what he had noticed
+before--that the big boy could stand still in perfect ease and silence.
+It was not necessary for him to say things or to ask questions--to look
+at people as if he felt restless if they did not speak to or notice
+him.  He did not seem to require notice, and The Rat felt vaguely that,
+young as he was, this very freedom from any anxiety to be looked at or
+addressed made him somehow look like a great gentleman.
+
+Loristan and the Prince advanced to where he stood.
+
+"L'Hotel de Marigny," Loristan said.
+
+Marco began to sketch rapidly.  He began the portrait of the handsome
+woman with the delicate high-bridged nose and the black brows which
+almost met.  As he did it, the Prince drew nearer and watched the work
+over his shoulder.  It did not take very long and, when it was
+finished, the inspector turned, and after giving Loristan a long and
+strange look, nodded twice.
+
+"It is a remarkable thing," he said.  "In that rough sketch she is not
+to be mistaken."
+
+Loristan bent his head.
+
+Then he mentioned the name of another street in another place--and
+Marco sketched again.  This time it was the peasant with the simple
+face.  The Prince bowed again.  Then Loristan gave another name, and
+after that another and another; and Marco did his work until it was at
+an end, and Lazarus stood near with a handful of sketches which he had
+silently taken charge of as each was laid aside.
+
+"You would know these faces wheresoever you saw them?" said the Prince.
+"If you passed one in Bond Street or in the Marylebone Road, you would
+recognize it at once?"
+
+"As I know yours, sir," Marco answered.
+
+Then followed a number of questions.  Loristan asked them as he had
+often asked them before.  They were questions as to the height and
+build of the originals of the pictures, of the color of their hair and
+eyes, and the order of their complexions. Marco answered them all.  He
+knew all but the names of these people, and it was plainly not
+necessary that he should know them, as his father had never uttered
+them.
+
+After this questioning was at an end the Prince pointed to The Rat who
+had leaned on his crutches against the wall, his eyes fiercely eager
+like a ferret's.
+
+"And he?" the Prince said.  "What can he do?"
+
+"Let me try," said The Rat.  "Marco knows."
+
+Marco looked at his father.
+
+"May I help him to show you?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," Loristan answered, and then, as he turned to the Prince, he said
+again in his low voice:  "HE IS ONE OF US."
+
+Then Marco began a new form of the game.  He held up one of the
+pictured faces before The Rat, and The Rat named at once the city and
+place connected with it, he detailed the color of eyes and hair, the
+height, the build, all the personal details as Marco himself had
+detailed them.  To these he added descriptions of the cities, and
+points concerning the police system, the palaces, the people.  His face
+twisted itself, his eyes burned, his voice shook, but he was amazing in
+his readiness of reply and his exactness of memory.
+
+"I can't draw," he said at the end.  "But I can remember.  I didn't
+want any one to be bothered with thinking I was trying to learn it.  So
+only Marco knew."
+
+This he said to Loristan with appeal in his voice.
+
+"It was he who invented 'the game,'" said Loristan.  "I showed you his
+strange maps and plans."
+
+"It is a good game," the Prince answered in the manner of a man
+extraordinarily interested and impressed.  "They know it well. They can
+be trusted."
+
+"No such thing has ever been done before," Loristan said.  "It is as
+new as it is daring and simple."
+
+"Therein lies its safety," the Prince answered.
+
+"Perhaps only boyhood," said Loristan, "could have dared to imagine it."
+
+"The Prince thanks you," he said after a few more words spoken aside to
+his visitor.  "We both thank you.  You may go back to your beds."
+
+And the boys went.
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+"THAT IS ONE!"
+
+A week had not passed before Marco brought to The Rat in their bedroom
+an envelope containing a number of slips of paper on each of which was
+written something.
+
+"This is another part of the game," he said gravely.  "Let us sit down
+together by the table and study it."
+
+They sat down and examined what was written on the slips.  At the head
+of each was the name of one of the places with which Marco had
+connected a face he had sketched.  Below were clear and concise
+directions as to how it was to be reached and the words to be said when
+each individual was encountered.
+
+"This person is to be found at his stall in the market," was written of
+the vacant-faced peasant.  "You will first attract his attention by
+asking the price of something.  When he is looking at you, touch your
+left thumb lightly with the forefinger of your right hand.  Then utter
+in a low distinct tone the words 'The Lamp is lighted.'  That is all
+you are to do."
+
+Sometimes the directions were not quite so simple, but they were all
+instructions of the same order.  The originals of the sketches were to
+be sought out--always with precaution which should conceal that they
+were being sought at all, and always in such a manner as would cause an
+encounter to appear to be mere chance.  Then certain words were to be
+uttered, but always without attracting the attention of any bystander
+or passer-by.
+
+The boys worked at their task through the entire day.  They
+concentrated all their powers upon it.  They wrote and re-wrote--they
+repeated to each other what they committed to memory as if it were a
+lesson.  Marco worked with the greater ease and more rapidly, because
+exercise of this order had been his practice and entertainment from his
+babyhood.  The Rat, however, almost kept pace with him, as he had been
+born with a phenomenal memory and his eagerness and desire were a fury.
+
+But throughout the entire day neither of them once referred to what
+they were doing as anything but "the game."
+
+At night, it is true, each found himself lying awake and thinking.  It
+was The Rat who broke the silence from his sofa.
+
+"It is what the messengers of the Secret Party would be ordered to do
+when they were sent out to give the Sign for the Rising," he said.  "I
+made that up the first day I invented the party, didn't I?"
+
+"Yes," answered Marco.
+
+After a third day's concentration they knew by heart everything given
+to them to learn.  That night Loristan put them through an examination.
+
+"Can you write these things?" he asked, after each had repeated them
+and emerged safely from all cross-questioning.
+
+Each boy wrote them correctly from memory.
+
+"Write yours in French--in German--in Russian--in Samavian," Loristan
+said to Marco.
+
+"All you have told me to do and to learn is part of myself, Father,"
+Marco said in the end.  "It is part of me, as if it were my hand or my
+eyes--or my heart."
+
+"I believe that is true," answered Loristan.
+
+He was pale that night and there was a shadow on his face.  His eyes
+held a great longing as they rested on Marco.  It was a yearning which
+had a sort of dread in it.
+
+Lazarus also did not seem quite himself.  He was red instead of pale,
+and his movements were uncertain and restless.  He cleared his throat
+nervously at intervals and more than once left his chair as if to look
+for something.
+
+It was almost midnight when Loristan, standing near Marco, put his arm
+round his shoulders.
+
+"The Game"--he began, and then was silent a few moments while Marco
+felt his arm tighten its hold.  Both Marco and The Rat felt a hard
+quick beat in their breasts, and, because of this and because the pause
+seemed long, Marco spoke.
+
+"The Game--yes, Father?" he said.
+
+"The Game is about to give you work to do--both of you," Loristan
+answered.
+
+Lazarus cleared his throat and walked to the easel in the corner of the
+room.  But he only changed the position of a piece of drawing-paper on
+it and then came back.
+
+"In two days you are to go to Paris--as you," to The Rat, "planned in
+the game."
+
+"As I planned?"  The Rat barely breathed the words.
+
+"Yes," answered Loristan.  "The instructions you have learned you will
+carry out.  There is no more to be done than to manage to approach
+certain persons closely enough to be able to utter certain words to
+them."
+
+"Only two young strollers whom no man could suspect," put in Lazarus in
+an astonishingly rough and shaky voice.  "They could pass near the
+Emperor himself without danger.  The young Master--"  his voice became
+so hoarse that he was obligated to clear it loudly--"the young Master
+must carry himself less finely.  It would be well to shuffle a little
+and slouch as if he were of the common people."
+
+"Yes," said The Rat hastily.  "He must do that.  I can teach him.  He
+holds his head and his shoulders like a gentleman.  He must look like a
+street lad."
+
+"I will look like one," said Marco, with determination.
+
+"I will trust you to remind him," Loristan said to The Rat, and he said
+it with gravity.  "That will be your charge."
+
+As he lay upon his pillow that night, it seemed to Marco as if a load
+had lifted itself from his heart.  It was the load of uncertainty and
+longing.  He had so long borne the pain of feeling that he was too
+young to be allowed to serve in any way. His dreams had never been wild
+ones--they had in fact always been boyish and modest, howsoever
+romantic.  But now no dream which could have passed through his brain
+would have seemed so wonderful as this--that the hour had come--the
+hour had come--and that he, Marco, was to be its messenger.  He was to
+do no dramatic deed and be announced by no flourish of heralds.  No one
+would know what he did.  What he achieved could only be attained if he
+remained obscure and unknown and seemed to every one only a common
+ordinary boy who knew nothing whatever of important things.  But his
+father had given to him a gift so splendid that he trembled with awe
+and joy as he thought of it.  The Game had become real.  He and The Rat
+were to carry with them The Sign, and it would be like carrying a tiny
+lamp to set aflame lights which would blaze from one mountain-top to
+another until half the world seemed on fire.
+
+As he had awakened out of his sleep when Lazarus touched him, so he
+awakened in the middle of the night again.  But he was not aroused by a
+touch.  When he opened his eyes he knew it was a look which had
+penetrated his sleep--a look in the eyes of his father who was standing
+by his side.  In the road outside there was the utter silence he had
+noticed the night of the Prince's first  visit--the only light was that
+of the lamp in the street, but he could see Loristan's face clearly
+enough to know that the mere intensity of his gaze had awakened him.
+The Rat was sleeping profoundly.  Loristan spoke in Samavian and under
+his breath.
+
+"Beloved one," he said.  "You are very young.  Because I am your
+father--just at this hour I can feel nothing else.  I have trained you
+for this through all the years of your life.  I am proud of your young
+maturity and strength but--Beloved--you are a child!  Can I do this
+thing!"
+
+For the moment, his face and his voice were scarcely like his own.
+
+He kneeled by the bedside, and, as he did it, Marco half sitting up
+caught his hand and held it hard against his breast.
+
+"Father, I know!" he cried under his breath also.  "It is true.  I am a
+child but am I not a man also?  You yourself said it.  I always knew
+that you were teaching me to be one--for some reason.  It was my secret
+that I knew it.  I learned well because I never forgot it.  And I
+learned.  Did I not?"
+
+He was so eager that he looked more like a boy than ever.  But his
+young strength and courage were splendid to see.  Loristan knew him
+through and through and read every boyish thought of his.
+
+"Yes," he answered slowly.  "You did your part--and now if I--drew
+back--you would feel that I HAD FAILED YOU--FAILED YOU."
+
+"You!" Marco breathed it proudly.  "You COULD not fail even the weakest
+thing in the world."
+
+There was a moment's silence in which the two pairs of eyes dwelt on
+each other with the deepest meaning, and then Loristan rose to his feet.
+
+"The end will be all that our hearts most wish," he said. "To-morrow
+you may begin the new part of 'the Game.'  You may go to Paris."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the train which was to meet the boat that crossed from Dover to
+Calais steamed out of the noisy Charing Cross Station, it carried in a
+third-class carriage two shabby boys.  One of them would have been a
+handsome lad if he had not carried himself slouchingly and walked with
+a street lad's careless shuffling gait.  The other was a cripple who
+moved slowly, and apparently with difficulty, on crutches.  There was
+nothing remarkable or picturesque enough about them to attract
+attention.  They sat in the corner of the carriage and neither talked
+much nor seemed to be particularly interested in the journey or each
+other.  When they went on board the steamer, they were soon lost among
+the commoner passengers and in fact found for themselves a secluded
+place which was not advantageous enough to be wanted by any one else.
+
+"What can such a poor-looking pair of lads be going to Paris for?" some
+one asked his companion.
+
+"Not for pleasure, certainly; perhaps to get work," was the casual
+answer.
+
+In the evening they reached Paris, and Marco led the way to a small
+cafe in a side-street where they got some cheap food.  In the same
+side-street they found a bed they could share for the night in a tiny
+room over a baker's shop.
+
+The Rat was too much excited to be ready to go to bed early.  He begged
+Marco to guide him about the brilliant streets.  They went slowly along
+the broad Avenue des Champs Elysees under the lights glittering among
+the horse-chestnut trees.  The Rat's sharp eyes took it all in--the
+light of the cafes among the embowering trees, the many carriages
+rolling by, the people who loitered and laughed or sat at little tables
+drinking wine and listening to music, the broad stream of life which
+flowed on to the Arc de Triomphe and back again.
+
+"It's brighter and clearer than London," he said to Marco. "The people
+look as if they were having more fun than they do in England."
+
+The Place de la Concorde spreading its stately spaces--a world of
+illumination, movement, and majestic beauty--held him as though by a
+fascination.  He wanted to stand and stare at it, first from one point
+of view and then from another.  It was bigger and more wonderful than
+he had been able to picture it when Marco had described it to him and
+told him of the part it had played in the days of the French Revolution
+when the guillotine had stood in it and the tumbrils had emptied
+themselves at the foot of its steps.
+
+He stood near the Obelisk a long time without speaking.
+
+"I can see it all happening," he said at last, and he pulled Marco away.
+
+Before they returned home, they found their way to a large house which
+stood in a courtyard.  In the iron work of the handsome gates which
+shut it in was wrought a gilded coronet.  The gates were closed and the
+house was not brightly lighted.
+
+They walked past it and round it without speaking, but, when they
+neared the entrance for the second time, The Rat said in a low tone:
+
+"She is five feet seven, has black hair, a nose with a high bridge, her
+eyebrows are black and almost meet across it, she has a pale olive skin
+and holds her head proudly."
+
+"That is the one," Marco answered.
+
+They were a week in Paris and each day passed this big house. There
+were certain hours when great ladies were more likely to go out and
+come in than they were at others.  Marco knew this, and they managed to
+be within sight of the house or to pass it at these hours.  For two
+days they saw no sign of the person they wished to see, but one morning
+the gates were thrown open and they saw flowers and palms being taken
+in.
+
+"She has been away and is coming back," said Marco.  The next day they
+passed three times--once at the hour when fashionable women drive out
+to do their shopping, once at the time when afternoon visiting is most
+likely to begin, and once when the streets were brilliant with lights
+and the carriages had begun to roll by to dinner-parties and theaters.
+
+Then, as they stood at a little distance from the iron gates, a
+carriage drove through them and stopped before the big open door which
+was thrown open by two tall footmen in splendid livery.
+
+"She is coming out," said The Rat.
+
+They would be able to see her plainly when she came, because the lights
+over the entrance were so bright.
+
+Marco slipped from under his coat sleeve a carefully made sketch.
+
+He looked at it and The Rat looked at it.
+
+A footman stood erect on each side of the open door.  The footman who
+sat with the coachman had got down and was waiting by the carriage.
+Marco and The Rat glanced again with furtive haste at the sketch.  A
+handsome woman appeared upon the threshold.  She paused and gave some
+order to the footman who stood on the right. Then she came out in the
+full light and got into the carriage which drove out of the courtyard
+and quite near the place where the two boys waited.
+
+When it was gone, Marco drew a long breath as he tore the sketch into
+very small pieces indeed.  He did not throw them away but put them into
+his pocket.
+
+The Rat drew a long breath also.
+
+"Yes," he said positively.
+
+"Yes," said Marco.
+
+When they were safely shut up in their room over the baker's shop, they
+discussed the chances of their being able to pass her in such a way as
+would seem accidental.  Two common boys could not enter the courtyard.
+There was a back entrance for tradespeople and messengers.  When she
+drove, she would always enter her carriage from the same place.  Unless
+she sometimes walked, they could not approach her.  What should be
+done?  The thing was difficult.  After they had talked some time, The
+Rat sat and gnawed his nails.
+
+"To-morrow afternoon," he broke out at last, "we'll watch and see if
+her carriage drives in for her--then, when she comes to the door, I'll
+go in and begin to beg.  The servant will think I'm a foreigner and
+don't know what I'm doing.  You can come after me to tell me to come
+away, because you know better than I do that I shall be ordered out.
+She may be a good-natured woman and listen to us--and you might get
+near her."
+
+"We might try it," Marco answered.  "It might work.  We will try it."
+
+The Rat never failed to treat him as his leader.  He had begged
+Loristan to let him come with Marco as his servant, and his servant he
+had been more than willing to be.  When Loristan had said he should be
+his aide-de-camp, he had felt his trust lifted to a military dignity
+which uplifted him with it.  As his aide-de-camp he must serve him,
+watch him, obey his lightest wish, make everything easy for him.
+Sometimes, Marco was troubled by the way in which he insisted on
+serving him, this queer, once dictatorial and cantankerous lad who had
+begun by throwing stones at him.
+
+"You must not wait on me," he said to him.  "I must wait upon myself."
+
+The Rat rather flushed.
+
+"He told me that he would let me come with you as your aide-de camp,"
+he said.  "It--it's part of the game.  It makes things easier if we
+keep up the game."
+
+It would have attracted attention if they had spent too much time in
+the vicinity of the big house.  So it happened that the next afternoon
+the great lady evidently drove out at an hour when they were not
+watching for her.  They were on their way to try if they could carry
+out their plan, when, as they walked together along the Rue Royale, The
+Rat suddenly touched Marco's elbow.
+
+"The carriage stands before the shop with lace in the windows," he
+whispered hurriedly.
+
+Marco saw and recognized it at once.  The owner had evidently gone into
+the shop to buy something.  This was a better chance than they had
+hoped for, and, when they approached the carriage itself, they saw that
+there was another point in their favor. Inside were no less than three
+beautiful little Pekingese spaniels that looked exactly alike.  They
+were all trying to look out of the window and were pushing against each
+other.  They were so perfect and so pretty that few people passed by
+without looking at them.  What better excuse could two boys have for
+lingering about a place?
+
+They stopped and, standing a little distance away, began to look at and
+discuss them and laugh at their excited little antics. Through the
+shop-window Marco caught a glimpse of the great lady.
+
+"She does not look much interested.  She won't stay long," he
+whispered, and added aloud, "that little one is the master.  See how he
+pushes the others aside!  He is stronger than the other two, though he
+is so small."
+
+"He can snap, too," said The Rat.
+
+"She is coming now," warned Marco, and then laughed aloud as if at the
+Pekingese, which, catching sight of their mistress at the shop-door,
+began to leap and yelp for joy.
+
+Their mistress herself smiled, and was smiling as Marco drew near her.
+
+"May we look at them, Madame?" he said in French, and, as she made an
+amiable gesture of acquiescence and moved toward the carriage with him,
+he spoke a few words, very low but very distinctly, in Russian.
+
+"The Lamp is lighted," he said.
+
+The Rat was looking at her keenly, but he did not see her face change
+at all.  What he noticed most throughout their journey was that each
+person to whom they gave the Sign had complete control over his or her
+countenance, if there were bystanders, and never betrayed by any change
+of expression that the words meant anything unusual.
+
+The great lady merely went on smiling, and spoke only of the dogs,
+allowing Marco and himself to look at them through the window of the
+carriage as the footman opened the door for her to enter.
+
+"They are beautiful little creatures," Marco said, lifting his cap,
+and, as the footman turned away, he uttered his few Russian words once
+more and moved off without even glancing at the lady again.
+
+"That is ONE!" he said to The Rat that night before they went to sleep,
+and with a match he burned the scraps of the sketch he had torn and put
+into his pocket.
+
+
+
+XX
+
+MARCO GOES TO THE OPERA
+
+Their next journey was to Munich, but the night before they left Paris
+an unexpected thing happened.
+
+To reach the narrow staircase which led to their bedroom it was
+necessary to pass through the baker's shop itself.
+
+The baker's wife was a friendly woman who liked the two boy lodgers who
+were so quiet and gave no trouble.  More than once she had given them a
+hot roll or so or a freshly baked little tartlet with fruit in the
+center.  When Marco came in this evening, she greeted him with a nod
+and handed him a small parcel as he passed through.
+
+"This was left for you this afternoon," she said.  "I see you are
+making purchases for your journey.  My man and I are very sorry you are
+going."
+
+"Thank you, Madame.  We also are sorry," Marco answered, taking the
+parcel.  "They are not large purchases, you see."
+
+But neither he nor The Rat had bought anything at all, though the
+ordinary-looking little package was plainly addressed to him and bore
+the name of one of the big cheap shops.  It felt as if it contained
+something soft.
+
+When he reached their bedroom, The Rat was gazing out of the window
+watching every living thing which passed in the street below.  He who
+had never seen anything but London was absorbed by the spell of Paris
+and was learning it by heart.
+
+"Something has been sent to us.  Look at this," said Marco.
+
+The Rat was at his side at once.  "What is it?  Where did it come from?"
+
+They opened the package and at first sight saw only several pairs of
+quite common woolen socks.  As Marco took up the sock in the middle of
+the parcel, he felt that there was something inside it--something laid
+flat and carefully.  He put his hand in and drew out a number of
+five-franc notes--not new ones, because new ones would have betrayed
+themselves by crackling.  These were old enough to be soft.  But there
+were enough of them to amount to a substantial sum.
+
+"It is in small notes because poor boys would have only small ones.  No
+one will be surprised when we change these," The Rat said.
+
+Each of them believed the package had been sent by the great lady, but
+it had been done so carefully that not the slightest clue was furnished.
+
+To The Rat, part of the deep excitement of "the Game" was the working
+out of the plans and methods of each person concerned. He could not
+have slept without working out some scheme which might have been used
+in this case.  It thrilled him to contemplate the difficulties the
+great lady might have found herself obliged to overcome.
+
+"Perhaps," he said, after thinking it over for some time, "she went to
+a big common shop dressed as if she were an ordinary woman and bought
+the socks and pretended she was going to carry them home herself.  She
+would do that so that she could take them into some corner and slip the
+money in.  Then, as she wanted to have them sent from the shop, perhaps
+she bought some other things and asked the people to deliver the
+packages to different places.  The socks were sent to us and the other
+things to some one else.  She would go to a shop where no one knew her
+and no one would expect to see her and she would wear clothes which
+looked neither rich nor too poor."
+
+He created the whole episode with all its details and explained them to
+Marco.  It fascinated him for the entire evening and he felt relieved
+after it and slept well.
+
+Even before they had left London, certain newspapers had swept out of
+existence the story of the descendant of the Lost Prince. This had been
+done by derision and light handling--by treating it as a romantic
+legend.
+
+At first, The Rat had resented this bitterly, but one day at a meal,
+when he had been producing arguments to prove that the story must be a
+true one, Loristan somehow checked him by his own silence.
+
+"If there is such a man," he said after a pause, "it is well for him
+that his existence should not be believed in--for some time at least."
+
+The Rat came to a dead stop.  He felt hot for a moment and then felt
+cold.  He saw a new idea all at once.  He had been making a mistake in
+tactics.
+
+No more was said but, when they were alone afterwards, he poured
+himself forth to Marco.
+
+"I was a fool!" he cried out.  "Why couldn't I see it for myself!
+Shall I tell you what I believe has been done?  There is some one who
+has influence in England and who is a friend to Samavia.  They've got
+the newspapers to make fun of the story so that it won't be believed.
+If it was believed, both the Iarovitch and the Maranovitch would be on
+the lookout, and the Secret Party would lose their  chances.  What a
+fool I was not to think of it!  There's some one watching and working
+here who is a friend to Samavia."
+
+"But there is some one in Samavia who has begun to suspect that it
+might be true," Marco answered.  "If there were not, I should not have
+been shut in the cellar.  Some one thought my father knew something.
+The spies had orders to find out what it was."
+
+"Yes.  Yes.  That's true, too!"  The Rat answered anxiously. "We shall
+have to be very careful."
+
+In the lining of the sleeve of Marco's coat there was a slit into which
+he could slip any small thing he wished to conceal and also wished to
+be able to reach without trouble.  In this he had carried the sketch of
+the lady which he had torn up in Paris. When they walked in the streets
+of Munich, the morning after their arrival, he carried still another
+sketch.  It was the one picturing the genial-looking old aristocrat
+with the sly smile.
+
+One of the things they had learned about this one was that his chief
+characteristic was his passion for music.  He was a patron of musicians
+and he spent much time in Munich because he loved its musical
+atmosphere and the earnestness of its opera-goers.
+
+"The military band plays in the Feldherrn-halle at midday.  When
+something very good is being played, sometimes people stop their
+carriages so that they can listen.  We will go there," said Marco.
+
+"It's a chance," said The Rat.  "We mustn't lose anything like a
+chance."
+
+The day was brilliant and sunny, the people passing through the streets
+looked comfortable and homely, the mixture of old streets and modern
+ones, of ancient corners and shops and houses of the day was
+picturesque and cheerful.  The Rat swinging through the crowd on his
+crutches was full of interest and exhilaration.  He had begun to grow,
+and the change in his face and expression which had begun in London had
+become more noticeable.  He had been given his "place," and a work to
+do which entitled him to hold it.
+
+No one could have suspected them of carrying a strange and vital secret
+with them as they strolled along together.  They seemed only two
+ordinary boys who looked in at shop windows and talked over  their
+contents, and who loitered with upturned faces in the Marien-Platz
+before the ornate Gothic Rathaus to hear the eleven o'clock chimes play
+and see the painted figures of the King and Queen watch from their
+balcony the passing before them of the automatic tournament procession
+with its trumpeters and tilting knights.  When the show was over and
+the automatic cock broke forth into his lusty farewell crow, they
+laughed just as any other boys would have laughed.  Sometimes it would
+have been easy for The Rat to forget that there was anything graver in
+the world than the new places and new wonders he was seeing, as if he
+were a wandering minstrel in a story.
+
+But in Samavia bloody battles were being fought, and bloody plans were
+being wrought out, and in anguished anxiety the Secret Party and the
+Forgers of the Sword waited breathlessly for the Sign for which they
+had waited so long.  And inside the lining of Marco's coat was hidden
+the sketched face, as the two unnoticed lads made their way to the
+Feldherrn-halle to hear the band play and see who might chance to be
+among the audience.
+
+Because the day was sunny, and also because the band was playing a
+specially fine programme, the crowd in the square was larger than
+usual.  Several vehicles had stopped, and among them were one or two
+which were not merely hired cabs but were the carriages of private
+persons.
+
+One of them had evidently arrived early, as it was drawn up in a good
+position when the boys reached the corner.  It was a big open carriage
+and a grand one, luxuriously upholstered in green. The footman and
+coachman wore green and silver liveries and seemed to know that people
+were looking at them and their master.
+
+He was a stout, genial-looking old aristocrat with a sly smile, though,
+as he listened to the music, it almost forgot to be sly. In the
+carriage with him were a young officer and a little boy, and they also
+listened attentively.  Standing near the carriage door were several
+people who were plainly friends or acquaintances, as they occasionally
+spoke to him.  Marco touched The Rat's coat sleeve as the two boys
+approached.
+
+"It would not be easy to get near him," he said.  "Let us go and stand
+as close to the carriage as we can get without pushing. Perhaps we may
+hear some one say something about where he is going after the music is
+over."
+
+Yes, there was no mistaking him.  He was the right man.  Each of them
+knew by heart the creases on his stout face and the sweep of his gray
+moustache.  But there was nothing noticeable in a boy looking for a
+moment at a piece of paper, and Marco sauntered a few steps to a bit of
+space left bare by the crowd and took a last glance at his sketch.  His
+rule was to make sure at the final moment.  The music was very good and
+the group about the carriage was evidently enthusiastic.  There was
+talk and praise and comment, and the old aristocrat nodded his head
+repeatedly in applause.
+
+"The Chancellor is music mad," a looker-on near the boys said to
+another.  "At the opera every night unless serious affairs keep him
+away!  There you may see him nodding his old head and bursting his
+gloves with applauding when a good thing is done. He ought to have led
+an orchestra or played a 'cello.  He is too big for first violin."
+
+There was a group about the carriage to the last, when the music came
+to an end and it drove away.  There had been no possible opportunity of
+passing close to it even had the presence of the young officer and the
+boy not presented an insurmountable obstacle.
+
+Marco and The Rat went on their way and passed by the Hof-Theater and
+read the bills.  "Tristan and Isolde" was to be presented at night and
+a great singer would sing Isolde.
+
+"He will go to hear that," both boys said at once.  "He will be sure to
+go."
+
+It was decided between them that Marco should go on his quest alone
+when night came.  One boy who hung around the entrance of the Opera
+would be observed less than two.
+
+"People notice crutches more than they notice legs," The Rat said.
+"I'd better keep out of the way unless you need me.  My time hasn't
+come yet.  Even if it doesn't come at all I've--I've been on duty. I've
+gone with you and I've been ready--that's what an aide-de-camp does."
+
+He stayed at home and read such English papers as he could lay hands on
+and he drew plans and re-fought battles on paper.
+
+Marco went to the opera.  Even if he had not known his way to the
+square near the place where the Hof-Theater stood, he could easily have
+found it by following the groups of people in the streets who all
+seemed walking in one direction.  There were students in their odd caps
+walking three or four abreast, there were young couples and older ones,
+and here and there whole families; there were soldiers of all ages,
+officers and privates; and, when talk was to be heard in passing, it
+was always talk about music.
+
+For some time Marco waited in the square and watched the carriages roll
+up and pass under the huge pillared portico to deposit their contents
+at the entrance and at once drive away in orderly sequence.  He must
+make sure that the grand carriage with the green and silver liveries
+rolled up with the rest.  If it came, he would buy a cheap ticket and
+go inside.
+
+It was rather late when it arrived.  People in Munich are not late for
+the opera if it can be helped, and the coachman drove up hurriedly.
+The green and silver footman leaped to the ground and opened the
+carriage door almost before it stopped.  The Chancellor got out looking
+less genial than usual because he was afraid that he might lose some of
+the overture.  A rosy-cheeked girl in a white frock was with him and
+she was evidently trying to soothe him.
+
+"I do not think we are really late, Father," she said.  "Don't feel
+cross, dear.  It will spoil the music for you."
+
+This was not a time in which a man's attention could be attracted
+quietly.  Marco ran to get the ticket which would give him a place
+among the rows of young soldiers, artists, male and female students,
+and musicians who were willing to stand four or five deep throughout
+the performance of even the longest opera.  He knew that, unless they
+were in one of the few boxes which belonged only to the court, the
+Chancellor and his rosy-cheeked daughter would be in the best seats in
+the front curve of the balcony which were the most desirable of the
+house.  He soon saw them.  They had secured the central places directly
+below the large royal box where two quiet princesses and their
+attendants were already seated.
+
+When he found he was not too late to hear the overture, the
+Chancellor's face become more genial than ever.  He settled himself
+down to an evening of enjoyment and evidently forgot everything else in
+the world.  Marco did not lose sight of him. When the audience went out
+between acts to promenade in the corridors, he might go also and there
+might be a chance to pass near to him in the crowd.  He watched him
+closely.  Sometimes his fine old face saddened at the beautiful woe of
+the music, sometimes it looked enraptured, and it was always evident
+that every note reached his soul.
+
+The pretty daughter who sat beside him was attentive but not so
+enthralled.  After the first act two glittering young officers appeared
+and made elegant and low bows, drawing their heels together as they
+kissed her hand.  They looked sorry when they were obliged to return to
+their seats again.
+
+After the second act the Chancellor sat for a few minutes as if he were
+in a dream.  The people in the seats near him began to rise from their
+seats and file out into the corridors.  The young officers were to be
+seen rising also.  The rosy daughter leaned forward and touched her
+father's arm gently.
+
+"She wants him to take her out," Marco thought.  "He will take her
+because he is good-natured."
+
+He saw him recall himself from his dream with a smile and then he rose
+and, after helping to arrange a silvery blue scarf round the girl's
+shoulders, gave her his arm just as Marco skipped out of his fourth-row
+standing-place.
+
+It was a rather warm night and the corridors were full.  By the time
+Marco had reached the balcony floor, the pair had issued from the
+little door and were temporarily lost in the moving numbers.
+
+Marco quietly made his way among the crowd trying to look as if he
+belonged to somebody.  Once or twice his strong body and his dense
+black eyes and lashes made people glance at him, but he was not the
+only boy who had been brought to the opera so he felt safe enough to
+stop at the foot of the stairs and watch those who went up and those
+who passed by.  Such a miscellaneous crowd as it was made up of--good
+unfashionable music-lovers mixed here and there with grand people of
+the court and the gay world.
+
+Suddenly he heard a low laugh and a moment later a hand lightly touched
+him.
+
+"You DID get out, then?" a soft voice said.
+
+When he turned he felt his muscles stiffen.  He ceased to slouch and
+did not smile as he looked at the speaker.  What he felt was a wave of
+fierce and haughty anger.  It swept over him before he had time to
+control it.
+
+A lovely person who seemed swathed in several shades of soft violet
+drapery was smiling at him with long, lovely eyes.
+
+It was the woman who had trapped him into No. 10 Brandon Terrace.
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+"HELP!"
+
+"Did it take you so long to find it?" asked the Lovely Person with the
+smile.  "Of course I knew you would find it in the end.  But we had to
+give ourselves time.  How long did it take?"
+
+Marco removed himself from beneath the touch of her hand.  It was
+quietly done, but there was a disdain in his young face which made her
+wince though she pretended to shrug her shoulders amusedly.
+
+"You refuse to answer?" she laughed.
+
+"I refuse."
+
+At that very moment he saw at the curve of the corridor the Chancellor
+and his daughter approaching slowly.  The two young officers were
+talking gaily to the girl.  They were on their way back to their box.
+Was he going to lose them?  Was he?
+
+The delicate hand was laid on his shoulder again, but this time he felt
+that it grasped him firmly.
+
+"Naughty boy!" the soft voice said.  "I am going to take you home with
+me.  If you struggle I shall tell these people that you are my bad boy
+who is here without permission.  What will you answer?  My escort is
+coming down the staircase and will help me. Do you see?"  And in fact
+there appeared in the crowd at the head of the staircase the figure of
+the man he remembered.
+
+He did see.  A dampness broke out on the palms of his hands.  If she
+did this bold thing, what could he say to those she told her lie to?
+How could he bring proof or explain who he was--and what story dare he
+tell?  His protestations and struggles would merely amuse the
+lookers-on, who would see in them only the impotent rage of an
+insubordinate youngster.
+
+There swept over him a wave of remembrance which brought back, as if he
+were living through it again, the moment when he had stood in the
+darkness of the wine cellar with his back against the door and heard
+the man walk away and leave him alone.  He felt again as he had done
+then--but now he was in another land and far away from his father.  He
+could do nothing to help himself unless Something showed him a way.
+
+He made no sound, and the woman who held him saw only a flame leap
+under his dense black lashes.
+
+But something within him called out.  It was as if he heard it. It was
+that strong self--the self that was Marco, and it called--it called as
+if it shouted.
+
+"Help!" it called--to that Unknown Stranger Thing which had made worlds
+and which he and his father so often talked of and in whose power they
+so believed.  "Help!"
+
+The Chancellor was drawing nearer.  Perhaps!  Should he--?
+
+"You are too proud to kick and shout," the voice went on. "And people
+would only laugh.  Do you see?"
+
+The stairs were crowded and the man who was at the head of them could
+only move slowly.  But he had seen the boy.
+
+Marco turned so that he could face his captor squarely as if he were
+going to say something in answer to her.  But he was not.
+
+Even as he made the movement of turning, the help he had called for
+came and he knew what he should do.  And he could do two things at
+once--save himself and give his Sign--because, the Sign once given, the
+Chancellor would understand.
+
+"He will be here in a moment.  He has recognized you," the woman said.
+
+As he glanced up the stairs, the delicate grip of her hand
+unconsciously slackened.
+
+Marco whirled away from her.  The bell rang which was to warn the
+audience that they must return to their seats and he saw the Chancellor
+hasten his pace.
+
+A moment later, the old aristocrat found himself amazedly looking down
+at the pale face of a breathless lad who spoke to him in German and in
+such a manner that he could not but pause and listen.
+
+"Sir," he was saying, "the woman in violet at the foot of the stairs is
+a spy.  She trapped me once and she threatens to do it again.  Sir, may
+I beg you to protect me?"
+
+He said it low and fast.  No one else could hear his words.
+
+"What!  What!" the Chancellor exclaimed.
+
+And then, drawing a step nearer and quite as low and rapidly but with
+perfect distinctness, Marco uttered four words:
+
+"The Lamp is lighted."
+
+The Help cry had been answered instantly.  Marco saw it at once in the
+old man's eyes, notwithstanding that he turned to look at the woman at
+the foot of the staircase as if she only concerned him.
+
+"What!  What!" he said again, and made a movement toward her, pulling
+his large moustache with a fierce hand.
+
+Then Marco recognized that a curious thing happened.  The Lovely Person
+saw the movement and the gray moustache, and that instant her smile
+died away and she turned quite white--so white, that under the
+brilliant electric light she was almost green and scarcely looked
+lovely at all.  She made a sign to the man on the staircase and slipped
+through the crowd like an eel.  She was a slim flexible creature and
+never was a disappearance more wonderful in its rapidity.  Between
+stout matrons and their thin or stout escorts and families she made her
+way and lost herself--but always making toward the exit.  In two
+minutes there was no sight of her violet draperies to be seen.  She was
+gone and so, evidently, was her male companion.
+
+It was plain to Marco that to follow the profession of a spy was not by
+any means a safe thing.  The Chancellor had recognized her--she had
+recognized the Chancellor who turned looking ferociously angry and
+spoke to one of the young officers.
+
+"She and the man with her are two of the most dangerous spies in
+Europe. She is a Rumanian and he is a Russian.  What they wanted of
+this innocent lad I don't pretend to know.  What did she threaten?" to
+Marco.
+
+Marco was feeling rather cold and sick and had lost his healthy color
+for the moment.
+
+"She said she meant to take me home with her and would pretend I was
+her son who had come here without permission," he answered. "She
+believes I know something I do not."  He made a hesitating but grateful
+bow.  "The third act, sir--I must not keep you. Thank you!  Thank you!"
+
+The Chancellor moved toward the entrance door of the balcony seats, but
+he did it with his hand on Marco's shoulder.
+
+"See that he gets home safely," he said to the younger of the two
+officers.  "Send a messenger with him.  He's young to be attacked by
+creatures of that kind."
+
+Polite young officers naturally obey the commands of Chancellors and
+such dignitaries.  This one found without trouble a young private who
+marched with Marco through the deserted streets to his lodgings.  He
+was a stolid young Bavarian peasant and seemed to have no curiosity or
+even any interest in the reason for the command given him.  He was in
+fact thinking of his sweetheart who lived near Konigsee and who had
+skated with him on the frozen lake last winter.  He scarcely gave a
+glance to the schoolboy he was to escort, he neither knew nor wondered
+why.
+
+The Rat had fallen asleep over his papers and lay with his head on his
+folded arms on the table.  But he was awakened by Marco's coming into
+the room and sat up blinking his eyes in the effort to get them open.
+
+"Did you see him?  Did you get near enough?" he drowsed.
+
+"Yes," Marco answered.  "I got near enough."
+
+The Rat sat upright suddenly.
+
+"It's not been easy," he exclaimed.  "I'm sure something
+happened--something went wrong."
+
+"Something nearly went wrong--VERY nearly," answered Marco. But as he
+spoke he took the sketch of the Chancellor out of the slit in his
+sleeve and tore it and burned it with a match.  "But I did get near
+enough.  And that's TWO."
+
+They talked long, before they went to sleep that night.  The Rat grew
+pale as he listened to the story of the woman in violet.
+
+"I ought to have gone with you!" he said.  "I see now.  An aide-de-camp
+must always be in attendance.  It would have been harder for her to
+manage two than one.  I must always be near to watch, even if I am not
+close by you.  If you had not come back--if you had not come back!"  He
+struck his clenched hands together fiercely.  "What should I have done!"
+
+When Marco turned toward him from the table near which he was standing,
+he looked like his father.
+
+"You would have gone on with the Game just as far as you could," he
+said.  "You could not leave it.  You remember the places, and the
+faces, and the Sign.  There is some money; and when it was all gone,
+you could have begged, as we used to pretend we should. We have not had
+to do it yet; and it was best to save it for country places and
+villages.  But you could have done it if you were obliged to.  The Game
+would have to go on."
+
+The Rat caught at his thin chest as if he had been struck breathless.
+
+"Without you?" he gasped.  "Without you?"
+
+"Yes," said Marco.  "And we must think of it, and plan in case anything
+like that should happen."
+
+He stopped himself quite suddenly, and sat down, looking straight
+before him, as if at some far away thing he saw.
+
+"Nothing will happen," he said.  "Nothing can."
+
+"What are you thinking of?"  The Rat gulped, because his breath had not
+quite come back.  "Why will nothing happen?"
+
+"Because--" the boy spoke in an almost matter-of-fact tone--in quite an
+unexalted tone at all events, "you see I can always make a strong call,
+as I did tonight."
+
+"Did you shout?" The Rat asked.  "I didn't know you shouted."
+
+"I didn't.  I said nothing aloud.  But I--the myself that is in me,"
+Marco touched himself on the breast, "called out, 'Help! Help!' with
+all its strength.  And help came."
+
+The Rat regarded him dubiously.
+
+"What did it call to?" he asked.
+
+"To the Power--to the Strength-place--to the Thought that does things.
+The Buddhist hermit, who told my father about it, called it 'The
+Thought that thought the World.'"
+
+A reluctant suspicion betrayed itself in The Rat's eyes.
+
+"Do you mean you prayed?" he inquired, with a slight touch of disfavor.
+
+Marco's eyes remained fixed upon him in vague thoughtfulness for a
+moment or so of pause.
+
+"I don't know," he said at last.  "Perhaps it's the same thing--when
+you need something so much that you cry out loud for it.  But it's not
+words, it's a strong thing without a name.  I called like that when I
+was shut in the wine-cellar.  I remembered some of the things the old
+Buddhist told my father."
+
+The Rat moved restlessly.
+
+"The help came that time," he admitted.  "How did it come to-night?"
+
+"In that thought which flashed into my mind almost the next second.  It
+came like lightning.  All at once I knew if I ran to the Chancellor and
+said the woman was a spy, it would startle him into listening to me;
+and that then I could give him the Sign; and that when I gave him the
+Sign, he would know I was speaking the truth and would protect me."
+
+"It was a splendid thought!" The Rat said.  "And it was quick. But it
+was you who thought of it."
+
+"All thinking is part of the Big Thought," said Marco slowly. "It
+KNOWS--It KNOWS.  And the outside part of us somehow broke the chain
+that linked us to It.  And we are always trying to mend the chain,
+without knowing it.  That is what our thinking is--trying to mend the
+chain.  But we shall find out how to do it sometime.  The old Buddhist
+told my father so--just as the sun was rising from behind a high peak
+of the Himalayas."  Then he added hastily, "I am only telling you what
+my father told me, and he only told me what the old hermit told him."
+
+"Does your father believe what he told him?"  The Rat's bewilderment
+had become an eager and restless thing.
+
+"Yes, he believes it.  He always thought something like it, himself.
+That is why he is so calm and knows so well how to wait."
+
+"Is THAT it!" breathed The Rat.  "Is that why?  Has--has he mended the
+chain?"  And there was awe in his voice, because of this one man to
+whom he felt any achievement was possible.
+
+"I believe he has," said Marco.  "Don't you think so yourself?"
+
+"He has done something," The Rat said.
+
+He seemed to be thinking things over before he spoke again--and then
+even more slowly than Marco.
+
+"If he could mend the chain," he said almost in a whisper, "he could
+find out where the descendant of the Lost Prince is.  He would know
+what to do for Samavia!"
+
+He ended the words with a start, and his whole face glowed with a new,
+amazed light.
+
+"Perhaps he does know!" he cried.  "If the help comes like thoughts--as
+yours did--perhaps his thought of letting us give the Sign was part of
+it.  We--just we two every-day boys--are part of it!"
+
+"The old Buddhist said--" began Marco.
+
+"Look here!" broke in The Rat.  "Tell me the whole story.  I want to
+hear it."
+
+It was because Loristan had heard it, and listened and believed, that
+The Rat had taken fire.  His imagination seized upon the idea, as it
+would have seized on some theory of necromancy proved true and workable.
+
+With his elbows on the table and his hands in his hair, he leaned
+forward, twisting a lock with restless fingers.  His breath quickened.
+
+"Tell it," he said, "I want to hear it all!"
+
+"I shall have to tell it in my own words," Marco said.  "And it won't
+be as wonderful as it was when my father told it to me. This is what I
+remember:
+
+"My father had gone through much pain and trouble.  A great load was
+upon him, and he had been told he was going to die before his work was
+done.  He had gone to India, because a man he was obliged to speak to
+had gone there to hunt, and no one knew when he would return.  My
+father followed him for months from one wild place to another, and,
+when he found him, the man would not hear or believe what he had come
+so far to say.  Then he had jungle-fever and almost died.  Once the
+natives left him for dead in a bungalow in the forest, and he heard the
+jackals howling round him all the night.  Through all the hours he was
+only alive enough to be conscious of two things--all the rest of him
+seemed gone from his body: his thought knew that his work was
+unfinished--and his body heard the jackals howl!"
+
+"Was the work for Samavia?" The Rat put in quickly.  "If he had died
+that night, the descendant of the Lost Prince never would have been
+found--never!" The Rat bit his lip so hard that a drop of blood started
+from it.
+
+"When he was slowly coming alive again, a native, who had gone back and
+stayed to wait upon him, told him that near the summit of a mountain,
+about fifty miles away, there was a ledge which jutted out into space
+and hung over the valley, which was thousands of feet below.  On the
+ledge there was a hut in which there lived an ancient Buddhist, who was
+a holy man, as they called him, and  who had been there during time
+which had not been measured.  They said that their grandparents and
+great-grandparents had known of him, though very few persons had ever
+seen him.  It was told that the most savage beast was tame before him.
+They said that a man-eating tiger would stop to salute him, and that a
+thirsty lioness would bring her whelps to drink at the spring near his
+hut."
+
+"That was a lie," said The Rat promptly.
+
+Marco neither laughed nor frowned.
+
+"How do we KNOW?" he said.  "It was a native's story, and it might be
+anything.  My father neither said it was true nor false. He listened to
+all that was told him by natives.  They said that the holy man was the
+brother of the stars.  He knew all things past and to come, and could
+heal the sick.  But most people, especially those who had sinful
+thoughts, were afraid to go near him."
+
+"I'd like to have seen--"  The Rat pondered aloud, but he did not
+finish.
+
+"Before my father was well, he had made up his mind to travel to the
+ledge if he could.  He felt as if he must go.  He thought that if he
+were going to die, the hermit might tell him some wise thing to do for
+Samavia."
+
+"He might have given him a message to leave to the Secret Ones," said
+The Rat.
+
+"He was so weak when he set out on his journey that he wondered if he
+would reach the end of it.  Part of the way he traveled by bullock
+cart, and part, he was carried by natives.  But at last the bearers
+came to a place more than halfway up the mountain, and would go no
+further.  Then they went back and left him to climb the rest of the way
+himself.  They had traveled slowly and he had got more strength, but he
+was weak yet.  The forest was more wonderful than anything he had ever
+seen.  There were tropical trees with foliage like lace, and some with
+huge leaves, and some of them seemed to reach the sky.  Sometimes he
+could barely see gleams of blue through them.  And vines swung down
+from their high branches, and caught each other, and matted together;
+and there were hot scents, and strange flowers, and dazzling birds
+darting  about, and thick moss, and little cascades bursting out.  The
+path grew narrower and steeper, and the flower scents and the
+sultriness made it like walking in a hothouse.  He heard rustlings in
+the undergrowth, which might have been made by any kind of wild animal;
+once he stepped across a deadly snake without seeing it.  But it was
+asleep and did not hurt him.  He knew the natives had been convinced
+that he would not reach the ledge; but for some strange reason he
+believed he should.  He stopped and rested many times, and he drank
+some milk he had brought in a canteen.  The higher he climbed, the more
+wonderful everything was, and a strange feeling began to fill him.  He
+said his body stopped being tired and began to feel very light.  And
+his load lifted itself from his heart, as if it were not his load any
+more but belonged to something stronger.  Even Samavia seemed to be
+safe.  As he went higher and higher, and looked down the abyss at the
+world below, it appeared as if it were not real but only a dream he had
+wakened from--only a dream."
+
+The Rat moved restlessly.
+
+"Perhaps he was light-headed with the fever," he suggested.
+
+"The fever had left him, and the weakness had left him," Marco
+answered.  "It seemed as if he had never really been ill at all--as if
+no one could be ill, because things like that were only dreams, just as
+the world was."
+
+"I wish I'd been with him!  Perhaps I could have thrown these
+away--down into the abyss!"  And The Rat shook his crutches which
+rested against the table.  "I feel as if I was climbing, too.  Go on."
+
+Marco had become more absorbed than The Rat.  He had lost himself in
+the memory of the story.
+
+"I felt that _I_ was climbing, when he told me," he said.  "I felt as
+if I were breathing in the hot flower-scents and pushing aside the big
+leaves and giant ferns.  There had been a rain, and they were wet and
+shining with big drops, like jewels, that showered over him as he
+thrust his way through and under them. And the stillness and the
+height--the stillness and the height! I can't make it real to you as he
+made it to me!  I can't!  I was there.  He took me.  And  it was so
+high--and so still--and so beautiful that I could scarcely bear it."
+
+But the truth was, that with some vivid boy-touch he had carried his
+hearer far.  The Rat was deadly quiet.  Even his eyes had not moved.
+He spoke almost as if he were in a sort of trance. "It's real," he
+said.  "I'm there now.  As high as you--go on--go on.  I want to climb
+higher."
+
+And Marco, understanding, went on.
+
+"The day was over and the stars were out when he reached the place were
+the ledge was.  He said he thought that during the last part of the
+climb he never looked on the earth at all.  The stars were so immense
+that he could not look away from them. They seemed to be drawing him
+up.  And all overhead was like violet velvet, and they hung there like
+great lamps of radiance. Can you see them?  You must see them.  My
+father saw them all night long.  They were part of the wonder."
+
+"I see them," The Rat answered, still in his trance-like voice and
+without stirring, and Marco knew he did.
+
+"And there, with the huge stars watching it, was the hut on the ledge.
+And there was no one there.  The door was open.  And outside it was a
+low bench and table of stone.  And on the table was a meal of dates and
+rice, waiting.  Not far from the hut was a deep spring, which ran away
+in a clear brook.  My father drank and bathed his face there.  Then he
+went out on the ledge, and sat down and waited, with his face turned up
+to the stars.  He did not lie down, and he thought he saw the stars all
+the time he waited.  He was sure he did not sleep.  He did not know how
+long he sat there alone.  But at last he drew his eyes from the stars,
+as if he had been commanded to do it.  And he was not alone any more.
+A yard or so away from him sat the holy man.  He knew it was the hermit
+because his eyes were different from any human eyes he had ever beheld.
+They were as still as the night was, and as deep as the shadows
+covering the world thousands of feet below, and they had a far, far
+look, and a strange light was in them."
+
+"What did he say?" asked The Rat hoarsely.
+
+"He only said, 'Rise, my son.  I awaited thee.  Go and eat the food I
+prepared for thee, and then we will speak together.'  He didn't move or
+speak again until my father had eaten the meal. He only sat on the moss
+and let his eyes rest on the shadows over the abyss.  When my father
+went back, he made a gesture which meant that he should sit near him.
+
+"Then he sat still for several minutes, and let his eyes rest on my
+father, until he felt as if the light in them were set in the midst of
+his own body and his soul.  Then he said, 'I cannot tell thee all thou
+wouldst know.  That I may not do.'  He had a wonderful gentle voice,
+like a deep soft bell.  'But the work will be done.  Thy life and thy
+son's life will set it on its way.'
+
+"They sat through the whole night together.  And the stars hung quite
+near, as if they listened.  And there were sounds in the bushes of
+stealthy, padding feet which wandered about as if the owners of them
+listened too.  And the wonderful, low, peaceful voice of the holy man
+went on and on, telling of wonders which seemed like miracles but which
+were to him only the 'working of the Law.'"
+
+"What is the Law?" The Rat broke in.
+
+"There were two my father wrote down, and I learned them.  The first
+was the law of The One.  I'll try to say that," and he covered his eyes
+and waited through a moment of silence.
+
+It seemed to The Rat as if the room held an extraordinary stillness.
+
+"Listen!" came next.  "This is it:
+
+"'There are a myriad worlds.  There is but One Thought out of which
+they grew.  Its Law is Order which cannot swerve.  Its creatures are
+free to choose.  Only they can create Disorder, which in itself is Pain
+and Woe and Hate and Fear.  These they alone can bring forth.  The
+Great One is a Golden Light.  It is not remote but near.  Hold thyself
+within its glow and thou wilt behold all things clearly.  First, with
+all thy breathing being, know one thing!  That thine own thought--when
+so thou standest--is one with That which thought the Worlds!'"
+
+"What?" gasped The Rat.  "MY thought--the things _I_ think!"
+
+"Your thoughts--boys' thoughts--anybody's thoughts."
+
+"You're giving me the jim-jams!"
+
+"He said it," answered Marco.  "And it was then he spoke about the
+broken Link--and about the greatest books in the world--that in all
+their different ways, they were only saying over and over again one
+thing thousands of times.  Just this thing--'Hate not, Fear not, Love.'
+And he said that was Order.  And when it was disturbed, suffering
+came--poverty and misery and catastrophe and wars."
+
+"Wars!" The Rat said sharply.  "The World couldn't do without war--and
+armies and defences!  What about Samavia?"
+
+"My father asked him that.  And this is what he answered.  I learned
+that too.  Let me think again," and he waited as he had waited before.
+Then he lifted his head.  "Listen!  This is it:
+
+"'Out of the blackness of Disorder and its outpouring of human misery,
+there will arise the Order which is Peace.  When Man learns that he is
+one with the Thought which itself creates all beauty, all power, all
+splendor, and all repose, he will not fear that his brother can rob him
+of his heart's desire.  He will stand in the Light and draw to himself
+his own.'"
+
+"Draw to himself?" The Rat said.  "Draw what he wants?  I don't believe
+it!"
+
+"Nobody does," said Marco.  "We don't know.  He said we stood in the
+dark of the night--without stars--and did not know that the broken
+chain swung just above us."
+
+"I don't believe it!" said The Rat.  "It's too big!"
+
+Marco did not say whether he believed it or not.  He only went on
+speaking.
+
+"My father listened until he felt as if he had stopped breathing.  Just
+at the stillest of the stillness the Buddhist stopped speaking.  And
+there was a rustling of the undergrowth a few yards away, as if
+something big was pushing its way through--and there was the soft pad
+of feet.  The Buddhist turned his head and my father heard him say
+softly:  'Come forth, Sister.'
+
+"And a huge leopardess with two cubs walked out on to the ledge and
+came to him and threw herself down with a heavy lunge near his feet."
+
+"Your father saw that!" cried out The Rat.  "You mean the old fellow
+knew something that made wild beasts afraid to touch him or any one
+near him?"
+
+"Not afraid.  They knew he was their brother, and that he was one with
+the Law.  He had lived so long with the Great Thought that all darkness
+and fear had left him forever.  He had mended the Chain."
+
+The Rat had reached deep waters.  He leaned forward--his hands
+burrowing in his hair, his face scowling and twisted, his eyes boring
+into space.  He had climbed to the ledge at the mountain-top; he had
+seen the luminous immensity of the stars, and he had looked down into
+the shadows filling the world thousands of feet below.  Was there some
+remote deep in him from whose darkness a slow light was rising?  All
+that Loristan had said he knew must be true.  But the rest of it--?
+
+Marco got up and came over to him.  He looked like his father again.
+
+"If the descendant of the Lost Prince is brought back to rule Samavia,
+he will teach his people the Law of the One.  It was for that the holy
+man taught my father until the dawn came."
+
+"Who will--who will teach the Lost Prince--the new King--when he is
+found?" The Rat cried.  "Who will teach him?"
+
+"The hermit said my father would.  He said he would also teach his
+son--and that son would teach his son--and he would teach his.  And
+through such as they were, the whole world would come to know the Order
+and the Law."
+
+Never had The Rat looked so strange and fierce a thing.  A whole world
+at peace!  No tactics--no battles--no slaughtered heroes--no clash of
+arms, and fame!  It made him feel sick.  And yet--something set his
+chest heaving.
+
+"And your father would teach him that--when he was found!  So that he
+could teach his sons.  Your father BELIEVES in it?"
+
+"Yes," Marco answered.  He said nothing but "Yes." The Rat threw
+himself forward on the table, face downward.
+
+"Then," he said, "he must make me believe it.  He must teach me--if he
+can."
+
+They heard a clumping step upon the staircase, and, when it reached the
+landing, it stopped at their door.  Then there was a solid knock.
+
+When Marco opened the door, the young soldier who had escorted him from
+the Hof-Theater was standing outside.  He looked as uninterested and
+stolid as before, as he handed in a small flat package.
+
+"You must have dropped it near your seat at the Opera," he said.  "I
+was to give it into your own hands.  It is your purse."
+
+After he had clumped down the staircase again, Marco and The Rat drew a
+quick breath at one and the same time.
+
+"I had no seat and I had no purse," Marco said.  "Let us open it."
+
+There was a flat limp leather note-holder inside.  In it was a paper,
+at the head of which were photographs of the Lovely Person and her
+companion.  Beneath were a few lines which stated that they were the
+well known spies, Eugenia Karovna and Paul Varel, and that the bearer
+must be protected against them.  It was signed by the Chief of the
+Police.  On a separate sheet was written the command:  "Carry this with
+you as protection."
+
+"That is help," The Rat said.  "It would protect us, even in another
+country.  The Chancellor sent it--but you made the strong call--and
+it's here!"
+
+There was no street lamp to shine into their windows when they went at
+last to bed.  When the blind was drawn up, they were nearer the sky
+than they had been in the Marylebone Road.  The last thing each of them
+saw, as he went to sleep, was the stars--and in their dreams, they saw
+them grow larger and larger, and hang like lamps of radiance against
+the violet-velvet sky above a ledge of a Himalayan Mountain, where
+they listened to the sound of a low voice going on and on and on.
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+A NIGHT VIGIL
+
+On a hill in the midst of a great Austrian plain, around which high
+Alps wait watching through the ages, stands a venerable fortress, almost
+more beautiful than anything one has ever seen. Perhaps, if it were not
+for the great plain flowering broadly about it with its wide-spread
+beauties of meadow-land, and wood, and dim toned buildings gathered
+about farms, and its dream of a small ancient city at its feet, it
+might--though it is to be doubted--seem something less a marvel of
+medieval picturesqueness.  But out of the plain rises the low hill, and
+surrounding it at a stately distance stands guard the giant majesty of
+Alps, with shoulders in the clouds and god-like heads above them,
+looking on--always looking  on--sometimes themselves ethereal clouds of
+snow-whiteness, some times monster bare crags which pierce the blue,
+and whose unchanging silence seems to know the secret of the
+everlasting.  And on the hill which this august circle holds in its
+embrace, as though it enclosed a treasure, stands the old, old, towered
+fortress built as a citadel for the Prince Archbishops, who were kings
+in their domain in the long past centuries when the splendor and power
+of ecclesiastical princes was among the greatest upon earth.
+
+And as you approach the town--and as you leave it--and as you walk
+through its streets, the broad calm empty-looking ones, or the narrow
+thoroughfares whose houses seem so near to each other, whether you
+climb or descend--or cross bridges, or gaze at churches, or step out on
+your balcony at night to look at the mountains and the moon--always it
+seems that from some point you can see it gazing down at you--the
+citadel of Hohen-Salzburg.
+
+It was to Salzburg they went next, because at Salzburg was to be found
+the man who looked like a hair-dresser and who worked in a barber's
+shop.  Strange as it might seem, to him also must be carried the Sign.
+
+"There may be people who come to him to be shaved--soldiers, or men who
+know things," The Rat worked it out, "and he can speak to them when he
+is standing close to them.  It will be easy to get near him.  You can
+go and have your hair cut."
+
+The journey from Munich was not a long one, and during the latter part
+of it they had the wooden-seated third-class carriage to themselves.
+Even the drowsy old peasant who nodded and slept in one corner got out
+with his bundles at last.  To Marco the mountains were long-known
+wonders which could never grow old. They had always and always been so
+old!  Surely they had been the first of the world!  Surely they had
+been standing there waiting when it was said "Let there be Light."  The
+Light had known it would find them there.  They were so silent, and yet
+it seemed as if they said some amazing thing--something which would
+take your breath from you if you could hear it.  And they never
+changed. The clouds changed, they wreathed them, and hid them, and
+trailed down them, and poured out storm torrents on them, and thundered
+against them, and darted forked lightnings round them.  But the
+mountains stood there afterwards as if such things had not been and
+were not in the world.  Winds roared and tore at them, centuries passed
+over them--centuries of millions of lives, of changing of kingdoms and
+empires, of battles and world-wide fame which grew and died and passed
+away; and temples crumbled, and kings' tombs were forgotten, and cities
+were buried and others built over them after hundreds of years--and
+perhaps a few stones fell from a mountain side, or a fissure was worn,
+which the people below could not even see.  And that was all.  There
+they stood, and perhaps their secret was that they had been there for
+ever and ever.  That was what the mountains said to Marco, which was
+why he did not want to talk much, but sat and gazed out of the carriage
+window.
+
+The Rat had been very silent all the morning.  He had been silent when
+they got up, and he had scarcely spoken when they made their way to the
+station at Munich and sat waiting for their train.  It seemed to Marco
+that he was thinking so hard that he was like a person who was far away
+from the place he stood in.  His brows were drawn together and his eyes
+did not seem to see the people who passed by.  Usually he saw
+everything and made shrewd remarks on almost all he saw.  But to-day he
+was somehow otherwise absorbed.  He sat in the train with his forehead
+against the window and stared out.  He moved and gasped when he found
+himself staring at the Alps, but afterwards he was even strangely
+still. It was not until after the sleepy old peasant had gathered his
+bundles and got out at a station that he spoke, and he did it without
+turning his head.
+
+"You only told me one of the two laws," he said.  "What was the other
+one?"
+
+Marco brought himself back from his dream of reaching the highest
+mountain-top and seeing clouds float beneath his feet in the sun. He
+had to come back a long way.
+
+"Are you thinking of that?  I wondered what you had been thinking of
+all the morning," he said.
+
+"I couldn't stop thinking of it.  What was the second one?" said The
+Rat, but he did not turn his head.
+
+"It was called the Law of Earthly Living.  It was for every day," said
+Marco.  "It was for the ordering of common things--the small things we
+think don't matter, as well as the big ones.  I always remember that
+one without any trouble.  This was it:
+
+"'Let pass through thy mind, my son, only the image thou wouldst desire
+to see become a truth.  Meditate only upon the wish of thy
+heart--seeing first that it is such as can wrong no man and is not
+ignoble.  Then will it take earthly form and draw near to thee.
+
+"'This is the Law of That which Creates.'"
+
+Then The Rat turned round.  He had a shrewdly reasoning mind.
+
+"That sounds as if you could get anything you wanted, if you think
+about it long enough and in the right way," he said. "But perhaps it
+only means that, if you do it, you'll be happy after you're dead.  My
+father used to shout with laughing when he was drunk and talked about
+things like that and looked at his rags."
+
+He hugged his knees for a few minutes.  He was remembering the rags,
+and the fog-darkened room in the slums, and the loud, hideous laughter.
+
+"What if you want something that will harm somebody else?" he said
+next.  "What if you hate some one and wish you could kill him?"
+
+"That was one of the questions my father asked that night on the ledge.
+The holy man said people always asked it," Marco answered.  "This was
+the answer:
+
+"'Let him who stretcheth forth his hand to draw the lightning to his
+brother recall that through his own soul and body will pass the bolt.'"
+
+"Wonder if there's anything in it?" The Rat pondered.  "It'd make a
+chap careful if he believed it!  Revenging yourself on a man would be
+like holding him against a live wire to kill him and getting all the
+volts through yourself."
+
+A sudden anxiety revealed itself in his face.
+
+"Does your father believe it?" he asked.  "Does he?"
+
+"He knows it is true," Marco said.
+
+"I'll own up," The Rat decided after further reflection--"I'll own up
+I'm glad that there isn't any one left that I've a grudge against.
+There isn't any one--now."
+
+Then he fell again into silence and did not speak until their journey
+was at an end.  As they arrived early in the day, they had plenty of
+time to wander about the marvelous little old city. But through the
+wide streets and through the narrow ones, under the archways into the
+market gardens, across the bridge and into the square where the
+"glockenspiel" played its old tinkling tune, everywhere the Citadel
+looked down and always The Rat walked on in his dream.
+
+They found the hair-dresser's shop in one of the narrow streets. There
+were no grand shops there, and this particular shop was a modest one.
+They walked past it once, and then went back.  It was a shop so humble
+that there was nothing remarkable in two common boys going into it to
+have their hair cut.  An old man came forward to receive them.  He was
+evidently glad of their modest patronage.  He undertook to attend to
+The Rat himself, but, having arranged him in a chair, he turned about
+and called to some one in the back room.
+
+"Heinrich," he said.
+
+In the slit in Marco's sleeve was the sketch of the man with smooth
+curled hair, who looked like a hair-dresser.  They had found a corner
+in which to take their final look at it before they turned back to come
+in.  Heinrich, who came forth from the small back room, had smooth
+curled hair.  He looked extremely like a hair-dresser.  He had features
+like those in the sketch--his nose and mouth and chin and figure were
+like what Marco had drawn and committed to memory.  But--
+
+He gave Marco a chair and tied the professional white covering around
+his neck.  Marco leaned back and closed his eyes a moment.
+
+"That is NOT the man!" he was saying to himself.  "He is NOT the man."
+
+How he knew he was not, he could not have explained, but he felt sure.
+It was a strong conviction.  But for the sudden feeling, nothing would
+have been easier than to give the Sign.  And if he could not give it
+now, where was the one to whom it must be spoken, and what would be the
+result if that one could not be found?  And if there were two who were
+so much alike, how could he be sure?
+
+Each owner of each of the pictured faces was a link in a powerful
+secret chain; and if a link were missed, the chain would be broken.
+Each time Heinrich came within the line of his vision, he recorded
+every feature afresh and compared it with the remembered sketch.  Each
+time the resemblance became more close, but each time some persistent
+inner conviction repeated, "No; the Sign is not for him!"
+
+It was disturbing, also, to find that The Rat was all at once as
+restless as he had previously been silent and preoccupied.  He moved in
+his chair, to the great discomfort of the old hair-dresser.  He kept
+turning his head to talk.  He asked Marco to translate divers questions
+he wished him to ask the two men. They were questions about the
+Citadel--about the Monchsberg--the Residenz--the Glockenspiel--the
+mountains.  He added one query to another and could not sit still.
+
+"The young gentleman will get an ear snipped," said the old man to
+Marco.  "And it will not be my fault."
+
+"What shall I do?" Marco was thinking.  "He is not the man."
+
+He did not give the Sign.  He must go away and think it out, though
+where his thoughts would lead him he did not know.  This was a more
+difficult problem than he had ever dreamed of facing. There was no one
+to ask advice of.  Only himself and The Rat, who was nervously
+wriggling and twisting in his chair.
+
+"You must sit still," he said to him.  "The hair-dresser is afraid you
+will make him cut you by accident."
+
+"But I want to know who lives at the Residenz?" said The Rat. "These
+men can tell us things if you ask them."
+
+"It is done now," said the old hair-dresser with a relieved air.
+"Perhaps the cutting of his hair makes the young gentleman nervous.  It
+is sometimes so."
+
+The Rat stood close to Marco's chair and asked questions until Heinrich
+also had done his work.  Marco could not understand his companion's
+change of mood.  He realized that, if he had wished to give the Sign,
+he had been allowed no opportunity.  He could not have given it.  The
+restless questioning had so directed the older man's attention to his
+son and Marco that nothing could have been said to Heinrich without his
+observing it.
+
+"I could not have spoken if he had been the man," Marco said to himself.
+
+Their very exit from the shop seemed a little hurried.  When they were
+fairly in the street, The Rat made a clutch at Marco's arm.
+
+"You didn't give it?" he whispered breathlessly.  "I kept talking and
+talking to prevent you."
+
+Marco tried not to feel breathless, and he tried to speak in a low and
+level voice with no hint of exclamation in it.
+
+"Why did you say that?" he asked.
+
+The Rat drew closer to him.
+
+"That was not the man!" he whispered.  "It doesn't matter how much he
+looks like him, he isn't the right one."
+
+He was pale and swinging along swiftly as if he were in a hurry.
+
+"Let's get into a quiet place," he said.  "Those queer things you've
+been telling me have got hold of me.  How did I know?  How could I
+know--unless it's because I've been trying to work that second law?
+I've been saying to myself that we should be told the right things to
+do--for the Game and for your father--and so that I could be the right
+sort of aide-de-camp.  I've been working at it, and, when he came out,
+I knew he was not the man in spite of his looks.  And I couldn't be
+sure you knew, and I thought, if I kept on talking and interrupting you
+with silly questions, you could be prevented from speaking."
+
+"There's a place not far away where we can get a look at the mountains.
+Let's go there and sit down," said Marco.  "I knew it was not the right
+one, too.  It's the Help over again."
+
+"Yes, it's the Help--it's the Help--it must be," muttered The Rat,
+walking fast and with a pale, set face.  "It could not be anything
+else."
+
+They got away from the streets and the people and reached the quiet
+place where they could see the mountains.  There they sat down by the
+wayside.  The Rat took off his cap and wiped his forehead, but it was
+not only the quick walking which had made it damp.
+
+"The queerness of it gave me a kind of fright," he said. "When he came
+out and he was near enough for me to see him, a sudden strong feeling
+came over me.  It seemed as if I knew he wasn't the man.  Then I said
+to myself--'but he looks like him'--and I began to get nervous.  And
+then I was sure again--and then I wanted to try to stop you from giving
+him the Sign.  And then it all seemed foolishness--and the next second
+all the things you had told me rushed back to me at once--and I
+remembered what I had been thinking ever since--and I said--'Perhaps
+it's the Law beginning to work,' and the palms of my hands got moist."
+
+Marco was very quiet.  He was looking at the farthest and highest peaks
+and wondering about many things.
+
+"It was the expression of his face that was different," he said.  "And
+his eyes.  They are rather smaller than the right man's are.  The light
+in the shop was poor, and it was not until the last time he bent over
+me that I found out what I had not seen before.  His eyes are gray--the
+other ones are brown."
+
+"Did you see that!" The Rat exclaimed.  "Then we're sure! We're safe!"
+
+"We're not safe till we've found the right man," Marco said. "Where is
+he?  Where is he?  Where is he?"
+
+He said the words dreamily and quietly, as if he were lost in
+thought--but also rather as if he expected an answer.  And he still
+looked at the far-off peaks.  The Rat, after watching him a moment or
+so, began to look at them also.  They were like a loadstone to him too.
+There was something stilling about them, and when your eyes had rested
+upon them a few moments they did not want to move away.
+
+"There must be a ledge up there somewhere," he said at last.
+
+"Let's go up and look for it and sit there and think and think--about
+finding the right man."
+
+There seemed nothing fantastic in this to Marco.  To go into some quiet
+place and sit and think about the thing he wanted to remember or to
+find out was an old way of his.  To be quiet was always the best thing,
+his father had taught him.  It was like listening to something which
+could speak without words.
+
+"There is a little train which goes up the Gaisberg," he said. "When
+you are at the top, a world of mountains spreads around you.  Lazarus
+went once and told me.  And we can lie out on the grass all night.  Let
+us go, Aide-de-camp."
+
+So they went, each one thinking the same thought, and each boy-mind
+holding its own vision.  Marco was the calmer of the two, because his
+belief that there was always help to be found was an accustomed one and
+had ceased to seem to partake of the supernatural.  He believed quite
+simply that it was the working of a law, not the breaking of one, which
+gave answer and led him in his quests.  The Rat, who had known nothing
+of laws other than those administered by police-courts, was at once
+awed and fascinated by the suggestion of crossing some borderland of
+the Unknown.  The law of the One had baffled and overthrown him, with
+its sweeping away of the enmities of passions which created wars and
+called for armies.  But the Law of Earthly Living seemed to offer
+practical benefits if you could hold on to yourself enough to work it.
+
+"You wouldn't get everything for nothing, as far as I can make out," he
+had said to Marco.  "You'd have to sweep all the rubbish out of your
+mind--sweep it as if you did it with a broom--and then keep on thinking
+straight and believing you were going to get things--and working for
+them--and they'd come."
+
+Then he had laughed a short ugly laugh because he recalled something.
+
+"There was something in the Bible that my father used to jeer
+about--something about a man getting what he prayed for if he believed
+it," he said.
+
+"Oh, yes, it's there," said Marco.  "That if a man pray believing  he
+shall receive what he asks it shall be given him. All the books say
+something like it.  It's been said so often it makes you believe it."
+
+"He didn't believe it, and I didn't," said The Rat.
+
+"Nobody does--really," answered Marco, as he had done once before.
+"It's because we don't know."
+
+They went up the Gaisberg in the little train, which pushed and dragged
+and panted slowly upward with them.  It took them with it stubbornly
+and gradually higher and higher until it had left Salzburg and the
+Citadel below and had reached the world of mountains which rose and
+spread and lifted great heads behind each other and beside each other
+and beyond each other until there seemed no other land on earth but
+that on mountain sides and backs and shoulders and crowns.  And also
+one felt the absurdity of living upon flat ground, where life must be
+an insignificant thing.
+
+There were only a few sight-seers in the small carriages, and they were
+going to look at the view from the summit.  They were not in search of
+a ledge.
+
+The Rat and Marco were.  When the little train stopped at the top, they
+got out with the rest.  They wandered about with them over the short
+grass on the treeless summit and looked out from this viewpoint and the
+other.  The Rat grew more and more silent, and his silence was not
+merely a matter of speechlessness but of expression.  He LOOKED silent
+and as if he were no longer aware of the earth.  They left the
+sight-seers at last and wandered away by themselves.  They found a
+ledge where they could sit or lie and where even the world of mountains
+seemed below them. They had brought some simple food with them, and
+they laid it behind a jutting bit of rock.  When the sight-seers
+boarded the laboring little train again and were dragged back down the
+mountain, their night of vigil would begin.
+
+That was what it was to be.  A night of stillness on the heights, where
+they could wait and watch and hold themselves ready to hear any thought
+which spoke to them.
+
+The Rat was so thrilled that he would not have been surprised if he had
+heard a voice from the place of the stars.  But Marco only believed
+that in this great stillness and beauty, if he held his boy-soul quiet
+enough, he should find himself at last thinking of something that would
+lead him to the place which held what it was best that he should find.
+The people returned to the train and it set out upon its way down the
+steepness.
+
+They heard it laboring on its way, as though it was forced to make as
+much effort to hold itself back as it had made to drag itself upward.
+
+Then they were alone, and it was a loneness such as an eagle might feel
+when it held itself poised high in the curve of blue. And they sat and
+watched.  They saw the sun go down and, shade by shade, deepen and make
+radiant and then draw away with it the last touches of
+color--rose-gold, rose-purple, and rose-gray.
+
+One mountain-top after another held its blush a few moments and lost
+it.  It took long to gather them all but at length they were gone and
+the marvel of night fell.
+
+The breath of the forests below was sweet about them, and soundlessness
+enclosed them which was of unearthly peace.  The stars began to show
+themselves, and presently the two who waited found their faces turned
+upward to the sky and they both were speaking in whispers.
+
+"The stars look large here," The Rat said.
+
+"Yes," answered Marco.  "We are not as high as the Buddhist was, but it
+seems like the top of the world."
+
+"There is a light on the side of the mountain yonder which is not a
+star," The Rat whispered.
+
+"It is a light in a hut where the guides take the climbers to rest and
+to spend the night," answered Marco.
+
+"It is so still," The Rat whispered again after a silence, and Marco
+whispered back:
+
+"It is so still."
+
+They had eaten their meal of black bread and cheese after the setting
+of the sun, and now they lay down on their backs and looked up until
+the first few stars had multiplied themselves into myriads.  They began
+a little low talk, but the soundlessness was stronger than themselves.
+
+"How am I going to hold on to that second law?" The Rat said
+restlessly.  "'Let pass through thy mind only the image thou wouldst
+see become a truth.'  The things that are passing through my mind are
+not the things I want to come true.  What if we don't find him--don't
+find the right one, I mean!"
+
+"Lie still--still--and look up at the stars," whispered Marco. "They
+give you a SURE feeling."
+
+There was something in the curious serenity of him which calmed even
+his aide-de-camp.  The Rat lay still and looked--and looked--and
+thought.  And what he thought of was the desire of his heart.  The
+soundlessness enwrapped him and there was no world left.  That there
+was a spark of light in the mountain-climbers' rest-hut was a thing
+forgotten.
+
+They were only two boys, and they had begun their journey on the
+earliest train and had been walking about all day and thinking of great
+and anxious things.
+
+"It is so still," The Rat whispered again at last.
+
+"It is so still," whispered Marco.
+
+And the mountains rising behind each other and beside each other and
+beyond each other in the night, and also the myriads of stars which had
+so multiplied themselves, looking down knew that they were asleep--as
+sleep the human things which do not watch forever.
+
+"Some one is smoking," Marco found himself saying in a dream. After
+which he awakened and found that the smoke was not part of a dream at
+all.  It came from the pipe of a young man who had an alpenstock and
+who looked as if he had climbed to see the sun rise.  He wore the
+clothes of a climber and a green hat with a tuft at the back.  He
+looked down at the two boys, surprised.
+
+"Good day," he said.  "Did you sleep here so that you could see the sun
+get up?"
+
+"Yes," answered Marco.
+
+"Were you cold?"
+
+"We slept too soundly to know.  And we brought our thick coats."
+
+"I slept half-way down the mountains," said the smoker.  "I am a guide
+in these days, but I have not been one long enough to miss a sunrise it
+is no work to reach.  My father and brother think I am mad about such
+things.  They would rather stay in their beds.  Oh! he is awake, is
+he?" turning toward The Rat, who had risen on one elbow and was staring
+at him.  "What is the matter?  You look as if you were afraid of me."
+
+Marco did not wait for The Rat to recover his breath and speak.
+
+"I know why he looks at you so," he answered for him.  "He is startled.
+Yesterday we went to a hair-dresser's shop down below there, and we saw
+a man who was almost exactly like you--only--" he added, looking up,
+"his eyes were gray and yours are brown."
+
+"He was my twin brother," said the guide, puffing at his pipe
+cheerfully.  "My father thought he could make hair-dressers of us both,
+and I tried it for four years.  But I always wanted to be climbing the
+mountains and there were not holidays enough.  So I cut my hair, and
+washed the pomade out of it, and broke away. I don't look like a
+hair-dresser now, do I?"
+
+He did not.  Not at all.  But Marco knew him.  He was the man. There
+was no one on the mountain-top but themselves, and the sun was just
+showing a rim of gold above the farthest and highest giant's shoulders.
+One need not be afraid to do anything, since there was no one to see or
+hear.  Marco slipped the sketch out of the slit in his sleeve.  He
+looked at it and he looked at the guide, and then he showed it to him.
+
+"That is not your brother.  It is you!" he said.
+
+The man's face changed a little--more than any other face had changed
+when its owner had been spoken to.  On a mountain-top as the sun rises
+one is not afraid.
+
+"The Lamp is lighted," said Marco.  "The Lamp is lighted."
+
+"God be thanked!" burst forth the man.  And he took off his hat and
+bared his head.  Then the rim behind the mountain's shoulder leaped
+forth into a golden torrent of splendor.
+
+And The Rat stood up, resting his weight on his crutches in utter
+silence, and stared and stared.
+
+"That is three!" said Marco.
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE SILVER HORN
+
+During the next week, which they spent in journeying towards Vienna,
+they gave the Sign to three different persons at places which were on
+the way.  In a village across the frontier in Bavaria they found a
+giant of an old man sitting on a bench under a tree before his mountain
+"Gasthaus" or inn; and when the four words were uttered, he stood up
+and bared his head as the guide had done.  When Marco gave the Sign in
+some quiet place to a man who was alone, he noticed that they all did
+this and said their "God be thanked" devoutly, as if it were part of
+some religious ceremony.  In a small town a few miles away he had to
+search some hours before he found a stalwart young shoemaker with
+bright red hair and a horseshoe-shaped scar on his forehead.  He was
+not in his workshop when the boys first passed it, because, as they
+found out later, he had been climbing a mountain the day before, and
+had been detained in the descent because his companion had hurt himself.
+
+When Marco went in and asked him to measure him for a pair of shoes, he
+was quite friendly and told them all about it.
+
+"There are some good fellows who should not climb," he said. "When they
+find themselves standing on a bit of rock jutting out over emptiness,
+their heads begin to whirl round--and then, if they don't turn head
+over heels a few thousand feet, it is because some comrade is near
+enough to drag them back.  There can be no ceremony then and they
+sometimes get hurt--as my friend did yesterday."
+
+"Did you never get hurt yourself?" The Rat asked.
+
+"When I was eight years old I did that," said the young shoemaker,
+touching the scar on his forehead.  "But it was not much.  My father
+was a guide and took me with him.  He wanted me to begin early.  There
+is nothing like it--climbing.  I shall be at it again.  This won't do
+for me.  I tried shoemaking because I was in love with a girl who
+wanted me to stay at home.  She married another man.  I am glad of it.
+Once a guide, always a guide."  He knelt down to measure Marco's foot,
+and Marco bent a little forward.
+
+"The Lamp is lighted," he said.
+
+There was no one in the shop, but the door was open and people were
+passing in the narrow street; so the shoemaker did not lift his red
+head.  He went on measuring.
+
+"God be thanked!" he said, in a low voice.  "Do you want these shoes
+really, or did you only want me to take your measure?"
+
+"I cannot wait until they are made," Marco answered.  "I must go on."
+
+"Yes, you must go on," answered the shoemaker.  "But I'll tell you what
+I'll do--I'll make them and keep them.  Some great day might come when
+I shall show them to people and swagger about them."  He glanced round
+cautiously, and then ended, still bending over his measuring.  "They
+will be called the shoes of the Bearer of the Sign.  And I shall say,
+'He was only a lad. This was the size of his foot.'"  Then he stood up
+with a great smile.
+
+"There'll be climbing enough to be done now," he said, "and I look to
+see you again somewhere."
+
+When the boys went away, they talked it over.
+
+"The hair-dresser didn't want to be a hair-dresser, and the shoemaker
+didn't want to make shoes," said The Rat.  "They both wanted to be
+mountain-climbers.  There are mountains in Samavia and mountains on the
+way to it.  You showed them to me on the map.
+
+"Yes; and secret messengers who can climb anywhere, and cross dangerous
+places, and reconnoiter from points no one else can reach, can find out
+things and give signals other men cannot," said Marco.
+
+"That's what I thought out," The Rat answered.  "That was what he meant
+when he said, 'There will be climbing enough to be done now.'"
+
+Strange were the places they went to and curiously unlike each other
+were the people to whom they carried their message.  The most singular
+of all was an old woman who lived in so remote a place that the road
+which wound round and round the mountain, wound round it for miles and
+miles.  It was not a bad road and it was an amazing one to travel,
+dragged in a small cart by a mule, when one could be dragged, and
+clambering slowly with rests between when one could not: the
+tree-covered precipices one looked down, the tossing whiteness of
+waterfalls, or the green foaming of rushing streams, and the immensity
+of farm- and village-scattered plains spreading themselves to the feet
+of other mountains shutting them in were breath-taking beauties to look
+down on, as the road mounted and wound round and round and higher and
+higher.
+
+"How can any one live higher than this?" said The Rat as they sat on
+the thick moss by the wayside after the mule and cart had left them.
+"Look at the bare crags looming up above there.  Let us  look at her
+again.  Her picture looked as if she were a hundred years old."
+
+Marco took out his hidden sketch.  It seemed surely one of the
+strangest things in the world that a creature as old as this one seemed
+could reach such a place, or, having reached it, could ever descend to
+the world again to give aid to any person or thing.
+
+Her old face was crossed and recrossed with a thousand wrinkles. Her
+profile was splendid yet and she had been a beauty in her day.  Her
+eyes were like an eagle's--and not an old eagle's.  And she had a long
+neck which held her old head high.
+
+"How could she get here?" exclaimed The Rat.
+
+"Those who sent us know, though we don't," said Marco.  "Will you sit
+here and rest while I go on further?"
+
+"No!" The Rat answered stubbornly.  "I didn't train myself to stay
+behind.  But we shall come to bare-rock climbing soon and then I shall
+be obliged to stop," and he said the last bitterly. He knew that, if
+Marco had come alone, he would have ridden in no cart but would have
+trudged upward and onward sturdily to the end of his journey.
+
+But they did not reach the crags, as they had thought must be
+inevitable.  Suddenly half-way to the sky, as it seemed, they came to a
+bend in the road and found themselves mounting into a new green
+world--an astonishing marvel of a world, with green velvet slopes and
+soft meadows and thick woodland, and cows feeding in velvet pastures,
+and--as if it had been snowed down from the huge bare mountain crags
+which still soared above into heaven--a mysterious, ancient, huddled
+village which, being thus snowed down, might have caught among the
+rocks and rested there through all time.
+
+There it stood.  There it huddled itself.  And the monsters in the blue
+above it themselves looked down upon it as if it were an incredible
+thing--this ancient, steep-roofed, hanging-balconied, crumbling cluster
+of human nests, which seemed a thousand miles from the world.  Marco
+and The Rat stood and stared at it.  Then they sat down and stared at
+it.
+
+"How did it get here?" The Rat cried.
+
+Marco shook his head.  He certainly could see no explanation of its
+being there.  Perhaps some of the oldest villagers could tell stories of
+how its first chalets had gathered themselves together.
+
+An old peasant driving a cow came down a steep path.  He looked with a
+dull curiosity at The Rat and his crutches; but when Marco advanced and
+spoke to him in German, he did not seem to understand, but shook his
+head saying something in a sort of dialect Marco did not know.
+
+"If they all speak like that, we shall have to make signs when we want
+to ask anything," The Rat said.  "What will she speak?"
+
+"She will know the German for the Sign or we should not have been sent
+here," answered Marco.  "Come on."
+
+They made their way to the village, which huddled itself together
+evidently with the object of keeping itself warm when through the
+winter months the snows strove to bury it and the winds roared down
+from the huge mountain crags and tried to tear it from among its rocks.
+The doors and windows were few and small, and glimpses of the inside of
+the houses showed earthen floors and dark rooms.  It was plain that it
+was counted a more comfortable thing to live without light than to let
+in the cold.
+
+It was easy enough to reconnoiter.  The few people they saw were
+evidently not surprised that strangers who discovered their unexpected
+existence should be curious and want to look at them and their houses.
+
+The boys wandered about as if they were casual explorers, who having
+reached the place by chance were interested in all they saw.  They went
+into the little Gasthaus and got some black bread and sausage and some
+milk.  The mountaineer owner was a brawny fellow who understood some
+German.  He told them that few strangers knew of the village but that
+bold hunters and climbers came for sport.  In the forests on the
+mountain sides were bears and, in the high places, chamois.  Now and
+again, some great gentlemen came with parties of the daring kind--very
+great gentlemen indeed, he said, shaking his head with pride.  There
+was one  who had castles in other mountains, but he liked best to come
+here.  Marco began to wonder if several strange things might not be
+true if great gentlemen sometimes climbed to the mysterious place.  But
+he had not been sent to give the Sign to a great gentleman.  He had
+been sent to give it to an old woman with eyes like an eagle which was
+young.
+
+He had a sketch in his sleeve, with that of her face, of her
+steep-roofed, black-beamed, balconied house.  If they walked about a
+little, they would be sure to come upon it in this tiny place.  Then he
+could go in and ask her for a drink of water.
+
+They roamed about for an hour after they left the Gasthaus.  They went
+into the little church and looked at the graveyard and wondered if it
+was not buried out of all sight in the winter. After they had done
+this, they sauntered out and walked through the huddled clusters of
+houses, examining each one as they drew near it and passed.
+
+"I see it!" The Rat exclaimed at last.  "It is that very old-looking
+one standing a little way from the rest.  It is not as tumbled down as
+most of them.  And there are some red flowers on the balcony."
+
+"Yes!  That's it!" said Marco.
+
+They walked up to the low black door and, as he stopped on the
+threshold, Marco took off his cap.  He did this because, sitting in the
+doorway on a low wooden chair, the old, old woman with the eagle eyes
+was sitting knitting.
+
+There was no one else in the room and no one anywhere within sight.
+When the old, old woman looked up at him with her young eagle's eyes,
+holding her head high on her long neck, Marco knew he need not ask for
+water or for anything else.
+
+"The Lamp is lighted," he said, in his low but strong and clear young
+voice.
+
+She dropped her knitting upon her knees and gazed at him a moment in
+silence.  She knew German it was clear, for it was in German she
+answered him.
+
+"God be thanked!" she said.  "Come in, young Bearer of the Sign, and
+bring your friend in with you.  I live alone and not a soul is within
+hearing."
+
+She was a wonderful old woman.  Neither Marco nor The Rat would live
+long enough to forget the hours they spent in her strange dark house.
+She kept them and made them spend the night with her.
+
+"It is quite safe," she said.  "I live alone since my man fell into the
+crevasse and was killed because his rope broke when he was trying to
+save his comrade.  So I have two rooms to spare and sometimes climbers
+are glad to sleep in them.  Mine is a good warm house and I am well
+known in the village.  You are very young," she added shaking her head.
+"You are very young.  You must have good blood in your veins to be
+trusted with this."
+
+"I have my father's blood," answered Marco.
+
+"You are like some one I once saw," the old woman said, and her eagle
+eyes set themselves hard upon him.  "Tell me your name."
+
+There was no reason why he should not tell it to her.
+
+"It is Marco Loristan," he said.
+
+"What!  It is that!" she cried out, not loud but low.
+
+To Marco's amazement she got up from her chair and stood before him,
+showing what a tall old woman she really was.  There was a startled,
+even an agitated, look in her face.  And suddenly she actually made a
+sort of curtsey to him--bending her knee as peasants do when they pass
+a shrine.
+
+"It is that!" she said again.  "And yet they dare let you go on a
+journey like this!  That speaks for your courage and for theirs."
+
+But Marco did not know what she meant.  Her strange obeisance made him
+feel awkward.  He stood up because his training had told him that when
+a woman stands a man also rises.
+
+"The name speaks for the courage," he said, "because it is my father's."
+
+She watched him almost anxiously.
+
+"You do not even know!" she breathed--and it was an exclamation and not
+a question.
+
+"I know what I have been told to do," he answered.  "I do not ask
+anything else."
+
+"Who is that?" she asked, pointing to The Rat.
+
+"He is the friend my father sent with me," said Marco smiling. "He
+called him my aide-de-camp.  It was a sort of joke because we had
+played soldiers together."
+
+It seemed as if she were obliged to collect her thoughts.  She stood
+with her hand at her mouth, looking down at the earth floor.
+
+"God guard you!" she said at last.  "You are very--very young!"
+
+"But all his years," The Rat broke in, "he has been in training for
+just this thing.  He did not know it was training, but it was.  A
+soldier who had been trained for thirteen years would know his work."
+
+He was so eager that he forgot she could not understand English. Marco
+translated what he said into German and added:  "What he says is true."
+
+She nodded her head, still with questioning and anxious eyes.
+
+"Yes.  Yes," she muttered.  "But you are very young."  Then she asked
+in a hesitating way:
+
+"Will you not sit down until I do?"
+
+"No," answered Marco.  "I would not sit while my mother or grandmother
+stood."
+
+"Then I must sit--and forget," she said.
+
+She passed her hand over her face as though she were sweeping away the
+sudden puzzled trouble in her expression.  Then she sat down, as if she
+had obliged herself to become again the old peasant she had been when
+they entered.
+
+"All the way up the mountain you wondered why an old woman should be
+given the Sign," she said.  "You asked each other how she could be of
+use."
+
+Neither Marco nor The Rat said anything.
+
+"When I was young and fresh," she went on.  "I went to a castle over
+the frontier to be foster-mother to a child who was born a great
+noble--one who was near the throne.  He loved me and I loved him.  He
+was a strong child and he grew up a great hunter and climber.  When he
+was not ten years old, my man taught him to climb.  He always loved
+these mountains better than his own.  He comes to see me as if he were
+only a young mountaineer.  He sleeps in the room there," with a gesture
+over her shoulder into the darkness.  "He has great power and, if he
+chooses to do a thing, he will do it--just as he will attack the
+biggest bear or climb the most dangerous peak.  He is one who can bring
+things about.  It is very safe to talk in this room."
+
+Then all was quite clear.  Marco and The Rat understood.
+
+No more was said about the Sign.  It had been given and that was
+enough.  The old woman told them that they must sleep in one of her
+bedrooms.  The next morning one of her neighbors was going down to the
+valley with a cart and he would help them on their way.  The Rat knew
+that she was thinking of his crutches and he became restless.
+
+"Tell her," he said to Marco, "how I have trained myself until I can do
+what any one else can.  And tell her I am growing stronger every day.
+Tell her I'll show her what I can do.  Your father wouldn't have let me
+come as your aide if I hadn't proved to him that I wasn't a cripple.
+Tell her.  She thinks I'm no use."
+
+Marco explained and the old woman listened attentively.  When The Rat
+got up and swung himself about up and down the steep path near her
+house she seemed relieved.  His extraordinary dexterity and firm
+swiftness evidently amazed her and gave her a confidence she had not
+felt at first.
+
+"If he has taught himself to be like that just for love of your father,
+he will go to the end," she said.  "It is more than one could believe,
+that a pair of crutches could do such things."
+
+The Rat was pacified and could afterwards give himself up to watching
+her as closely as he wished to.  He was soon "working out" certain
+things in his mind.  What he watched was her way of watching Marco.  It
+was as if she were fascinated and could not keep her eyes from him.
+She told them stories about the mountains and the strangers who came to
+climb with guides or to hunt.  She told them about the storms, which
+sometimes seemed about to put an end to the little world among the
+crags.  She described the winter when the snow buried them and the
+strong ones were forced  to dig out the weak and some lived for days
+under the masses of soft whiteness, glad to keep their cows or goats in
+their rooms that they might share the warmth of their bodies.  The
+villages were forced to be good neighbors to each other, for the man
+who was not ready to dig out a hidden chimney or buried door to-day
+might be left to freeze and starve in his snow tomb next week.  Through
+the worst part of the winter no creature from the world below could
+make way to them to find out whether they were all dead or alive.
+
+While she talked, she watched Marco as if she were always asking
+herself some question about him.  The Rat was sure that she liked him
+and greatly admired his strong body and good looks.  It was not
+necessary for him to carry himself slouchingly in her presence and he
+looked glowing and noble.  There was a sort of reverence in her manner
+when she spoke to him.  She reminded him of Lazarus more than once.
+When she gave them their evening meal, she insisted on waiting on him
+with a certain respectful ceremony.  She would not sit at table with
+him, and The Rat began to realize that she felt that he himself should
+be standing to serve him.
+
+"She thinks I ought to stand behind your chair as Lazarus stands behind
+your father's," he said to Marco.  "Perhaps an aide ought to do it.
+Shall I?  I believe it would please her."
+
+"A Bearer of the Sign is not a royal person," answered Marco. "My
+father would not like it--and I should not.  We are only two boys."
+
+It was very wonderful when, after their supper was over, they all three
+sat together before the fire.
+
+The red glow of the bed of wood-coal and the orange yellow of the flame
+from the big logs filled the room with warm light, which made a mellow
+background for the figure of the old woman as she sat in her low chair
+and told them more and more enthralling stories.
+
+Her eagle eyes glowed and her long neck held her head splendidly high
+as she described great feats of courage and endurance  or almost
+superhuman daring in aiding those in awesome peril, and, when she
+glowed most in the telling, they always knew that the hero of the
+adventure had been her foster-child who was the baby born a great noble
+and near the throne.  To her, he was the most splendid and adorable of
+human beings.  Almost an emperor, but so warm and tender of heart that
+he never forgot the long-past days when she had held him on her knee
+and told him tales of chamois- and bear-hunting, and of the
+mountain-tops in mid-winter.  He was her sun-god.
+
+"Yes!  Yes!" she said.  "'Good Mother,' he calls me.  And I bake him a
+cake on the hearth, as I did when he was ten years old and my man was
+teaching him to climb.  And when he chooses that a thing shall be
+done--done it is!  He is a great lord."
+
+The flames had died down and only the big bed of red coal made the room
+glow, and they were thinking of going to bed when the old woman started
+very suddenly, turning her head as if to listen.
+
+Marco and The Rat heard nothing, but they saw that she did and they sat
+so still that each held his breath.  So there was utter stillness for a
+few moments.  Utter stillness.
+
+Then they did hear something--a clear silver sound, piercing the pure
+mountain air.
+
+The old woman sprang upright with the fire of delight in her eyes.
+
+"It is his silver horn!" she cried out striking her hands together.
+"It is his own call to me when he is coming.  He has been hunting
+somewhere and wants to sleep in his good bed here. Help me to put on
+more faggots," to The Rat, "so that he will see the flame of them
+through the open door as he comes."
+
+"Shall we be in the way?" said Marco.  "We can go at once."
+
+She was going towards the door to open it and she stopped a moment and
+turned.
+
+"No, no!" she said.  "He must see your face.  He will want to see it.
+I want him to see--how young you are."
+
+She threw the door wide open and they heard the silver horn send out
+its gay call again.  The brushwood and faggots The Rat had thrown on
+the coals crackled and sparkled and roared into fine flames, which cast
+their light into the road and threw out in fine relief the old figure
+which stood on the threshold and looked so tall.
+
+And in but a few minutes her great lord came to her.  And in his green
+hunting-suit with its green hat and eagle's feather he was as splendid
+as she had said he was.  He was big and royal-looking and laughing and
+he bent and kissed her as if he had been her own son.
+
+"Yes, good Mother," they heard him say.  "I want my warm bed and one of
+your good suppers.  I sent the others to the Gasthaus."
+
+He came into the redly glowing room and his head almost touched the
+blackened rafters.  Then he saw the two boys.
+
+"Who are these, good Mother?" he asked.
+
+She lifted his hand and kissed it.
+
+"They are the Bearers of the Sign," she said rather softly. "'The Lamp
+is lighted.'"
+
+Then his whole look changed.  His laughing face became quite grave and
+for a moment looked even anxious.  Marco knew it was because he was
+startled to find them only boys.  He made a step forward to look at
+them more closely.
+
+"The Lamp is lighted!  And you two bear the Sign!" he exclaimed.  Marco
+stood out in the fire glow that he might see him well.  He saluted with
+respect.
+
+"My name is Marco Loristan, Highness," he said.  "And my father sent
+me."
+
+The change which came upon his face then was even greater than at
+first.  For a second, Marco even felt that there was a flash of alarm
+in it.  But almost at once that passed.
+
+"Loristan is a great man and a great patriot," he said.  "If he sent
+you, it is because he knows you are the one safe messenger.  He has
+worked too long for Samavia not to know what he does."
+
+Marco saluted again.  He knew what it was right to say next.
+
+"If we have your Highness's permission to retire," he said, "we will
+leave you and go to bed.  We go down the mountain at sunrise."
+
+"Where next?" asked the hunter, looking at him with curious intentness.
+
+"To Vienna, Highness," Marco answered.
+
+His questioner held out his hand, still with the intent interest in his
+eyes.
+
+"Good night, fine lad," he said.  "Samavia has need to vaunt itself on
+its Sign-bearer.  God go with you."
+
+He stood and watched him as he went toward the room in which he and his
+aide-de-camp were to sleep.  The Rat followed him closely.  At the
+little back door the old, old woman stood, having opened it for them.
+As Marco passed and bade her good night, he saw that she again made the
+strange obeisance, bending the knee as he went by.
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+"HOW SHALL WE FIND HIM?"
+
+In Vienna they came upon a pageant.  In celebration of a century-past
+victory the Emperor drove in state and ceremony to attend at the great
+cathedral and to do honor to the ancient banners and laurel-wreathed
+statue of a long-dead soldier-prince. The broad pavements of the huge
+chief thoroughfare were crowded with a cheering populace watching the
+martial pomp and splendor as it passed by with marching feet, prancing
+horses, and glitter of scabbard and chain, which all seemed somehow
+part of music in triumphant bursts.
+
+The Rat was enormously thrilled by the magnificence of the imperial
+place.  Its immense spaces, the squares and gardens, reigned over by
+statues of emperors, and warriors, and queens made him feel that all
+things on earth were possible.  The palaces and stately piles of
+architecture, whose surmounting equestrian bronzes ramped high in the
+air clear cut and beautiful against the sky, seemed to sweep out of his
+world all atmosphere but that of splendid cities down whose broad
+avenues emperors rode with waving banners, tramping, jangling soldiery
+before and behind, and golden trumpets blaring forth.  It seemed as if
+it must always be like this--that lances and cavalry and emperors would
+never cease to ride by.  "I should like to stay here a long time," he
+said almost as if he were in a dream.  "I should like to see it all."
+
+He leaned on his crutches in the crowd and watched the glitter of the
+passing pageant.  Now and then he glanced at Marco, who watched also
+with a steady eye which, The Rat saw, nothing would escape:  How
+absorbed he always was in the Game!  How impossible it was for him to
+forget it or to remember it only as a boy would!  Often it seemed that
+he was not a boy at all.  And the Game, The Rat knew in these days, was
+a game no more but a thing of deep and deadly earnest--a thing which
+touched kings and thrones, and concerned the ruling and swaying of
+great countries. And they--two lads pushed about by the crowd as they
+stood and stared at the soldiers--carried with them that which was even
+now lighting the Lamp.  The blood in The Rat's veins ran quickly and
+made him feel hot as he remembered certain thoughts which had forced
+themselves into his mind during the past weeks.  As his brain had the
+trick of "working things out," it had, during the last fortnight at
+least, been following a wonderful even if rather fantastic and feverish
+fancy.  A mere trifle had set it at work, but, its labor once begun,
+things which might have once seemed to be trifles appeared so no
+longer.  When Marco was asleep, The Rat lay awake through thrilled and
+sometimes almost breathless midnight hours, looking backward and
+recalling every detail of their lives since they had known each other.
+Sometimes it seemed to him that almost everything he remembered--the
+Game from first to last above all--had pointed to but  one thing.  And
+then again he would all at once feel that he was a fool and had better
+keep his head steady.  Marco, he knew, had no wild fancies.  He had
+learned too much and his mind was too well balanced.  He did not try to
+"work out things."  He only thought of what he was under orders to do.
+
+"But," said The Rat more than once in these midnight hours, "if it ever
+comes to a draw whether he is to be saved or I am, he is the one that
+must come to no harm.  Killing can't take long--and his father sent me
+with him."
+
+This thought passed through his mind as the tramping feet went by.  As
+a sudden splendid burst of approaching music broke upon his ear, a
+queer look twisted his face.  He realized the contrast between this day
+and that first morning behind the churchyard, when he had sat on his
+platform among the Squad and looked up and saw Marco in the arch at the
+end of the passage.  And because he had been good-looking and had held
+himself so well, he had thrown a stone at him.  Yes--blind gutter-bred
+fool that he'd been:--his first greeting to Marco had been a stone,
+just because he was what he was.  As they stood here in the crowd in
+this far-off foreign city, it did not seem as if it could be true that
+it was he who had done it.
+
+He managed to work himself closer to Marco's side.  "Isn't it
+splendid?" he said, "I wish I was an emperor myself.  I'd have these
+fellows out like this every day."  He said it only because he wanted to
+say something, to speak, as a reason for getting closer to him.  He
+wanted to be near enough to touch him and feel that they were really
+together and that the whole thing was not a sort of magnificent dream
+from which he might awaken to find himself lying on his heap of rags in
+his corner of the room in Bone Court.
+
+The crowd swayed forward in its eagerness to see the principal feature
+of the pageant--the Emperor in his carriage.  The Rat swayed forward
+with the rest to look as it passed.
+
+A handsome white-haired and mustached personage in splendid uniform
+decorated with jeweled orders and with a cascade of emerald-green
+plumes nodding in his military hat gravely saluted the shouting people
+on either side.  By him sat a man uniformed, decorated, and
+emerald-plumed also, but many years younger.
+
+Marco's arm touched The Rat's almost at the same moment that his own
+touched Marco.  Under the nodding plumes each saw the rather tired and
+cynical pale face, a sketch of which was hidden in the slit in Marco's
+sleeve.
+
+"Is the one who sits with the Emperor an Archduke?" Marco asked the man
+nearest to him in the crowd.  The man answered amiably enough.  No, he
+was not, but he was a certain Prince, a descendant of the one who was
+the hero of the day.  He was a great favorite of the Emperor's and was
+also a great personage, whose palace contained pictures celebrated
+throughout Europe.
+
+"He pretends it is only pictures he cares for," he went on, shrugging
+his shoulders and speaking to his wife, who had begun to listen, "but
+he is a clever one, who amuses himself with things he professes not to
+concern himself about--big things. It's his way to look bored, and
+interested in nothing, but it's said he's a wizard for knowing
+dangerous secrets."
+
+"Does he live at the Hofburg with the Emperor?" asked the woman,
+craning her neck to look after the imperial carriage.
+
+"No, but he's often there.  The Emperor is lonely and bored too, no
+doubt, and this one has ways of making him forget his troubles.  It's
+been told me that now and then the two dress themselves roughly, like
+common men, and go out into the city to see what it's like to rub
+shoulders with the rest of the world. I daresay it's true.  I should
+like to try it myself once in a while, if I had to sit on a throne and
+wear a crown."
+
+The two boys followed the celebration to its end.  They managed to get
+near enough to see the entrance to the church where the service was
+held and to get a view of the ceremonies at the banner-draped and
+laurel-wreathed statue.  They saw the man with the pale face several
+times, but he was always so enclosed that it was not possible to get
+within yards of him.  It happened once, however, that he looked through
+a temporary break in the crowding people and saw a dark strong-featured
+and remarkably intent boy's face, whose vivid scrutiny of him caught
+his eye.  There was something in the fixedness of its attention which
+caused him to look at it curiously for a few seconds, and Marco met his
+gaze squarely.
+
+"Look at me!  Look at me!" the boy was saying to him mentally. "I have
+a message for you.  A message!"
+
+The tired eyes in the pale face rested on him with a certain growing
+light of interest and curiosity, but the crowding people moved and the
+temporary break closed up, so that the two could see each other no
+more.  Marco and The Rat were pushed backward by those taller and
+stronger than themselves until they were on the outskirts of the crowd.
+
+"Let us go to the Hofburg," said Marco.  "They will come back there,
+and we shall see him again even if we can't get near."
+
+To the Hofburg they made their way through the less crowded streets,
+and there they waited as near to the great palace as they could get.
+They were there when, the ceremonies at an end, the imperial carriages
+returned, but, though they saw their man again, they were at some
+distance from him and he did not see them.
+
+Then followed four singular days.  They were singular days because they
+were full of tantalizing incidents.  Nothing seemed easier than to hear
+talk of, and see the Emperor's favorite, but nothing was more
+impossible than to get near to him.  He seemed rather a favorite with
+the populace, and the common people of the shopkeeping or laboring
+classes were given to talking freely of him--of where he was going and
+what he was doing.  To-night he would be sure to be at this great house
+or that, at this ball or that banquet.  There was no difficulty in
+discovering that he would be sure to go to the opera, or the theatre,
+or to drive to Schonbrunn with his imperial master.  Marco and The Rat
+heard casual speech of him again and again, and from one part of the
+city to the other they followed and waited for him.  But it was like
+chasing a will-o'-the-wisp.  He was evidently too brilliant and
+important a person to be allowed to move about alone.  There were
+always  people with him who seemed absorbed in his languid cynical
+talk.  Marco thought that he never seemed to care much for his
+companions, though they on their part always seemed highly entertained
+by what he was saying.  It was noticeable that they laughed a great
+deal, though he himself scarcely even smiled.
+
+"He's one of those chaps with the trick of saying witty things as if he
+didn't see the fun in them himself," The Rat summed him up.  "Chaps
+like that are always cleverer than the other kind."
+
+"He's too high in favor and too rich not to be followed about," they
+heard a man in a shop say one day, "but he gets tired of it.
+Sometimes, when he's too bored to stand it any longer, he gives it out
+that he's gone into the mountains somewhere, and all the time he's shut
+up alone with his pictures in his own palace."
+
+That very night The Rat came in to their attic looking pale and
+disappointed.  He had been out to buy some food after a long and
+arduous day in which they had covered much ground, had seen their man
+three times, and each time under circumstances which made him more
+inaccessible than ever.  They had come back to their poor quarters both
+tired and ravenously hungry.
+
+The Rat threw his purchase on to the table and himself into a chair.
+
+"He's gone to Budapest," he said.  "NOW how shall we find him?"
+
+Marco was rather pale also, and for a moment he looked paler. The day
+had been a hard one, and in their haste to reach places at a long
+distance from each other they had forgotten their need of food.
+
+They sat silent for a few moments because there seemed to be nothing to
+say.  "We are too tired and hungry to be able to think well," Marco
+said at last.  "Let us eat our supper and then go to sleep.  Until
+we've had a rest, we must 'let go.'"
+
+"Yes.  There's no good in talking when you're tired," The Rat answered
+a trifle gloomily.  "You don't reason straight.  We must 'let go.'"
+
+Their meal was simple but they ate well and without words.
+
+Even when they had finished and undressed for the night, they said very
+little.
+
+"Where do our thoughts go when we are asleep?" The Rat inquired
+casually after he was stretched out in the darkness.  "They must go
+somewhere.  Let's send them to find out what to do next."
+
+"It's not as still as it was on the Gaisberg.  You can hear the city
+roaring," said Marco drowsily from his dark corner.  "We must make a
+ledge--for ourselves."
+
+Sleep made it for them--deep, restful, healthy sleep.  If they had been
+more resentful of their ill luck and lost labor, it would have come
+less easily and have been less natural.  In their talks of strange
+things they had learned that one great secret of strength and
+unflagging courage is to know how to "let go"--to cease thinking over
+an anxiety until the right moment comes.  It was their habit to "let
+go" for hours sometimes, and wander about looking at places and
+things--galleries, museums, palaces, giving themselves up with boyish
+pleasure and eagerness to all they saw.  Marco was too intimate with
+the things worth seeing, and The Rat too curious and feverishly
+wide-awake to allow of their missing much.
+
+The Rat's image of the world had grown until it seemed to know no
+boundaries which could hold its wealth of wonders.  He wanted to go on
+and on and see them all.
+
+When Marco opened his eyes in the morning, he found The Rat lying
+looking at him.  Then they both sat up in bed at the same time.
+
+"I believe we are both thinking the same thing," Marco said.
+
+They frequently discovered that they were thinking the same things.
+
+"So do I," answered The Rat.  "It shows how tired we were that we
+didn't think of it last night."
+
+"Yes, we are thinking the same thing," said Marco.  "We have both
+remembered what we heard about his shutting himself up alone with his
+pictures and making people believe he had gone away."
+
+"He's in his palace now," The Rat announced.
+
+"Do you feel sure of that, too?" asked Marco.  "Did you wake up and
+feel sure of it the first thing?"
+
+"Yes," answered The Rat.  "As sure as if I'd heard him say it himself."
+
+"So did I," said Marco.
+
+"That's what our thoughts brought back to us," said The Rat, "when we
+'let go' and sent them off last night."  He sat up hugging his knees
+and looking straight before him for some time after this, and Marco did
+not interrupt his meditations.
+
+The day was a brilliant one, and, though their attic had only one
+window, the sun shone in through it as they ate their breakfast. After
+it, they leaned on the window's ledge and talked about the Prince's
+garden.  They talked about it because it was a place open to the public
+and they had walked round it more than once. The palace, which was not
+a large one, stood in the midst of it. The Prince was good-natured
+enough to allow quiet and well-behaved people to saunter through.  It
+was not a fashionable promenade but a pleasant retreat for people who
+sometimes took their work or books and sat on the seats placed here and
+there among the shrubs and flowers.
+
+"When we were there the first time, I noticed two things," Marco said.
+"There is a stone balcony which juts out from the side of the palace
+which looks on the Fountain Garden.  That day there were chairs on it
+as if the Prince and his visitors sometimes sat there.  Near it, there
+was a very large evergreen shrub and I saw that there was a hollow
+place inside it.  If some one wanted to stay in the gardens all night
+to watch the windows when they were lighted and see if any one came out
+alone upon the balcony, he could hide himself in the hollow place and
+stay there until the morning."
+
+"Is there room for two inside the shrub?" The Rat asked.
+
+"No. I must go alone," said Marco.
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+A VOICE IN THE NIGHT
+
+Late that afternoon there wandered about the gardens two quiet,
+inconspicuous, rather poorly dressed boys.  They looked at the palace,
+the shrubs, and the flower-beds, as strangers usually did, and they sat
+on the seats and talked as people were accustomed to seeing boys talk
+together.  It was a sunny day and exceptionally warm, and there were
+more saunterers and sitters than usual, which was perhaps the reason
+why the _portier_ at the entrance gates gave such slight notice to the
+pair that he did not observe that, though two boys came in, only one
+went out.  He did not, in fact, remember, when he saw The Rat swing by
+on his crutches at closing-time, that he had entered in company with a
+dark-haired  lad who walked without any aid.  It happened that, when
+The Rat passed out, the _portier_ at the entrance was much interested in
+the aspect of the sky, which was curiously threatening.  There had been
+heavy clouds hanging about all day and now and then blotting out the
+sunshine entirely, but the sun had refused to retire altogether.  Just
+now, however, the clouds had piled themselves in thunderous, purplish
+mountains, and the sun had been forced to set behind them.
+
+"It's been a sort of battle since morning," the _portier_ said. "There
+will be some crashes and cataracts to-night."  That was what The Rat
+had thought when they had sat in the Fountain Garden on a seat which
+gave them a good view of the balcony and the big evergreen shrub, which
+they knew had the hollow in the middle, though its circumference was so
+imposing.  "If there should be a big storm, the evergreen will not save
+you much, though it may keep off the worst," The Rat said.  "I wish
+there was room for two."
+
+He would have wished there was room for two if he had seen Marco
+marching to the stake.  As the gardens emptied, the boys rose and
+walked round once more, as if on their way out.  By the time they had
+sauntered toward the big evergreen, nobody was in the Fountain Garden,
+and the last loiterers were moving toward the arched stone entrance to
+the streets.
+
+When they drew near one side of the evergreen, the two were together.
+When The Rat swung out on the other side of it, he was alone!  No one
+noticed that anything had happened; no one looked back.  So The Rat
+swung down the walks and round the flower-beds and passed into the
+street.  And the _portier_ looked at the sky and made his remark about
+the "crashes" and "cataracts."
+
+As the darkness came on, the hollow in the shrub seemed a very safe
+place.  It was not in the least likely that any one would enter the
+closed gardens; and if by rare chance some servant passed through, he
+would not be in search of people who wished to watch all night in the
+middle of an evergreen instead of going to bed and to sleep.  The
+hollow was well inclosed with greenery, and there was room to sit down
+when one was tired of standing.
+
+Marco stood for a long time because, by doing so, he could see plainly
+the windows opening on the balcony if he gently pushed aside some
+flexible young boughs.  He had managed to discover in his first visit
+to the gardens that the windows overlooking the Fountain Garden were
+those which belonged to the Prince's own suite of rooms.  Those which
+opened on to the balcony lighted his favorite apartment, which
+contained his best-loved books and pictures and in which he spent most
+of his secluded leisure hours.
+
+Marco watched these windows anxiously.  If the Prince had not gone to
+Budapest,--if he were really only in retreat, and hiding from his gay
+world among his treasures,--he would be living in his favorite rooms
+and lights would show themselves.  And if there were lights, he might
+pass before a window because, since he was inclosed in his garden, he
+need not fear being seen.  The twilight deepened into darkness and,
+because of the heavy clouds, it was very dense.  Faint gleams showed
+themselves in the lower part of the palace, but none was lighted in the
+windows Marco watched.  He waited so long that it became evident that
+none was to be lighted at all.  At last he loosed his hold on the young
+boughs and, after standing a few moments in thought, sat down upon the
+earth in the midst of his embowered tent.  The Prince was not in his
+retreat; he was probably not in Vienna, and the rumor of his journey to
+Budapest had no doubt been true.  So much time lost through making a
+mistake--but it was best to have made the venture.  Not to have made it
+would have been to lose a chance.  The entrance was closed for the
+night and there was no getting out of the gardens until they were
+opened for the next day.  He must stay in his hiding-place until the
+time when people began to come and bring their books and knitting and
+sit on the seats.  Then he could stroll out without attracting
+attention.  But he had the night before him to spend as best he could.
+That would not matter at all.  He could tuck his cap under his head and
+go to sleep on the ground.  He could command himself to waken once
+every half-hour and look for the lights. He would not go to sleep until
+it was long past midnight--so long past that there would not be one
+chance in a hundred that anything could happen.  But the clouds which
+made the night so dark were giving forth low rumbling growls.  At
+intervals a threatening gleam of light shot across them and a sudden
+swish of wind rushed through the trees in the garden.  This happened
+several times, and then Marco began to hear the patter of raindrops.
+They were heavy and big drops, but few at first, and then there was a
+new and more powerful rush of wind, a jagged dart of light in the sky,
+and a tremendous crash.  After that the clouds tore themselves open and
+poured forth their contents in floods.  After the protracted struggle
+of the day it all seemed to happen at once, as if a horde of huge lions
+had at one moment been let loose: flame after flame of lightning, roar
+and crash and sharp reports of thunder, shrieks of hurricane wind,
+torrents of rain, as if some tidal-wave of the skies had gathered and
+rushed and burst upon the earth.  It was such a storm as people
+remember for a lifetime and which in few lifetimes is seen at all.
+
+Marco stood still in the midst of the rage and flooding, blinding roar
+of it.  After the first few minutes he knew he could do nothing to
+shield himself.  Down the garden paths he heard cataracts rushing.  He
+held his cap pressed against his eyes because he seemed to stand in the
+midst of darting flames.  The crashes, cannon reports and thunderings,
+and the jagged streams of light came so close to one another that he
+seemed deafened as well as blinded.  He wondered if he should ever be
+able to hear human voices again when it was over.  That he was drenched
+to the skin and that the water poured from his clothes as if he were
+himself a cataract was so small a detail that he was scarcely aware of
+it.  He stood still, bracing his body, and waited.  If he had been a
+Samavian soldier in the trenches and such a storm had broken upon him
+and his comrades, they could only have braced themselves and waited.
+This was what he found himself thinking when the tumult and downpour
+were at their worst.  There were men who had waited in the midst of a
+rain of bullets.
+
+It was not long after this thought had come to him that there occurred
+the first temporary lull in the storm.  Its fury perhaps reached its
+height and broke at that moment.  A yellow flame had torn its jagged
+way across the heavens, and an earth-rending crash had thundered itself
+into rumblings which actually died away before breaking forth again.
+Marco took his cap from his eyes and drew  a long breath.  He drew two
+long breaths.  It was as he began drawing a third and realizing the
+strange feeling of the almost stillness about him that he heard a new
+kind of sound at the side of the garden nearest his hiding-place.  It
+sounded like the creak of a door opening somewhere in the wall behind
+the laurel hedge.  Some one was coming into the garden by a private
+entrance.  He pushed aside the young boughs again and tried to see, but
+the darkness was too dense.  Yet he could hear if the thunder would not
+break again.  There was the sound of feet on the wet gravel, the
+footsteps of more than one person coming toward where he stood, but not
+as if afraid of being heard; merely as if they were at liberty to come
+in by what entrance they chose.  Marco remained very still.  A sudden
+hope gave him a shock of joy.  If the man with the tired face chose to
+hide himself from his acquaintances, he might choose to go in and out
+by a private entrance.  The footsteps drew near, crushing the wet
+gravel, passed by, and seemed to pause somewhere near the balcony; and
+them flame lit up the sky again and the thunder burst forth once more.
+
+But this was its last great peal.  The storm was at an end.  Only
+fainter and fainter rumblings and mutterings and paler and paler darts
+followed.  Even they were soon over, and the cataracts in the paths had
+rushed themselves silent.  But the darkness was still deep.
+
+It was deep to blackness in the hollow of the evergreen.  Marco stood
+in it, streaming with rain, but feeling nothing because he was full of
+thought.  He pushed aside his greenery and kept his eyes on the place
+in the blackness where the windows must be, though he could not see
+them.  It seemed that he waited a long time, but he knew it only seemed
+so really.  He began to breathe quickly because he was waiting for
+something.
+
+Suddenly he saw exactly where the windows were--because they were all
+lighted!
+
+His feeling of relief was great, but it did not last very long. It was
+true that something had been gained in the certainty that his man had
+not left Vienna.  But what next?  It would not be so easy to follow him
+if he chose only to go out secretly at night. What next?  To spend the
+rest of the night watching a lighted window was not  enough.  To-morrow
+night it might not be lighted. But he kept his gaze fixed upon it.  He
+tried to fix all his will and thought-power on the person inside the
+room.  Perhaps he could reach him and make him listen, even though he
+would not know that any one was speaking to him.  He knew that thoughts
+were strong things.  If angry thoughts in one man's mind will create
+anger in the mind of another, why should not sane messages cross the
+line?
+
+"I must speak to you.  I must speak to you!" he found himself saying in
+a low intense voice.  "I am outside here waiting. Listen!  I must speak
+to you!"
+
+He said it many times and kept his eyes fixed upon the window which
+opened on to the balcony.  Once he saw a man's figure cross the room,
+but he could not be sure who it was.  The last distant rumblings of
+thunder had died away and the clouds were breaking. It was not long
+before the dark mountainous billows broke apart, and a brilliant full
+moon showed herself sailing in the rift, suddenly flooding everything
+with light.  Parts of the garden were silver white, and the tree
+shadows were like black velvet. A silvery lance pierced even into the
+hollow of Marco's evergreen and struck across his face.
+
+Perhaps it was this sudden change which attracted the attention of
+those inside the balconied room.  A man's figure appeared at the long
+windows.  Marco saw now that it was the Prince.  He opened the windows
+and stepped out on to the balcony.
+
+"It is all over," he said quietly.  And he stood with his face lifted,
+looking at the great white sailing moon.
+
+He stood very still and seemed for the moment to forget the world and
+himself.  It was a wonderful, triumphant queen of a moon. But something
+brought him back to earth.  A low, but strong and clear, boy-voice came
+up to him from the garden path below.
+
+"The Lamp is lighted.  The Lamp is lighted," it said, and the words
+sounded almost as if some one were uttering a prayer.  They seemed to
+call to him, to arrest him, to draw him.
+
+He stood still a few seconds in dead silence.  Then he bent over the
+balustrade.  The moonlight had not broken the darkness below.
+
+"That is a boy's voice," he said in a low tone, "but I cannot see who
+is speaking."
+
+"Yes, it is a boy's voice," it answered, in a way which somehow moved
+him, because it was so ardent.  "It is the son of Stefan Loristan.  The
+Lamp is lighted."
+
+"Wait.  I am coming down to you," the Prince said.
+
+In a few minutes Marco heard a door open gently not far from where he
+stood.  Then the man he had been following so many days appeared at his
+side.
+
+"How long have you been here?" he asked.
+
+"Before the gates closed.  I hid myself in the hollow of the big shrub
+there, Highness," Marco answered.
+
+"Then you were out in the storm?"
+
+"Yes, Highness."
+
+The Prince put his hand on the boy's shoulder.  "I cannot see you--but
+it is best to stand in the shadow.  You are drenched to the skin."
+
+"I have been able to give your Highness--the Sign," Marco whispered.
+"A storm is nothing."
+
+There was a silence.  Marco knew that his companion was pausing to turn
+something over in his mind.
+
+"So-o?" he said slowly, at length.  "The Lamp is lighted, And YOU are
+sent to bear the Sign."  Something in his voice made Marco feel that he
+was smiling.
+
+"What a race you are!  What a race--you Samavian Loristans!"
+
+He paused as if to think the thing over again.
+
+"I want to see your face," he said next.  "Here is a tree with a shaft
+of moonlight striking through the branches.  Let us step aside and
+stand under it."
+
+Marco did as he was told.  The shaft of moonlight fell upon his
+uplifted face and showed its young strength and darkness, quite
+splendid for the moment in a triumphant glow of joy in obstacles
+overcome.  Raindrops hung on his hair, but he did not look draggled,
+only very wet and picturesque.  He had reached his man. He had given
+the Sign.
+
+The Prince looked him over with interested curiosity.
+
+"Yes," he said in his cool, rather dragging voice.  "You are the son of
+Stefan Loristan.  Also you must be taken care of.  You must come with
+me.  I have trained my household to remain in its own quarters until I
+require its service.  I have attached to my own apartments a good safe
+little room where I sometimes keep people.  You can dry your clothes
+and sleep there.  When the gardens are opened again, the rest will be
+easy."
+
+But though he stepped out from under the trees and began to move
+towards the palace in the shadow, Marco noticed that he moved
+hesitatingly, as if he had not quite decided what he should do. He
+stopped rather suddenly and turned again to Marco, who was following
+him.
+
+"There is some one in the room I just now left," he said, "an old
+man--whom it might interest to see you.  It might also be a good thing
+for him to feel interest in you.  I choose that he shall see you--as
+you are."
+
+"I am at your command, Highness," Marco answered.  He knew his
+companion was smiling again.
+
+"You have been in training for more centuries than you know," he said;
+"and your father has prepared you to encounter the unexpected without
+surprise."
+
+They passed under the balcony and paused at a low stone doorway hidden
+behind shrubs.  The door was a beautiful one, Marco saw when it was
+opened, and the corridor disclosed was beautiful also, though it had an
+air of quiet and aloofness which was not so much secret as private.  A
+perfect though narrow staircase mounted from it to the next floor.
+After ascending it, the Prince led the way through a short corridor and
+stopped at the door at the end of it.  "We are going in here," he said.
+
+It was a wonderful room--the one which opened on to the balcony. Each
+piece of furniture in it, the hangings, the tapestries, and pictures on
+the wall were all such as might well have found themselves adorning a
+museum.  Marco remembered the common report of his escort's favorite
+amusement of collecting wonders and furnishing his house with the
+things others exhibited only as marvels of  art and handicraft.  The
+place was rich and mellow with exquisitely chosen beauties.
+
+In a massive chair upon the hearth sat a figure with bent head. It was a
+tall old man with white hair and moustache.  His elbows rested upon the
+arm of his chair and he leaned his forehead on his hand as if he were
+weary.
+
+Marco's companion crossed the room and stood beside him, speaking in a
+lowered voice.  Marco could not at first hear what he said. He himself
+stood quite still, waiting.  The white-haired man lifted his head and
+listened.  It seemed as though almost at once he was singularly
+interested.  The lowered voice was slightly raised at last and Marco
+heard the last two sentences:
+
+"The only son of Stefan Loristan.  Look at him."
+
+The old man in the chair turned slowly and looked, steadily, and with
+questioning curiosity touched with grave surprise.  He had keen and
+clear blue eyes.
+
+Then Marco, still erect and silent, waited again.  The Prince had
+merely said to him, "an old man whom it might interest to see you."  He
+had plainly intended that, whatsoever happened, he must make no outward
+sign of seeing more than he had been told he would see--"an old man."
+It was for him to show no astonishment or recognition.  He had been
+brought here not to see but to be seen.  The power of remaining still
+under scrutiny, which The Rat had often envied him, stood now in good
+stead because he had seen the white head and tall form not many days
+before, surmounted by brilliant emerald plumes, hung with jeweled
+decorations, in the royal carriage, escorted by banners, and helmets,
+and following troops whose tramping feet kept time to bursts of
+military music while the populace bared their heads and cheered.
+
+"He is like his father," this personage said to the Prince. "But if any
+one but Loristan had sent him--His looks please me."  Then suddenly to
+Marco, "You were waiting outside while the storm was going on?"
+
+"Yes, sir," Marco answered.
+
+Then the two exchanged some words still in the lowered voice.
+
+"You read the news as you made your journey?" he was asked. "You know
+how Samavia stands?"
+
+"She does not stand," said Marco.  "The Iarovitch and the Maranovitch
+have fought as hyenas fight, until each has torn the other into
+fragments--and neither has blood or strength left."
+
+The two glanced at each other.
+
+"A good simile," said the older person.  "You are right.  If a strong
+party rose--and a greater power chose not to interfere--the country
+might see better days."  He looked at him a few moments longer and then
+waved his hand kindly.
+
+"You are a fine Samavian," he said.  "I am glad of that.  You may go.
+Good night."
+
+Marco bowed respectfully and the man with the tired face led him out of
+the room.
+
+It was just before he left him in the small quiet chamber in which he
+was to sleep that the Prince gave him a final curious glance.  "I
+remember now," he said.  "In the room, when you answered the question
+about Samavia, I was sure that I had seen you before.  It was the day
+of the celebration.  There was a break in the crowd and I saw a boy
+looking at me.  It was you."
+
+"Yes," said Marco, "I have followed you each time you have gone out
+since then, but I could never get near enough to speak. To-night seemed
+only one chance in a thousand."
+
+"You are doing your work more like a man than a boy," was the next
+speech, and it was made reflectively.  "No man could have behaved more
+perfectly than you did just now, when discretion and composure were
+necessary."  Then, after a moment's pause, "He was deeply interested
+and deeply pleased.  Good night."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the gardens had been thrown open the next morning and people were
+passing in and out again, Marco passed out also.  He was obliged to
+tell himself two or three times that he had not wakened from an amazing
+dream.  He quickened his pace after he had crossed the street, because
+he wanted to get home to the attic and talk to The Rat.  There was a
+narrow side-street it was necessary  for him to pass through if he
+wished to make a short cut.  As he turned into it, he saw a curious
+figure leaning on crutches against a wall.  It looked damp and forlorn,
+and he wondered if it could be a beggar.  It was not.  It was The Rat,
+who suddenly saw who was approaching and swung forward.  His face was
+pale and haggard and he looked worn and frightened.  He dragged off his
+cap and spoke in a voice which was hoarse as a crow's.
+
+"God be thanked!" he said.  "God be thanked!" as people always said it
+when they received the Sign, alone.  But there was a kind of anguish in
+his voice as well as relief.
+
+"Aide-de-camp!" Marco cried out--The Rat had begged him to call him so.
+"What have you been doing?  How long have you been here?"
+
+"Ever since I left you last night," said The Rat clutching tremblingly
+at his arm as if to make sure he was real.  "If there was not room for
+two in the hollow, there was room for one in the street. Was it my
+place to go off duty and leave you alone--was it?"
+
+"You were out in the storm?"
+
+"Weren't you?" said The Rat fiercely.  "I huddled against the wall as
+well as I could.  What did I care?  Crutches don't prevent a fellow
+waiting.  I wouldn't have left you if you'd given me orders.  And that
+would have been mutiny.  When you did not come out as soon as the gates
+opened, I felt as if my head got on fire.  How could I know what had
+happened?  I've not the nerve and backbone you have.  I go half mad."
+For a second or so Marco did not answer.  But when he put his hand on
+the damp sleeve, The Rat actually started, because it seemed as though
+he were looking into the eyes of Stefan Loristan.
+
+"You look just like your father!" he exclaimed, in spite of himself.
+"How tall you are!"
+
+"When you are near me," Marco said, in Loristan's own voice, "when you
+are near me, I feel--I feel as if I were a royal prince attended by an
+army.  You ARE my army."  And he pulled off his cap with quick
+boyishness and added, "God be thanked!"
+
+The sun was warm in the attic window when they reached their lodging,
+and the two leaned on the rough sill as Marco told his story.  It took
+some time to relate; and when he ended, he took an envelope from his
+pocket and showed it to The Rat.  It contained a flat package of money.
+
+"He gave it to me just before he opened the private door," Marco
+explained.  "And he said to me, 'It will not be long now. After
+Samavia, go back to London as quickly as you can--AS QUICKLY AS YOU
+CAN!'"
+
+"I wonder--what he meant?" The Rat said, slowly.  A tremendous thought
+had shot through his mind.  But it was not a thought he could speak of
+to Marco.
+
+"I cannot tell.  I thought that it was for some reason he did not
+expect me to know," Marco said.  "We will do as he told us. As quickly
+as we can."  They looked over the newspapers, as they did every day.
+All that could be gathered from any of them was that the opposing
+armies of Samavia seemed each to have reached the culmination of
+disaster and exhaustion.  Which party had the power left to take any
+final step which could call itself a victory, it was impossible to say.
+Never had a country been in a more desperate case.
+
+"It is the time!" said The Rat, glowering over his map.  "If the Secret
+Party rises suddenly now, it can take Melzarr almost without a blow.
+It can sweep through the country and disarm both armies. They're
+weakened--they're half starved--they're bleeding to death; they WANT to
+be disarmed.  Only the Iarovitch and the Maranovitch keep on with the
+struggle because each is fighting for the power to tax the people and
+make slaves of them.  If the Secret Party does not rise, the people
+will, and they'll rush on the palaces and kill every Maranovitch and
+Iarovitch they find. And serve them right!"
+
+"Let us spend the rest of the day in studying the road-map again," said
+Marco.  "To-night we must be on the way to Samavia!"
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+ACROSS THE FRONTIER
+
+That one day, a week later, two tired and travel-worn boy-mendicants
+should drag themselves with slow and weary feet across the frontier
+line between Jiardasia and Samavia, was not an incident to awaken
+suspicion or even to attract attention. War and hunger and anguish had
+left the country stunned and broken.  Since the worst had happened, no
+one was curious as to what would befall them next.  If Jiardasia
+herself had become a foe, instead of a friendly neighbor, and had sent
+across the border galloping hordes of soldiery, there would only have
+been more shrieks, and home-burnings, and slaughter which no one dare
+resist.  But, so far, Jiardasia had remained peaceful.  The two
+boys--one of them on crutches--had  evidently traveled far on foot.
+Their poor clothes were dusty and travel-stained, and they stopped and
+asked for water at the first hut across the line. The one who walked
+without crutches had some coarse bread in a bag slung over his
+shoulder, and they sat on the roadside and ate it as if they were
+hungry.  The old grandmother who lived alone in the hut sat and stared
+at them without any curiosity.  She may have vaguely wondered why any
+one crossed into Samavia in these days.  But she did not care to know
+their reason.  Her big son had lived in a village which belonged to the
+Maranovitch and he had been called out to fight for his lords.  He had
+not wanted to fight and had not known what the quarrel was about, but
+he was forced to obey.  He had kissed his handsome wife and four sturdy
+children, blubbering aloud when he left them.  His village and his good
+crops and his house must be left behind.  Then the Iarovitch swept
+through the pretty little cluster of homesteads which belonged to their
+enemy.  They were mad with rage because they had met with great losses
+in a battle not far away, and, as they swooped through, they burned and
+killed, and trampled down fields and vineyards.  The old woman's son
+never saw either the burned walls of his house or the bodies of his
+wife and children, because he had been killed himself in the battle for
+which the Iarovitch were revenging themselves.  Only the old
+grandmother who lived in the hut near the frontier line and stared
+vacantly at the passers-by remained alive.  She wearily gazed at people
+and wondered why she did not hear news from her son and her
+grandchildren.  But that was all.
+
+When the boys were over the frontier and well on their way along the
+roads, it was not difficult to keep out of sight if it seemed
+necessary.  The country was mountainous and there were deep and thick
+forests by the way--forests so far-reaching and with such thick
+undergrowth that full-grown men could easily have hidden themselves.
+It was because of this, perhaps, that this part of the country had seen
+little fighting.  There was too great opportunity for secure ambush for
+a foe.  As the two travelers went on, they heard of burned villages and
+towns destroyed, but they were towns and villages  nearer Melzarr and
+other fortress-defended cities, or they were in the country surrounding
+the castles and estates of powerful nobles and leaders.  It was true,
+as Marco had said to the white-haired personage, that the Maranovitch
+and Iarovitch had fought with the savageness of hyenas until at last
+the forces of each side lay torn and bleeding, their strength, their
+resources, their supplies exhausted.
+
+Each day left them weaker and more desperate.  Europe looked on with
+small interest in either party but with growing desire that the
+disorder should end and cease to interfere with commerce. All this and
+much more Marco and The Rat knew, but, as they made their cautious way
+through byways of the maimed and tortured little country, they learned
+other things.  They learned that the stories of its beauty and
+fertility were not romances.  Its heaven-reaching mountains, its
+immense plains of rich verdure on which flocks and herds might have fed
+by thousands, its splendor of deep forest and broad clear rushing
+rivers had a primeval majesty such as the first human creatures might
+have found on earth in the days of the Garden of Eden.  The two boys
+traveled through forest and woodland when it was possible to leave the
+road.  It was safe to thread a way among huge trees and tall ferns and
+young saplings.  It was not always easy but it was safe.  Sometimes
+they saw a charcoal-burner's hut or a shelter where a shepherd was
+hiding with the few sheep left to him.  Each man they met wore the same
+look of stony suffering in his face; but, when the boys begged for
+bread and water, as was their habit, no one refused to share the little
+he had.  It soon became plain to them that they were thought to be two
+young fugitives whose homes had probably been destroyed and who were
+wandering about with no thought but that of finding safety until the
+worst was over.  That one of them traveled on crutches added to their
+apparent helplessness, and that he could not speak the language of the
+country made him more an object of pity.  The peasants did not know
+what language he spoke.  Sometimes a foreigner came to find work in
+this small town or that.  The poor lad might have come to the country
+with his father and mother and then have been caught in the whirlpool
+of war and tossed out on the world parent-less.  But  no one asked
+questions.  Even in their desolation they were silent and noble people
+who were too courteous for curiosity.
+
+"In the old days they were simple and stately and kind.  All doors were
+open to travelers.  The master of the poorest hut uttered a blessing
+and a welcome when a stranger crossed his threshold.  It was the custom
+of the country," Marco said.  "I read about it in a book of my
+father's.  About most of the doors the welcome was carved in stone.  It
+was this--'The Blessing of the Son of God, and Rest within these
+Walls.'"
+
+"They are big and strong," said The Rat.  "And they have good faces.
+They carry themselves as if they had been drilled--both men and women."
+
+It was not through the blood-drenched part of the unhappy land their
+way led them, but they saw hunger and dread in the villages they
+passed.  Crops which should have fed the people had been taken from
+them for the use of the army; flocks and herds had been driven away,
+and faces were gaunt and gray.  Those who had as yet only lost crops
+and herds knew that homes and lives might be torn from them at any
+moment.  Only old men and women and children were left to wait for any
+fate which the chances of war might deal out to them.
+
+When they were given food from some poor store, Marco would offer a
+little money in return.  He dare not excite suspicion by offering much.
+He was obliged to let it be imagined that in his flight from his ruined
+home he had been able to snatch at and secrete some poor hoard which
+might save him from starvation. Often the women would not take what he
+offered.  Their journey was a hard and hungry one.  They must make it
+all on foot and there was little food to be found.  But each of them
+knew how to live on scant fare.  They traveled mostly by night and
+slept among the ferns and undergrowth through the day.  They drank from
+running brooks and bathed in them.  Moss and ferns made soft and
+sweet-smelling beds, and trees roofed them.  Sometimes they lay long
+and talked while they rested.  And at length a day came when they knew
+they were nearing their journey's end.
+
+"It is nearly over now," Marco said, after they had thrown themselves
+down in the forest in the early hours of one dewy morning.  "He said
+'After Samavia, go back to London as quickly as you can--AS QUICKLY AS
+YOU CAN.'  He said it twice.  As if--something were going to happen."
+
+"Perhaps it will happen more suddenly than we think--the thing he
+meant," answered The Rat.
+
+Suddenly he sat up on his elbow and leaned towards Marco.
+
+"We are in Samavia!" he said "We two are in Samavia!  And we are near
+the end!"
+
+Marco rose on his elbow also.  He was very thin as a result of hard
+travel and scant feeding.  His thinness made his eyes look immense and
+black as pits.  But they burned and were beautiful with their own fire.
+
+"Yes," he said, breathing quickly.  "And though we do not know what the
+end will be, we have obeyed orders.  The Prince was next to the last
+one.  There is only one more.  The old priest."
+
+"I have wanted to see him more than I have wanted to see any of the
+others," The Rat said.
+
+"So have I," Marco answered.  "His church is built on the side of this
+mountain.  I wonder what he will say to us."
+
+Both had the same reason for wanting to see him.  In his youth he had
+served in the monastery over the frontier--the one which, till it was
+destroyed in a revolt, had treasured the five-hundred-year-old story of
+the beautiful royal lad brought to be hidden among the brotherhood by
+the ancient shepherd.  In the monastery the memory of the Lost Prince
+was as the memory of a saint.  It had been told that one of the early
+brothers, who was a decorator and a painter, had made a picture of him
+with a faint halo shining about his head.  The young acolyte who had
+served there must have heard wonderful legends.  But the monastery had
+been burned, and the young acolyte had in later years crossed the
+frontier and become the priest of a few mountaineers whose little
+church clung to the mountain side.  He had worked hard and faithfully
+and was worshipped by his people.  Only the secret Forgers of the Sword
+knew that his most ardent  worshippers were those with whom he prayed
+and to whom he gave blessings in dark caverns under the earth, where
+arms piled themselves and men with dark strong faces sat together in
+the dim light and laid plans and wrought schemes.
+
+This Marco and The Rat did not know as they talked of their desire to
+see him.
+
+"He may not choose to tell us anything," said Marco.  "When we have
+given him the Sign, he may turn away and say nothing as some of the
+others did.  He may have nothing to say which we should hear.  Silence
+may be the order for him, too."
+
+It would not be a long or dangerous climb to the little church on the
+rock.  They could sleep or rest all day and begin it at twilight.  So
+after they had talked of the old priest and had eaten their black
+bread, they settled themselves to sleep under cover of the thick tall
+ferns.
+
+It was a long and deep sleep which nothing disturbed.  So few human
+beings ever climbed the hill, except by the narrow rough path leading
+to the church, that the little wild creatures had not learned to be
+afraid of them.  Once, during the afternoon, a hare hopping along under
+the ferns to make a visit stopped by Marco's head, and, after looking
+at him a few seconds with his lustrous eyes, began to nibble the ends
+of his hair.  He only did it from curiosity and because he wondered if
+it might be a new kind of grass, but he did not like it and stopped
+nibbling almost at once, after which he looked at it again, moving the
+soft sensitive end of his nose rapidly for a second or so, and then
+hopped away to attend to his own affairs.  A very large and handsome
+green stag-beetle crawled from one end of The Rat's crutches to the
+other, but, having done it, he went away also. Two or three times a
+bird, searching for his dinner under the ferns, was surprised to find
+the two sleeping figures, but, as they lay so quietly, there seemed
+nothing to be frightened about. A beautiful little field mouse running
+past discovered that there were crumbs lying about and ate all she
+could find on the moss. After that she crept into Marco's pocket and
+found some excellent ones and had quite a feast.  But she disturbed
+nobody and the boys slept on.
+
+It was a bird's evening song which awakened them both.  The bird
+alighted on the branch of a tree near them and her trill was rippling
+clear and sweet.  The evening air had freshened and was fragrant with
+hillside scents.  When Marco first rolled over and opened his eyes, he
+thought the most delicious thing on earth was to waken from sleep on a
+hillside at evening and hear a bird singing.  It seemed to make
+exquisitely real to him the fact that he was in Samavia--that the Lamp
+was lighted and his work was nearly done.  The Rat awakened when he
+did, and for a few minutes both lay on their backs without speaking.
+At last Marco said, "The stars are coming out.  We can begin to climb,
+Aide-de-camp."
+
+Then they both got up and looked at each other.
+
+"The last one!" The Rat said.  "To-morrow we shall be on our way back
+to London--Number 7 Philibert Place.  After all the places we've been
+to--what will it look like?"
+
+"It will be like wakening out of a dream," said Marco.  "It's not
+beautiful--Philibert Place.  But HE will be there," And it was as if a
+light lighted itself in his face and shone through the very darkness of
+it.
+
+And The Rat's face lighted in almost exactly the same way.  And he
+pulled off his cap and stood bare-headed.  "We've obeyed orders," he
+said.  "We've not forgotten one.  No one has noticed us, no one has
+thought of us.  We've blown through the countries as if we had been
+grains of dust."
+
+Marco's head was bared, too, and his face was still shining. "God be
+thanked!" he said.  "Let us begin to climb."
+
+They pushed their way through the ferns and wandered in and out through
+trees until they found the little path.  The hill was thickly clothed
+with forest and the little path was sometimes dark and steep; but they
+knew that, if they followed it, they would at last come out to a place
+where there were scarcely any trees at all, and on a crag they would
+find the tiny church waiting for them.  The priest might not be there.
+They might have to wait for him, but he would be sure to come back for
+morning Mass and for vespers, wheresoever he wandered between times.
+
+There were many stars in the sky when at last a turn of the  path
+showed them the church above them.  It was little and built of rough
+stone.  It looked as if the priest himself and his scattered flock
+might have broken and carried or rolled bits of the hill to put it
+together.  It had the small, round, mosque-like summit the Turks had
+brought into Europe in centuries past.  It was so tiny that it would
+hold but a very small congregation--and close to it was a shed-like
+house, which was of course the priest's.
+
+The two boys stopped on the path to look at it.
+
+"There is a candle burning in one of the little windows," said Marco.
+
+"There is a well near the door--and some one is beginning to draw
+water," said The Rat, next.  "It is too dark to see who it is.  Listen!"
+
+They listened and heard the bucket descend on the chains, and splash in
+the water.  Then it was drawn up, and it seemed some one drank long.
+Then they saw a dim figure move forward and stand still.  Then they
+heard a voice begin to pray aloud, as if the owner, being accustomed to
+utter solitude, did not think of earthly hearers.
+
+"Come," Marco said.  And they went forward.
+
+Because the stars were so many and the air so clear, the priest heard
+their feet on the path, and saw them almost as soon as he heard them.
+He ended his prayer and watched them coming.  A lad on crutches, who
+moved as lightly and easily as a bird--and a lad who, even yards away,
+was noticeable for a bearing of his body which was neither haughty nor
+proud but set him somehow aloof from every other lad one had ever seen.
+A magnificent lad--though, as he drew near, the starlight showed his
+face thin and his eyes hollow as if with fatigue or hunger.
+
+"And who is this one?" the old priest murmured to himself. "WHO?"
+
+Marco drew up before him and made a respectful reverence.  Then he
+lifted his black head, squared his shoulders and uttered his message
+for the last time.
+
+"The Lamp is lighted, Father," he said.  "The Lamp is lighted."
+
+The old priest stood quite still and gazed into his face.  The next
+moment he bent his head so that he could look at him closely.  It
+seemed almost as if he were frightened and wanted to make sure of
+something.  At the moment it flashed through The Rat's mind that the
+old, old woman on the mountain-top had looked frightened in something
+the same way.
+
+"I am an old man," he said.  "My eyes are not good.  If I had a
+light"--and he glanced towards the house.
+
+It was The Rat who, with one whirl, swung through the door and seized
+the candle.  He guessed what he wanted.  He held it himself so that the
+flare fell on Marco's face.
+
+The old priest drew nearer and nearer.  He gasped for breath. "You are
+the son of Stefan Loristan!" he cried.  "It is HIS SON who brings the
+Sign."
+
+He fell upon his knees and hid his face in his hands.  Both the boys
+heard him sobbing and praying--praying and sobbing at once.
+
+They glanced at each other.  The Rat was bursting with excitement, but
+he felt a little awkward also and wondered what Marco would do.  An old
+fellow on his knees, crying, made a chap feel as if he didn't know what
+to say.  Must you comfort him or must you let him go on?
+
+Marco only stood quite still and looked at him with understanding and
+gravity.
+
+"Yes, Father," he said.  "I am the son of Stefan Loristan, and I have
+given the Sign to all.  You are the last one.  The Lamp is lighted.  I
+could weep for gladness, too."
+
+The priest's tears and prayers ended.  He rose to his feet--a
+rugged-faced old man with long and thick white hair which fell on his
+shoulders--and smiled at Marco while his eyes were still wet.
+
+"You have passed from one country to another with the message?" he
+said.  "You were under orders to say those four words?"
+
+"Yes, Father," answered Marco.
+
+"That was all?  You were to say no more?"
+
+"I know no more.  Silence has been the order since I took my oath of
+allegiance when I was a child.  I was not old enough to fight, or
+serve, or reason about great things.  All I could do was to be silent,
+and to train myself to remember, and be ready when I was  called.  When
+my father saw I was ready, he trusted me to go out and give the Sign.
+He told me the four words. Nothing else."
+
+The old man watched him with a wondering face.
+
+"If Stefan Loristan does not know best," he said, "who does?"
+
+"He always knows," answered Marco proudly.  "Always."  He waved his
+hand like a young king toward The Rat.  He wanted each man they met to
+understand the value of The Rat.  "He chose for me this companion," he
+added.  "I have done nothing alone."
+
+"He let me call myself his aide-de-camp!" burst forth The Rat. "I would
+be cut into inch-long strips for him."
+
+Marco translated.
+
+Then the priest looked at The Rat and slowly nodded his head. "Yes," he
+said.  "He knew best.  He always knows best.  That I see."
+
+"How did you know I was my father's son?" asked Marco.  "You have seen
+him?"
+
+"No," was the answer; "but I have seen a picture which is said to be
+his image--and you are the picture's self.  It is, indeed, a strange
+thing that two of God's creatures should be so alike. There is a
+purpose in it."  He led them into his bare small house and made them
+rest, and drink goat's milk, and eat food. As he moved about the
+hut-like place, there was a mysterious and exalted look on his face.
+
+"You must be refreshed before we leave here," he said at last. "I am
+going to take you to a place hidden in the mountains where there are
+men whose hearts will leap at the sight of you.  To see you will give
+them new power and courage and new resolve. To-night they meet as they
+or their ancestors have met for centuries, but now they are nearing the
+end of their waiting. And I shall bring them the son of Stefan
+Loristan, who is the Bearer of the Sign!"
+
+They ate the bread and cheese and drank the goat's milk he gave them,
+but Marco explained that they did not need rest as they had slept all
+day.  They were prepared to follow him when he was ready.
+
+The last faint hint of twilight had died into night and the stars were
+at their thickest when they set out together.  The white-haired old man
+took a thick knotted staff in his hand and led the way.  He  knew it
+well, though it was a rugged and steep one with no track to mark it.
+Sometimes they seemed to be walking around the mountain, sometimes they
+were climbing, sometimes they dragged themselves over rocks or fallen
+trees, or struggled through almost impassable thickets; more than once
+they descended into ravines and, almost at the risk of their lives,
+clambered and drew themselves with the aid of the undergrowth up the
+other side.  The Rat was called upon to use all his prowess, and
+sometimes Marco and the priest helped him across obstacles with the aid
+of his crutch.
+
+"Haven't I shown to-night whether I'm a cripple or not?" he said once
+to Marco.  "You can tell HIM about this, can't you? And that the
+crutches helped instead of being in the way?"
+
+They had been out nearly two hours when they came to a place where the
+undergrowth was thick and a huge tree had fallen crashing down among it
+in some storm.  Not far from the tree was an outcropping rock.  Only
+the top of it was to be seen above the heavy tangle.
+
+They had pushed their way through the jungle of bushes and young
+saplings, led by their companion.  They did not know where they would
+be led next and were supposed to push forward further when the priest
+stopped by the outcropping rock.  He stood silent a few minutes--quite
+motionless--as if he were listening to the forest and the night.  But
+there was utter stillness.  There was not even a breeze to stir a leaf,
+or a half-wakened bird to sleepily chirp.
+
+He struck the rock with his staff--twice, and then twice again.
+
+Marco and The Rat stood with bated breath.
+
+They did not wait long.  Presently each of them found himself leaning
+forward, staring with almost unbelieving eyes, not at the priest or his
+staff, but at THE ROCK ITSELF!
+
+It was moving!  Yes, it moved.  The priest stepped aside and it slowly
+turned, as if worked by a lever.  As it turned, it gradually revealed a
+chasm of darkness dimly lighted, and the priest spoke to Marco.  "There
+are hiding-places like this all through Samavia," he said.  "Patience
+and misery have waited long in them.  They are the caverns of the
+Forgers of the Sword. Come!"
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+"IT IS THE LOST PRINCE! IT IS IVOR!"
+
+Many times since their journey had begun the boys had found their
+hearts beating with the thrill and excitement of things.  The story of
+which their lives had been a part was a pulse-quickening experience.
+But as they carefully made their way down the steep steps leading
+seemingly into the bowels of the earth, both Marco and The Rat felt as
+though the old priest must hear the thudding in their young sides.
+
+"'The Forgers of the Sword.'  Remember every word they say," The Rat
+whispered, "so that you can tell it to me afterwards. Don't forget
+anything!  I wish I knew Samavian."
+
+At the foot of the steps stood the man who was evidently the sentinel
+who worked the lever that turned the rock.  He was a big burly peasant
+with a good watchful face, and the priest gave him a greeting and a
+blessing as he took from him the lantern he held out.
+
+They went through a narrow and dark passage, and down some more steps,
+and turned a corner into another corridor cut out of rock and earth.
+It was a wider corridor, but still dark, so that Marco and The Rat had
+walked some yards before their eyes became sufficiently accustomed to
+the dim light to see that the walls themselves seemed made of arms
+stacked closely together.
+
+"The Forgers of the Sword!"  The Rat was unconsciously mumbling to
+himself, "The Forgers of the Sword!"
+
+It must have taken years to cut out the rounding passage they threaded
+their way through, and longer years to forge the solid, bristling
+walls.  But The Rat remembered the story the stranger had told his
+drunken father, of the few mountain herdsmen who, in their savage grief
+and wrath over the loss of their prince, had banded themselves together
+with a solemn oath which had been handed down from generation to
+generation.  The Samavians were a long-memoried people, and the fact
+that their passion must be smothered had made it burn all the more
+fiercely.  Five hundred years ago they had first sworn their oath; and
+kings had come and gone, had died or been murdered, and dynasties had
+changed, but the Forgers of the Sword had not changed or forgotten
+their oath or wavered in their belief that some time--some time, even
+after the long dark years--the soul of their Lost Prince would be among
+them once more, and that they would kneel at the feet and kiss the
+hands of him for whose body that soul had been reborn.  And for the
+last hundred years their number and power and their hiding places had
+so increased that Samavia was at last honeycombed with them.  And they
+only waited, breathless,--for the Lighting of the Lamp.
+
+The old priest knew how breathlessly, and he knew what he was bringing
+them.  Marco and The Rat, in spite of their fond boy-imaginings, were
+not quite old enough to know how fierce and full of flaming eagerness
+the breathless waiting of savage full-grown men could be.  But there
+was a tense-strung thrill in knowing that they  who were being led to
+them were the Bearers of the Sign.  The Rat went hot and cold; he
+gnawed his fingers as he went.  He could almost have shrieked aloud, in
+the intensity of his excitement, when the old priest stopped before a
+big black door!
+
+Marco made no sound.  Excitement or danger always made him look tall
+and quite pale.  He looked both now.
+
+The priest touched the door, and it opened.
+
+They were looking into an immense cavern.  Its walls and roof were
+lined with arms--guns, swords, bayonets, javelins, daggers, pistols,
+every weapon a desperate man might use.  The place was full of men, who
+turned towards the door when it opened.  They all made obeisance to the
+priest, but Marco realized almost at the same instant that they started
+on seeing that he was not alone.
+
+They were a strange and picturesque crowd as they stood under their
+canopy of weapons in the lurid torchlight.  Marco saw at once that they
+were men of all classes, though all were alike roughly dressed.  They
+were huge mountaineers, and plainsmen young and mature in years.  Some
+of the biggest were men with white hair but with bodies of giants, and
+with determination in their strong jaws.  There were many of these,
+Marco saw, and in each man's eyes, whether he were young or old, glowed
+a steady unconquered flame.  They had been beaten so often, they had
+been oppressed and robbed, but in the eyes of each one was this
+unconquered flame which, throughout all the long tragedy of years had
+been handed down from father to son.  It was this which had gone on
+through centuries, keeping its oath and forging its swords in the
+caverns of the earth, and which to-day was--waiting.
+
+The old priest laid his hand on Marco's shoulder, and gently pushed him
+before him through the crowd which parted to make way for them.  He did
+not stop until the two stood in the very midst of the circle, which
+fell back gazing wonderingly.  Marco looked up at the old man because
+for several seconds he did not speak. It was plain that he did not
+speak because he also was excited, and could not.  He opened his lips
+and his voice seemed to fail him.  Then he tried again and spoke so
+that all could hear--even the men at the back of the gazing circle.
+
+"My children," he said, "this is the son of Stefan Loristan, and he
+comes to bear the Sign.  My son," to Marco, "speak!"
+
+Then Marco understood what he wished, and also what he felt.  He felt
+it himself, that magnificent uplifting gladness, as he spoke, holding
+his black head high and lifting his right hand.
+
+"The Lamp is Lighted, brothers!" he cried.  "The Lamp is Lighted!"
+
+Then The Rat, who stood apart, watching, thought that the strange world
+within the cavern had gone mad!  Wild smothered cries broke forth, men
+caught each other in passionate embrace, they fell upon their knees,
+they clutched one another sobbing, they wrung each other's hands, they
+leaped into the air.  It was as if they could not bear the joy of
+hearing that the end of their waiting had come at last.  They rushed
+upon Marco, and fell at his feet. The Rat saw big peasants kissing his
+shoes, his hands, every scrap of his clothing they could seize.  The
+wild circle swayed and closed upon him until The Rat was afraid.  He
+did not know that, overpowered by this frenzy of emotion, his own
+excitement was making him shake from head to foot like a leaf, and that
+tears were streaming down his cheeks.  The swaying crowd hid Marco from
+him, and he began to fight his way towards him because his excitement
+increased with fear.  The ecstasy-frenzied crowd of men seemed for the
+moment to have almost ceased to be sane. Marco was only a boy.  They
+did not know how fiercely they were pressing upon him and keeping away
+the very air.
+
+"Don't kill him!  Don't kill him!" yelled The Rat, struggling forward.
+"Stand back, you fools!  I'm his aide-de-camp!  Let me pass!"
+
+And though no one understood his English, one or two suddenly
+remembered they had seen him enter with the priest and so gave way.
+But just then the old priest lifted his hand above the crowd, and spoke
+in a voice of stern command.
+
+"Stand back, my children!" he cried.  "Madness is not the homage you
+must bring to the son of Stefan Loristan.  Obey! Obey!"  His voice had
+a power in it that penetrated even the wildest herdsmen.  The frenzied
+mass swayed back and left space about Marco, whose face The Rat could
+at last see.  It was very white with emotion, and in his eyes there was
+a look which was like awe.
+
+The Rat pushed forward until he stood beside him.  He did not know that
+he almost sobbed as he spoke.
+
+"I'm your aide-de-camp," he said.  "I'm going to stand here! Your
+father sent me!  I'm under orders!  I thought they'd crush you to
+death."
+
+He glared at the circle about them as if, instead of worshippers
+distraught with adoration, they had been enemies.  The old priest
+seeing him, touched Marco's arm.
+
+"Tell him he need not fear," he said.  "It was only for the first few
+moments.  The passion of their souls drove them wild. They are your
+slaves."
+
+"Those at the back might have pushed the front ones on until they
+trampled you under foot in spite of themselves!" The Rat persisted.
+
+"No," said Marco.  "They would have stopped if I had spoken."
+
+
+"Why didn't you speak then?" snapped The Rat.
+
+"All they felt was for Samavia, and for my father," Marco said, "and
+for the Sign.  I felt as they did."
+
+The Rat was somewhat softened.  It was true, after all.  How could he
+have tried to quell the outbursts of their worship of Loristan--of the
+country he was saving for them--of the Sign which called them to
+freedom?  He could not.
+
+Then followed a strange and picturesque ceremonial.  The priest went
+about among the encircling crowd and spoke to one man after
+another--sometimes to a group.  A larger circle was formed.  As the
+pale old man moved about, The Rat felt as if some religious ceremony
+were going to be performed.  Watching it from first to last, he was
+thrilled to the core.
+
+At the end of the cavern a block of stone had been cut out to look like
+an altar.  It was covered with white, and against the wall above it
+hung a large picture veiled by a curtain.  From the roof there swung
+before it an ancient lamp of metal suspended by chains.  In front of
+the altar was a sort of stone dais.  There the priest asked Marco to
+stand, with his aide-de-camp on the lower level in attendance.  A knot
+of the biggest herdsmen went out and returned.  Each carried a huge
+sword which had perhaps been of the earliest made in the dark days gone
+by.  The bearers formed themselves into  a line on either side of
+Marco.  They raised their swords and formed a pointed arch above his
+head and a passage twelve men long.  When the points first clashed
+together The Rat struck himself hard upon his breast.  His exultation
+was too keen to endure.  He gazed at Marco standing still--in that
+curiously splendid way in which both he and his father COULD stand
+still--and wondered how he could do it.  He looked as if he were
+prepared for any strange thing which could happen to him--because he
+was "under orders."  The Rat knew that he was doing whatsoever he did
+merely for his father's sake. It was as if he felt that he was
+representing his father, though he was a mere boy; and that because of
+this, boy as he was, he must bear himself nobly and remain outwardly
+undisturbed.
+
+At the end of the arch of swords, the old priest stood and gave a sign
+to one man after another.  When the sign was given to a man he walked
+under the arch to the dais, and there knelt and, lifting Marco's hand
+to his lips, kissed it with passionate fervor.  Then he returned to the
+place he had left.  One after another passed up the aisle of swords,
+one after another knelt, one after the other kissed the brown young
+hand, rose and went away.  Sometimes The Rat heard a few words which
+sounded almost like a murmured prayer, sometimes he heard a sob as a
+shaggy head bent, again and again he saw eyes wet with tears.  Once or
+twice Marco spoke a few Samavian words, and the face of the man spoken
+to flamed with joy.  The Rat had time to see, as Marco had seen, that
+many of the faces were not those of peasants.  Some of them were clear
+cut and subtle and of the type of scholars or nobles. It took a long
+time for them all to kneel and kiss the lad's hand, but no man omitted
+the ceremony; and when at last it was at an end, a strange silence
+filled the cavern.  They stood and gazed at each other with burning
+eyes.
+
+The priest moved to Marco's side, and stood near the altar.  He leaned
+forward and took in his hand a cord which hung from the veiled
+picture--he drew it and the curtain fell apart.  There seemed to stand
+gazing at them from between its folds a tall kingly youth with deep
+eyes in which the stars of God were stilly shining, and with a smile
+wonderful to behold.  Around the heavy locks of his  black hair the
+long dead painter of missals had set a faint glow of light like a halo.
+
+"Son of Stefan Loristan," the old priest said, in a shaken voice, "it
+is the Lost Prince!  It is Ivor!"
+
+Then every man in the room fell on his knees.  Even the men who had
+upheld the archway of swords dropped their weapons with a crash and
+knelt also.  He was their saint--this boy!  Dead for five hundred
+years, he was their saint still.
+
+"Ivor!  Ivor!" the voices broke into a heavy murmur.  "Ivor! Ivor!" as
+if they chanted a litany.
+
+Marco started forward, staring at the picture, his breath caught in his
+throat, his lips apart.
+
+"But--but--" he stammered, "but if my father were as young as he is--he
+would be LIKE him!"
+
+"When you are as old as he is, YOU will be like him--YOU!" said the
+priest.  And he let the curtain fall.
+
+The Rat stood staring with wide eyes from Marco to the picture and from
+the picture to Marco.  And he breathed faster and faster and gnawed his
+finger ends.  But he did not utter a word.  He could not have done it,
+if he tried.
+
+Then Marco stepped down from the dais as if he were in a dream, and the
+old man followed him.  The men with swords sprang to their feet and
+made their archway again with a new clash of steel.  The old man and
+the boy passed under it together.  Now every man's eyes were fixed on
+Marco.  At the heavy door by which he had entered, he stopped and
+turned to meet their glances.  He looked very young and thin and pale,
+but suddenly his father's smile was lighted in his face.  He said a few
+words in Samavian clearly and gravely, saluted, and passed out.
+
+"What did you say to them?" gasped The Rat, stumbling after him as the
+door closed behind them and shut in the murmur of impassioned sound.
+
+"There was only one thing to say," was the answer.  "They are men--I am
+only a boy.  I thanked them for my father, and told them he would
+never--never forget."
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+"EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA!"
+
+It was raining in London--pouring.  It had been raining for two weeks,
+more or less, generally more.  When the train from Dover drew in at
+Charing Cross, the weather seemed suddenly to have considered that it
+had so far been too lenient and must express itself much more
+vigorously.  So it had gathered together its resources and poured them
+forth in a deluge which surprised even Londoners.
+
+The rain so beat against and streamed down the windows of the
+third-class carriage in which Marco and The Rat sat that they could not
+see through them.
+
+They had made their homeward journey much more rapidly than they had
+made the one on which they had been outward  bound.  It had of course
+taken them some time to tramp back to the frontier, but there had been
+no reason for stopping anywhere after they had once reached the
+railroads.  They had been tired sometimes, but they had slept heavily
+on the wooden seats of the railway carriages.  Their one desire was to
+get home.  No. 7 Philibert Place rose before them in its noisy
+dinginess as the one desirable spot on earth.  To Marco it held his
+father.  And it was Loristan alone that The Rat saw when he thought of
+it. Loristan as he would look when he saw him come into the room with
+Marco, and stand up and salute, and say:  "I have brought him back,
+sir.  He has carried out every single order you gave him--every single
+one.  So have I."  So he had.  He had been sent as his companion and
+attendant, and he had been faithful in every thought.  If Marco would
+have allowed him, he would have waited upon him like a servant, and
+have been proud of the service.  But Marco would never let him forget
+that they were only two boys and that one was of no more importance
+than the other.  He had secretly even felt this attitude to be a sort
+of grievance.  It would have been more like a game if one of them had
+been the mere servitor of the other, and if that other had blustered a
+little, and issued commands, and demanded sacrifices. If the faithful
+vassal could have been wounded or cast into a dungeon for his young
+commander's sake, the adventure would have been more complete.  But
+though their journey had been full of wonders and rich with beauties,
+though the memory of it hung in The Rat's mind like a background of
+tapestry embroidered in all the hues of the earth with all the
+splendors of it, there had been no dungeons and no wounds.  After the
+adventure in Munich their unimportant boyishness had not even been
+observed by such perils as might have threatened them.  As The Rat had
+said, they had "blown like grains of dust" through Europe and had been
+as nothing.  And this was what Loristan had planned, this was what his
+grave thought had wrought out.  If they had been men, they would not
+have been so safe.
+
+From the time they had left the old priest on the hillside to begin
+their journey back to the frontier, they both had been given to long
+silences as they tramped side by side or lay on the moss in the
+forests.  Now that their work was done, a sort of reaction had set  in.
+There were no more plans to be made and no more uncertainties to
+contemplate.  They were on their way back to No. 7 Philibert
+Place--Marco to his father, The Rat to the man he worshipped.  Each of
+them was thinking of many things.  Marco was full of longing to see his
+father's face and hear his voice again.  He wanted to feel the pressure
+of his hand on his shoulder--to be sure that he was real and not a
+dream.  This last was because during this homeward journey everything
+that had happened often seemed to be a dream.  It had all been so
+wonderful--the climber standing looking down at them the morning they
+awakened on the Gaisburg; the mountaineer shoemaker measuring his foot
+in the small shop; the old, old woman and her noble lord; the Prince
+with his face turned upward as he stood on the balcony looking at the
+moon; the old priest kneeling and weeping for joy; the great cavern
+with the yellow light upon the crowd of passionate faces; the curtain
+which fell apart and showed the still eyes and the black hair with the
+halo about it! Now that they were left behind, they all seemed like
+things he had dreamed.  But he had not dreamed them; he was going back
+to tell his father about them.  And how GOOD it would be to feel his
+hand on his shoulder!
+
+The Rat gnawed his finger ends a great deal.  His thoughts were more
+wild and feverish than Marco's.  They leaped forward in spite of him.
+It was no use to pull himself up and tell himself that he was a fool.
+Now that all was over, he had time to be as great a fool as he was
+inclined to be.  But how he longed to reach London and stand face to
+face with Loristan!  The sign was given.  The Lamp was lighted.  What
+would happen next?  His crutches were under his arms before the train
+drew up.
+
+"We're there!  We're there!" he cried restlessly to Marco. They had no
+luggage to delay them.  They took their bags and followed the crowd
+along the platform.  The rain was rattling like bullets against the
+high glassed roof.  People turned to look at Marco, seeing the glow of
+exultant eagerness in his face. They thought he must be some boy coming
+home for the holidays and going to make a visit at a place he delighted
+in.  The rain was dancing on the pavements when they reached the
+entrance.
+
+"A cab won't cost much," Marco said, "and it will take us quickly."
+
+They called one and got into it.  Each of them had flushed cheeks, and
+Marco's eyes looked as if he were gazing at something a long way
+off--gazing at it, and wondering.
+
+"We've come back!" said The Rat, in an unsteady voice.  "We've
+been--and we've come back!"  Then suddenly turning to look at Marco,
+"Does it ever seem to you as if, perhaps, it--it wasn't true?"
+
+"Yes," Marco answered, "but it was true.  And it's done." Then he added
+after a second or so of silence, just what The Rat had said to himself,
+"What next?"  He said it very low.
+
+The way to Philibert Place was not long.  When they turned into the
+roaring, untidy road, where the busses and drays and carts struggled
+past each other with their loads, and the tired-faced people hurried in
+crowds along the pavement, they looked at them all feeling that they
+had left their dream far behind indeed. But they were at home.
+
+It was a good thing to see Lazarus open the door and stand waiting
+before they had time to get out of the cab.  Cabs stopped so seldom
+before houses in Philibert Place that the inmates were always prompt to
+open their doors.  When Lazarus had seen this one stop at the broken
+iron gate, he had known whom it brought. He had kept an eye on the
+windows faithfully for many a day--even when he knew that it was too
+soon, even if all was well, for any travelers to return.
+
+He bore himself with an air more than usually military and his salute
+when Marco crossed the threshold was formal stateliness itself.  But
+his greeting burst from his heart.
+
+"God be thanked!" he said in his deep growl of joy.  "God be thanked!"
+
+When Marco put forth his hand, he bent his grizzled head and kissed it
+devoutly.
+
+"God be thanked!" he said again.
+
+"My father?" Marco began, "my father is out?"  If he had been in the
+house, he knew he would not have stayed in the back sitting-room.
+
+"Sir," said Lazarus, "will you come with me into his room? You, too,
+sir," to The Rat.  He had never said "sir" to him before.
+
+He opened the door of the familiar room, and the boys entered. The room
+was empty.
+
+Marco did not speak; neither did The Rat.  They both stood still in the
+middle of the shabby carpet and looked up at the old soldier.  Both had
+suddenly the same feeling that the earth had dropped from beneath their
+feet.  Lazarus saw it and spoke fast and with tremor.  He was almost as
+agitated as they were.
+
+"He left me at your service--at your command"--he began.
+
+"Left you?" said Marco.
+
+"He left us, all three, under orders--to WAIT," said Lazarus. "The
+Master has gone."
+
+The Rat felt something hot rush into his eyes.  He brushed it away that
+he might look at Marco's face.  The shock had changed it very much.
+Its glowing eager joy had died out, it had turned paler and his brows
+were drawn together.  For a few seconds he did not speak at all, and,
+when he did speak, The Rat knew that his voice was steady only because
+he willed that it should be so.
+
+"If he has gone," he said, "it is because he had a strong reason.  It
+was because he also was under orders."
+
+"He said that you would know that," Lazarus answered.  "He was called
+in such haste that he had not a moment in which to do more than write a
+few words.  He left them for you on his desk there."
+
+Marco walked over to the desk and opened the envelope which was lying
+there.  There were only a few lines on the sheet of paper inside and
+they had evidently been written in the greatest haste. They were these:
+
+"The Life of my life--for Samavia."
+
+"He was called--to Samavia," Marco said, and the thought sent his blood
+rushing through his veins.  "He has gone to Samavia!"
+
+Lazarus drew his hand roughly across his eyes and his voice shook and
+sounded hoarse.
+
+"There has been great disaffection in the camps of the Maranovitch," he
+said.  "The remnant of the army has gone mad. Sir, silence is still the
+order, but who knows--who knows?  God alone."
+
+He had not finished speaking before he turned his head as if listening
+to sounds in the road.  They were the kind of sounds which  had broken
+up The Squad, and sent it rushing down the passage into the street to
+seize on a newspaper.  There was to be heard a commotion of newsboys
+shouting riotously some startling piece of news which had called out an
+"Extra."
+
+The Rat heard it first and dashed to the front door.  As he opened it a
+newsboy running by shouted at the topmost power of his lungs the news
+he had to sell:  "Assassination of King Michael Maranovitch by his own
+soldiers!  Assassination of the Maranovitch!  Extra! Extra!  Extra!"
+
+When The Rat returned with a newspaper, Lazarus interposed between him
+and Marco with great and respectful ceremony. "Sir," he said to Marco,
+"I am at your command, but the Master left me with an order which I was
+to repeat to you.  He requested you NOT to read the newspapers until he
+himself could see you again."
+
+Both boys fell back.
+
+"Not read the papers!" they exclaimed together.
+
+Lazarus had never before been quite so reverential and ceremonious.
+
+"Your pardon, sir," he said.  "I may read them at your orders, and
+report such things as it is well that you should know.  There have been
+dark tales told and there may be darker ones.  He asked that you would
+not read for yourself.  If you meet again--when you meet again"--he
+corrected himself hastily--"when you meet again, he says you will
+understand.  I am your servant.  I will read and answer all such
+questions as I can."
+
+The Rat handed him the paper and they returned to the back room
+together.
+
+"You shall tell us what he would wish us to hear," Marco said.
+
+The news was soon told.  The story was not a long one as exact details
+had not yet reached London.  It was briefly that the head of the
+Maranovitch party had been put to death by infuriated soldiers of his
+own army.  It was an army drawn chiefly from a peasantry which did not
+love its leaders, or wish to fight, and suffering and brutal treatment
+had at last roused it to furious revolt.
+
+"What next?" said Marco.
+
+"If I were a Samavian--" began The Rat and then he stopped.
+
+Lazarus stood biting his lips, but staring stonily at the carpet. Not
+The Rat alone but Marco also noted a grim change in him.  It was grim
+because it suggested that he was holding himself under an iron control.
+It was as if while tortured by anxiety he had sworn not to allow
+himself to look anxious and the resolve set his jaw hard and carved new
+lines in his rugged face.  Each boy thought this in secret, but did not
+wish to put it into words. If he was anxious, he could only be so for
+one reason, and each realized what the reason must be.  Loristan had
+gone to Samavia--to the torn and bleeding country filled with riot and
+danger.  If he had gone, it could only have been because its danger
+called him and he went to face it at its worst.  Lazarus had been left
+behind to watch over them.  Silence was still the order, and what he
+knew he could not tell them, and perhaps he knew little more than that
+a great life might be lost.
+
+Because his master was absent, the old soldier seemed to feel that he
+must comfort himself with a greater ceremonial reverence than he had
+ever shown before.  He held himself within call, and at Marco's orders,
+as it had been his custom to hold himself with regard to Loristan.  The
+ceremonious service even extended itself to The Rat, who appeared to
+have taken a new place in his mind. He also seemed now to be a person
+to be waited upon and replied to with dignity and formal respect.
+
+When the evening meal was served, Lazarus drew out Loristan's chair at
+the head of the table and stood behind it with a majestic air.
+
+"Sir," he said to Marco, "the Master requested that you take his seat
+at the table until--while he is not with you."
+
+Marco took the seat in silence.
+
+
+At two o'clock in the morning, when the roaring road was still, the
+light from the street lamp, shining into the small bedroom, fell on two
+pale boy faces.  The Rat sat up on his sofa bed in the old way with his
+hands clasped round his knees.  Marco lay flat on his hard pillow.
+Neither of them had been to sleep and yet they had  not talked a great
+deal.  Each had secretly guessed a good deal of what the other did not
+say.
+
+"There is one thing we must remember," Marco had said, early in the
+night.  "We must not be afraid."
+
+"No," answered The Rat, almost fiercely, "we must not be afraid."
+
+"We are tired; we came back expecting to be able to tell it all to him.
+We have always been looking forward to that.  We never thought once
+that he might be gone.  And he WAS gone.  Did you feel as if--" he
+turned towards the sofa, "as if something had struck you on the chest?"
+
+"Yes," The Rat answered heavily.  "Yes."
+
+"We weren't ready," said Marco.  "He had never gone before; but we
+ought to have known he might some day be--called.  He went because he
+was called.  He told us to wait.  We don't know what we are waiting
+for, but we know that we must not be afraid.  To let ourselves be
+AFRAID would be breaking the Law."
+
+"The Law!" groaned The Rat, dropping his head on his hands, "I'd
+forgotten about it."
+
+"Let us remember it," said Marco.  "This is the time.  'Hate not.  FEAR
+not!'"  He repeated the last words again and again. "Fear not!  Fear
+not," he said.  "NOTHING can harm him."
+
+The Rat lifted his head, and looked at the bed sideways.
+
+"Did you think--" he said slowly--"did you EVER think that perhaps HE
+knew where the descendant of the Lost Prince was?"
+
+Marco answered even more slowly.
+
+"If any one knew--surely he might.  He has known so much," he said.
+
+"Listen to this!" broke forth The Rat.  "I believe he has gone to TELL
+the people.  If he does--if he could show them--all the country would
+run mad with joy.  It wouldn't be only the Secret Party.  All Samavia
+would rise and follow any flag he chose to raise.  They've prayed for
+the Lost Prince for five hundred years, and if they believed they'd got
+him once more, they'd fight like madmen for him.  But there would not
+be any one to fight.  They'd ALL want the same thing!  If they could
+see the man with Ivor's blood in his veins, they'd feel he had come
+back to them--risen from the dead.  They'd believe it!"
+
+He beat his fists together in his frenzy of excitement.  "It's the
+time!  It's the time!" he cried.  "No man could let such a chance go
+by! He MUST tell them--he MUST.  That MUST be what he's gone for.  He
+knows--he knows--he's always known!"  And he threw himself back on his
+sofa and flung his arms over his face, lying there panting.
+
+"If it is the time," said Marco in a low, strained voice--"if it is,
+and he knows--he will tell them."  And he threw his arms up over his
+own face and lay quite still.
+
+Neither of them said another word, and the street lamp shone in on them
+as if it were waiting for something to happen.  But nothing happened.
+In time they were asleep.
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+'TWIXT NIGHT AND MORNING
+
+After this, they waited.  They did not know what they waited for, nor
+could they guess even vaguely how the waiting would end.  All that
+Lazarus could tell them he told.  He would have been willing to stand
+respectfully for hours relating to Marco the story of how the period of
+their absence had passed for his Master and himself.  He told how
+Loristan had spoken each day of his son, how he had often been pale
+with anxiousness, how in the evenings he had walked to and fro in his
+room, deep in thought, as he looked down unseeingly at the carpet.
+
+"He permitted me to talk of you, sir," Lazarus said.  "I saw that he
+wished to hear your name often.  I reminded him of the times  when you
+had been so young that most children of your age would have been in the
+hands of nurses, and yet you were strong and silent and sturdy and
+traveled with us as if you were not a child at all--never crying when
+you were tired and were not properly fed.  As if you understood--as if
+you understood," he added, proudly.  "If, through the power of God a
+creature can be a man at six years old, you were that one.  Many a dark
+day I have looked into your solemn, watching eyes, and have been half
+afraid; because that a child should answer one's gaze so gravely seemed
+almost an unearthly thing."
+
+"The chief thing I remember of those days," said Marco, "is that he was
+with me, and that whenever I was hungry or tired, I knew he must be,
+too."
+
+The feeling that they were "waiting" was so intense that it filled the
+days with strangeness.  When the postman's knock was heard at the door,
+each of them endeavored not to start.  A letter might some day come
+which would tell them--they did not know what.  But no letters came.
+When they went out into the streets, they found themselves hurrying on
+their way back in spite of themselves.  Something might have happened.
+Lazarus read the papers faithfully, and in the evening told Marco and
+The Rat all the news it was "well that they should hear."  But the
+disorders of Samavia had ceased to occupy much space.  They had become
+an old story, and after the excitement of the assassination of Michael
+Maranovitch had died out, there seemed to be a lull in events.
+Michael's son had not dared to try to take his father's place, and
+there were rumors that he also had been killed.  The head of the
+Iarovitch had declared himself king but had not been crowned because of
+disorders in his own party. The country seemed existing in a nightmare
+of suffering, famine and suspense.
+
+"Samavia is 'waiting' too," The Rat broke forth one night as they
+talked together, "but it won't wait long--it can't.  If I were a
+Samavian and in Samavia--"
+
+"My father is a Samavian and he is in Samavia," Marco's grave young
+voice interposed.
+
+The Rat flushed red as he realized what he had said. "What a fool I am!"
+he groaned. "I--I beg your pardon--sir." He stood up when he said the last
+words and added the "sir" as if he suddenly realized that there was a
+distance between them which was something akin to the distance between
+youth and maturity--but yet was not the same.
+
+"You are a good Samavian but--you forget," was Marco's answer.
+
+Lazarus' intense grimness increased with each day that passed. The
+ceremonious respectfulness of his manner toward Marco increased also.
+It seemed as if the more anxious he felt the more formal and stately
+his bearing became.  It was as though he braced his own courage by
+doing the smallest things life in the back sitting-room required as if
+they were of the dignity of services performed in a much larger place
+and under much more imposing circumstances.  The Rat found himself
+feeling almost as if he were an equerry in a court, and that dignity
+and ceremony were necessary on his own part.  He began to experience a
+sense of being somehow a person of rank, for whom doors were opened
+grandly and who had vassals at his command.  The watchful obedience of
+fifty vassals embodied itself in the manner of Lazarus.
+
+"I am glad," The Rat said once, reflectively, "that, after all my
+father was once--different.  It makes it easier to learn things
+perhaps.  If he had not talked to me about people who--well, who had
+never seen places like Bone Court--this might have been harder for me
+to understand."
+
+When at last they managed to call The Squad together, and went to spend
+a morning at the Barracks behind the churchyard, that body of armed men
+stared at their commander in great and amazed uncertainty.  They felt
+that something had happened to him.  They did not know what had
+happened, but it was some experience which had made him mysteriously
+different.  He did not look like Marco, but in some extraordinary way
+he seemed more akin to him.  They only knew that some necessity in
+Loristan's affairs had taken the two away from London and the Game.
+Now they had come back, and they seemed older.
+
+At first, The Squad felt awkward and shuffled its feet uncomfortably.
+After the first greetings it did not know exactly what to say.  It was
+Marco who saved the situation.
+
+"Drill us first," he said to The Rat, "then we can talk about the Game."
+
+"'Tention!" shouted The Rat, magnificently.  And then they forgot
+everything else and sprang into line.  After the drill was ended, and
+they sat in a circle on the broken flags, the Game became more
+resplendent than it had ever been.
+
+"I've had time to read and work out new things," The Rat said. "Reading
+is like traveling."
+
+Marco himself sat and listened, enthralled by the adroitness of the
+imagination he displayed.  Without revealing a single dangerous fact he
+built up, of their journeyings and experiences, a totally new structure
+of adventures which would have fired the whole being of any group of
+lads.  It was safe to describe places and people, and he so described
+them that The Squad squirmed in its delight at feeling itself marching
+in a procession attending the Emperor in Vienna; standing in line
+before palaces; climbing, with knapsacks strapped tight, up precipitous
+mountain roads; defending mountain-fortresses; and storming Samavian
+castles.
+
+The Squad glowed and exulted.  The Rat glowed and exulted himself.
+Marco watched his sharp-featured, burning-eyed face with wonder and
+admiration.  This strange power of making things alive was, he knew,
+what his father would call "genius."
+
+"Let's take the oath of 'legiance again," shouted Cad, when the Game
+was over for the morning.
+
+"The papers never said nothin' more about the Lost Prince, but we are
+all for him yet!  Let's take it!"  So they stood in line again, Marco
+at the head, and renewed their oath.
+
+"The sword in my hand--for Samavia!
+
+"The heart in my breast--for Samavia!
+
+"The swiftness of my sight, the thought of my brain, the life of my
+life--for Samavia.
+
+"Here grow twelve men--for Samavia.
+
+"God be thanked!"
+
+It was more solemn than it had been the first time.  The Squad felt it
+tremendously.  Both Cad and Ben were conscious that thrills ran down
+their spines into their boots.  When Marco and The Rat left them, they
+first stood at salute and then broke out into a ringing cheer.
+
+On their way home, The Rat asked Marco a question.
+
+"Did you see Mrs. Beedle standing at the top of the basement steps and
+looking after us when we went out this morning?"
+
+Mrs. Beedle was the landlady of the lodgings at No. 7 Philibert Place.
+She was a mysterious and dusty female, who lived in the "cellar
+kitchen" part of the house and was seldom seen by her lodgers.
+
+"Yes," answered Marco, "I have seen her two or three times lately, and
+I do not think I ever saw her before.  My father has never seen her,
+though Lazarus says she used to watch him round corners.  Why is she
+suddenly so curious about us?"
+
+"I'd like to know," said The Rat.  "I've been trying to work it out.
+Ever since we came back, she's been peeping round the door of the
+kitchen stairs, or over balustrades, or through the cellar-kitchen
+windows.  I believe she wants to speak to you, and knows Lazarus won't
+let her if he catches her at it.  When Lazarus is about, she always
+darts back."
+
+"What does she want to say?" said Marco.
+
+"I'd like to know," said The Rat again.
+
+When they reached No. 7 Philibert Place, they found out, because when
+the door opened they saw at the top of cellar-kitchen stairs at the end
+of the passage, the mysterious Mrs. Beedle, in her dusty black dress
+and with a dusty black cap on, evidently having that minute mounted
+from her subterranean hiding-place.  She had come up the steps so
+quickly that Lazarus had not yet seen her.
+
+"Young Master Loristan!" she called out authoritatively. Lazarus
+wheeled about fiercely.
+
+"Silence!" he commanded.  "How dare you address the young Master?"
+
+She snapped her fingers at him, and marched forward folding  her arms
+tightly.  "You mind your own business," she said.  "It's young Master
+Loristan I'm speaking to, not his servant.  It's time he was talked to
+about this."
+
+"Silence, woman!" shouted Lazarus.
+
+"Let her speak," said Marco.  "I want to hear.  What is it you wish to
+say, Madam?  My father is not here."
+
+"That's just what I want to find out about," put in the woman. "When is
+he coming back?"
+
+"I do not know," answered Marco.
+
+"That's it," said Mrs. Beedle.  "You're old enough to understand that
+two big lads and a big fellow like that can't have food and lodgin's
+for nothing.  You may say you don't live high--and you don't--but
+lodgin's are lodgin's and rent is rent. If your father's coming back
+and you can tell me when, I mayn't be obliged to let the rooms over
+your heads; but I know too much about foreigners to let bills run when
+they are out of sight. Your father's out of sight.  He," jerking her
+head towards Lazarus, "paid me for last week.  How do I know he will
+pay me for this week!"
+
+"The money is ready," roared Lazarus.
+
+The Rat longed to burst forth.  He knew what people in Bone Court said
+to a woman like that; he knew the exact words and phrases. But they
+were not words and phrases an aide-de-camp might deliver himself of in
+the presence of his superior officer; they were not words and phrases
+an equerry uses at court.  He dare not ALLOW himself to burst forth.
+He stood with flaming eyes and a flaming face, and bit his lips till
+they bled.  He wanted to strike with his crutches.  The son of Stefan
+Loristan!  The Bearer of the Sign!  There sprang up before his furious
+eyes the picture of the luridly lighted cavern and the frenzied crowd
+of men kneeling at this same boy's feet, kissing them, kissing his
+hands, his garments, the very earth he stood upon, worshipping him,
+while above the altar the kingly young face looked on with the nimbus
+of light like a halo above it.  If he dared speak his mind now, he felt
+he could have endured it better.  But being an aide-de-camp he could
+not.
+
+"Do you want the money now?" asked Marco.  "It is only the beginning of
+the week and we do not owe it to you until the week is over.  Is it
+that you want to have it now?"
+
+Lazarus had become deadly pale.  He looked huge in his fury, and he
+looked dangerous.
+
+"Young Master," he said slowly, in a voice as deadly as his pallor, and
+he actually spoke low, "this woman--"
+
+Mrs. Beedle drew back towards the cellar-kitchen steps.
+
+"There's police outside," she shrilled.  "Young Master Loristan, order
+him to stand back."
+
+"No one will hurt you," said Marco.  "If you have the money here,
+Lazarus, please give it to me."
+
+Lazarus literally ground his teeth.  But he drew himself up and saluted
+with ceremony.  He put his hand in his breast pocket and produced an
+old leather wallet.  There were but a few coins in it.  He pointed to a
+gold one.
+
+"I obey you, sir--since I must--" he said, breathing hard. "That one
+will pay her for the week."
+
+Marco took out the sovereign and held it out to the woman.
+
+"You hear what he says," he said.  "At the end of this week if there is
+not enough to pay for the next, we will go."
+
+Lazarus looked so like a hyena, only held back from springing by chains
+of steel, that the dusty Mrs. Beedle was afraid to take the money.
+
+"If you say that I shall not lose it, I'll wait until the week's
+ended," she said.  "You're nothing but a lad, but you're like your
+father.  You've got a way that a body can trust.  If he was here and
+said he hadn't the money but he'd have it in time, I'd wait if it was
+for a month.  He'd pay it if he said he would. But he's gone; and two
+boys and a fellow like that one don't seem much to depend on.  But I'll
+trust YOU."
+
+"Be good enough to take it," said Marco.  And he put the coin in her
+hand and turned into the back sitting-room as if he did not see her.
+
+The Rat and Lazarus followed him.
+
+"Is there so little money left?" said Marco.  "We have always had very
+little.  When we had less than usual, we lived in poorer places  and
+were hungry if it was necessary.  We know how to go hungry.  One does
+not die of it."
+
+The big eyes under Lazarus' beetling brows filled with tears.
+
+"No, sir," he said, "one does not die of hunger.  But the insult--the
+insult!  That is not endurable."
+
+"She would not have spoken if my father had been here," Marco said.
+"And it is true that boys like us have no money.  Is there enough to
+pay for another week?"
+
+"Yes, sir," answered Lazarus, swallowing hard as if he had a lump in
+his throat, "perhaps enough for two--if we eat but little.  If--if the
+Master would accept money from those who would give it, he would alway
+have had enough.  But how could such a one as he?  How could he?  When
+he went away, he thought--he thought that--" but there he stopped
+himself suddenly.
+
+"Never mind," said Marco.  "Never mind.  We will go away the day we can
+pay no more."
+
+"I can go out and sell newspapers," said The Rat's sharp voice.
+
+"I've done it before.  Crutches help you to sell them.  The platform
+would sell 'em faster still.  I'll go out on the platform."
+
+"I can sell newspapers, too," said Marco.
+
+Lazarus uttered an exclamation like a groan.
+
+"Sir," he cried, "no, no!  Am I not here to go out and look for work?
+I can carry loads.  I can run errands."
+
+"We will all three begin to see what we can do," Marco said.
+
+Then--exactly as had happened on the day of their return from their
+journey--there arose in the road outside the sound of newsboys
+shouting.  This time the outcry seemed even more excited than before.
+The boys were running and yelling and there seemed more of them than
+usual.  And above all other words was heard "Samavia!  Samavia!"  But
+to-day The Rat did not rush to the door at the first cry.  He stood
+still--for several seconds they all three stood still--listening.
+Afterwards each one remembered and told the others that he had stood
+still because some strange, strong feeling held him WAITING as if to
+hear some great thing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+	   
+It was Lazarus who went out of the room first and The Rat and Marco
+followed him.
+
+One of the upstairs lodgers had run down in haste and opened the door
+to buy newspapers and ask questions.  The newsboys were wild with
+excitement and danced about as they shouted.  The piece of news they
+were yelling had evidently a popular quality.
+
+The lodger bought two papers and was handing out coppers to a lad who
+was talking loud and fast.
+
+"Here's a go!" he was saying.  "A Secret Party's risen up and taken
+Samavia!  'Twixt night and mornin' they done it!  That there Lost
+Prince descendant 'as turned up, an' they've CROWNED him--'twixt night
+and mornin' they done it!  Clapt 'is crown on 'is 'ead, so's they'd
+lose no time."  And off he bolted, shouting, "'Cendant of Lost Prince!
+'Cendant of Lost Prince made King of Samavia!"
+
+It was then that Lazarus, forgetting even ceremony, bolted also. He
+bolted back to the sitting-room, rushed in, and the door fell to behind
+him.
+
+Marco and The Rat found it shut when, having secured a newspaper, they
+went down the passage.  At the closed door, Marco stopped. He did not
+turn the handle.  From the inside of the room there came the sound of
+big convulsive sobs and passionate Samavian words of prayer and
+worshipping gratitude.
+
+"Let us wait," Marco said, trembling a little.  "He will not want any
+one to see him.  Let us wait."
+
+His black pits of eyes looked immense, and he stood at his tallest, but
+he was trembling slightly from head to foot.  The Rat had begun to
+shake, as if from an ague.  His face was scarcely human in its fierce
+unboyish emotion.
+
+"Marco!  Marco!" his whisper was a cry.  "That was what he went
+for--BECAUSE HE KNEW!"
+
+"Yes," answered Marco, "that was what he went for."  And his voice was
+unsteady, as his body was.
+
+Presently the sobs inside the room choked themselves back suddenly.
+Lazarus had remembered.  They had guessed he had been leaning against
+the wall during his outburst.  Now it was evident that he stood
+upright, probably shocked at the forgetfulness of his frenzy.
+
+So Marco turned the handle of the door and went into the room. He shut
+the door behind him, and they all three stood together.
+
+When the Samavian gives way to his emotions, he is emotional indeed.
+Lazarus looked as if a storm had swept over him.  He had choked back
+his sobs, but tears still swept down his cheeks.
+
+"Sir," he said hoarsely, "your pardon!  It was as if a convulsion
+seized me.  I forgot everything--even my duty. Pardon, pardon!"  And
+there on the worn carpet of the dingy back sitting-room in the
+Marylebone Road, he actually went on one knee and kissed the boy's hand
+with adoration.
+
+"You mustn't ask pardon," said Marco.  "You have waited so long, good
+friend.  You have given your life as my father has. You have known all
+the suffering a boy has not lived long enough to understand.  Your big
+heart--your faithful heart--" his voice broke and he stood and looked
+at him with an appeal which seemed to ask him to remember his boyhood
+and understand the rest.
+
+"Don't kneel," he said next.  "You mustn't kneel."  And Lazarus,
+kissing his hand again, rose to his feet.
+
+"Now--we shall HEAR!" said Marco.  "Now the waiting will soon be over."
+
+"Yes, sir.  Now, we shall receive commands!" Lazarus answered.
+
+The Rat held out the newspapers.
+
+"May we read them yet?" he asked.
+
+"Until further orders, sir," said Lazarus hurriedly and
+apologetically--"until further orders, it is still better that I should
+read them first."
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+THE GAME IS AT AN END
+
+So long as the history of Europe is written and read, the unparalleled
+story of the Rising of the Secret Party in Samavia will stand out as
+one of its most startling and romantic records. Every detail connected
+with the astonishing episode, from beginning to end, was romantic even
+when it was most productive of realistic results.  When it is related,
+it always begins with the story of the tall and kingly Samavian youth
+who walked out of the palace in the early morning sunshine singing the
+herdsmen's song of beauty of old days.  Then comes the outbreak of the
+ruined and revolting populace; then the legend of the morning on the
+mountain side, and the old shepherd coming out of his cave and finding
+the apparently dead body of the  beautiful young hunter.  Then the
+secret nursing in the cavern; then the jolting cart piled with
+sheepskins crossing the frontier, and ending its journey at the barred
+entrance of the monastery and leaving its mysterious burden behind.
+And then the bitter hate and struggle of dynasties, and the handful of
+shepherds and herdsmen meeting in their cavern and binding themselves
+and their unborn sons and sons' sons by an oath never to be broken.
+Then the passing of generations and the slaughter of peoples and the
+changing of kings,--and always that oath remembered, and the Forgers of
+the Sword, at their secret work, hidden in forests and caves.  Then the
+strange story of the uncrowned kings who, wandering in other lands,
+lived and died in silence and seclusion, often laboring with their
+hands for their daily bread, but never forgetting that they must be
+kings, and ready,--even though Samavia never called. Perhaps the whole
+story would fill too many volumes to admit of it ever being told fully.
+
+But history makes the growing of the Secret Party clear,--though it
+seems almost to cease to be history, in spite of its efforts to be
+brief and speak only of dull facts, when it is forced to deal with the
+Bearing of the Sign by two mere boys, who, being blown as unremarked as
+any two grains of dust across Europe, lit the Lamp whose flame so
+flared up to the high heavens that as if from the earth itself there
+sprang forth Samavians by the thousands ready to feed it--Iarovitch and
+Maranovitch swept aside forever and only Samavians remaining to cry
+aloud in ardent praise and worship of the God who had brought back to
+them their Lost Prince.  The battle-cry of his name had ended every
+battle. Swords fell from hands because swords were not needed.  The
+Iarovitch fled in terror and dismay; the Maranovitch were nowhere to be
+found.  Between night and morning, as the newsboy had said, the
+standard of Ivor was raised and waved from palace and citadel alike.
+From mountain, forest and plain, from city, village and town, its
+followers flocked to swear allegiance; broken and wounded legions
+staggered along the roads to join and kneel to it; women and children
+followed, weeping with joy and chanting songs of praise.  The Powers
+held out their scepters to the lately prostrate and ignored country.
+Train-loads of food and supplies  of all things needed began to cross
+the frontier; the aid of nations was bestowed.  Samavia, at peace to
+till its land, to raise its flocks, to mine its ores, would be able to
+pay all back.  Samavia in past centuries had been rich enough to make
+great loans, and had stored such harvests as warring countries had been
+glad to call upon.  The story of the crowning of the King had been the
+wildest of all--the multitude of ecstatic people, famished, in rags,
+and many of them weak with wounds, kneeling at his feet, praying, as
+their one salvation and security, that he would go attended by them to
+their bombarded and broken cathedral, and at its high altar let the
+crown be placed upon his head, so that even those who perhaps must die
+of their past sufferings would at least have paid their poor homage to
+the King Ivor who would rule their children and bring back to Samavia
+her honor and her peace.
+
+"Ivor!  Ivor!" they chanted like a prayer,--"Ivor!  Ivor!" in their
+houses, by the roadside, in the streets.
+
+"The story of the Coronation in the shattered Cathedral, whose roof had
+been torn to fragments by bombs," said an important London paper,
+"reads like a legend of the Middle Ages.  But, upon the whole, there is
+in Samavia's national character, something of the mediaeval, still."
+
+
+Lazarus, having bought and read in his top floor room every newspaper
+recording the details which had reached London, returned to report
+almost verbatim, standing erect before Marco, the eyes under his shaggy
+brows sometimes flaming with exultation, sometimes filled with a rush
+of tears.  He could not be made to sit down.  His whole big body seemed
+to have become rigid with magnificence.  Meeting Mrs. Beedle in the
+passage, he strode by her with an air so thunderous that she turned and
+scuttled back to her cellar kitchen, almost falling down the stone
+steps in her nervous terror.  In such a mood, he was not a person to
+face without something like awe.
+
+In the middle of the night, The Rat suddenly spoke to Marco as if he
+knew that he was awake and would hear him.
+
+"He has given all his life to Samavia!" he said.  "When you traveled
+from country to country, and lived in holes and corners, it was because
+by doing it he could escape spies, and see the people who must be made
+to understand.  No one else could have made them listen.  An emperor
+would have begun to listen when he had seen his face and heard his
+voice.  And he could be silent, and wait for the right time to speak.
+He could keep still when other men could not.  He could keep his face
+still--and his hands--and his eyes.  Now all Samavia knows what he has
+done, and that he has been the greatest patriot in the world.  We both
+saw what Samavians were like that night in the cavern.  They will go
+mad with joy when they see his face!"
+
+"They have seen it now," said Marco, in a low voice from his bed.
+
+Then there was a long silence, though it was not quite silence because
+The Rat's breathing was so quick and hard.
+
+"He--must have been at that coronation!" he said at last. "The
+King--what will the King do to--repay him?"
+
+Marco did not answer.  His breathing could be heard also.  His mind was
+picturing that same coronation--the shattered, roofless cathedral, the
+ruins of the ancient and magnificent high altar, the multitude of
+kneeling, famine-scourged people, the battle-worn, wounded and bandaged
+soldiery!  And the King!  And his father!  Where had his father stood
+when the King was crowned?  Surely, he had stood at the King's right
+hand, and the people had adored and acclaimed them equally!
+
+"King Ivor!" he murmured as if he were in a dream.  "King Ivor!"
+
+The Rat started up on his elbow.
+
+"You will see him," he cried out.  "He's not a dream any longer.  The
+Game is not a game now--and it is ended--it is won! It was real--HE was
+real!  Marco, I don't believe you hear."
+
+"Yes, I do," answered Marco, "but it is almost more a dream than when
+it was one."
+
+"The greatest patriot in the world is like a king himself!" raved The
+Rat.  "If there is no bigger honor to give him, he will be made a
+prince--and Commander-in-Chief--and Prime Minister!  Can't you hear
+those Samavians shouting, and singing, and praying?  You'll  see it
+all!  Do you remember the mountain climber who was going to save the
+shoes he made for the Bearer of the Sign?  He said a great day might
+come when one could show them to the people.  It's come!  He'll show
+them!  I know how they'll take it!"  His voice suddenly dropped--as if
+it dropped into a pit.  "You'll see it all.  But I shall not."
+
+Then Marco awoke from his dream and lifted his head.  "Why not?" he
+demanded.  It sounded like a demand.
+
+"Because I know better than to expect it!" The Rat groaned. "You've
+taken me a long way, but you can't take me to the palace of a king.
+I'm not such a fool as to think that, even if your father--"
+
+He broke off because Marco did more than lift his head.  He sat upright.
+
+"You bore the Sign as much as I did," he said.  "We bore it together."
+
+"Who would have listened to ME?" cried The Rat.  "YOU were the son of
+Stefan Loristan."
+
+"You were the friend of his son," answered Marco.  "You went at the
+command of Stefan Loristan.  You were the ARMY of the son of Stefan
+Loristan.  That I have told you.  Where I go, you will go.  We will say
+no more of this--not one word."
+
+And he lay down again in the silence of a prince of the blood. And The
+Rat knew that he meant what he said, and that Stefan Loristan also
+would mean it.  And because he was a boy, he began to wonder what Mrs.
+Beedle would do when she heard what had happened--what had been
+happening all the time a tall, shabby "foreigner" had lived in her
+dingy back sitting-room, and been closely watched lest he should go
+away without paying his rent, as shabby foreigners sometimes did.  The
+Rat saw himself managing to poise himself very erect on his crutches
+while he told her that the shabby foreigner was--well, was at least the
+friend of a King, and had given him his crown--and would be made a
+prince and a Commander-in-Chief--and a Prime Minister--because there
+was no higher rank or honor to give him.  And his son--whom she had
+insulted--was Samavia's idol because he had borne the Sign.  And also
+that if  she were in Samavia, and Marco chose to do it he could batter
+her wretched lodging-house to the ground and put her in a prison--"and
+serve her jolly well right!"
+
+The next day passed, and the next; and then there came a letter. It was
+from Loristan, and Marco turned pale when Lazarus handed it to him.
+Lazarus and The Rat went out of the room at once, and left him to read
+it alone.  It was evidently not a long letter, because it was not many
+minutes before Marco called them again into the room.
+
+"In a few days, messengers--friends of my father's--will come to take
+us to Samavia.  You and I and Lazarus are to go," he said to The Rat.
+
+"God be thanked!" said Lazarus.  "God be thanked!"
+
+Before the messengers came, it was the end of the week.  Lazarus had
+packed their few belongings, and on Saturday Mrs. Beedle was to be seen
+hovering at the top of the cellar steps, when Marco and The Rat left
+the back sitting-room to go out.
+
+"You needn't glare at me!" she said to Lazarus, who stood glowering at
+the door which he had opened for them.  "Young Master Loristan, I want
+to know if you've heard when your father is coming back?"
+
+"He will not come back," said Marco.
+
+"He won't, won't he?  Well, how about next week's rent?" said Mrs.
+Beedle.  "Your man's been packing up, I notice.  He's not got much to
+carry away, but it won't pass through that front door until I've got
+what's owing me.  People that can pack easy think they can get away
+easy, and they'll bear watching.  The week's up to-day."
+
+Lazarus wheeled and faced her with a furious gesture.  "Get back to
+your cellar, woman," he commanded.  "Get back under ground and stay
+there.  Look at what is stopping before your miserable gate."
+
+A carriage was stopping--a very perfect carriage of dark brown. The
+coachman and footman wore dark brown and gold liveries, and the footman
+had leaped down and opened the door with respectful alacrity.  "They
+are friends of the Master's come to pay their respects to his son,"
+said Lazarus.  "Are their eyes to be offended  by the sight of you?"
+
+"Your money is safe," said Marco.  "You had better leave us."
+
+Mrs. Beedle gave a sharp glance at the two gentlemen who had entered
+the broken gate.  They were of an order which did not belong to
+Philibert Place.  They looked as if the carriage and the dark brown and
+gold liveries were every-day affairs to them.
+
+"At all events, they're two grown men, and not two boys without a
+penny," she said.  "If they're your father's friends, they'll tell me
+whether my rent's safe or not."
+
+The two visitors were upon the threshold.  They were both men of a
+certain self-contained dignity of type; and when Lazarus opened wide
+the door, they stepped into the shabby entrance hall as if they did not
+see it.  They looked past its dinginess, and past Lazarus, and The Rat,
+and Mrs. Beedle--THROUGH them, as it were,--at Marco.
+
+He advanced towards them at once.
+
+"You come from my father!" he said, and gave his hand first to the
+elder man, then to the younger.
+
+"Yes, we come from your father.  I am Baron Rastka--and this is the
+Count Vorversk," said the elder man, bowing.
+
+"If they're barons and counts, and friends of your father's, they are
+well-to-do enough to be responsible for you," said Mrs. Beedle, rather
+fiercely, because she was somewhat over-awed and resented the fact.
+"It's a matter of next week's rent, gentlemen.  I want to know where
+it's coming from."
+
+The elder man looked at her with a swift cold glance.  He did not speak
+to her, but to Lazarus.  "What is she doing here?" he demanded.
+
+Marco answered him.  "She is afraid we cannot pay our rent," he said.
+"It is of great importance to her that she should be sure."
+
+"Take her away," said the gentleman to Lazarus.  He did not even glance
+at her.  He drew something from his coat-pocket and handed it to the
+old soldier.  "Take her away," he repeated. And because it seemed as if
+she were not any longer a person at all, Mrs.  Beedle actually shuffled
+down the passage to the cellar-kitchen steps.  Lazarus did not leave
+her until he, too, had descended into the cellar kitchen, where he
+stood and towered above her like an infuriated giant.
+
+"To-morrow he will be on his way to Samavia, miserable woman!" he said.
+"Before he goes, it would be well for you to implore his pardon."
+
+But Mrs. Beedle's point of view was not his.  She had recovered some of
+her breath.
+
+"I don't know where Samavia is," she raged, as she struggled to set her
+dusty, black cap straight.  "I'll warrant it's one of these little
+foreign countries you can scarcely see on the map--and not a decent
+English town in it!  He can go as soon as he likes, so long as he pays
+his rent before he does it. Samavia, indeed! You talk as if he was
+Buckingham Palace!"
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+"THE SON OF STEFAN LORISTAN"
+
+When a party composed of two boys attended by a big soldierly
+man-servant and accompanied by two distinguished-looking, elderly men,
+of a marked foreign type, appeared on the platform of Charing Cross
+Station they attracted a good deal of attention. In fact, the good
+looks and strong, well-carried body of the handsome lad with the thick
+black hair would have caused eyes to turn towards him even if he had
+not seemed to be regarded as so special a charge by those who were with
+him.  But in a country where people are accustomed to seeing a certain
+manner and certain forms observed in the case of persons--however
+young--who are set apart by the fortune of rank and distinction, and
+where the populace also rather  enjoys the sight of such demeanor, it
+was inevitable that more than one quick-sighted looker-on should
+comment on the fact that this was not an ordinary group of individuals.
+
+"See that fine, big lad over there!" said a workman, whose head, with a
+pipe in its mouth, stuck out of a third-class smoking carriage window.
+"He's some sort of a young swell, I'll lay a shillin'!  Take a look at
+him," to his mate inside.
+
+The mate took a look.  The pair were of the decent,
+polytechnic-educated type, and were shrewd at observation.
+
+"Yes, he's some sort of young swell," he summed him up.  "But he's not
+English by a long chalk.  He must be a young Turk, or Russian, sent
+over to be educated.  His suite looks like it.  All but the
+ferret-faced chap on crutches.  Wonder what he is!"
+
+A good-natured looking guard was passing, and the first man hailed him.
+
+"Have we got any swells traveling with us this morning?" he asked,
+jerking his head towards the group.  "That looks like it. Any one
+leaving Windsor or Sandringham to cross from Dover to-day?"
+
+The man looked at the group curiously for a moment and then shook his
+head.
+
+"They do look like something or other," he answered, "but no one knows
+anything about them.  Everybody's safe in Buckingham Palace and
+Marlborough House this week.  No one either going or coming."
+
+No observer, it is true, could have mistaken Lazarus for an ordinary
+attendant escorting an ordinary charge.  If silence had not still been
+strictly the order, he could not have restrained himself.  As it was,
+he bore himself like a grenadier, and stood by Marco as if across his
+dead body alone could any one approach the lad.
+
+"Until we reach Melzarr," he had said with passion to the two
+gentlemen,--"until I can stand before my Master and behold him embrace
+his son--BEHOLD him--I implore that I may not lose sight of him night
+or day.  On my knees, I implore that I may travel, armed, at his side.
+I am but his servant, and have no right to occupy a place in the same
+carriage.  But put me anywhere.  I will be deaf, dumb, blind to all but
+himself.  Only permit me to be near enough to  give my life if it is
+needed.  Let me say to my Master, 'I never left him.'"
+
+"We will find a place for you," the elder man said, "and if you are so
+anxious, you may sleep across his threshold when we spend the night at
+a hotel."
+
+"I will not sleep!" said Lazarus.  "I will watch.  Suppose there should
+be demons of Maranovitch loose and infuriated in Europe?  Who knows!"
+
+"The Maranovitch and Iarovitch who have not already sworn allegiance to
+King Ivor are dead on battlefields.  The remainder are now Fedorovitch
+and praising God for their King," was the answer Baron Rastka made him.
+
+But Lazarus kept his guard unbroken.  When he occupied the next
+compartment to the one in which Marco traveled, he stood in the
+corridor throughout the journey.  When they descended at any point to
+change trains, he followed close at the boy's heels, his fierce eyes on
+every side at once and his hand on the weapon hidden in his broad
+leather belt.  When they stopped to rest in some city, he planted
+himself in a chair by the bedroom door of his charge, and if he slept
+he was not aware that nature had betrayed him into doing so.
+
+If the journey made by the young Bearers of the Sign had been a strange
+one, this was strange by its very contrast.  Throughout that
+pilgrimage, two uncared-for waifs in worn clothes had traveled from one
+place to another, sometimes in third- or fourth-class continental
+railroad carriages, sometimes in jolting diligences, sometimes in
+peasants' carts, sometimes on foot by side roads and mountain paths,
+and forest ways.  Now, two well-dressed boys in the charge of two men
+of the class whose orders are obeyed, journeyed in compartments
+reserved for them, their traveling appurtenances supplying every
+comfort that luxury could provide.
+
+The Rat had not known that there were people who traveled in such a
+manner; that wants could be so perfectly foreseen; that railroad
+officials, porters at stations, the staff of restaurants, could be by
+magic transformed into active and eager servants.  To lean against  the
+upholstered back of a railway carriage and in luxurious ease look
+through the window at passing beauties, and then to find books at your
+elbow and excellent meals appearing at regular hours, these unknown
+perfections made it necessary for him at times to pull himself together
+and give all his energies to believing that he was quite awake.  Awake
+he was, and with much on his mind "to work out,"--so much, indeed, that
+on the first day of the journey he had decided to give up the struggle,
+and wait until fate made clear to him such things as he was to be
+allowed to understand of the mystery of Stefan Loristan.
+
+What he realized most clearly was that the fact that the son of Stefan
+Loristan was being escorted in private state to the country his father
+had given his life's work to, was never for a moment forgotten.  The
+Baron Rastka and Count Vorversk were of the dignity and courteous
+reserve which marks men of distinction. Marco was not a mere boy to
+them, he was the son of Stefan Loristan; and they were Samavians.  They
+watched over him, not as Lazarus did, but with a gravity and
+forethought which somehow seemed to encircle him with a rampart.
+Without any air of subservience, they constituted themselves his
+attendants.  His comfort, his pleasure, even his entertainment, were
+their private care.  The Rat felt sure they intended that, if possible,
+he should enjoy his journey, and that he should not be fatigued by it.
+They conversed with him as The Rat had not known that men ever
+conversed with boys,--until he had met Loristan.  It was plain that
+they knew what he would be most interested in, and that they were aware
+he was as familiar with the history of Samavia as they were themselves.
+When he showed a disposition to hear of events which had occurred, they
+were as prompt to follow his lead as they would have been to follow the
+lead of a man. That, The Rat argued with himself, was because Marco had
+lived so intimately with his father that his life had been more like a
+man's than a boy's and had trained him in mature thinking.  He was very
+quiet during the journey, and The Rat knew he was thinking all the time.
+
+The night before they reached Melzarr, they slept at a town some hours
+distant from the capital.  They arrived at midnight and went to a quiet
+hotel.
+
+"To-morrow," said Marco, when The Rat had left him for the night,
+"to-morrow, we shall see him!  God be thanked!"
+
+"God be thanked!" said The Rat, also.  And each saluted the other
+before they parted.
+
+In the morning, Lazarus came into the bedroom with an air so solemn
+that it seemed as if the garments he carried in his hands were part of
+some religious ceremony.
+
+"I am at your command, sir," he said.  "And I bring you your uniform."
+
+He carried, in fact, a richly decorated Samavian uniform, and the first
+thing Marco had seen when he entered was that Lazarus himself was in
+uniform also.  His was the uniform of an officer of the King's Body
+Guard.
+
+"The Master," he said, "asks that you wear this on your entrance to
+Melzarr.  I have a uniform, also, for your aide-de-camp."
+
+When Rastka and Vorversk appeared, they were in uniforms also. It was a
+uniform which had a touch of the Orient in its picturesque splendor.  A
+short fur-bordered mantle hung by a jeweled chain from the shoulders,
+and there was much magnificent embroidery of color and gold.
+
+"Sir, we must drive quickly to the station," Baron Rastka said to
+Marco.  "These people are excitable and patriotic, and His Majesty
+wishes us to remain incognito, and avoid all chance of public
+demonstration until we reach the capital."  They passed rather
+hurriedly through the hotel to the carriage which awaited them.  The
+Rat saw that something unusual was happening in the place.  Servants
+were scurrying round corners, and guests were coming out of their rooms
+and even hanging over the balustrades.
+
+As Marco got into his carriage, he caught sight of a boy about his own
+age who was peeping from behind a bush.  Suddenly he darted away, and
+they all saw him tearing down the street towards the station as fast as
+his legs would carry him.
+
+But the horses were faster than he was.  The party reached the station,
+and was escorted quickly to its place in a special saloon-carriage
+which awaited it.  As the train made its way out of the station, Marco
+saw the boy who had run before them rush on to the platform, waving his
+arms and shouting something with wild delight.  The people who were
+standing about turned to look at him, and the next instant they had all
+torn off their caps and thrown them up in the air and were shouting
+also.  But it was not possible to hear what they said.
+
+"We were only just in time," said Vorversk, and Baron Rastka nodded.
+
+The train went swiftly, and stopped only once before they reached
+Melzarr.  This was at a small station, on the platform of which stood
+peasants with big baskets of garlanded flowers and evergreens.  They
+put them on the train, and soon both Marco and The Rat saw that
+something unusual was taking place.  At one time, a man standing on the
+narrow outside platform of the carriage was plainly seen to be securing
+garlands and handing up flags to men who worked on the roof.
+
+"They are doing something with Samavian flags and a lot of flowers and
+green things!" cried The Rat, in excitement.
+
+"Sir, they are decorating the outside of the carriage," Vorversk said.
+"The villagers on the line obtained permission from His Majesty.  The
+son of Stefan Loristan could not be allowed to pass their homes without
+their doing homage."
+
+"I understand," said Marco, his heart thumping hard against his
+uniform.  "It is for my father's sake."
+
+
+At last, embowered, garlanded, and hung with waving banners, the train
+drew in at the chief station at Melzarr.
+
+"Sir," said Rastka, as they were entering, "will you stand up that the
+people may see you?  Those on the outskirts of the crowd will have the
+merest glimpse, but they will never forget."
+
+Marco stood up.  The others grouped themselves behind him.  There arose
+a roar of voices, which ended almost in a shriek of joy which was like
+the shriek of a tempest.  Then there burst forth the  blare of brazen
+instruments playing the National Hymn of Samavia, and mad voices joined
+in it.
+
+If Marco had not been a strong boy, and long trained in self-control,
+what he saw and heard might have been almost too much to be borne.
+When the train had come to a full stop, and the door was thrown open,
+even Rastka's dignified voice was unsteady as he said, "Sir, lead the
+way.  It is for us to follow."
+
+And Marco, erect in the doorway, stood for a moment, looking out upon
+the roaring, acclaiming, weeping, singing and swaying multitude--and
+saluted just as he had saluted The Squad, looking just as much a boy,
+just as much a man, just as much a thrilling young human being.
+
+Then, at the sight of him standing so, it seemed as if the crowd went
+mad--as the Forgers of the Sword had seemed to go mad on the night in
+the cavern.  The tumult rose and rose, the crowd rocked, and leapt,
+and, in its frenzy of emotion, threatened to crush itself to death.
+But for the lines of soldiers, there would have seemed no chance for
+any one to pass through it alive.
+
+"I am the son of Stefan Loristan," Marco said to himself, in order to
+hold himself steady.  "I am on my way to my father."
+
+Afterward, he was moving through the line of guarding soldiers to the
+entrance, where two great state-carriages stood; and there, outside,
+waited even a huger and more frenzied crowd than that left behind.  He
+saluted there again, and again, and again, on all sides.  It was what
+they had seen the Emperor do in Vienna. He was not an Emperor, but he
+was the son of Stefan Loristan who had brought back the King.
+
+"You must salute, too," he said to The Rat, when they got into the
+state carriage.  "Perhaps my father has told them.  It seems as if they
+knew you."
+
+The Rat had been placed beside him on the carriage seat.  He was
+inwardly shuddering with a rapture of exultation which was almost
+anguish.  The people were looking at him--shouting at him--surely it
+seemed like it when he looked at the faces nearest in the crowd.
+Perhaps Loristan--
+
+"Listen!" said Marco suddenly, as the carriage rolled on its way.
+"They are shouting to us in Samavian, 'The Bearers of the Sign!' That
+is what they are saying now.  'The Bearers of the Sign.'"
+
+They were being taken to the Palace.  That Baron Rastka and Count
+Vorversk had explained in the train.  His Majesty wished to receive
+them.  Stefan Loristan was there also.
+
+The city had once been noble and majestic.  It was somewhat Oriental,
+as its uniforms and national costumes were.  There were domed and
+pillared structures of white stone and marble, there were great arches,
+and city gates, and churches.  But many of them were half in ruins
+through war, and neglect, and decay. They passed the half-unroofed
+cathedral, standing in the sunshine in its great square, still in all
+its disaster one of the most beautiful structures in Europe.  In the
+exultant crowd were still to be seen haggard faces, men with bandaged
+limbs and heads or hobbling on sticks and crutches.  The richly colored
+native costumes were most of them worn to rags.  But their wearers had
+the faces of creatures plucked from despair to be lifted to heaven.
+
+"Ivor!  Ivor!" they cried; "Ivor!  Ivor!" and sobbed with rapture.
+
+The Palace was as wonderful in its way as the white cathedral. The
+immensely wide steps of marble were guarded by soldiers.  The huge
+square in which it stood was filled with people whom the soldiers held
+in check.
+
+"I am his son," Marco said to himself, as he descended from the state
+carriage and began to walk up the steps which seemed so enormously wide
+that they appeared almost like a street.  Up he mounted, step by step,
+The Rat following him.  And as he turned from side to side, to salute
+those who made deep obeisance as he passed, he began to realize that he
+had seen their faces before.
+
+"These who are guarding the steps," he said, quickly under his breath
+to The Rat, "are the Forgers of the Sword!"
+
+There were rich uniforms everywhere when he entered the palace, and
+people who bowed almost to the ground as he passed.  He was very young
+to be confronted with such an adoring adulation  and royal ceremony;
+but he hoped it would not last too long, and that after he had knelt to
+the King and kissed his hand, he would see his father and hear his
+voice.  Just to hear his voice again, and feel his hand on his shoulder!
+
+Through the vaulted corridors, to the wide-opened doors of a
+magnificent room he was led at last.  The end of it seemed a long way
+off as he entered.  There were many richly dressed people who stood in
+line as he passed up toward the canopied dais.  He felt that he had
+grown pale with the strain of excitement, and he had begun to feel that
+he must be walking in a dream, as on each side people bowed low and
+curtsied to the ground.
+
+He realized vaguely that the King himself was standing, awaiting his
+approach.  But as he advanced, each step bearing him nearer to the
+throne, the light and color about him, the strangeness and
+magnificence, the wildly joyous acclamation of the populace outside the
+palace, made him feel rather dazzled, and he did not clearly see any
+one single face or thing.
+
+"His Majesty awaits you," said a voice behind him which seemed to be
+Baron Rastka's.  "Are you faint, sir?  You look pale."
+
+He drew himself together, and lifted his eyes.  For one full moment,
+after he had so lifted them, he stood quite still and straight, looking
+into the deep beauty of the royal face.  Then he knelt and kissed the
+hands held out to him--kissed them both with a passion of boy love and
+worship.
+
+The King had the eyes he had longed to see--the King's hands were those
+he had longed to feel again upon his shoulder--the King was his father!
+the "Stefan Loristan" who had been the last of those who had waited and
+labored for Samavia through five hundred years, and who had lived and
+died kings, though none of them till now had worn a crown!
+
+His father was the King!
+
+It was not that night, nor the next, nor for many nights that the
+telling of the story was completed.  The people knew that their King
+and his son were rarely separated from each other; that the Prince's
+suite of apartments were connected by a private passage with his
+father's.  The two were bound together by an affection of singular
+strength and meaning, and their love for their people added to their
+feeling for each other.  In the history of what their past had been,
+there was a romance which swelled the emotional Samavian heart near to
+bursting.  By mountain fires, in huts, under the stars, in fields and
+in forests, all that was known of their story was told and retold a
+thousand times, with sobs of joy and prayer breaking in upon the tale.
+
+But none knew it as it was told in a certain quiet but stately room in
+the palace, where the man once known only as "Stefan Loristan," but
+whom history would call the first King Ivor of Samavia, told his share
+of it to the boy whom Samavians had a strange and superstitious worship
+for, because he seemed so surely their Lost Prince restored in body and
+soul--almost the kingly lad in the ancient portrait--some of them half
+believed when he stood in the sunshine, with the halo about his head.
+
+It was a wonderful and intense story, that of the long wanderings and
+the close hiding of the dangerous secret.  Among all those who had
+known that a man who was an impassioned patriot was laboring for
+Samavia, and using all the power of a great mind and the delicate
+ingenuity of a great genius to gain friends and favor for his unhappy
+country, there had been but one who had known that Stefan Loristan had
+a claim to the Samavian throne. He had made no claim, he had
+sought--not a crown--but the final freedom of the nation for which his
+love had been a religion.
+
+"Not the crown!" he said to the two young Bearers of the Sign as they
+sat at his feet like schoolboys--"not a throne.  'The Life of my
+life--for Samavia.'  That was what I worked for--what we have all
+worked for.  If there had risen a wiser man in Samavia's time of need,
+it would not have been for me to remind them of their Lost Prince.  I
+could have stood aside.  But no man arose.  The crucial moment
+came--and the one man who knew the secret, revealed it.  Then--Samavia
+called, and I answered."
+
+He put his hand on the thick, black hair of his boy's head.
+
+"There was a thing we never spoke of together," he said.  "I believed
+always that your mother died of her bitter fears for me and the
+unending strain of them.  She was very young and loving, and knew that
+there was no day when we parted that we were sure of seeing each other
+alive again.  When she died, she begged me to promise that your boyhood
+and youth should not be burdened by the knowledge she had found it so
+terrible to bear.  I should have kept the secret from you, even if she
+had not so implored me.  I had never meant that you should know the
+truth until you were a man.  If I had died, a certain document would
+have been sent to you which would have left my task in your hands and
+made my plans clear.  You would have known then that you also were a
+Prince Ivor, who must take up his country's burden and be ready when
+Samavia called.  I tried to help you to train yourself for any task.
+You never failed me."
+
+"Your Majesty," said The Rat, "I began to work it out, and think it
+must be true that night when we were with the old woman on the top of
+the mountain.  It was the way she looked at--at His Highness."
+
+"Say 'Marco,'" threw in Prince Ivor.  "It's easier.  He was my army,
+Father."
+
+Stefan Loristan's grave eyes melted.
+
+"Say 'Marco,'" he said.  "You were his army--and more--when we both
+needed one.  It was you who invented the Game!"
+
+"Thanks, Your Majesty," said The Rat, reddening scarlet.  "You do me
+great honor!  But he would never let me wait on him when we were
+traveling.  He said we were nothing but two boys.  I suppose that's why
+it's hard to remember, at first.  But my mind went on working until
+sometimes I was afraid I might let something out at the wrong time.
+When we went down into the cavern, and I saw the Forgers of the Sword
+go mad over him--I KNEW it must be true. But I didn't dare to speak.  I
+knew you meant us to wait; so I waited."
+
+"You are a faithful friend," said the King, "and you have always obeyed
+orders!"
+
+A great moon was sailing in the sky that night--just such a  moon as
+had sailed among the torn rifts of storm clouds when the Prince at
+Vienna had come out upon the balcony and the boyish voice had startled
+him from the darkness of the garden below. The clearer light of this
+night's splendor drew them out on a balcony also--a broad balcony of
+white marble which looked like snow.  The pure radiance fell upon all
+they saw spread before them--the lovely but half-ruined city, the great
+palace square with its broken statues and arches, the splendid ghost of
+the unroofed cathedral whose High Altar was bare to the sky.
+
+They stood and looked at it.  There was a stillness in which all the
+world might have ceased breathing.
+
+"What next?" said Prince Ivor, at last speaking quietly and low.  "What
+next, Father?"
+
+"Great things which will come, one by one," said the King, "if we hold
+ourselves ready."
+
+Prince Ivor turned his face from the lovely, white, broken city, and
+put his brown hand on his father's arm.
+
+"Upon the ledge that night--" he said, "Father, you remember--?"  The
+King was looking far away, but he bent his head:
+
+"Yes.  That will come, too," he said.  "Can you repeat it?"
+
+"Yes," said Ivor, "and so can the aide-de-camp.  We've said it a
+hundred times.  We believe it's true.  'If the descendant of the Lost
+Prince is brought back to rule in Samavia, he will teach his people the
+Law of the One, from his throne.  He will teach his son, and that son
+will teach his son, and he will teach his. And through such as these,
+the whole world will learn the Order and the Law.'"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Lost Prince, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
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