The Lost Prince
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

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 extra-
ordinary 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
cleanly 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 herm 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 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
immov-  able. 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.