← catalogue

The Lost Prince

by Frances Hodgson Burnett · English · Gutenberg #384 · 552,846 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lost Prince
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Lost Prince

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett


        
Release date: January 1, 1996 [eBook #384]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/384

Credits: Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOST PRINCE ***




Produced by Charles Keller and David Garcia





[Illustration: The King had the eyes he longed to see.]




THE LOST PRINCE

By FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT


With Four Illustrations

By MAURICE L. BOWER


1915




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      THE 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."

[Illustration: He was the man who had spoken to him in Samavian.]

It was of this story that Marco was thinking as he walked, and perhaps
the thoughts that filled his mind expressed themselves in his face in
some way which attracted attention. As he was nearing Buckingham Palace,
a distinguished-looking well-dressed man with clever eyes caught sight
of him, and, after looking at him keenly, slackened his pace as he
approached him from the opposite direction. An observer might have
thought he saw something which puzzled and surprised him. Marco didn't
see him at all, and still moved forward, thinking of the shepherds and
the prince. The well-dressed man began to walk still more slowly. When
he was quite close to Marco, he stopped and spoke to him--in the
Samavian language.

"What is your name?" he asked.

Marco's training from his earliest childhood had been an extraordinary
thing. His love for his father had made it simple and natural to him,
and he had never questioned the reason for it. As he had been taught to
keep silence, he had been taught to control the expression of his face
and the sound of his voice, and, above all, never to allow himself to
look startled. But for this he might have started at the extraordinary
sound of the Samavian words suddenly uttered in a London street by an
English gentleman. He might even have answered the question in Samavian
himself. But he did not. He courteously lifted his cap and replied in
English:

"Excuse me?"

The gentleman's clever eyes scrutinized him keenly. Then he also spoke
in English.

"Perhaps you do not understand? I asked your name because you are very
like a Samavian I know," he said.

"I am Marco Loristan," the boy answered him.

The man looked straight into his eyes and smiled.

"That is not the name," he said. "I beg your pardon, my boy."

He was about to go on, and had indeed taken a couple of steps away, when
he paused and turned to him again.

"You may tell your father that you are a very well-trained lad. I wanted
to find out for myself." And he went on.

Marco felt that his heart beat a little quickly. This was one of
several incidents which had happened during the last three years, and
made him feel that he was living among things so mysterious that their
very mystery hinted at danger. But he himself had never before seemed
involved in them. Why should it matter that he was well-behaved? Then he
remembered something. The man had not said "well-behaved," he had said
"well-_trained_." Well-trained in what way? He felt his forehead prickle
slightly as he thought of the smiling, keen look which set itself so
straight upon him. Had he spoken to him in Samavian for an experiment,
to see if he would be startled into forgetting that he had been trained
to seem to know only the language of the country he was temporarily
living in? But he had not forgotten. He had remembered well, and was
thankful that he had betrayed nothing. "Even exiles may be Samavian
soldiers. I am one. You must be one," his father had said on that day
long ago when he had made him take his oath. Perhaps remembering his
training was being a soldier. Never had Samavia needed help as she
needed it to-day. Two years before, a rival claimant to the throne had
assassinated the then reigning king and his sons, and since then, bloody
war and tumult had raged. The new king was a powerful man, and had a
great following of the worst and most self-seeking of the people.
Neighboring countries had interfered for their own welfare's sake,
and the newspapers had been full of stories of savage fighting and
atrocities, and of starving peasants.

Marco had late one evening entered their lodgings to find Loristan
walking to and fro like a lion in a cage, a paper crushed and torn
in his hands, and his eyes blazing. He had been reading of cruelties
wrought upon innocent peasants and women and children. Lazarus was
standing staring at him with huge tears running down his cheeks. When
Marco opened the door, the old soldier strode over to him, turned him
about, and led him out of the room.

"Pardon, sir, pardon!" he sobbed. "No one must see him, not even you.
He suffers so horribly."

He stood by a chair in Marco's own small bedroom, where he half pushed,
half led him. He bent his grizzled head, and wept like a beaten child.

"Dear God of those who are in pain, assuredly it is now the time to give
back to us our Lost Prince!" he said, and Marco knew the words were a
prayer, and wondered at the frenzied intensity of it, because it seemed
so wild a thing to pray for the return of a youth who had died five
hundred years before.

When he reached the palace, he was still thinking of the man who had
spoken to him. He was thinking of him even as he looked at the majestic
gray stone building and counted the number of its stories and windows.
He walked round it that he might make a note in his memory of its size
and form and its entrances, and guess at the size of its gardens. This
he did because it was part of his game, and part of his strange
training.

When he came back to the front, he saw that in the great entrance court
within the high iron railings an elegant but quiet-looking closed
carriage was drawing up before the doorway. Marco stood and watched with
interest to see who would come out and enter it. He knew that kings and
emperors who were not on parade looked merely like well-dressed private
gentlemen, and often chose to go out as simply and quietly as other men.
So he thought that, perhaps, if he waited, he might see one of those
well-known faces which represent the highest rank and power in a
monarchical country, and which in times gone by had also represented the
power over human life and death and liberty.

"I should like to be able to tell my father that I have seen the King
and know his face, as I know the faces of the czar and the two
emperors."

There was a little movement among the tall men-servants in the royal
scarlet liveries, and an elderly man descended the steps attended by
another who walked behind him. He entered the carriage, the other man
followed him, the door was closed, and the carriage drove through the
entrance gates, where the sentries saluted.

Marco was near enough to see distinctly. The two men were talking as if
interested. The face of the one farthest from him was the face he had
often seen in shop-windows and newspapers. The boy made his quick,
formal salute. It was the King; and, as he smiled and acknowledged his
greeting, he spoke to his companion.

"That fine lad salutes as if he belonged to the army," was what he said,
though Marco could not hear him.

His companion leaned forward to look through the window. When he caught
sight of Marco, a singular expression crossed his face.

"He does belong to an army, sir," he answered, "though he does not know
it. His name is Marco Loristan."

Then Marco saw him plainly for the first time. He was the man with the
keen eyes who had spoken to him in Samavian.




IV

THE RAT


Marco would have wondered very much if he had heard the words, but, as
he did not hear them, he turned toward home wondering at something else.
A man who was in intimate attendance on a king must be a person of
importance. He no doubt knew many things not only of his own ruler's
country, but of the countries of other kings. But so few had really
known anything of poor little Samavia until the newspapers had begun to
tell them of the horrors of its war--and who but a Samavian could speak
its language? It would be an interesting thing to tell his father--that
a man who knew the King had spoken to him in Samavian, and had sent that
curious message.

Later he found himself passing a side street and looked up it. It was so
narrow, and on either side of it were such old, tall, and sloping-walled
houses that it attracted his attention. It looked as if a bit of old
London had been left to stand while newer places grew up and hid it
from view. This was the kind of street he liked to pass through for
curiosity's sake. He knew many of them in the old quarters of many
cities. He had lived in some of them. He could find his way home from
the other end of it. Another thing than its queerness attracted him.
He heard a clamor of boys' voices, and he wanted to see what they were
doing. Sometimes, when he had reached a new place and had had that
lonely feeling, he had followed some boyish clamor of play or wrangling,
and had found a temporary friend or so.

Half-way to the street's end there was an arched brick passage. The
sound of the voices came from there--one of them high, and thinner and
shriller than the rest. Marco tramped up to the arch and looked down
through the passage. It opened on to a gray flagged space, shut in by
the railings of a black, deserted, and ancient graveyard behind a
venerable church which turned its face toward some other street. The
boys were not playing, but listening to one of their number who was
reading to them from a newspaper.

Marco walked down the passage and listened also, standing in the dark
arched outlet at its end and watching the boy who read. He was a strange
little creature with a big forehead, and deep eyes which were curiously
sharp. But this was not all. He had a hunch back, his legs seemed small
and crooked. He sat with them crossed before him on a rough wooden
platform set on low wheels, on which he evidently pushed himself about.
Near him were a number of sticks stacked together as if they were
rifles. One of the first things that Marco noticed was that he had a
savage little face marked with lines as if he had been angry all his
life.

"Hold your tongues, you fools!" he shrilled out to some boys who
interrupted him. "Don't you want to know anything, you ignorant swine?"

He was as ill-dressed as the rest of them, but he did not speak in the
Cockney dialect. If he was of the riffraff of the streets, as his
companions were, he was somehow different.

Then he, by chance, saw Marco, who was standing in the arched end of the
passage.

"What are you doing there listening?" he shouted, and at once stooped to
pick up a stone and threw it at him. The stone hit Marco's shoulder, but
it did not hurt him much. What he did not like was that another lad
should want to throw something at him before they had even exchanged
boy-signs. He also did not like the fact that two other boys promptly
took the matter up by bending down to pick up stones also.

He walked forward straight into the group and stopped close to the
hunchback.

"What did you do that for?" he asked, in his rather deep young voice.

He was big and strong-looking enough to suggest that he was not a boy it
would be easy to dispose of, but it was not that which made the group
stand still a moment to stare at him. It was something in himself--half
of it a kind of impartial lack of anything like irritation at the
stone-throwing. It was as if it had not mattered to him in the least.
It had not made him feel angry or insulted. He was only rather curious
about it. Because he was clean, and his hair and his shabby clothes were
brushed, the first impression given by his appearance as he stood in the
archway was that he was a young "toff" poking his nose where it was not
wanted; but, as he drew near, they saw that the well-brushed clothes
were worn, and there were patches on his shoes.

"What did you do that for?" he asked, and he asked it merely as if he
wanted to find out the reason.

"I'm not going to have you swells dropping in to my club as if it was
your own," said the hunchback.

"I'm not a swell, and I didn't know it was a club," Marco answered. "I
heard boys, and I thought I'd come and look. When I heard you reading
about Samavia, I wanted to hear."

He looked at the reader with his silent-expressioned eyes.

"You needn't have thrown a stone," he added. "They don't do it at men's
clubs. I'll go away."

He turned about as if he were going, but, before he had taken three
steps, the hunchback hailed him unceremoniously.

"Hi!" he called out. "Hi, you!"

"What do you want?" said Marco.

"I bet you don't know where Samavia is, or what they're fighting about."
The hunchback threw the words at him.

"Yes, I do. It's north of Beltrazo and east of Jiardasia, and they are
fighting because one party has assassinated King Maran, and the other
will not let them crown Nicola Iarovitch. And why should they? He's a
brigand, and hasn't a drop of royal blood in him."

"Oh!" reluctantly admitted the hunchback. "You do know that much, do
you? Come back here."

Marco turned back, while the boys still stared. It was as if two leaders
or generals were meeting for the first time, and the rabble, looking on,
wondered what would come of their encounter.

"The Samavians of the Iarovitch party are a bad lot and want only bad
things," said Marco, speaking first. "They care nothing for Samavia.
They only care for money and the power to make laws which will serve
them and crush everybody else. They know Nicola is a weak man, and that,
if they can crown him king, they can make him do what they like."

The fact that he spoke first, and that, though he spoke in a steady
boyish voice without swagger, he somehow seemed to take it for granted
that they would listen, made his place for him at once. Boys are
impressionable creatures, and they know a leader when they see him. The
hunchback fixed glittering eyes on him. The rabble began to murmur.

"Rat! Rat!" several voices cried at once in good strong Cockney. "Arst
'im some more, Rat!"

"Is that what they call you?" Marco asked the hunchback.

"It's what I called myself," he answered resentfully. "'The Rat.' Look
at me! Crawling round on the ground like this! Look at me!"

He made a gesture ordering his followers to move aside, and began to
push himself rapidly, with queer darts this side and that round the
inclosure. He bent his head and body, and twisted his face, and made
strange animal-like movements. He even uttered sharp squeaks as he
rushed here and there--as a rat might have done when it was being
hunted. He did it as if he were displaying an accomplishment, and his
followers' laughter was applause.

"Wasn't I like a rat?" he demanded, when he suddenly stopped.

"You made yourself like one on purpose," Marco answered. "You do it for
fun."

"Not so much fun," said The Rat. "I feel like one. Every one's my enemy.
I'm vermin. I can't fight or defend myself unless I bite. I can bite,
though." And he showed two rows of fierce, strong, white teeth, sharper
at the points than human teeth usually are. "I bite my father when he
gets drunk and beats me. I've bitten him till he's learned to remember."
He laughed a shrill, squeaking laugh. "He hasn't tried it for three
months--even when he was drunk--and he's always drunk." Then he laughed
again still more shrilly. "He's a gentleman," he said. "I'm a
gentleman's son. He was a Master at a big school until he was kicked
out--that was when I was four and my mother died. I'm thirteen now. How
old are you?"

"I'm twelve," answered Marco.

The Rat twisted his face enviously.

"I wish I was your size! Are you a gentleman's son? You look as if you
were."

"I'm a very poor man's son," was Marco's answer. "My father is a
writer."

"Then, ten to one, he's a sort of gentleman," said The Rat. Then quite
suddenly he threw another question at him. "What's the name of the other
Samavian party?"

"The Maranovitch. The Maranovitch and the Iarovitch have been fighting
with each other for five hundred years. First one dynasty rules, and
then the other gets in when it has killed somebody as it killed King
Maran," Marco answered without hesitation.

"What was the name of the dynasty that ruled before they began fighting?
The first Maranovitch assassinated the last of them," The Rat asked him.

"The Fedorovitch," said Marco. "The last one was a bad king."

"His son was the one they never found again," said The Rat. "The one
they call the Lost Prince."

Marco would have started but for his long training in exterior
self-control. It was so strange to hear his dream-hero spoken of in this
back alley in a slum, and just after he had been thinking of him.

"What do you know about him?" he asked, and, as he did so, he saw the
group of vagabond lads draw nearer.

"Not much. I only read something about him in a torn magazine I found in
the street," The Rat answered. "The man that wrote about him said he was
only part of a legend, and he laughed at people for believing in him. He
said it was about time that he should turn up again if he intended to.
I've invented things about him because these chaps like to hear me tell
them. They're only stories."

"We likes 'im," a voice called out, "becos 'e wos the right sort; 'e'd
fight, 'e would, if 'e was in Samavia now."

Marco rapidly asked himself how much he might say. He decided and spoke
to them all.

"He is not part of a legend. He's part of Samavian history," he said.
"I know something about him too."

"How did you find it out?" asked The Rat.

"Because my father's a writer, he's obliged to have books and papers,
and he knows things. I like to read, and I go into the free libraries.
You can always get books and papers there. Then I ask my father
questions. All the newspapers are full of things about Samavia just
now." Marco felt that this was an explanation which betrayed nothing.
It was true that no one could open a newspaper at this period without
seeing news and stories of Samavia.

The Rat saw possible vistas of information opening up before him.

"Sit down here," he said, "and tell us what you know about him. Sit
down, you fellows."

There was nothing to sit on but the broken flagged pavement, but that
was a small matter. Marco himself had sat on flags or bare ground often
enough before, and so had the rest of the lads. He took his place near
The Rat, and the others made a semicircle in front of them. The two
leaders had joined forces, so to speak, and the followers fell into line
at "attention."

Then the new-comer began to talk. It was a good story, that of the Lost
Prince, and Marco told it in a way which gave it reality. How could he
help it? He knew, as they could not, that it was real. He who had pored
over maps of little Samavia since his seventh year, who had studied them
with his father, knew it as a country he could have found his way to any
part of if he had been dropped in any forest or any mountain of it. He
knew every highway and byway, and in the capital city of Melzarr could
almost have made his way blindfolded. He knew the palaces and the forts,
the churches, the poor streets and the rich ones. His father had once
shown him a plan of the royal palace which they had studied together
until the boy knew each apartment and corridor in it by heart. But this
he did not speak of. He knew it was one of the things to be silent
about. But of the mountains and the emerald velvet meadows climbing
their sides and only ending where huge bare crags and peaks began, he
could speak. He could make pictures of the wide fertile plains where
herds of wild horses fed, or raced and sniffed the air; he could
describe the fertile valleys where clear rivers ran and flocks of sheep
pastured on deep sweet grass. He could speak of them because he could
offer a good enough reason for his knowledge of them. It was not the
only reason he had for his knowledge, but it was one which would serve
well enough.

"That torn magazine you found had more than one article about Samavia in
it," he said to The Rat. "The same man wrote four. I read them all in a
free library. He had been to Samavia, and knew a great deal about it.
He said it was one of the most beautiful countries he had ever traveled
in--and the most fertile. That's what they all say of it."

The group before him knew nothing of fertility or open country. They
only knew London back streets and courts. Most of them had never
traveled as far as the public parks, and in fact scarcely believed in
their existence. They were a rough lot, and as they had stared at Marco
at first sight of him, so they continued to stare at him as he talked.
When he told of the tall Samavians who had been like giants centuries
ago, and who had hunted the wild horses and captured and trained them to
obedience by a sort of strong and gentle magic, their mouths fell open.
This was the sort of thing to allure any boy's imagination.

"Blimme, if I wouldn't 'ave liked ketchin' one o' them 'orses," broke in
one of the audience, and his exclamation was followed by a dozen of like
nature from the others. Who wouldn't have liked "ketchin' one"?

When he told of the deep endless-seeming forests, and of the herdsmen
and shepherds who played on their pipes and made songs about high deeds
and bravery, they grinned with pleasure without knowing they were
grinning. They did not really know that in this neglected,
broken-flagged inclosure, shut in on one side by smoke-blackened,
poverty-stricken houses, and on the other by a deserted and forgotten
sunken graveyard, they heard the rustle of green forest boughs where
birds nested close, the swish of the summer wind in the river reeds, and
the tinkle and laughter and rush of brooks running.

They heard more or less of it all through the Lost Prince story, because
Prince Ivor had loved lowland woods and mountain forests and all
out-of-door life. When Marco pictured him tall and strong-limbed and
young, winning all the people when he rode smiling among them, the boys
grinned again with unconscious pleasure.

"Wisht 'e 'adn't got lost!" some one cried out.

When they heard of the unrest and dissatisfaction of the Samavians, they
began to get restless themselves. When Marco reached the part of the
story in which the mob rushed into the palace and demanded their prince
from the king, they ejaculated scraps of bad language. "The old geezer
had got him hidden somewhere in some dungeon, or he'd killed him out an'
out--that's what he'd been up to!" they clamored. "Wisht the lot of us
had been there then--wisht we 'ad. We'd 'ave give' 'im wot for, anyway!"

"An' 'im walkin' out o' the place so early in the mornin' just singin'
like that! 'E 'ad 'im follered an' done for!" they decided with various
exclamations of boyish wrath. Somehow, the fact that the handsome royal
lad had strolled into the morning sunshine singing made them more
savage. Their language was extremely bad at this point.

But if it was bad here, it became worse when the old shepherd found
the young huntsman's half-dead body in the forest. He _had_ "bin 'done
for' _in the back_! 'E'd bin give' no charnst. G-r-r-r!" they groaned
in chorus. "Wisht" _they'd_ "bin there when 'e'd bin 'it!" They'd
"'ave done fur somebody" themselves. It was a story which had a queer
effect on them. It made them think they saw things; it fired their
blood; it set them wanting to fight for ideals they knew nothing
about--adventurous things, for instance, and high and noble young
princes who were full of the possibility of great and good deeds.
Sitting upon the broken flagstones of the bit of ground behind the
deserted graveyard, they were suddenly dragged into the world of
romance, and noble young princes and great and good deeds became as
real as the sunken gravestones, and far more interesting.

And then the smuggling across the frontier of the unconscious prince in
the bullock cart loaded with sheepskins! They held their breaths. Would
the old shepherd get him past the line! Marco, who was lost in the
recital himself, told it as if he had been present. He felt as if he
had, and as this was the first time he had ever told it to thrilled
listeners, his imagination got him in its grip, and his heart jumped in
his breast as he was sure the old man's must have done when the guard
stopped his cart and asked him what he was carrying out of the country.
He knew he must have had to call up all his strength to force his voice
into steadiness.

And then the good monks! He had to stop to explain what a monk was, and
when he described the solitude of the ancient monastery, and its walled
gardens full of flowers and old simples to be used for healing, and the
wise monks walking in the silence and the sun, the boys stared a little
helplessly, but still as if they were vaguely pleased by the picture.

And then there was no more to tell--no more. There it broke off, and
something like a low howl of dismay broke from the semicircle.

"Aw!" they protested, "it 'adn't ought to stop there! Ain't there no
more? Is that all there is?"

"It's all that was ever known really. And that last part might only be
a sort of story made up by somebody. But I believe it myself."

The Rat had listened with burning eyes. He had sat biting his
finger-nails, as was a trick of his when he was excited or angry.

"Tell you what!" he exclaimed suddenly. "This was what happened. It was
some of the Maranovitch fellows that tried to kill him. They meant to
kill his father and make their own man king, and they knew the people
wouldn't stand it if young Ivor was alive. They just stabbed him in the
back, the fiends! I dare say they heard the old shepherd coming, and
left him for dead and ran."

"Right, oh! That was it!" the lads agreed. "Yer right there, Rat!"

"When he got well," The Rat went on feverishly, still biting his nails,
"he couldn't go back. He was only a boy. The other fellow had been
crowned, and his followers felt strong because they'd just conquered
the country. He could have done nothing without an army, and he was too
young to raise one. Perhaps he thought he'd wait till he was old enough
to know what to do. I dare say he went away and had to work for his
living as if he'd never been a prince at all. Then perhaps sometime he
married somebody and had a son, and told him as a secret who he was and
all about Samavia." The Rat began to look vengeful. "If I'd bin him I'd
have told him not to forget what the Maranovitch had done to me. I'd
have told him that if I couldn't get back the throne, he must see what
he could do when he grew to be a man. And I'd have made him swear,
if he got it back, to take it out of them or their children or their
children's children in torture and killing. I'd have made him swear not
to leave a Maranovitch alive. And I'd have told him that, if he couldn't
do it in his life, he must pass the oath on to his son and his son's
son, as long as there was a Fedorovitch on earth. Wouldn't you?" he
demanded hotly of Marco.

Marco's blood was also hot, but it was a different kind of blood, and he
had talked too much to a very sane man.

"No," he said slowly. "What would have been the use? It wouldn't have
done Samavia any good, and it wouldn't have done him any good to torture
and kill people. Better keep them alive and make them do things for the
country. If you're a patriot, you think of the country." He wanted to
add "That's what my father says," but he did not.

"Torture 'em first and then attend to the country," snapped The Rat.
"What would you have told your son if you'd been Ivor?"

"I'd have told him to learn everything about Samavia--and all the things
kings have to know--and study things about laws and other countries--and
about keeping silent--and about governing himself as if he were a
general commanding soldiers in battle--so that he would never do
anything he did not mean to do or could be ashamed of doing after it was
over. And I'd have asked him to tell his son's sons to tell their sons
to learn the same things. So, you see, however long the time was, there
would always be a king getting ready for Samavia--when Samavia really
wanted him. And he would be a real king."

He stopped himself suddenly and looked at the staring semicircle.

"I didn't make that up myself," he said. "I have heard a man who reads
and knows things say it. I believe the Lost Prince would have had the
same thoughts. If he had, and told them to his son, there has been a
line of kings in training for Samavia for five hundred years, and
perhaps one is walking about the streets of Vienna, or Budapest, or
Paris, or London now, and he'd be ready if the people found out about
him and called him."

"Wisht they would!" some one yelled.

"It would be a queer secret to know all the time when no one else knew
it," The Rat communed with himself as it were, "that you were a king and
you ought to be on a throne wearing a crown. I wonder if it would make a
chap look different?"

He laughed his squeaky laugh, and then turned in his sudden way to
Marco:

"But he'd be a fool to give up the vengeance. What is your name?"

"Marco Loristan. What's yours? It isn't The Rat really."

"It's Jem _Rat_cliffe. That's pretty near. Where do you live?"

"No. 7 Philibert Place."

"This club is a soldiers' club," said The Rat. "It's called the Squad.
I'm the captain. 'Tention, you fellows! Let's show him."

The semicircle sprang to its feet. There were about twelve lads
altogether, and, when they stood upright, Marco saw at once that for
some reason they were accustomed to obeying the word of command with
military precision.

"Form in line!" ordered The Rat.

They did it at once, and held their backs and legs straight and their
heads up amazingly well. Each had seized one of the sticks which had
been stacked together like guns.

The Rat himself sat up straight on his platform. There was actually
something military in the bearing of his lean body. His voice lost its
squeak and its sharpness became commanding.

He put the dozen lads through the drill as if he had been a smart young
officer. And the drill itself was prompt and smart enough to have done
credit to practiced soldiers in barracks. It made Marco involuntarily
stand very straight himself, and watch with surprised interest.

"That's good!" he exclaimed when it was at an end. "How did you learn
that?"

The Rat made a savage gesture.

"If I'd had legs to stand on, I'd have been a soldier!" he said. "I'd
have enlisted in any regiment that would take me. I don't care for
anything else."

Suddenly his face changed, and he shouted a command to his followers.

"Turn your backs!" he ordered.

And they did turn their backs and looked through the railings of the old
churchyard. Marco saw that they were obeying an order which was not new
to them. The Rat had thrown his arm up over his eyes and covered them.
He held it there for several moments, as if he did not want to be seen.
Marco turned his back as the rest had done. All at once he understood
that, though The Rat was not crying, yet he was feeling something which
another boy would possibly have broken down under.

"All right!" he shouted presently, and dropped his ragged-sleeved arm
and sat up straight again.

"I want to go to war!" he said hoarsely. "I want to fight! I want to
lead a lot of men into battle! And I haven't got any legs. Sometimes it
takes the pluck out of me."

"You've not grown up yet!" said Marco. "You might get strong."

No one knows what is going to happen. How did you learn to drill the
club?"

"I hang about barracks. I watch and listen. I follow soldiers. If I
could get books, I'd read about wars. I can't go to libraries as you
can. I can do nothing but scuffle about like a rat."

"I can take you to some libraries," said Marco. "There are places where
boys can get in. And I can get some papers from my father."

"Can you?" said The Rat. "Do you want to join the club?"

"Yes!" Marco answered. "I'll speak to my father about it."

He said it because the hungry longing for companionship in his own mind
had found a sort of response in the queer hungry look in The Rat's eyes.
He wanted to see him again. Strange creature as he was, there was
attraction in him. Scuffling about on his low wheeled platform, he had
drawn this group of rough lads to him and made himself their commander.
They obeyed him; they listened to his stories and harangues about war
and soldiering; they let him drill them and give them orders. Marco knew
that, when he told his father about him, he would be interested. The boy
wanted to hear what Loristan would say.

"I'm going home now," he said. "If you're going to be here to-morrow,
I will try to come."

"We shall be here," The Rat answered. "It's our barracks."

Marco drew himself up smartly and made his salute as if to a superior
officer. Then he wheeled about and marched through the brick archway,
and the sound of his boyish tread was as regular and decided as if he
had been a man keeping time with his regiment.

"He's been drilled himself," said The Rat. "He knows as much as I do."

And he sat up and stared down the passage with new interest.




V

"SILENCE IS STILL THE ORDER"


They were even poorer than usual just now, and the supper Marco and his
father sat down to was scant enough. Lazarus stood upright behind his
master's chair and served him with strictest ceremony. Their poor
lodgings were always kept with a soldierly cleanliness and order. When
an object could be polished it was forced to shine, no grain of dust was
allowed to lie undisturbed, and this perfection was not attained through
the ministrations of a lodging house slavey. Lazarus made himself
extremely popular by taking the work of caring for his master's rooms
entirely out of the hands of the overburdened maids of all work. He had
learned to do many things in his young days in barracks. He carried
about with him coarse bits of table-cloths and towels, which he
laundered as if they had been the finest linen. He mended, he patched,
he darned, and in the hardest fight the poor must face--the fight with
dirt and dinginess--he always held his own. They had nothing but dry
bread and coffee this evening, but Lazarus had made the coffee and the
bread was good.

As Marco ate, he told his father the story of The Rat and his followers.
Loristan listened, as the boy had known he would, with the far-off,
intently-thinking smile in his dark eyes. It was a look which always
fascinated Marco because it meant that he was thinking so many things.
Perhaps he would tell some of them and perhaps he would not. His spell
over the boy lay in the fact that to him he seemed like a wonderful book
of which one had only glimpses. It was full of pictures and adventures
which were true, and one could not help continually making guesses about
them. Yes, the feeling that Marco had was that his father's attraction
for him was a sort of spell, and that others felt the same thing. When
he stood and talked to commoner people, he held his tall body with
singular quiet grace which was like power. He never stirred or moved
himself as if he were nervous or uncertain. He could hold his hands (he
had beautiful slender and strong hands) quite still; he could stand on
his fine arched feet without shuffling them. He could sit without any
ungrace or restlessness. His mind knew what his body should do, and gave
it orders without speaking, and his fine limbs and muscles and nerves
obeyed. So he could stand still and at ease and look at the people he
was talking to, and they always looked at him and listened to what he
said, and somehow, courteous and uncondescending as his manner
unfailingly was, it used always to seem to Marco as if he were "giving
an audience" as kings gave them.

He had often seen people bow very low when they went away from him, and
more than once it had happened that some humble person had stepped out
of his presence backward, as people do when retiring before a sovereign.
And yet his bearing was the quietest and least assuming in the world.

"And they were talking about Samavia? And he knew the story of the Lost
Prince?" he said ponderingly. "Even in that place!"

"He wants to hear about wars--he wants to talk about them," Marco
answered. "If he could stand and were old enough, he would go and fight
for Samavia himself."

"It is a blood-drenched and sad place now!" said Loristan. "The people
are mad when they are not heartbroken and terrified."

Suddenly Marco struck the table with a sounding slap of his boy's hand.
He did it before he realized any intention in his own mind.

"Why should either one of the Iarovitch or one of the Maranovitch be
king!" he cried. "They were only savage peasants when they first fought
for the crown hundreds of years ago. The most savage one got it, and
they have been fighting ever since. Only the Fedorovitch were born
kings. There is only one man in the world who has the right to the
throne--and I don't know whether he is in the world or not. But I
believe he is! I do!"

Loristan looked at his hot twelve-year-old face with a reflective
curiousness. He saw that the flame which had leaped up in him had leaped
without warning--just as a fierce heart-beat might have shaken him.

"You mean--?" he suggested softly.

"Ivor Fedorovitch. King Ivor he ought to be. And the people would obey
him, and the good days would come again."

"It is five hundred years since Ivor Fedorovitch left the good monks."
Loristan still spoke softly.

"But, Father," Marco protested, "even The Rat said what you said--that
he was too young to be able to come back while the Maranovitch were in
power. And he would have to work and have a home, and perhaps he is as
poor as we are. But when he had a son he would call him Ivor and _tell_
him--and his son would call _his_ son Ivor and tell _him_--and it would
go on and on. They could never call their eldest sons anything but Ivor.
And what you said about the training would be true. There would always
be a king being trained for Samavia, and ready to be called." In the
fire of his feelings he sprang from his chair and stood upright. "Why!
There may be a king of Samavia in some city now who knows he is king,
and, when he reads about the fighting among his people, his blood gets
red-hot. They're his own people--his very own! He ought to go to
them--he ought to go and tell them who he is! Don't you think he ought,
Father?"

"It would not be as easy as it seems to a boy," Loristan answered.
"There are many countries which would have something to say--Russia
would have her word, and Austria, and Germany; and England never is
silent. But, if he were a strong man and knew how to make strong friends
in silence, he might sometime be able to declare himself openly."

"But if he is anywhere, some one--some Samavian--ought to go and look
for him. It ought to be a Samavian who is very clever and a patriot--"
He stopped at a flash of recognition. "Father!" he cried out. "Father!
You--you are the one who could find him if any one in the world could.
But perhaps--" and he stopped a moment again because new thoughts rushed
through his mind. "Have _you_ ever looked for him?" he asked hesitating.

Perhaps he had asked a stupid question--perhaps his father had always
been looking for him, perhaps that was his secret and his work.

But Loristan did not look as if he thought him stupid. Quite the
contrary. He kept his handsome eyes fixed on him still in that curious
way, as if he were studying him--as if he were much more than twelve
years old, and he were deciding to tell him something.

"Comrade at arms," he said, with the smile which always gladdened
Marco's heart, "you have kept your oath of allegiance like a man. You
were not seven years old when you took it. You are growing older.
Silence is still the order, but you are man enough to be told more." He
paused and looked down, and then looked up again, speaking in a low
tone. "I have not looked for him," he said, "because--I believe I know
where he is."

Marco caught his breath.

"Father!" He said only that word. He could say no more. He knew he must
not ask questions. "Silence is still the order." But as they faced each
other in their dingy room at the back of the shabby house on the side
of the roaring common road--as Lazarus stood stock-still behind his
father's chair and kept his eyes fixed on the empty coffee cups and
the dry bread plate, and everything looked as poor as things always
did--there was a king of Samavia--an Ivor Fedorovitch with the blood of
the Lost Prince in his veins--alive in some town or city this moment!
And Marco's own father knew where he was!

He glanced at Lazarus, but, though the old soldier's face looked as
expressionless as if it were cut out of wood, Marco realized that he
knew this thing and had always known it. He had been a comrade at arms
all his life. He continued to stare at the bread plate.

Loristan spoke again and in an even lower voice. "The Samavians who are
patriots and thinkers," he said, "formed themselves into a secret party
about eighty years ago. They formed it when they had no reason for
hope, but they formed it because one of them discovered that an Ivor
Fedorovitch was living. He was head forester on a great estate in the
Austrian Alps. The nobleman he served had always thought him a mystery
because he had the bearing and speech of a man who had not been born a
servant, and his methods in caring for the forests and game were those
of a man who was educated and had studied his subject. But he never was
familiar or assuming, and never professed superiority over any of his
fellows. He was a man of great stature, and was extraordinarily brave
and silent. The nobleman who was his master made a sort of companion
of him when they hunted together. Once he took him with him when he
traveled to Samavia to hunt wild horses. He found that he knew the
country strangely well, and that he was familiar with Samavian hunting
and customs. Before he returned to Austria, the man obtained permission
to go to the mountains alone. He went among the shepherds and made
friends among them, asking many questions.

"One night around a forest fire he heard the songs about the Lost Prince
which had not been forgotten even after nearly five hundred years had
passed. The shepherds and herdsmen talked about Prince Ivor, and told
old stories about him, and related the prophecy that he would come back
and bring again Samavia's good days. He might come only in the body of
one of his descendants, but it would be his spirit which came, because
his spirit would never cease to love Samavia. One very old shepherd
tottered to his feet and lifted his face to the myriad stars bestrewn
like jewels in the blue sky above the forest trees, and he wept and
prayed aloud that the great God would send their king to them. And the
stranger huntsman stood upright also and lifted his face to the stars.
And, though he said no word, the herdsman nearest to him saw tears on
his cheeks--great, heavy tears. The next day, the stranger went to the
monastery where the order of good monks lived who had taken care of the
Lost Prince. When he had left Samavia, the secret society was formed,
and the members of it knew that an Ivor Fedorovitch had passed through
his ancestors' country as the servant of another man. But the secret
society was only a small one, and, though it has been growing ever since
and it has done good deeds and good work in secret, the huntsman died an
old man before it was strong enough even to dare to tell Samavia what it
knew."

"Had he a son?" cried Marco. "Had he a son?"

"Yes. He had a son. His name was Ivor. And he was trained as I told you.
That part I knew to be true, though I should have believed it was true
even if I had not known. There has _always_ been a king ready for
Samavia--even when he has labored with his hands and served others. Each
one took the oath of allegiance."

"As I did?" said Marco, breathless with excitement. When one is twelve
years old, to be so near a Lost Prince who might end wars is a thrilling
thing.

"The same," answered Loristan.

Marco threw up his hand in salute.

"'Here grows a man for Samavia! God be thanked!'" he quoted. "And _he_
is somewhere? And you know?"

Loristan bent his head in acquiescence.

"For years much secret work has been done, and the Fedorovitch party has
grown until it is much greater and more powerful than the other parties
dream. The larger countries are tired of the constant war and disorder
in Samavia. Their interests are disturbed by them, and they are deciding
that they must have peace and laws which can be counted on. There have
been Samavian patriots who have spent their lives in trying to bring
this about by making friends in the most powerful capitals, and working
secretly for the future good of their own land. Because Samavia is so
small and uninfluential, it has taken a long time but when King Maran
and his family were assassinated and the war broke out, there were great
powers which began to say that if some king of good blood and reliable
characteristics were given the crown, he should be upheld."

"_His_ blood,"--Marco's intensity made his voice drop almost to a
whisper,--"_his_ blood has been trained for five hundred years, Father!
If it comes true--" though he laughed a little, he was obliged to wink
his eyes hard because suddenly he felt tears rush into them, which no
boy likes--"the shepherds will have to make a new song--it will have to
be a shouting one about a prince going away and a king coming back!"

"They are a devout people and observe many an ancient rite and ceremony.
They will chant prayers and burn altar-fires on their mountain sides,"
Loristan said. "But the end is not yet--the end is not yet. Sometimes it
seems that perhaps it is near--but God knows!"

Then there leaped back upon Marco the story he had to tell, but which he
had held back for the last--the story of the man who spoke Samavian and
drove in the carriage with the King. He knew now that it might mean some
important thing which he could not have before suspected.

"There is something I must tell you," he said.

He had learned to relate incidents in few but clear words when he
related them to his father. It had been part of his training. Loristan
had said that he might sometime have a story to tell when he had but few
moments to tell it in--some story which meant life or death to some one.
He told this one quickly and well. He made Loristan see the well-dressed
man with the deliberate manner and the keen eyes, and he made him hear
his voice when he said, "Tell your father that you are a very
well-trained lad."

"I am glad he said that. He is a man who knows what training is," said
Loristan. "He is a person who knows what all Europe is doing, and almost
all that it will do. He is an ambassador from a powerful and great
country. If he saw that you are a well-trained and fine lad, it
might--it might even be good for Samavia."

"Would it matter that _I_ was well-trained? _Could_ it matter to Samavia?"
Marco cried out.

Loristan paused for a moment--watching him gravely--looking him
over--his big, well-built boy's frame, his shabby clothes, and his
eagerly burning eyes.

He smiled one of his slow wonderful smiles.

"Yes. It might even matter to Samavia!" he answered.




VI

THE DRILL AND THE SECRET PARTY


Loristan did not forbid Marco to pursue his acquaintance with The Rat
and his followers.

"You will find out for yourself whether they are friends for you or
not," he said. "You will know in a few days, and then you can make your
own decision. You have known lads in various countries, and you are a
good judge of them, I think. You will soon see whether they are going to
be _men_ or mere rabble. The Rat now--how does he strike you?"

And the handsome eyes held their keen look of questioning.

"He'd be a brave soldier if he could stand," said Marco, thinking him
over. "But he might be cruel."

"A lad who might make a brave soldier cannot be disdained, but a man
who is cruel is a fool. Tell him that from me," Loristan answered. "He
wastes force--his own and the force of the one he treats cruelly. Only
a fool wastes force."

"May I speak of you sometimes?" asked Marco.

"Yes. You will know how. You will remember the things about which
silence is the order."

"I never forget them," said Marco. "I have been trying not to, for such
a long time."

"You have succeeded well, Comrade!" returned Loristan, from his
writing-table, to which he had gone and where he was turning over
papers.

A strong impulse overpowered the boy. He marched over to the table and
stood very straight, making his soldierly young salute, his whole body
glowing.

"Father!" he said, "you don't know how I love you! I wish you were a
general and I might die in battle for you. When I look at you, I long
and long to do something for you a boy could not do. I would die of a
thousand wounds rather than disobey you--or Samavia!"

He seized Loristan's hand, and knelt on one knee and kissed it. An
English or American boy could not have done such a thing from unaffected
natural impulse. But he was of warm Southern blood.

"I took my oath of allegiance to you, Father, when I took it to Samavia.
It seems as if you were Samavia, too," he said, and kissed his hand
again.

Loristan had turned toward him with one of the movements which were full
of dignity and grace. Marco, looking up at him, felt that there was
always a certain remote stateliness in him which made it seem quite
natural that any one should bend the knee and kiss his hand.

A sudden great tenderness glowed in his father's face as he raised the
boy and put his hand on his shoulder.

"Comrade," he said, "you don't know how much I love you--and what reason
there is that we should love each other! You don't know how I have been
watching you, and thanking God each year that here grew a man for
Samavia. That I know you are--a _man_, though you have lived but twelve
years. Twelve years may grow a man--or prove that a man will never grow,
though a human thing he may remain for ninety years. This year may be
full of strange things for both of us. We cannot know _what_ I may have
to ask you to do for me--and for Samavia. Perhaps such a thing as no
twelve-year-old boy has ever done before."

"Every night and every morning," said Marco, "I shall pray that I may be
called to do it, and that I may do it well."

"You will do it well, Comrade, if you are called. That I could make
oath," Loristan answered him.

The Squad had collected in the inclosure behind the church when Marco
appeared at the arched end of the passage. The boys were drawn up with
their rifles, but they all wore a rather dogged and sullen look. The
explanation which darted into Marco's mind was that this was because The
Rat was in a bad humor. He sat crouched together on his platform biting
his nails fiercely, his elbows on his updrawn knees, his face twisted
into a hideous scowl. He did not look around, or even look up from the
cracked flagstone of the pavement on which his eyes were fixed.

Marco went forward with military step and stopped opposite to him with
prompt salute.

"Sorry to be late, sir," he said, as if he had been a private speaking
to his colonel.

"It's 'im, Rat! 'E's come, Rat!" the Squad shouted. "Look at 'im!"

But The Rat would not look, and did not even move.

"What's the matter?" said Marco, with less ceremony than a private would
have shown. "There's no use in my coming here if you don't want me."

"'E's got a grouch on 'cos you're late!" called out the head of the
line. "No doin' nothin' when 'e's got a grouch on."

"I sha'n't try to do anything," said Marco, his boy-face setting itself
into good stubborn lines. "That's not what I came here for. I came to
drill. I've been with my father. He comes first. I can't join the Squad
if he doesn't come first. We're not on active service, and we're not in
barracks."

Then The Rat moved sharply and turned to look at him.

"I thought you weren't coming at all!" he snapped and growled at once.
"My father said you wouldn't. He said you were a young swell for all
your patched clothes. He said your father would think he was a swell,
even if he was only a penny-a-liner on newspapers, and he wouldn't let
you have anything to do with a vagabond and a nuisance. Nobody begged
you to join. Your father can go to blazes!"

"Don't you speak in that way about my father," said Marco, quite
quietly, "because I can't knock you down."

"I'll get up and let you!" began The Rat, immediately white and raging.
"I can stand up with two sticks. I'll get up and let you!"

"No, you won't," said Marco. "If you want to know what my father said,
I can tell you. He said I could come as often as I liked--till I found
out whether we should be friends or not. He says I shall find that out
for myself."

It was a strange thing The Rat did. It must always be remembered of him
that his wretched father, who had each year sunk lower and lower in the
under-world, had been a gentleman once, a man who had been familiar with
good manners and had been educated in the customs of good breeding.
Sometimes when he was drunk, and sometimes when he was partly sober,
he talked to The Rat of many things the boy would otherwise never have
heard of. That was why the lad was different from the other vagabonds.
This, also, was why he suddenly altered the whole situation by doing
this strange and unexpected thing. He utterly changed his expression and
voice, fixing his sharp eyes shrewdly on Marco's. It was almost as if he
were asking him a conundrum. He knew it would have been one to most boys
of the class he appeared outwardly to belong to. He would either know
the answer or he wouldn't.

"I beg your pardon," The Rat said.

That was the conundrum. It was what a gentleman and an officer would
have said, if he felt he had been mistaken or rude. He had heard that
from his drunken father.

"I beg yours--for being late," said Marco.

That was the right answer. It was the one another officer and gentleman
would have made. It settled the matter at once, and it settled more than
was apparent at the moment. It decided that Marco was one of those who
knew the things The Rat's father had once known--the things gentlemen do
and say and think. Not another word was said. It was all right. Marco
slipped into line with the Squad, and The Rat sat erect with his
military bearing and began his drill:

"Squad!

"'Tention!

"Number!

"Slope arms!

"Form fours!

"Right!

"Quick march!

"Halt!

"Left turn!

"Order arms!

"Stand at ease!

"Stand easy!"

They did it so well that it was quite wonderful when one considered the
limited space at their disposal. They had evidently done it often, and
The Rat had been not only a smart, but a severe, officer. This morning
they repeated the exercise a number of times, and even varied it with
Review Drill, with which they seemed just as familiar.

"Where did you learn it?" The Rat asked, when the arms were stacked
again and Marco was sitting by him as he had sat the previous day.

"From an old soldier. And I like to watch it, as you do."

"If you were a young swell in the Guards, you couldn't be smarter at
it," The Rat said. "The way you hold yourself! The way you stand! You've
got it! Wish I was you! It comes natural to you."

"I've always liked to watch it and try to do it myself. I did when I was
a little fellow," answered Marco.

"I've been trying to kick it into these chaps for more than a year,"
said The Rat. "A nice job I had of it! It nearly made me sick at first."

The semicircle in front of him only giggled or laughed outright. The
members of it seemed to take very little offense at his cavalier
treatment of them. He had evidently something to give them which was
entertaining enough to make up for his tyranny and indifference. He
thrust his hand into one of the pockets of his ragged coat, and drew out
a piece of newspaper.

"My father brought home this, wrapped round a loaf of bread," he said.
"See what it says there!"

He handed it to Marco, pointing to some words printed in large letters
at the head of a column. Marco looked at it and sat very still.

The words he read were: "The Lost Prince."

"Silence is still the order," was the first thought which flashed
through his mind. "Silence is still the order."

"What does it mean?" he said aloud.

"There isn't much of it. I wish there was more," The Rat said fretfully.
"Read and see. Of course they say it mayn't be true--but I believe it
is. They say that people think some one knows where he is--at least
where one of his descendants is. It'd be the same thing. He'd be the
real king. If he'd just show himself, it might stop all the fighting.
Just read."

Marco read, and his skin prickled as the blood went racing through
his body. But his face did not change. There was a sketch of the story
of the Lost Prince to begin with. It had been regarded by most people,
the article said, as a sort of legend. Now there was a definite rumor
that it was not a legend at all, but a part of the long past history
of Samavia. It was said that through the centuries there had always
been a party secretly loyal to the memory of this worshiped and lost
Fedorovitch. It was even said that from father to son, generation after
generation after generation, had descended the oath of fealty to him and
his descendants. The people had made a god of him, and now, romantic
as it seemed, it was beginning to be an open secret that some persons
believed that a descendant had been found--a Fedorovitch worthy of his
young ancestor--and that a certain Secret Party also held that, if he
were called back to the throne of Samavia, the interminable wars and
bloodshed would reach an end.

The Rat had begun to bite his nails fast.

"Do you believe he's found?" he asked feverishly. "_Don't you_? I do!"

"I wonder where he is, if it's true? I wonder! Where?" exclaimed Marco.
He could say that, and he might seem as eager as he felt.

The Squad all began to jabber at once. "Yus, where wos'e? There is no
knowin'. It'd be likely to be in some o' these furrin places. England'd
be too far from Samavia. 'Ow far off wos Samavia? Wos it in Roosha, or
where the Frenchies were, or the Germans? But wherever 'e wos, 'e'd be
the right sort, an' 'e'd be the sort a chap'd turn and look at in the
street."

The Rat continued to bite his nails.

"He might be anywhere," he said, his small fierce face glowing.

"That's what I like to think about. He might be passing in the street
outside there; he might be up in one of those houses," jerking his head
over his shoulder toward the backs of the inclosing dwellings. "Perhaps
he knows he's a king, and perhaps he doesn't. He'd know if what you said
yesterday was true--about the king always being made ready for Samavia."

"Yes, he'd know," put in Marco.

"Well, it'd be finer if he did," went on The Rat. "However poor and
shabby he was, he'd know the secret all the time. And if people sneered
at him, he'd sneer at them and laugh to himself. I dare say he'd walk
tremendously straight and hold his head up. If I was him, I'd like to
make people suspect a bit that I wasn't like the common lot o' them."
He put out his hand and pushed Marco excitedly. "Let's work out plots
for him!" he said. "That'd be a splendid game! Let's pretend we're the
Secret Party!"

He was tremendously excited. Out of the ragged pocket he fished a piece
of chalk. Then he leaned forward and began to draw something quickly on
the flagstones closest to his platform. The Squad leaned forward also,
quite breathlessly, and Marco leaned forward. The chalk was sketching a
roughly outlined map, and he knew what map it was, before The Rat spoke.

"That's a map of Samavia," he said. "It was in that piece of magazine
I told you about--the one where I read about Prince Ivor. I studied it
until it fell to pieces. But I could draw it myself by that time, so it
didn't matter. I could draw it with my eyes shut. That's the capital
city," pointing to a spot. "It's called Melzarr. The palace is there.
It's the place where the first of the Maranovitch killed the last of
the Fedorovitch--the bad chap that was Ivor's father. It's the palace
Ivor wandered out of singing the shepherds' song that early morning.
It's where the throne is that his descendant would sit upon to be
crowned--that he's _going_ to sit upon. I believe he is! Let's swear
he shall!" He flung down his piece of chalk and sat up. "Give me two
sticks. Help me to get up."

Two of the Squad sprang to their feet and came to him. Each snatched one
of the sticks from the stacked rifles, evidently knowing what he wanted.
Marco rose too, and watched with sudden, keen curiosity. He had thought
that The Rat could not stand up, but it seemed that he could, in a
fashion of his own, and he was going to do it. The boys lifted him by
his arms, set him against the stone coping of the iron railings of the
churchyard, and put a stick in each of his hands. They stood at his
side, but he supported himself.

"'E could get about if 'e 'ad the money to buy crutches!" said one
whose name was Cad, and he said it quite proudly. The queer thing that
Marco had noticed was that the ragamuffins were proud of The Rat, and
regarded him as their lord and master. "--'E could get about an' stand
as well as any one," added the other, and he said it in the tone of one
who boasts. His name was Ben.

"I'm going to stand now, and so are the rest of you," said The Rat.
"Squad! 'Tention! You at the head of the line," to Marco. They were in
line in a moment--straight, shoulders back, chins up. And Marco stood at
the head.

"We're going to take an oath," said The Rat. "It's an oath of
allegiance. Allegiance means faithfulness to a thing--a king or a
country. Ours means allegiance to the King of Samavia. We don't know
where he is, but we swear to be faithful to him, to fight for him, to
plot for him, to _die_ for him, and to bring him back to his throne!" The
way in which he flung up his head when he said the word "die" was very
fine indeed. "We are the Secret Party. We will work in the dark and find
out things--and run risks--and collect an army no one will know anything
about until it is strong enough to suddenly rise at a secret signal, and
overwhelm the Maranovitch and Iarovitch, and seize their forts and
citadels. No one even knows we are alive. We are a silent, secret thing
that never speaks aloud!"

Silent and secret as they were, however, they spoke aloud at this
juncture. It was such a grand idea for a game, and so full of possible
larks, that the Squad broke into a howl of an exultant cheer.

"Hooray!" they yelled. "Hooray for the oath of 'legiance! 'Ray! 'ray!
'ray!"

"Shut up, you swine!" shouted The Rat. "Is that the way you keep
yourself secret? You'll call the police in, you fools! Look at _him_!"
pointing to Marco. "He's got some sense."

Marco, in fact, had not made any sound.

"Come here, you Cad and Ben, and put me back on my wheels," raged the
Squad's commander. "I'll not make up the game at all. It's no use with a
lot of fat-head, raw recruits like you."

The line broke and surrounded him in a moment, pleading and urging.

"Aw, Rat! We forgot. It's the primest game you've ever thought out! Rat!
Rat! Don't get a grouch on! We'll keep still, Rat! Primest lark of all
'll be the sneakin' about an' keepin' quiet. Aw, Rat! Keep it up!"

"Keep it up yourselves!" snarled The Rat.

"Not another cove of us could do it but you! Not one! There's no other
cove could think it out. You're the only chap that can think out things.
You thought out the Squad! That's why you're captain!"

This was true. He was the one who could invent entertainment for them,
these street lads who had nothing. Out of that nothing he could create
what excited them, and give them something to fill empty, useless, often
cold or wet or foggy, hours. That made him their captain and their
pride.

The Rat began to yield, though grudgingly. He pointed again to Marco,
who had not moved, but stood still at attention.

"Look at _him_!" he said. "He knows enough to stand where he's put until
he's ordered to break line. He's a soldier, he is--not a raw recruit
that don't know the goose-step. He's been in barracks before."

But after this outburst, he deigned to go on.

"Here's the oath," he said. "We swear to stand any torture and submit in
silence to any death rather than betray our secret and our king. We will
obey in silence and in secret. We will swim through seas of blood and
fight our way through lakes of fire, if we are ordered. Nothing shall
bar our way. All we do and say and think is for our country and our
king. If any of you have anything to say, speak out before you take the
oath."

He saw Marco move a little, and he made a sign to him.

"You," he said. "Have you something to say?"

Marco turned to him and saluted.

"Here stand ten men for Samavia. God be thanked!" he said. He dared say
that much, and he felt as if his father himself would have told him that
they were the right words.

The Rat thought they were. Somehow he felt that they struck home. He
reddened with a sudden emotion.

"Squad!" he said. "I'll let you give three cheers on that. It's for the
last time. We'll begin to be quiet afterward."

And to the Squad's exultant relief he led the cheer, and they were
allowed to make as much uproar as they liked. They liked to make a great
deal, and when it was at an end, it had done them good and made them
ready for business.

The Rat opened the drama at once. Never surely had there ever before
been heard a conspirator's whisper as hollow as his.

"Secret Ones," he said, "it is midnight. We meet in the depths of
darkness. We dare not meet by day. When we meet in the daytime, we
pretend not to know each other. We are meeting now in a Samavian city
where there is a fortress. We shall have to take it when the secret sign
is given and we make our rising. We are getting everything ready, so
that, when we find the king, the secret sign can be given."

"What is the name of the city we are in?" whispered Cad.

"It is called Larrina. It is an important seaport. We must take it as
soon as we rise. The next time we meet I will bring a dark lantern and
draw a map and show it to you."

It would have been a great advantage to the game if Marco could have
drawn for them the map he could have made, a map which would have shown
every fortress--every stronghold and every weak place. Being a boy, he
knew what excitement would have thrilled each breast, how they would
lean forward and pile question on question, pointing to this place and
to that. He had learned to draw the map before he was ten, and he had
drawn it again and again because there had been times when his father
had told him that changes had taken place. Oh, yes! he could have drawn
a map which would have moved them to a frenzy of joy. But he sat silent
and listened, only speaking when he asked a question, as if he knew
nothing more about Samavia than The Rat did. What a Secret Party they
were! They drew themselves together in the closest of circles; they
spoke in unearthly whispers.

"A sentinel ought to be posted at the end of the passage," Marco
whispered.

"Ben, take your gun!" commanded The Rat.

Ben rose stealthily, and, shouldering his weapon, crept on tiptoe to the
opening. There he stood on guard.

"My father says there's been a Secret Party in Samavia for a hundred
years," The Rat whispered.

"Who told him?" asked Marco.

"A man who has been in Samavia," answered The Rat. "He said it was the
most wonderful Secret Party in the world, because it has worked and
waited so long, and never given up, though it has had no reason for
hoping. It began among some shepherds and charcoal-burners who bound
themselves by an oath to find the Lost Prince and bring him back to
the throne. There were too few of them to do anything against the
Maranovitch, and when the first lot found they were growing old,
they made their sons take the same oath. It has been passed on from
generation to generation, and in each generation the band has grown. No
one really knows how large it is now, but they say that there are people
in nearly all the countries in Europe who belong to it in dead secret,
and are sworn to help it when they are called. They are only waiting.
Some are rich people who will give money, and some are poor ones who
will slip across the frontier to fight or to help to smuggle in arms.
They even say that for all these years there have been arms made in
caves in the mountains, and hidden there year after year. There are men
who are called Forgers of the Sword, and they, and their fathers, and
grandfathers, and great-grandfathers have always made swords and stored
them in caverns no one knows of, hidden caverns underground."

Marco spoke aloud the thought which had come into his mind as he
listened, a thought which brought fear to him. "If the people in the
streets talk about it, they won't be hidden long."

"It isn't common talk, my father says. Only very few have guessed, and
most of them think it is part of the Lost Prince legend," said The Rat.
"The Maranovitch and Iarovitch laugh at it. They have always been great
fools. They're too full of their own swagger to think anything can
interfere with them."

"Do you talk much to your father?" Marco asked him.

The Rat showed his sharp white teeth in a grin.

"I know what you're thinking of," he said. "You're remembering that I
said he was always drunk. So he is, except when he's only _half_ drunk.
And when he's _half_ drunk, he's the most splendid talker in London. He
remembers everything he has ever learned or read or heard since he was
born. I get him going and listen. He wants to talk and I want to hear.
I found out almost everything I know in that way. He didn't know he was
teaching me, but he was. He goes back into being a gentleman when he's
half drunk."

"If--if you care about the Samavians, you'd better ask him not to tell
people about the Secret Party and the Forgers of the Sword," suggested
Marco.

The Rat started a little.

"That's true!" he said. "You're sharper than I am. It oughtn't to be
blabbed about, or the Maranovitch might hear enough to make them stop
and listen. I'll get him to promise. There's one queer thing about him,"
he added very slowly, as if he were thinking it over, "I suppose it's
part of the gentleman that's left in him. If he makes a promise, he
never breaks it, drunk or sober."

"Ask him to make one," said Marco. The next moment he changed the
subject because it seemed the best thing to do. "Go on and tell us what
our own Secret Party is to do. We're forgetting," he whispered.

The Rat took up his game with renewed keenness. It was a game which
attracted him immensely because it called upon his imagination and held
his audience spellbound, besides plunging him into war and strategy.

"We're preparing for the rising," he said. "It must come soon. We've
waited so long. The caverns are stacked with arms. The Maranovitch and
the Iarovitch are fighting and using all their soldiers, and now is our
time." He stopped and thought, his elbows on his knees. He began to bite
his nails again.

"The Secret Signal must be given," he said. Then he stopped again, and
the Squad held its breath and pressed nearer with a softly shuffling
sound. "Two of the Secret Ones must be chosen by lot and sent forth," he
went on; and the Squad almost brought ruin and disgrace upon itself by
wanting to cheer again, and only just stopping itself in time. "Must be
chosen _by lot_," The Rat repeated, looking from one face to another.
"Each one will take his life in his hand when he goes forth. He may have
to die a thousand deaths, but he must go. He must steal in silence and
disguise from one country to another. Wherever there is one of the
Secret Party, whether he is in a hovel or on a throne, the messengers
must go to him in darkness and stealth and give him the sign. It will
mean, 'The hour has come. God save Samavia!'"

"God save Samavia!" whispered the Squad, excitedly. And, because they
saw Marco raise his hand to his forehead, every one of them saluted.

They all began to whisper at once.

"Let's draw lots now. Let's draw lots, Rat. Don't let's 'ave no
waitin'."

The Rat began to look about him with dread anxiety. He seemed to be
examining the sky.

"The darkness is not as thick as it was," he whispered. "Midnight has
passed. The dawn of day will be upon us. If any one has a piece of paper
or a string, we will draw the lots before we part."

Cad had a piece of string, and Marco had a knife which could be used to
cut it into lengths. This The Rat did himself. Then, after shutting his
eyes and mixing them, he held them in his hand ready for the drawing.

"The Secret One who draws the longest lot is chosen. The Secret One who
draws the shortest is chosen," he said solemnly.

The drawing was as solemn as his tone. Each boy wanted to draw either
the shortest lot or the longest one. The heart of each thumped somewhat
as he drew his piece of string.

When the drawing was at an end, each showed his lot. The Rat had drawn
the shortest piece of string, and Marco had drawn the longest one.

"Comrade!" said The Rat, taking his hand. "We will face death and danger
together!"

"God save Samavia!" answered Marco.

And the game was at an end for the day. The primest thing, the Squad
said, The Rat had ever made up for them. "'E wos a wonder, he wos!"




VII

"THE LAMP IS LIGHTED!"


On his way home, Marco thought of nothing but the story he must tell his
father, the story the stranger who had been to Samavia had told The
Rat's father. He felt that it must be a true story and not merely an
invention. The Forgers of the Sword must be real men, and the hidden
subterranean caverns stacked through the centuries with arms must be
real, too. And if they were real, surely his father was one of those who
knew the secret. His thoughts ran very fast. The Rat's boyish invention
of the rising was only part of a game, but how natural it would be that
sometime--perhaps before long--there would be a real rising! Surely
there would be one if the Secret Party had grown so strong, and if many
weapons and secret friends in other countries were ready and waiting.
During all these years, hidden work and preparation would have been
going on continually, even though it was preparation for an unknown day.
A party which had lasted so long--which passed its oath on from
generation to generation--must be of a deadly determination.

What might it not have made ready in its caverns and secret
meeting-places! He longed to reach home and tell his father, at once,
all he had heard. He recalled to mind, word for word, all that The Rat
had been told, and even all he had added in his game, because--well,
because that seemed so real too, so real that it actually might be
useful.

But when he reached No. 7 Philibert Place, he found Loristan and Lazarus
very much absorbed in work. The door of the back sitting-room was locked
when he first knocked on it, and locked again as soon as he had entered.
There were many papers on the table, and they were evidently studying
them. Several of them were maps. Some were road maps, some maps of towns
and cities, and some of fortifications; but they were all maps of places
in Samavia. They were usually kept in a strong box, and when they were
taken out to be studied, the door was always kept locked.

Before they had their evening meal, these were all returned to the
strong box, which was pushed into a corner and had newspapers piled upon
it.

"When he arrives," Marco heard Loristan say to Lazarus, "we can show him
clearly what has been planned. He can see for himself."

His father spoke scarcely at all during the meal, and, though it was
not the habit of Lazarus to speak at such times unless spoken to, this
evening it seemed to Marco that he _looked_ more silent than he had
ever seen him look before. They were plainly both thinking anxiously of
deeply serious things. The story of the stranger who had been to Samavia
must not be told yet. But it was one which would keep.

Loristan did not say anything until Lazarus had removed the things from
the table and made the room as neat as possible. While that was being
done, he sat with his forehead resting on his hand, as if absorbed in
thought. Then he made a gesture to Marco.

"Come here, Comrade," he said.

Marco went to him.

"To-night some one may come to talk with me about grave things," he
said. "I think he will come, but I cannot be quite sure. It is important
that he should know that, when he comes, he will find me quite alone. He
will come at a late hour, and Lazarus will open the door quietly that no
one may hear. It is important that no one should see him. Some one must
go and walk on the opposite side of the street until he appears. Then
the one who goes to give warning must cross the pavement before him and
say in a low voice, 'The Lamp is lighted!' and at once turn quietly
away."

What boy's heart would not have leaped with joy at the mystery of it!
Even a common and dull boy who knew nothing of Samavia would have felt
jerky. Marco's voice almost shook with the thrill of his feeling.

"How shall I know him?" he said at once. Without asking at all, he knew
he was the "some one" who was to go.

"You have seen him before," Loristan answered. "He is the man who drove
in the carriage with the King."

"I shall know him," said Marco. "When shall I go?"

"Not until it is half-past one o'clock. Go to bed and sleep until
Lazarus calls you." Then he added, "Look well at his face before you
speak. He will probably not be dressed as well as he was when you saw
him first."

Marco went up-stairs to his room and went to bed as he was told, but
it was hard to go to sleep. The rattle and roaring of the road did not
usually keep him awake, because he had lived in the poorer quarter of
too many big capital cities not to be accustomed to noise. But to-night
it seemed to him that, as he lay and looked out at the lamplight, he
heard every bus and cab which went past. He could not help thinking of
the people who were in them, and on top of them, and of the people who
were hurrying along on the pavement outside the broken iron railings. He
was wondering what they would think if they knew that things connected
with the battles they read of in the daily papers were going on in one
of the shabby houses they scarcely gave a glance to as they went by
them. It must be something connected with the war, if a man who was a
great diplomat and the companion of kings came in secret to talk alone
with a patriot who was a Samavian. Whatever his father was doing was for
the good of Samavia, and perhaps the Secret Party knew he was doing it.
His heart almost beat aloud under his shirt as he lay on the lumpy
mattress thinking it over. He must indeed look well at the stranger
before he even moved toward him. He must be sure he was the right man.
The game he had amused himself with so long--the game of trying to
remember pictures and people and places clearly and in detail--had been
a wonderful training. If he could draw, he knew he could have made a
sketch of the keen-eyed, clever, aquiline face with the well-cut and
delicately close mouth, which looked as if it had been shut upon secrets
always--always. If he could draw, he found himself saying again. He
_could_ draw, though perhaps only roughly. He had often amused himself by
making sketches of things he wanted to ask questions about. He had even
drawn people's faces in his untrained way, and his father had said that
he had a crude gift for catching a likeness. Perhaps he could make a
sketch of this face which would show his father that he knew and would
recognize it.

He jumped out of bed and went to a table near the window. There was
paper and a pencil lying on it. A street lamp exactly opposite threw
into the room quite light enough for him to see by. He half knelt by the
table and began to draw. He worked for about twenty minutes steadily,
and he tore up two or three unsatisfactory sketches. The poor drawing
would not matter if he could catch that subtle look which was not
slyness but something more dignified and important. It was not
difficult to get the marked, aristocratic outline of the features.
A common-looking man with less pronounced profile would have been less
easy to draw in one sense. He gave his mind wholly to the recalling of
every detail which had photographed itself on his memory through its
trained habit. Gradually he saw that the likeness was becoming clearer.
It was not long before it was clear enough to be a striking one. Any one
who knew the man would recognize it. He got up, drawing a long and
joyful breath.

He did not put on his shoes, but crossed his room as noiselessly as
possible, and as noiselessly opened the door. He made no ghost of a
sound when he went down the stairs. The woman who kept the lodging-house
had gone to bed, and so had the other lodgers and the maid of all work.
All the lights were out except the one he saw a glimmer of under the
door of his father's room. When he had been a mere baby, he had been
taught to make a special sign on the door when he wished to speak to
Loristan. He stood still outside the back sitting-room and made it now.
It was a low scratching sound--two scratches and a soft tap. Lazarus
opened the door and looked troubled.

"It is not yet time, sir," he said very low.

"I know," Marco answered. "But I must show something to my father."
Lazarus let him in, and Loristan turned round from his writing-table
questioningly.

Marco went forward and laid the sketch down before him.

"Look at it," he said. "I remember him well enough to draw that. I
thought of it all at once--that I could make a sort of picture. Do you
think it is like him?" Loristan examined it closely.

"It is very like him," he answered. "You have made me feel entirely
safe. Thanks, Comrade. It was a good idea."

There was relief in the grip he gave the boy's hand, and Marco turned
away with an exultant feeling. Just as he reached the door, Loristan
said to him:

"Make the most of this gift. It is a gift. And it is true your mind has
had good training. The more you draw, the better. Draw everything you
can."

Neither the street lamps, nor the noises, nor his thoughts kept Marco
awake when he went back to bed. But before he settled himself upon his
pillow he gave himself certain orders. He had both read, and heard
Loristan say, that the mind can control the body when people once find
out that it can do so. He had tried experiments himself, and had found
out some curious things. One was that if he told himself to remember a
certain thing at a certain time, he usually found that he _did_ remember
it. Something in his brain seemed to remind him. He had often tried the
experiment of telling himself to awaken at a particular hour, and had
awakened almost exactly at the moment by the clock.

"I will sleep until one o'clock," he said as he shut his eyes. "Then I
will awaken and feel quite fresh. I shall not be sleepy at all."

He slept as soundly as a boy can sleep. And at one o'clock exactly he
awakened, and found the street lamp still throwing its light through the
window. He knew it was one o'clock, because there was a cheap little
round clock on the table, and he could see the time. He was quite fresh
and not at all sleepy. His experiment had succeeded again.

He got up and dressed. Then he went down-stairs as noiselessly as
before. He carried his shoes in his hands, as he meant to put them on
only when he reached the street. He made his sign at his father's door,
and it was Loristan who opened it.

"Shall I go now?" Marco asked.

"Yes. Walk slowly to the other side of the street. Look in every
direction. We do not know where he will come from. After you have given
him the sign, then come in and go to bed again."

Marco saluted as a soldier would have done on receiving an order.

Then, without a second's delay, he passed noiselessly out of the house.

Loristan turned back into the room and stood silently in the center of
it. The long lines of his handsome body looked particularly erect and
stately, and his eyes were glowing as if something deeply moved him.

"There grows a man for Samavia," he said to Lazarus, who watched him.
"God be thanked!"

Lazarus's voice was low and hoarse, and he saluted quite reverently.

"Your--sir!" he said. "God save the Prince!"

"Yes," Loristan answered, after a moment's hesitation,--"when he is
found." And he went back to his table smiling his beautiful smile.

       *       *       *       *       *

The wonder of silence in the deserted streets of a great city, after
midnight has hushed all the roar and tumult to rest, is an almost
unbelievable thing. The stillness in the depths of a forest or on a
mountain top is not so strange. A few hours ago, the tumult was rushing
past; in a few hours more, it will be rushing past again.

But now the street is a naked thing; a distant policeman's tramp on
the bare pavement has a hollow and almost fearsome sound. It seemed
especially so to Marco as he crossed the road. Had it ever been so empty
and deadly silent before? Was it so every night? Perhaps it was, when he
was fast asleep on his lumpy mattress with the light from a street lamp
streaming into the room. He listened for the step of the policeman on
night-watch, because he did not wish to be seen. There was a jutting
wall where he could stand in the shadow while the man passed. A
policeman would stop to look questioningly at a boy who walked up and
down the pavement at half-past one in the morning. Marco could wait
until he had gone by, and then come out into the light and look up and
down the road and the cross streets.

He heard his approaching footsteps in a few minutes, and was safely in
the shadows before he could be seen. When the policeman passed, he came
out and walked slowly down the road, looking on each side, and now and
then looking back. At first no one was in sight. Then a late hansom-cab
came tinkling along. But the people in it were returning from some
festivity, and were laughing and talking, and noticed nothing but their
own joking. Then there was silence again, and for a long time, as it
seemed to Marco, no one was to be seen. It was not really so long as it
appeared, because he was anxious. Then a very early vegetable-wagon on
the way from the country to Covent Garden Market came slowly lumbering
by with its driver almost asleep on his piles of potatoes and cabbages.
After it had passed, there was stillness and emptiness once more, until
the policeman showed himself again on his beat, and Marco slipped into
the shadow of the wall as he had done before.

When he came out into the light, he had begun to hope that the time
would not seem long to his father. It had not really been long, he told
himself, it had only seemed so. But his father's anxiousness would be
greater than his own could be. Loristan knew all that depended on the
coming of this great man who sat side by side with a king in his
carriage and talked to him as if he knew him well.

"It might be something which all Samavia is waiting to know--at least
all the Secret Party," Marco thought. "The Secret Party is Samavia,"--he
started at the sound of footsteps. "Some one is coming!" he said. "It is
a man."

It was a man who was walking up the road on the same side of the
pavement as his own. Marco began to walk toward him quietly but rather
rapidly. He thought it might be best to appear as if he were some boy
sent on a midnight errand--perhaps to call a doctor. Then, if it was a
stranger he passed, no suspicion would be aroused. Was this man as tall
as the one who had driven with the King? Yes, he was about the same
height, but he was too far away to be recognizable otherwise. He drew
nearer, and Marco noticed that he also seemed slightly to hasten his
footsteps. Marco went on. A little nearer, and he would be able to make
sure. Yes, now he was near enough. Yes, this man was the same height and
not unlike in figure, but he was much younger. He was not the one who
had been in the carriage with His Majesty. He was not more than thirty
years old. He began swinging his cane and whistling a music-hall song
softly as Marco passed him without changing his pace.

It was after the policeman had walked round his beat and disappeared for
the third time, that Marco heard footsteps echoing at some distance down
a cross street. After listening to make sure that they were approaching
instead of receding in another direction, he placed himself at a point
where he could watch the length of the thoroughfare. Yes, some one was
coming. It was a man's figure again. He was able to place himself rather
in the shadow so that the person approaching would not see that he was
being watched. The solitary walker reached a recognizable distance in
about two minutes' time. He was dressed in an ordinary shop-made suit of
clothes which was rather shabby and quite unnoticeable in its
appearance. His common hat was worn so that it rather shaded his face.
But even before he had crossed to Marco's side of the road, the boy had
clearly recognized him. It was the man who had driven with the King!

Chance was with Marco. The man crossed at exactly the place which made
it easy for the boy to step lightly from behind him, walk a few paces
by his side, and then pass directly before him across the pavement,
glancing quietly up into his face as he said in a low voice but
distinctly, the words "The Lamp is lighted," and without pausing a
second walk on his way down the road. He did not slacken his pace or
look back until he was some distance away. Then he glanced over his
shoulder, and saw that the figure had crossed the street and was inside
the railings. It was all right. His father would not be disappointed.
The great man had come.

He walked for about ten minutes, and then went home and to bed. But he
was obliged to tell himself to go to sleep several times before his eyes
closed for the rest of the night.




VIII

AN EXCITING GAME


Loristan referred only once during the next day to what had happened.

"You did your errand well. You were not hurried or nervous," he said.
"The Prince was pleased with your calmness."

No more was said. Marco knew that the quiet mention of the stranger's
title had been made merely as a designation. If it was necessary to
mention him again in the future, he could be referred to as "the
Prince." In various Continental countries there were many princes who
were not royal or even serene highnesses--who were merely princes as
other nobles were dukes or barons. Nothing special was revealed when
a man was spoken of as a prince. But though nothing was said on the
subject of the incident, it was plain that much work was being done by
Loristan and Lazarus. The sitting-room door was locked, and the maps
and documents, usually kept in the iron box, were being used.

Marco went to the Tower of London and spent part of the day in living
again the stories which, centuries past, had been inclosed within its
massive and ancient stone walls. In this way, he had throughout boyhood
become intimate with people who to most boys seemed only the unreal
creatures who professed to be alive in school-books of history. He had
learned to know them as men and women because he had stood in the
palaces they had been born in and had played in as children, had died in
at the end. He had seen the dungeons they had been imprisoned in, the
blocks on which they had laid their heads, the battlements on which they
had fought to defend their fortressed towers, the thrones they had sat
upon, the crowns they had worn, and the jeweled scepters they had held.
He had stood before their portraits and had gazed curiously at their
"Robes of Investiture," sewn with tens of thousands of seed-pearls. To
look at a man's face and feel his pictured eyes follow you as you move
away from him, to see the strangely splendid garments he once warmed
with his living flesh, is to realize that history is not a mere lesson
in a school-book, but is a relation of the life stories of men and women
who saw strange and splendid days, and sometimes suffered strange and
terrible things.

There were only a few people who were being led about sight-seeing.
The man in the ancient Beef-eaters' costume, who was their guide, was
good-natured, and evidently fond of talking. He was a big and stout man,
with a large face and a small, merry eye. He was rather like pictures of
Henry the Eighth, himself, which Marco remembered having seen. He was
specially talkative when he stood by the tablet that marks the spot
where stood the block on which Lady Jane Grey had laid her young head.
One of the sightseers who knew little of English history had asked some
questions about the reasons for her execution.

"If her father-in-law, the Duke of Northumberland, had left that young
couple alone--her and her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley--they'd have
kept their heads on. He was bound to make her a queen, and Mary Tudor
was bound to be queen herself. The duke wasn't clever enough to manage a
conspiracy and work up the people. These Samavians we're reading about
in the papers would have done it better. And they're half-savages."

"They had a big battle outside Melzarr yesterday," the sight-seer
standing next to Marco said to the young woman who was his companion.
"Thousands of 'em killed. I saw it in big letters on the boards as I
rode on the top of the bus. They're just slaughtering each other, that's
what they're doing."

The talkative Beef-eater heard him.

"They can't even bury their dead fast enough," he said. "There'll be
some sort of plague breaking out and sweeping into the countries nearest
them. It'll end by spreading all over Europe as it did in the Middle
Ages. What the civilized countries have got to do is to make them choose
a decent king and begin to behave themselves."

"I'll tell my father that too," Marco thought. "It shows that everybody
is thinking and talking of Samavia, and that even the common people know
it must have a real king. This must be _the time_!" And what he meant was
that this must be the time for which the Secret Party had waited and
worked so long--the time for the Rising. But his father was out when he
went back to Philibert Place, and Lazarus looked more silent than ever
as he stood behind his chair and waited on him through his insignificant
meal. However plain and scant the food they had to eat, it was always
served with as much care and ceremony as if it had been a banquet.

"A man can eat dry bread and drink cold water as if he were a
gentleman," his father had said long ago. "And it is easy to form
careless habits. Even if one is hungry enough to feel ravenous, a man
who has been well bred will not allow himself to look so. A dog may, a
man may not. Just as a dog may howl when he is angry or in pain and a
man may not."

It was only one of the small parts of the training which had quietly
made the boy, even as a child, self-controlled and courteous, had taught
him ease and grace of boyish carriage, the habit of holding his body
well and his head erect, and had given him a certain look of young
distinction which, though it assumed nothing, set him apart from boys of
carelessly awkward bearing.

"Is there a newspaper here which tells of the battle, Lazarus?" he
asked, after he had left the table.

"Yes, sir," was the answer. "Your father said that you might read it. It
is a black tale!" he added, as he handed him the paper.

It was a black tale. As he read, Marco felt as if he could scarcely bear
it. It was as if Samavia swam in blood, and as if the other countries
must stand aghast before such furious cruelties.

"Lazarus," he said, springing to his feet at last, his eyes burning,
"something must stop it! There must be something strong enough. The time
has come. The time has come." And he walked up and down the room because
he was too excited to stand still.

How Lazarus watched him! What a strong and glowing feeling there was in
his own restrained face!

"Yes, sir. Surely the time has come," he answered. But that was all he
said, and he turned and went out of the shabby back sitting-room at
once. It was as if he felt it were wiser to go before he lost power over
himself and said more.

Marco made his way to the meeting-place of the Squad, to which The Rat
had in the past given the name of the Barracks. The Rat was sitting
among his followers, and he had been reading the morning paper to them,
the one which contained the account of the battle of Melzarr. The Squad
had become the Secret Party, and each member of it was thrilled with the
spirit of dark plot and adventure. They all whispered when they spoke.

"This is not the Barracks now," The Rat said. "It is a subterranean
cavern. Under the floor of it thousands of swords and guns are buried,
and it is piled to the roof with them. There is only a small place left
for us to sit and plot in. We crawl in through a hole, and the hole is
hidden by bushes."

To the rest of the boys this was only an exciting game, but Marco
knew that to The Rat it was more. Though The Rat knew none of the
things he knew, he saw that the whole story seemed to him a real thing.
The struggles of Samavia, as he had heard and read of them in the
newspapers, had taken possession of him. His passion for soldiering and
warfare and his curiously mature brain had led him into following every
detail he could lay hold of. He had listened to all he had heard with
remarkable results. He remembered things older people forgot after they
had mentioned them. He forgot nothing. He had drawn on the flagstones a
map of Samavia which Marco saw was actually correct, and he had made a
rough sketch of Melzarr and the battle which had had such disastrous
results.

"The Maranovitch had possession of Melzarr," he explained with feverish
eagerness. "And the Iarovitch attacked them from here," pointing with
his finger. "That was a mistake. I should have attacked them from a
place where they would not have been expecting it. They expected attack
on their fortifications, and they were ready to defend them. I believe
the enemy could have stolen up in the night and rushed in here,"
pointing again. Marco thought he was right. The Rat had argued it all
out, and had studied Melzarr as he might have studied a puzzle or an
arithmetical problem. He was very clever, and as sharp as his queer face
looked.

"I believe you would make a good general if you were grown up," said
Marco. "I'd like to show your maps to my father and ask him if he
doesn't think your stratagem would have been a good one."

"Does he know much about Samavia?" asked The Rat.

"He has to read the newspapers because he writes things," Marco
answered. "And every one is thinking about the war. No one can help it."

The Rat drew a dingy, folded paper out of his pocket and looked it over
with an air of reflection.

"I'll make a clean one," he said. "I'd like a grown-up man to look at it
and see if it's all right. My father was more than half-drunk when I
was drawing this, so I couldn't ask him questions. He'll kill himself
before long. He had a sort of fit last night."

"Tell us, Rat, wot you an' Marco'll 'ave ter do. Let's 'ear wot you've
made up," suggested Cad. He drew closer, and so did the rest of the
circle, hugging their knees with their arms.

"This is what we shall have to do," began The Rat, in the hollow whisper
of a Secret Party. "_The hour has come_. To all the Secret Ones in
Samavia, and to the friends of the Secret Party in every country, the
sign must be carried. It must be carried by some one who could not be
suspected. Who would suspect two boys--and one of them a cripple? The
best thing of all for us is that I am a cripple. Who would suspect a
cripple? When my father is drunk and beats me, he does it because I
won't go out and beg in the streets and bring him the money I get. He
says that people will nearly always give money to a cripple. I won't be
a beggar for him--the swine--but I will be one for Samavia and the Lost
Prince. Marco shall pretend to be my brother and take care of me. I
say," speaking to Marco with a sudden change of voice, "can you sing
anything? It doesn't matter how you do it."

"Yes, I can sing," Marco replied.

"Then Marco will pretend he is singing to make people give him money.
I'll get a pair of crutches somewhere, and part of the time I will go on
crutches and part of the time on my platform. We'll live like beggars
and go wherever we want to. I can whiz past a man and give the sign and
no one will know. Some times Marco can give it when people are dropping
money into his cap. We can pass from one country to another and rouse
everybody who is of the Secret Party. We'll work our way into Samavia,
and we'll be only two boys--and one a cripple--and nobody will think we
could be doing anything. We'll beg in great cities and on the highroad."

"Where'll you get the money to travel?" said Cad.

"The Secret Party will give it to us, and we sha'n't need much. We could
beg enough, for that matter. We'll sleep under the stars, or under
bridges, or archways, or in dark corners of streets. I've done it myself
many a time when my father drove me out of doors. If it's cold weather,
it's bad enough but if it's fine weather, it's better than sleeping in
the kind of place I'm used to. Comrade," to Marco, "are you ready?"

He said "Comrade" as Loristan did, and somehow Marco did not resent it,
because he was ready to labor for Samavia. It was only a game, but it
made them comrades--and was it really only a game, after all? His
excited voice and his strange, lined face made it singularly unlike one.

"Yes, Comrade, I am ready," Marco answered him.

"We shall be in Samavia when the fighting for the Lost Prince begins."
The Rat carried on his story with fire. "We may see a battle. We might
do something to help. We might carry messages under a rain of bullets--a
rain of bullets!" The thought so elated him that he forgot his whisper
and his voice rang out fiercely. "Boys have been in battles before. We
might find the Lost King--no, the Found King--and ask him to let us be
his servants. He could send us where he couldn't send bigger people. I
could say to him, 'Your Majesty, I am called "The Rat," because I can
creep through holes and into corners and dart about. Order me into any
danger and I will obey you. Let me die like a soldier if I can't live
like one.'"

Suddenly he threw his ragged coat sleeve up across his eyes. He had
wrought himself up tremendously with the picture of the rain of bullets.
And he felt as if he saw the King who had at last been found. The next
moment he uncovered his face.

"That's what we've got to do," he said. "Just that, if you want to know.
And a lot more. There's no end to it!"

Marco's thoughts were in a whirl. It ought not to be nothing but
a game. He grew quite hot all over. If the Secret Party wanted to
send messengers no one would think of suspecting, who could be more
harmless-looking than two vagabond boys wandering about picking up their
living as best they could, not seeming to belong to any one? And one a
cripple. It was true--yes, it was true, as The Rat said, that his being
a cripple made him look safer than any one else. Marco actually put his
forehead in his hands and pressed his temples.

"What's the matter?" exclaimed The Rat. "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking what a general you would make. I'm thinking that it might
all be real--every word of it. It mightn't be a game at all," said
Marco.

"No, it mightn't," The Rat answered. "If I knew where the Secret Party
was, I'd like to go and tell them about it. What's that!" he said,
suddenly turning his head toward the street. "What are they calling
out?"

Some newsboy with a particularly shrill voice was shouting out something
at the topmost of his lungs.

Tense and excited, no member of the circle stirred or spoke for a few
seconds. The Rat listened, Marco listened, the whole Squad listened,
pricking up their ears.

"Startling news from Samavia," the newsboy was shrilling out. "Amazing
story! Descendant of the Lost Prince found! Descendant of the Lost
Prince found!"

"Any chap got a penny?" snapped The Rat, beginning to shuffle toward the
arched passage.

"I have!" answered Marco, following him.

"Come on!" The Rat yelled. "Let's go and get a paper!" And he whizzed
down the passage with his swiftest rat-like dart, while the Squad
followed him, shouting and tumbling over each other.




IX

"IT IS NOT A GAME"


Loristan walked slowly up and down the back sitting-room and listened to
Marco, who sat by the small fire and talked.

"Go on," he said, whenever the boy stopped. "I want to hear it all. He's
a strange lad, and it's a splendid game."

Marco was telling him the story of his second and third visits to the
inclosure behind the deserted church-yard. He had begun at the
beginning, and his father had listened with a deep interest.

A year later, Marco recalled this evening as a thrilling memory, and as
one which would never pass away from him throughout his life. He would
always be able to call it all back. The small and dingy back room, the
dimness of the one poor gas-burner, which was all they could afford to
light, the iron box pushed into the corner with its maps and plans
locked safely in it, the erect bearing and actual beauty of the tall
form, which the shabbiness of worn and mended clothes could not hide or
dim. Not even rags and tatters could have made Loristan seem
insignificant or undistinguished. He was always the same. His eyes
seemed darker and more wonderful than ever in their remote
thoughtfulness and interest as he spoke.

"Go on," he said. "It is a splendid game. And it is curious. He has
thought it out well. The lad is a born soldier."

"It is not a game to him," Marco said. "And it is not a game to me. The
Squad is only playing, but with him it's quite different. He knows he'll
never really get what he wants, but he feels as if this was something
near it. He said I might show you the map he made. Father, look at it."

He gave Loristan the clean copy of The Rat's map of Samavia. The city of
Melzarr was marked with certain signs. They were to show at what points
The Rat--if he had been a Samavian general--would have attacked the
capital. As Marco pointed them out, he explained The Rat's reasons for
his planning.

Loristan held the paper for some minutes. He fixed his eyes on it
curiously, and his black brows drew themselves together.

"This is very wonderful!" he said at last. "He is quite right. They
might have got in there, and for the very reasons he hit on. How did he
learn all this?"

"He thinks of nothing else now," answered Marco. "He has always thought
of wars and made plans for battles. He's not like the rest of the Squad.
His father is nearly always drunk, but he is very well educated, and,
when he is only half drunk, he likes to talk. The Rat asks him questions
then, and leads him on until he finds out a great deal. Then he begs old
newspapers, and he hides himself in corners and listens to what people
are saying. He says he lies awake at night thinking it out, and he
thinks about it all the day. That was why he got up the Squad."

Loristan had continued examining the paper.

"Tell him," he said, when he refolded and handed it back, "that I
studied his map, and he may be proud of it. You may also tell him--" and
he smiled quietly as he spoke--"that in my opinion he is right. The
Iarovitch would have held Melzarr to-day if he had led them."

Marco was full of exultation.

"I thought you would say he was right. I felt sure you would. That is
what makes me want to tell you the rest," he hurried on.

"If you think he is right about the rest too--" He stopped awkwardly
because of a sudden wild thought which rushed upon him. "I don't know
what you will think," he stammered. "Perhaps it will seem to you as if
the game--as if that part of it could--could only be a game."

He was so fervent in spite of his hesitation that Loristan began to
watch him with sympathetic respect, as he always did when the boy was
trying to express something he was not sure of. One of the great bonds
between them was that Loristan was always interested in his boyish
mental processes--in the way in which his thoughts led him to any
conclusion.

"Go on," he said again. "I am like The Rat and I am like you. It has not
seemed quite like a game to me, so far."

He sat down at the writing-table and Marco, in his eagerness, drew
nearer and leaned against it, resting on his arms and lowering his
voice, though it was always their habit to speak at such a pitch that no
one outside the room they were in could distinguish what they said.

"It is The Rat's plan for giving the signal for a Rising," he said.

Loristan made a slight movement.

"Does he think there will be a Rising?" he asked.

"He says that must be what the Secret Party has been preparing for all
these years. And it must come soon. The other nations see that the
fighting must be put an end to even if they have to stop it themselves.
And if the real King is found--but when The Rat bought the newspaper
there was nothing in it about where he was. It was only a sort of rumor.
Nobody seemed to know anything." He stopped a few seconds, but he did
not utter the words which were in his mind. He did not say: "But _you_
know."

"And The Rat has a plan for giving the signal?" Loristan said.

Marco forgot his first feeling of hesitation. He began to see the plan
again as he had seen it when The Rat talked. He began to speak as The
Rat had spoken, forgetting that it was a game. He made even a clearer
picture than The Rat had made of the two vagabond boys--one of them
a cripple--making their way from one place to another, quite free
to carry messages or warnings where they chose, because they were so
insignificant and poor-looking that no one could think of them as
anything but waifs and strays, belonging to nobody and blown about by
the wind of poverty and chance. He felt as if he wanted to convince his
father that the plan was a possible one. He did not quite know why he
felt so anxious to win his approval of the scheme--as if it were
real--as if it could actually be done. But this feeling was what
inspired him to enter into new details and suggest possibilities.

"A boy who was a cripple and one who was only a street singer and a sort
of beggar could get almost anywhere," he said. "Soldiers would listen to
a singer if he sang good songs--and they might not be afraid to talk
before him. A strolling singer and a cripple would perhaps hear a great
many things it might be useful for the Secret Party to know. They might
even hear important things. Don't you think so?"

Before he had gone far with his story, the faraway look had fallen upon
Loristan's face--the look Marco had known so well all his life. He sat
turned a little sidewise from the boy, his elbow resting on the table
and his forehead on his hand. He looked down at the worn carpet at his
feet, and so he looked as he listened to the end. It was as if some new
thought were slowly growing in his mind as Marco went on talking and
enlarging on The Rat's plan. He did not even look up or change his
position as he answered, "Yes. I think so."

But, because of the deep and growing thought in his face, Marco's
courage increased. His first fear that this part of the planning might
seem so bold and reckless that it would only appear to belong to a
boyish game, gradually faded away for some strange reason. His father
had said that the first part of The Rat's imaginings had not seemed
quite like a game to him, and now--even now--he was not listening as if
he were listening to the details of mere exaggerated fancies. It was as
if the thing he was hearing was not wildly impossible. Marco's knowledge
of Continental countries and of methods of journeying helped him to
enter into much detail and give realism to his plans.

"Sometimes we could pretend we knew nothing but English," he said.
"Then, though The Rat could not understand, I could. I should always
understand in each country. I know the cities and the places we should
want to go to. I know how boys like us live, and so we should not do
anything which would make the police angry or make people notice us.
If any one asked questions, I would let them believe that I had met The
Rat by chance, and we had made up our minds to travel together because
people gave more money to a boy who sang if he was with a cripple. There
was a boy who used to play the guitar in the streets of Rome, and he
always had a lame girl with him, and every one knew it was for that
reason. When he played, people looked at the girl and were sorry for her
and gave her soldi. You remember."

"Yes, I remember. And what you say is true," Loristan answered.

Marco leaned forward across the table so that he came closer to him.
The tone in which the words were said made his courage leap like a
flame. To be allowed to go on with this boldness was to feel that he was
being treated almost as if he were a man. If his father had wished to
stop him, he could have done it with one quiet glance, without uttering
a word. For some wonderful reason he did not wish him to cease talking.
He was willing to hear what he had to say--he was even interested.

"You are growing older," he had said the night he had revealed the
marvelous secret. "Silence is still the order, but you are man enough to
be told more."

Was he man enough to be thought worthy to help Samavia in any small
way--even with boyish fancies which might contain a germ of some thought
which older and wiser minds might make useful? Was he being listened to
because the plan, made as part of a game, was not an impossible one--if
two boys who could be trusted could be found? He caught a deep breath as
he went on, drawing still nearer and speaking so low that his tone was
almost a whisper.

"If the men of the Secret Party have been working and thinking for
so many years--they have prepared everything. They know by this time
exactly what must be done by the messengers who are to give the signal.
They can tell them where to go and how to know the secret friends who
must be warned. If the orders could be written and given to--to some one
who has--who has learned to remember things!" He had begun to breathe so
quickly that he stopped for a moment.

Loristan looked up. He looked directly into his eyes.

"Some one who has been _trained_ to remember things?" he said.

"Some one who has been trained," Marco went on, catching his breath
again. "Some one who does not forget--who would never forget--never!
That one, even if he were only twelve--even if he were only ten--could
go and do as he was told."

Loristan put his hand on his shoulder.

"Comrade," he said, "you are speaking as if you were ready to go
yourself."

Marco's eyes looked bravely straight into his, but he said not one word.

"Do you know what it would mean, Comrade?" his father went on. "You are
right. It is not a game. And you are not thinking of it as one. But have
you thought how it would be if something betrayed you--and you were set
up against a wall to be _shot_?"

Marco stood up quite straight. He tried to believe he felt the wall
against his back.

"If I were shot, I should be shot for Samavia," he said. "And for _you_,
Father."

Even as he was speaking, the front door-bell rang and Lazarus evidently
opened it. He spoke to some one, and then they heard his footsteps
approaching the back sitting-room.

"Open the door," said Loristan, and Marco opened it.

"There is a boy who is a cripple here, sir," the old soldier said. "He
asked to see Master Marco."

"If it is The Rat," said Loristan, "bring him in here. I wish to see
him."

Marco went down the passage to the front door. The Rat was there, but he
was not upon his platform. He was leaning upon an old pair of crutches,
and Marco thought he looked wild and strange. He was white, and somehow
the lines of his face seemed twisted in a new way. Marco wondered if
something had frightened him, or if he felt ill.

"Rat," he began, "my father--"

"I've come to tell you about _my_ father," The Rat broke in without
waiting to hear the rest, and his voice was as strange as his pale face.
"I don't know why I've come, but I--I just wanted to. He's dead!"

"Your father?" Marco stammered. "He's--"

"He's dead," The Rat answered shakily. "I told you he'd kill himself.
He had another fit and he died in it. I knew he would, one of these days.
I told him so. He knew he would himself. I stayed with him till he was
dead--and then I got a bursting headache and I felt sick--and I thought
about you."

Marco made a jump at him because he saw he was suddenly shaking as if he
were going to fall. He was just in time, and Lazarus, who had been
looking on from the back of the passage, came forward. Together they
held him up.

"I'm not going to faint," he said weakly, "but I felt as if I was. It
was a bad fit, and I had to try and hold him. I was all by myself. The
people in the other attic thought he was only drunk, and they wouldn't
come in. He's lying on the floor there, dead."

"Come and see my father," Marco said. "He'll tell us what do do.
Lazarus, help him."

"I can get on by myself," said The Rat. "Do you see my crutches? I did
something for a pawnbroker last night, and he gave them to me for pay."

But though he tried to speak carelessly, he had plainly been horribly
shaken and overwrought. His queer face was yellowish white still, and he
was trembling a little.

Marco led the way into the back sitting-room. In the midst of its shabby
gloom and under the dim light Loristan was standing in one of his still,
attentive attitudes. He was waiting for them.

"Father, this is The Rat," the boy began. The Rat stopped short and
rested on his crutches, staring at the tall, reposeful figure with
widened eyes.

"Is that your father?" he said to Marco. And then added, with a jerky
half-laugh, "He's not much like mine, is he?"




X

THE RAT--AND SAMAVIA


What The Rat thought when Loristan began to speak to him, Marco
wondered. Suddenly he stood in an unknown world, and it was Loristan who
made it so because its poverty and shabbiness had no power to touch him.
He looked at the boy with calm and clear eyes, he asked him practical
questions gently, and it was plain that he understood many things
without asking questions at all. Marco thought that perhaps he had, at
some time, seen drunken men die, in his life in strange places. He
seemed to know the terribleness of the night through which The Rat had
passed. He made him sit down, and he ordered Lazarus to bring him some
hot coffee and simple food.

"Haven't had a bite since yesterday," The Rat said, still staring at
him. "How did you know I hadn't?"

"You have not had time," Loristan answered.

Afterward he made him lie down on the sofa.

"Look at my clothes," said The Rat.

"Lie down and sleep," Loristan replied, putting his hand on his shoulder
and gently forcing him toward the sofa. "You will sleep a long time. You
must tell me how to find the place where your father died, and I will
see that the proper authorities are notified."

"What are you doing it for?" The Rat asked, and then he added, "sir."

"Because I am a man and you are a boy. And this is a terrible thing,"
Loristan answered him.

He went away without saying more, and The Rat lay on the sofa staring at
the wall and thinking about it until he fell asleep. But, before this
happened, Marco had quietly left him alone. So, as Loristan had told him
he would, he slept deeply and long; in fact, he slept through all the
night.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he awakened it was morning, and Lazarus was standing by the side of
the sofa looking down at him.

"You will want to make yourself clean," he said. "It must be done."

"Clean!" said The Rat, with his squeaky laugh. "I couldn't keep clean
when I had a room to live in, and now where am I to wash myself?" He sat
up and looked about him.

"Give me my crutches," he said. "I've got to go. They've let me sleep
here all night. They didn't turn me into the street. I don't know why
they didn't. Marco's father--he's the right sort. He looks like a
swell."

"The Master," said Lazarus, with a rigid manner, "the Master is a great
gentleman. He would turn no tired creature into the street. He and his
son are poor, but they are of those who give. He desires to see and talk
to you again. You are to have bread and coffee with him and the young
Master. But it is I who tell you that you cannot sit at table with them
until you are clean. Come with me," and he handed him his crutches.
His manner was authoritative, but it was the manner of a soldier; his
somewhat stiff and erect movements were those of a soldier, also, and
The Rat liked them because they made him feel as if he were in barracks.
He did not know what was going to happen, but he got up and followed him
on his crutches.

Lazarus took him to a closet under the stairs where a battered tin bath
was already full of hot water, which the old soldier himself had brought
in pails. There were soap and coarse, clean towels on a wooden chair,
and also there was a much worn but clean suit of clothes.

"Put these on when you have bathed," Lazarus ordered, pointing to them.
"They belong to the young Master and will be large for you, but they
will be better than your own." And then he went out of the closet and
shut the door.

It was a new experience for The Rat. So long as he remembered, he had
washed his face and hands--when he had washed them at all--at an iron
tap set in the wall of a back street or court in some slum. His father
and himself had long ago sunk into the world where to wash one's self is
not a part of every-day life. They had lived amid dirt and foulness, and
when his father had been in a maudlin state, he had sometimes cried and
talked of the long-past days when he had shaved every morning and put on
a clean shirt.

To stand even in the most battered of tin baths full of clean hot water
and to splash and scrub with a big piece of flannel and plenty of soap
was a marvelous thing. The Rat's tired body responded to the novelty
with a curious feeling of freshness and comfort.

"I dare say swells do this every day," he muttered. "I'd do it myself if
I was a swell. Soldiers have to keep themselves so clean they shine."

When, after making the most of his soap and water, he came out of the
closet under the stairs, he was as fresh as Marco himself; and, though
his clothes had been built for a more stalwart body, his recognition of
their cleanliness filled him with pleasure. He wondered if by any effort
he could keep himself clean when he went out into the world again and
had to sleep in any hole the police did not order him out of.

He wanted to see Marco again, but he wanted more to see the tall man
with the soft dark eyes and that queer look of being a swell in spite of
his shabby clothes and the dingy place he lived in. There was something
about him which made you keep on looking at him, and wanting to know
what he was thinking of, and why you felt as if you'd take orders from
him as you'd take orders from your general, if you were a soldier. He
looked, somehow, like a soldier, but as if he were something more--as
if people had taken orders from him all his life, and always would take
orders from him. And yet he had that quiet voice and those fine, easy
movements, and he was not a soldier at all, but only a poor man who
wrote things for papers which did not pay him well enough to give him
and his son a comfortable living. Through all the time of his seclusion
with the battered bath and the soap and water, The Rat thought of him,
and longed to have another look at him and hear him speak again. He did
not see any reason why he should have let him sleep on his sofa or why
he should give him a breakfast before he turned him out to face the
world. It was first-rate of him to do it. The Rat felt that when he was
turned out, after he had had the coffee, he should want to hang about
the neighborhood just on the chance of seeing him pass by sometimes. He
did not know what he was going to do. The parish officials would by this
time have taken his dead father, and he would not see him again. He did
not want to see him again. He had never seemed like a father. They had
never cared anything for each other. He had only been a wretched outcast
whose best hours had been when he had drunk too much to be violent and
brutal. Perhaps, The Rat thought, he would be driven to going about on
his platform on the pavements and begging, as his father had tried to
force him to do. Could he sell newspapers? What could a crippled lad do
unless he begged or sold papers?

Lazarus was waiting for him in the passage. The Rat held back a little.

"Perhaps they'd rather not eat their breakfast with me," he hesitated.
"I'm not--I'm not the kind they are. I could swallow the coffee out here
and carry the bread away with me. And you could thank him for me. I'd
want him to know I thanked him."

Lazarus also had a steady eye. The Rat realized that he was looking him
over as if he were summing him up.

"You may not be the kind they are, but you may be of a kind the Master
sees good in. If he did not see something, he would not ask you to sit
at his table. You are to come with me."

The Squad had seen good in The Rat, but no one else had. Policemen had
moved him on whenever they set eyes on him, the wretched women of the
slums had regarded him as they regarded his darting, thieving namesake;
loafing or busy men had seen in him a young nuisance to be kicked or
pushed out of the way. The Squad had not called "good" what they saw in
him. They would have yelled with laughter if they had heard any one else
call it so. "Goodness" was not considered an attraction in their world.

The Rat grinned a little and wondered what was meant, as he followed
Lazarus into the back sitting-room.

It was as dingy and gloomy as it had looked the night before, but by
the daylight The Rat saw how rigidly neat it was, how well swept and
free from any speck of dust, how the poor windows had been cleaned and
polished, and how everything was set in order. The coarse linen cloth on
the table was fresh and spotless, so was the cheap crockery, the spoons
shone with brightness.

Loristan was standing on the hearth and Marco was near him. They were
waiting for their vagabond guest as if he had been a gentleman.

The Rat hesitated and shuffled at the door for a moment, and then it
suddenly occurred to him to stand as straight as he could and salute.
When he found himself in the presence of Loristan, he felt as if he
ought to do something, but he did not know what.

Loristan's recognition of his gesture and his expression as he moved
forward lifted from The Rat's shoulders a load which he himself had not
known lay there. Somehow he felt as if something new had happened to
him, as if he were not mere "vermin," after all, as if he need not be
on the defensive--even as if he need not feel so much in the dark, and
like a thing there was no place in the world for. The mere straight and
far-seeing look of this man's eyes seemed to make a place somewhere for
what he looked at. And yet what he said was quite simple.

"This is well," he said. "You have rested. We will have some food, and
then we will talk together." He made a slight gesture in the direction
of the chair at the right hand of his own place.

The Rat hesitated again. What a swell he was! With that wave of the hand
he made you feel as if you were a fellow like himself, and he was doing
you some honor.

"I'm not--" The Rat broke off and jerked his head toward Marco. "He
knows--" he ended, "I've never sat at a table like this before."

"There is not much on it." Loristan made the slight gesture toward the
right-hand seat again and smiled. "Let us sit down."

The Rat obeyed him and the meal began. There were only bread and coffee
and a little butter before them. But Lazarus presented the cups and
plates on a small japanned tray as if it were a golden salver. When he
was not serving, he stood upright behind his master's chair, as though
he wore royal livery of scarlet and gold. To the boy who had gnawed a
bone or munched a crust wheresoever he found them, and with no thought
but of the appeasing of his own wolfish hunger, to watch the two with
whom he sat eat their simple food was a new thing. He knew nothing of
the every-day decencies of civilized people. The Rat liked to look at
them, and he found himself trying to hold his cup as Loristan did, and
to sit and move as Marco was sitting and moving--taking his bread or
butter, when it was held at his side by Lazarus, as if it were a simple
thing to be waited upon. Marco had had things handed to him all his
life, and it did not make him feel awkward. The Rat knew that his own
father had once lived like this. He himself would have been at ease if
chance had treated him fairly. It made him scowl to think of it. But
in a few minutes Loristan began to talk about the copy of the map of
Samavia. Then The Rat forgot everything else and was ill at ease no
more. He did not know that Loristan was leading him on to explain his
theories about the country and the people and the war. He found himself
telling all that he had read, or overheard, or _thought_ as he lay awake
in his garret. He had thought out a great many things in a way not at
all like a boy's. His strangely concentrated and over-mature mind had
been full of military schemes which Loristan listened to with curiosity
and also with amazement. He had become extraordinarily clever in one
direction because he had fixed all his mental powers on one thing. It
seemed scarcely natural that an untaught vagabond lad should know so
much and reason so clearly. It was at least extraordinarily interesting.
There had been no skirmish, no attack, no battle which he had not led
and fought in his own imagination, and he had made scores of rough queer
plans of all that had been or should have been done. Lazarus listened as
attentively as his master, and once Marco saw him exchange a startled,
rapid glance with Loristan. It was at a moment when The Rat was
sketching with his finger on the cloth an attack which _ought_ to have
been made but was not. And Marco knew at once that the quickly exchanged
look meant "He is right! If it had been done, there would have been
victory instead of disaster!"

It was a wonderful meal, though it was only of bread and coffee. The Rat
knew he should never be able to forget it.

Afterward, Loristan told him of what he had done the night before. He
had seen the parish authorities and all had been done which a city
government provides in the case of a pauper's death.

His father would be buried in the usual manner. "We will follow him,"
Loristan said in the end. "You and I and Marco and Lazarus."

The Rat's mouth fell open.

"You--and Marco--and Lazarus!" he exclaimed, staring. "And me! Why
should any of us go? I don't want to. He wouldn't have followed me if
I'd been the one."

Loristan remained silent for a few moments.

"When a life has counted for nothing, the end of it is a lonely thing,"
he said at last. "If it has forgotten all respect for itself, pity is
all that one has left to give. One would like to give _something_ to
anything so lonely." He said the last brief sentence after a pause.

"Let us go," Marco said suddenly; and he caught The Rat's hand.

The Rat's own movement was sudden. He slipped from his crutches to a
chair, and sat and gazed at the worn carpet as if he were not looking at
it at all, but at something a long way off. After a while he looked up
at Loristan.

"Do you know what I thought of, all at once?" he said in a shaky voice.
"I thought of that 'Lost Prince' one. He only lived once. Perhaps he
didn't live a long time. Nobody knows. But it's five hundred years ago,
and, just because he was the kind he was, every one that remembers him
thinks of something fine. It's queer, but it does you good just to hear
his name. And if he has been training kings for Samavia all these
centuries--they may have been poor and nobody may have known about them,
but they've been _kings_. That's what _he_ did--just by being alive a few
years. When I think of him and then think of--the other--there's such an
awful difference that--yes--I'm sorry. For the first time. I'm his son
and I can't care about him; but he's too lonely--I want to go."

       *       *       *       *       *

So it was that when the forlorn derelict was carried to the graveyard
where nameless burdens on the city were given to the earth, a curious
funeral procession followed him. There were two tall and soldierly
looking men and two boys, one of whom walked on crutches, and behind
them were ten other boys who walked two by two. These ten were a queer,
ragged lot; but they had respectfully sober faces, held their heads and
their shoulders well, and walked with a remarkably regular marching
step.

It was the Squad; but they had left their "rifles" at home.




XI

"COME WITH ME"


When they came back from the graveyard, The Rat was silent all the way.
He was thinking of what had happened and of what lay before him. He was,
in fact, thinking chiefly that nothing lay before him--nothing. The
certainty of that gave his sharp, lined face new lines and sharpness
which made it look pinched and hard.

He had nothing before but a corner in a bare garret in which he could
find little more than a leaking roof over his head--when he was not
turned out into the street. But, if policemen asked him where he lived,
he could say he lived in Bone Court with his father. Now he couldn't say
it.

He got along very well on his crutches, but he was rather tired when
they reached the turn in the street which led in the direction of his
old haunts. At any rate, they were haunts he knew, and he belonged
to them more than he belonged elsewhere. The Squad stopped at this
particular corner because it led to such homes as they possessed. They
stopped in a body and looked at The Rat, and The Rat stopped also. He
swung himself to Loristan's side, touching his hand to his forehead.

"Thank you, sir," he said. "Line and salute, you chaps!" And the Squad
stood in line and raised their hands also. "Thank you, sir. Thank you,
Marco. Good-by."

"Where are you going?" Loristan asked.

"I don't know yet," The Rat answered, biting his lips.

He and Loristan looked at each other a few moments in silence. Both of
them were thinking very hard. In The Rat's eyes there was a kind of
desperate adoration. He did not know what he should do when this man
turned and walked away from him. It would be as if the sun itself had
dropped out of the heavens--and The Rat had not thought of what the sun
meant before.

But Loristan did not turn and walk away. He looked deep into the lad's
eyes as if he were searching to find some certainty. Then he said in a
low voice, "You know how poor I am."

"I--I don't care!" said The Rat. "You--you're like a king to me. I'd
stand up and be shot to bits if you told me to do it."

"I am so poor that I am not sure I can give you enough dry bread to
eat--always. Marco and Lazarus and I are often hungry. Sometimes you
might have nothing to sleep on but the floor. But I can find a _place_ for
you if I take you with me," said Loristan. "Do you know what I mean by a
_place_?"

"Yes, I do," answered The Rat. "It's what I've never had before--sir."

What he knew was that it meant some bit of space, out of all the world,
where he would have a sort of right to stand, howsoever poor and bare it
might be.

"I'm not used to beds or to food enough," he said. But he did not dare
to insist too much on that "place." It seemed too great a thing to be
true.

Loristan took his arm.

"Come with me," he said. "We won't part. I believe you are to be
trusted."

The Rat turned quite white in a sort of anguish of joy. He had never
cared for any one in his life. He had been a sort of young Cain, his
hand against every man and every man's hand against him. And during the
last twelve hours he had plunged into a tumultuous ocean of boyish
hero-worship. This man seemed like a sort of god to him. What he had
said and done the day before, in what had been really The Rat's hours of
extremity, after that appalling night--the way he had looked into his
face and understood it all, the talk at the table when he had listened
to him seriously, comprehending and actually respecting his plans and
rough maps; his silent companionship as they followed the pauper hearse
together--these things were enough to make the lad longingly ready to be
any sort of servant or slave to him if he might see and be spoken to by
him even once or twice a day.

The Squad wore a look of dismay for a moment, and Loristan saw it.

"I am going to take your captain with me," he said. "But he will come
back to Barracks. So will Marco."

"Will yer go on with the game?" asked Cad, as eager spokesman. "We want
to go on being the 'Secret Party.'"

"Yes, I'll go on," The Rat answered. "I won't give it up. There's a lot
in the papers to-day."

So they were pacified and went on their way, and Loristan and Lazarus
and Marco and The Rat went on theirs also.

"Queer thing is," The Rat thought as they walked together, "I'm a bit
afraid to speak to him unless he speaks to me first. Never felt that way
before with any one."

He had jeered at policemen and had impudently chaffed "swells," but he
felt a sort of secret awe of this man, and actually liked the feeling.

"It's as if I was a private and he was commander-in-chief," he thought.
"That's it."

Loristan talked to him as they went. He was simple enough in his
statements of the situation. There was an old sofa in Marco's bedroom.
It was narrow and hard, as Marco's bed itself was, but The Rat could
sleep upon it. They would share what food they had. There were
newspapers and magazines to be read. There were papers and pencils to
draw new maps and plans of battles. There was even an old map of Samavia
of Marco's which the two boys could study together as an aid to their
game. The Rat's eyes began to have points of fire in them.

"If I could see the papers every morning, I could fight the battles on
paper by night," he said, quite panting at the incredible vision of
splendor. Were all the kingdoms of the earth going to be given to him?
Was he going to sleep without a drunken father near him?

Was he going to have a chance to wash himself and to sit at a table and
hear people say "Thank you," and "I beg pardon," as if they were using
the most ordinary fashion of speech? His own father, before he had sunk
into the depths, had lived and spoken in this way.

"When I have time, we will see who can draw up the best plans," Loristan
said.

"Do you mean that you'll look at mine then--when you have time?" asked
The Rat, hesitatingly. "I wasn't expecting that."

"Yes," answered Loristan, "I'll look at them, and we'll talk them over."

As they went on, he told him that he and Marco could do many things
together. They could go to museums and galleries, and Marco could show
him what he himself was familiar with.

"My father said you wouldn't let him come back to Barracks when you
found out about it," The Rat said, hesitating again and growing hot
because he remembered so many ugly past days. "But--but I swear I won't
do him any harm, sir. I won't!"

"When I said I believed you could be trusted, I meant several things,"
Loristan answered him. "That was one of them. You're a new recruit. You
and Marco are both under a commanding officer." He said the words
because he knew they would elate him and stir his blood.




XII

"ONLY TWO BOYS"


The words did elate him, and his blood was stirred by them every time
they returned to his mind. He remembered them through the days and
nights that followed. He sometimes, indeed, awakened from his deep sleep
on the hard and narrow sofa in Marco's room, and found that he was
saying them half aloud to himself. The hardness of the sofa did not
prevent his resting as he had never rested before in his life. By
contrast with the past he had known, this poor existence was comfort
which verged on luxury. He got into the battered tin bath every morning,
he sat at the clean table, and could look at Loristan and speak to him
and hear his voice. His chief trouble was that he could hardly keep his
eyes off him, and he was a little afraid he might be annoyed. But he
could not bear to lose a look or a movement.

At the end of the second day, he found his way, at some trouble, to
Lazarus's small back room at the top of the house.

"Will you let me come in and talk a bit?" he said.

When he went in, he was obliged to sit on the top of Lazarus's wooden
box because there was nothing else for him.

"I want to ask you," he plunged into his talk at once, "do you think he
minds me looking at him so much? I can't help it--but if he hates
it--well--I'll try and keep my eyes on the table."

"The Master is used to being looked at," Lazarus made answer. "But it
would be well to ask himself. He likes open speech."

"I want to find out everything he likes and everything he doesn't like,"
The Rat said. "I want--isn't there anything--anything you'd let me do
for him? It wouldn't matter what it was. And he needn't know you are not
doing it. I know you wouldn't be willing to give up anything particular.
But you wait on him night and day. Couldn't you give up something to
me?"

Lazarus pierced him with keen eyes. He did not answer for several
seconds.

"Now and then," he said gruffly at last, "I'll let you brush his boots.
But not every day--perhaps once a week."

"When will you let me have my first turn?" The Rat asked.

Lazarus reflected. His shaggy eyebrows drew themselves down over his
eyes as if this were a question of state.

"Next Saturday," he conceded. "Not before. I'll tell him when you brush
them."

"You needn't," said The Rat. "It's not that I want him to know. I want
to know myself that I'm doing something for him. I'll find out things
that I can do without interfering with you. I'll think them out."

"Anything any one else did for him would be interfering with me," said
Lazarus.

It was The Rat's turn to reflect now, and his face twisted itself into
new lines and wrinkles.

"I'll tell you before I do anything," he said, after he had thought it
over. "You served him first."

"I have served him ever since he was born," said Lazarus.

"He's--he's yours," said The Rat, still thinking deeply.

"I am his," was Lazarus's stern answer. "I am his--and the young
Master's."

"That's it," The Rat said. Then a squeak of a half-laugh broke from him.
"I've never been anybody's," he added.

His sharp eyes caught a passing look on Lazarus's face. Such a queer,
disturbed, sudden look. Could he be rather sorry for him?

Perhaps the look meant something like that.

"If you stay near him long enough--and it needn't be long--you will be
his too. Everybody is."

The Rat sat up as straight as he could. "When it comes to that," he
blurted out, "I'm his now, in my way. I was his two minutes after he
looked at me with his queer, handsome eyes. They're queer because they
get you, and you want to follow him. I'm going to follow."

That night Lazarus recounted to his master the story of the scene. He
simply repeated word for word what had been said, and Loristan listened
gravely.

"We have not had time to learn much of him yet," he commented. "But that
is a faithful soul, I think."

A few days later, Marco missed The Rat soon after their breakfast hour.
He had gone out without saying anything to the household. He did not
return for several hours, and when he came back he looked tired. In the
afternoon he fell asleep on his sofa in Marco's room and slept heavily.
No one asked him any questions as he volunteered no explanation. The
next day he went out again in the same mysterious manner, and the next
and the next. For an entire week he went out and returned with the tired
look; but he did not explain until one morning, as he lay on his sofa
before getting up, he said to Marco:

"I'm practicing walking with my crutches. I don't want to go about like
a rat any more. I mean to be as near like other people as I can. I walk
farther every morning. I began with two miles. If I practice every day,
my crutches will be like legs."

"Shall I walk with you?" asked Marco.

"Wouldn't you mind walking with a cripple?"

"Don't call yourself that," said Marco. "We can talk together, and try
to remember everything we see as we go along."

"I want to learn to remember things. I'd like to train myself in that
way too," The Rat answered. "I'd give anything to know some of the
things your father taught you. I've got a good memory. I remember a lot
of things I don't want to remember. Will you go this morning?"

That morning they went, and Loristan was told the reason for their walk.
But though he knew one reason, he did not know all about it. When The
Rat was allowed his "turn" of the boot-brushing, he told more to
Lazarus.

"What I want to do," he said, "is not only walk as fast as other people
do, but faster. Acrobats train themselves to do anything. It's training
that does it. There might come a time when he might need some one to go
on an errand quickly, and I'm going to be ready. I'm going to train
myself until he needn't think of me as if I were only a cripple who
can't do things and has to be taken care of. I want him to know that I'm
really as strong as Marco, and where Marco can go I can go."

"He" was what he always said, and Lazarus always understood without
explanation.

"'The Master' is your name for him," he had explained at the beginning.
"And I can't call him just 'Mister' Loristan. It sounds like cheek. If
he was called 'General' or 'Colonel' I could stand it--though it
wouldn't be quite right. Some day I shall find a name. When I speak to
him, I say 'Sir.'"

The walks were taken every day, and each day were longer. Marco found
himself silently watching The Rat with amazement at his determination
and endurance. He knew that he must not speak of what he could not fail
to see as they walked. He must not tell him that he looked tired and
pale and sometimes desperately fatigued. He had inherited from his
father the tact which sees what people do not wish to be reminded of. He
knew that for some reason of his own The Rat had determined to do this
thing at any cost to himself. Sometimes his face grew white and worn and
he breathed hard, but he never rested more than a few minutes, and never
turned back or shortened a walk they had planned.

"Tell me something about Samavia, something to remember," he would say,
when he looked his worst. "When I begin to try to remember, I
forget--other things."

So, as they went on their way, they talked, and The Rat committed things
to memory. He was quick at it, and grew quicker every day. They invented
a game of remembering faces they passed. Both would learn them by heart,
and on their return home Marco would draw them. They went to the museums
and galleries and learned things there, making from memory lists and
descriptions which at night they showed to Loristan, when he was not too
busy to talk to them.

As the days passed, Marco saw that The Rat was gaining strength. This
exhilarated him greatly. They often went to Hampstead Heath and walked
in the wind and sun. There The Rat would go through curious exercises
which he believed would develop his muscles. He began to look less tired
during and after his journey. There were even fewer wrinkles on his
face, and his sharp eyes looked less fierce. The talks between the two
boys were long and curious. Marco soon realized that The Rat wanted to
learn--learn--learn.

"Your father can talk to you almost as if you were twenty years old," he
said once. "He knows you can understand what he's saying. If he were to
talk to me, he'd always have to remember that I was only a rat that had
lived in gutters and seen nothing else."

They were talking in their room, as they nearly always did after they
went to bed and the street lamp shone in and lighted their bare little
room. They often sat up clasping their knees, Marco on his poor bed,
The Rat on his hard sofa, but neither of them conscious either of the
poorness or hardness, because to each one the long unknown sense of
companionship was such a satisfying thing. Neither of them had ever
talked intimately to another boy, and now they were together day and
night. They revealed their thoughts to each other; they told each other
things it had never before occurred to either to think of telling any
one. In fact, they found out about themselves, as they talked, things
they had not quite known before. Marco had gradually discovered that the
admiration The Rat had for his father was an impassioned and curious
feeling which possessed him entirely. It seemed to Marco that it was
beginning to be like a sort of religion. He evidently thought of him
every moment. So when he spoke of Loristan's knowing him to be only a
rat of the gutter, Marco felt he himself was fortunate in remembering
something he could say.

"My father said yesterday that you had a big brain and a strong will,"
he answered from his bed. "He said that you had a wonderful memory which
only needed exercising. He said it after he looked over the list you
made of the things you had seen in the Tower."

The Rat shuffled on his sofa and clasped his knees tighter.

"Did he? Did he?" he said.

He rested his chin upon his knees for a few minutes and stared straight
before him. Then he turned to the bed.

"Marco," he said, in a rather hoarse voice, a queer voice; "are you
jealous?"

"Jealous," said Marco; "why?"

"I mean, have you ever been jealous? Do you know what it is like?"

"I don't think I do," answered Marco, staring a little.

"Are you ever jealous of Lazarus because he's always with your
father--because he's with him oftener than you are--and knows about his
work--and can do things for him you can't? I mean, are you jealous
of--your father?"

Marco loosed his arms from his knees and lay down flat on his pillow.

"No, I'm not. The more people love and serve him, the better," he said.
"The only thing I care for is--is him. I just care for _him_. Lazarus does
too. Don't you?"

The Rat was greatly excited internally. He had been thinking of this
thing a great deal. The thought had sometimes terrified him. He might
as well have it out now if he could. If he could get at the truth,
everything would be easier. But would Marco really tell him?

"Don't you mind?" he said, still hoarse and eager--"don't you mind how
much I care for him? Could it ever make you feel savage? Could it ever
set you thinking I was nothing but--what I am--and that it was cheek of
me to push myself in and fasten on to a gentleman who only took me up
for charity? Here's the living truth," he ended in an outburst; "if I
were you and you were me, that's what I should be thinking. I know it
is. I couldn't help it. I should see every low thing there was in you,
in your manners and your voice and your looks. I should see nothing but
the contrast between you and me and between you and him. I should be so
jealous that I should just rage. I should _hate_ you--and I should
_despise_ you!"

He had wrought himself up to such a passion of feeling that he set Marco
thinking that what he was hearing meant strange and strong emotions such
as he himself had never experienced. The Rat had been thinking over all
this in secret for some time, it was evident. Marco lay still a few
minutes and thought it over. Then he found something to say, just as he
had found something before.

"You might, if you were with other people who thought in the same way,"
he said, "and if you hadn't found out that it is such a mistake to think
in that way, that it's even stupid. But, you see, if you were I, you
would have lived with my father, and he'd have told you what he
knows--what he's been finding out all his life."

"What's he found out?"

"Oh!" Marco answered, quite casually, "just that you can't set savage
thoughts loose in the world, any more than you can let loose savage
beasts with hydrophobia. They spread a sort of rabies, and they always
tear and worry you first of all."

"What do you mean?" The Rat gasped out.

"It's like this," said Marco, lying flat and cool on his hard pillow and
looking at the reflection of the street lamp on the ceiling. "That day
I turned into your Barracks, without knowing that you'd think I was
spying, it made you feel savage, and you threw the stone at me. If it
had made me feel savage and I'd rushed in and fought, what would have
happened to all of us?"

The Rat's spirit of generalship gave the answer.

"I should have called on the Squad to charge with fixed bayonets. They'd
have half killed you. You're a strong chap, and you'd have hurt a lot of
them."

A note of terror broke into his voice. "What a fool I should have been!"
he cried out. "I should never have come here! I should never have known
_him_!" Even by the light of the street lamp Marco could see him begin to
look almost ghastly.

"The Squad could easily have half killed me," Marco added. "They could
have quite killed me, if they had wanted to do it. And who would have
got any good out of it? It would only have been a street-lads'
row--with the police and prison at the end of it."

"But because you'd lived with him," The Rat pondered, "you walked in as
if you didn't mind, and just asked why we did it, and looked like a
stronger chap than any of us--and different--different. I wondered what
was the matter with you, you were so cool and steady. I know now. It was
because you were like him. He'd taught you. He's like a wizard."

"He knows things that wizards think they know, but he knows them
better," Marco said. "He says they're not queer and unnatural. They're
just simple laws of nature. You have to be either on one side or the
other, like an army. You choose your side. You either build up or tear
down. You either keep in the light where you can see, or you stand in
the dark and fight everything that comes near you, because you can't see
and you think it's an enemy. No, you wouldn't have been jealous if you'd
been I and I'd been you."

"And you're _not_?" The Rat's sharp voice was almost hollow. "You'll swear
you're not?"

"I'm not," said Marco.

The Rat's excitement even increased a shade as he poured forth his
confession.

"I was afraid," he said. "I've been afraid every day since I came here.
I'll tell you straight out. It seemed just natural that you and Lazarus
wouldn't stand me, just as I wouldn't have stood you. It seemed just
natural that you'd work together to throw me out. I knew how I should
have worked myself. Marco--I said I'd tell you straight out--I'm jealous
of you. I'm jealous of Lazarus. It makes me wild when I see you both
knowing all about him, and fit and ready to do anything he wants done.
I'm not ready and I'm not fit."

"You'd do anything he wanted done, whether you were fit and ready or
not," said Marco. "He knows that."

"Does he? Do you think he does?" cried The Rat. "I wish he'd try me. I
wish he would."

Marco turned over on his bed and rose up on his elbow so that he faced
The Rat on his sofa.

"Let us _wait_," he said in a whisper. "Let us _wait_."

There was a pause, and then The Rat whispered also.

"For what?"

"For him to find out that we're fit to be tried. Don't you see what
fools we should be if we spent our time in being jealous, either of us.
We're only two boys. Suppose he saw we were only two silly fools. When
you are jealous of me or of Lazarus, just go and sit down in a still
place and think of _him_. Don't think about yourself or about us. He's so
quiet that to think about him makes you quiet yourself. When things go
wrong or when I'm lonely, he's taught me to sit down and make myself
think of things I like--pictures, books, monuments, splendid places.
It pushes the other things out and sets your mind going properly.
He doesn't know I nearly always think of him. He's the best thought
himself. You try it. You're not really jealous. You only _think_ you are.
You'll find that out if you always stop yourself in time. Any one can be
such a fool if he lets himself. And he can always stop it if he makes up
his mind. I'm not jealous. You must let that thought alone. You're not
jealous yourself. Kick that thought into the street."

The Rat caught his breath and threw his arms up over his eyes. "Oh,
Lord! Oh, Lord!" he said; "if I'd lived near him always as you have.
If I just had."

"We're both living near him now," said Marco. "And here's something to
think of," leaning more forward on his elbow. "The kings who were being
made ready for Samavia have waited all these years; _We_ can make
ourselves ready and wait so that, if just two boys are wanted to do
something--just two boys--we can step out of the ranks when the call
comes and say 'Here!' Now let's lie down and think of it until we go to
sleep."




XIII

LORISTAN ATTENDS A DRILL OF THE SQUAD, AND MARCO MEETS A SAMAVIAN


The Squad was not forgotten. It found that Loristan himself would have
regarded neglect as a breach of military duty.

"You must remember your men," he said, two or three days after The Rat
became a member of his household. "You must keep up their drill. Marco
tells me it was very smart. Don't let them get slack."

"His men!" The Rat felt what he could not have put into words.

He knew he had worked, and that the Squad had worked, in their hidden
holes and corners. Only hidden holes and corners had been possible for
them because they had existed in spite of the protest of their world and
the vigilance of its policemen. They had tried many refuges before they
found the Barracks. No one but resented the existence of a troop of
noisy vagabonds. But somehow this man knew that there had evolved from
it something more than mere noisy play, that he, The Rat, had _meant_
order and discipline.

"His men!" It made him feel as if he had had the Victoria Cross fastened
on his coat. He had brain enough to see many things, and he knew that it
was in this way that Loristan was finding him his "place." He knew how.

When they went to the Barracks, the Squad greeted them with a tumultuous
welcome which expressed a great sense of relief. Privately the members
had been filled with fears which they had talked over together in deep
gloom. Marco's father, they decided, was too big a swell to let the two
come back after he had seen the sort the Squad was made up of. He might
be poor just now, toffs sometimes lost their money for a bit, but you
could see what he was, and fathers like him weren't going to let their
sons make friends with "such as us." He'd stop the drill and the "Secret
Society" game. That's what he'd do!

But The Rat came swinging in on his secondhand crutches looking as if
he had been made a general, and Marco came with him; and the drill the
Squad was put through was stricter and finer than any drill they had
ever known.

"I wish my father could have seen that," Marco said to The Rat.

The Rat turned red and white and then red again, but he said not a
single word. The mere thought was like a flash of fire passing through
him. But no fellow could hope for a thing as big as that. The Secret
Party, in its subterranean cavern, surrounded by its piled arms, sat
down to read the morning paper.

The war news was bad to read. The Maranovitch held the day for the
moment, and while they suffered and wrought cruelties in the capital
city, the Iarovitch suffered and wrought cruelties in the country
outside. So fierce and dark was the record that Europe stood aghast.

The Rat folded his paper when he had finished, and sat biting his nails.
Having done this for a few minutes, he began to speak in his dramatic
and hollow Secret Party whisper.

"The hour has come," he said to his followers. "The messengers must go
forth. They know nothing of what they go for; they only know that they
must obey. If they were caught and tortured, they could betray nothing
because they know nothing but that, at certain places, they must utter
a certain word. They carry no papers. All commands they must learn by
heart. When the sign is given, the Secret Party will know what to
do--where to meet and where to attack."

He drew plans of the battle on the flagstones, and he sketched an
imaginary route which the two messengers were to follow. But his
knowledge of the map of Europe was not worth much, and he turned to
Marco.

"You know more about geography that I do. You know more about
everything," he said. "I only know Italy is at the bottom and Russia is
at one side and England's at the other. How would the Secret Messengers
go to Samavia? Can you draw the countries they'd have to pass through?"

Because any school-boy who knew the map could have done the same thing,
Marco drew them. He also knew the stations the Secret Two would arrive
at and leave by when they entered a city, the streets they would walk
through and the very uniforms they would see; but of these things he
said nothing. The reality his knowledge gave to the game was, however, a
thrilling thing. He wished he could have been free to explain to The Rat
the things he knew. Together they could have worked out so many details
of travel and possible adventure that it would have been almost as if
they had set out on their journey in fact.

As it was, the mere sketching of the route fired The Rat's imagination.
He forged ahead with the story of adventure, and filled it with such
mysterious purport and design that the Squad at times gasped for breath.
In his glowing version the Secret Two entered cities by midnight and
sang and begged at palace gates where kings driving outward paused to
listen and were given the Sign.

"Though it would not always be kings," he said. "Sometimes it would
be the poorest people. Sometimes they might seem to be beggars like
ourselves, when they were only Secret Ones disguised. A great lord might
wear poor clothes and pretend to be a workman, and we should only know
him by the signs we had learned by heart. When we were sent to Samavia,
we should be obliged to creep in through some back part of the country
where no fighting was being done and where no one would attack. Their
generals are not clever enough to protect the parts which are joined to
friendly countries, and they have not forces enough. Two boys could find
a way in if they thought it out."

He became possessed by the idea of thinking it out on the spot. He drew
his rough map of Samavia on the flagstones with his chalk.

"Look here," he said to Marco, who, with the elated and thrilled Squad,
bent over it in a close circle of heads. "Beltrazo is here and Carnolitz
is here--and here is Jiardasia. Beltrazo and Jiardasia are friendly,
though they don't take sides. All the fighting is going on in the
country about Melzarr. There is no reason why they should prevent single
travelers from coming in across the frontiers of friendly neighbors.
They're not fighting with the countries outside, they are fighting with
themselves." He paused a moment and thought.

"The article in that magazine said something about a huge forest on the
eastern frontier. That's here. We could wander into a forest and stay
there until we'd planned all we wanted to do. Even the people who had
seen us would forget about us. What we have to do is to make people feel
as if we were nothing--nothing."

They were in the very midst of it, crowded together, leaning over,
stretching necks and breathing quickly with

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/384