"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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body 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, p.r.i.c.king 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 pa.s.sage.

"I have!" answered Marco, following him.

"Come on!" The Rat yelled. "Let"s go and get a paper!" And he whizzed down the pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.s 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.