"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 a.s.sa.s.sinated 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 c.o.c.kney. "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 a.s.sa.s.sinated 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 gra.s.s. 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed sc.r.a.ps 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 n.o.ble young princes who were full of the possibility of great and good deeds.