The Frances Hodgson Burnett MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson Burnett

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