The Frances Hodgson Burnett MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Rat.

      “This moment, if you are ready,” was the answer. The Rat swung himself to the door.

      Loristan said to him a thing which was like the sudden lighting of a great light in the very center of his being.

      “You are one of us. Now that I know you are doing this I may even sleep. You are one of us.” And it was because he was following this plan that The Rat had turned into Brandon Terrace and heard the Samavian song ringing out from the locked basement of Number 10.

      “Yes, he is one of us,” Loristan said, when he told this part of the story to Marco as they sat by the fire. “I had not been sure before. I wanted to be very sure. Last night I saw into the depths of him and knew. He may be trusted.”

      From that day The Rat held a new place. Lazarus himself, strangely enough, did not resent his holding it. The boy was allowed to be near Loristan as he had never dared to hope to be near. It was not merely that he was allowed to serve him in many ways, but he was taken into the intimacy which had before enclosed only the three. Loristan talked to him as he talked to Marco, drawing him within the circle which held so much that was comprehended without speech. The Rat knew that he was being trained and observed and he realized it with exaltation. His idol had said that he was “one of them” and he was watching and putting him to tests so that he might find out how much he was one of them. And he was doing it for some grave reason of his own. This thought possessed The Rat’s whole mind. Perhaps he was wondering if he should find out that he was to be trusted, as a rock is to be trusted. That he should even think that perhaps he might find that he was like a rock, was inspiration enough.

      “Sir,” he said one night when they were alone together, because The Rat had been copying a road-map. His voice was very low—“do you think that—sometime—you could trust me as you trust Marco? Could it ever be like that—ever?”

      “The time has come,” and Loristan’s voice was almost as low as his own, though strong and deep feeling underlay its quiet—“ythe time has come when I can trust you with Marco—to be his companion—to care for him, to stand by his side at any moment. And Marco is—Marco is my son.” That was enough to uplift The Rat to the skies. But there was more to follow.

      “It may not be long before it may be his part to do work in which he will need a comrade who can be trusted—as a rock can be trusted.”

      He had said the very words The Rat’s own mind had given to him.

      “A Rock! A Rock!” the boy broke out. “Let me show you, sir. Send me with him for a servant. The crutches are nothing. You’ve seen that they’re as good as legs, haven’t you? I’ve trained myself.”

      “I know, I know, dear lad.” Marco had told him all of it. He gave him a gracious smile which seemed as if it held a sort of fine secret. “You shall go as his aide-de-camp. It shall be part of the game.”

      He had always encouraged “the game,” and during the last weeks had even found time to help them in their plannings for the mysterious journey of the Secret Two. He had been so interested that once or twice he had called on Lazarus as an old soldier and Samavian to give his opinions of certain routes—and of the customs and habits of people in towns and villages by the way. Here they would find simple pastoral folk who danced, sang after their day’s work, and who would tell all they knew; here they would find those who served or feared the Maranovitch and who would not talk at all. In one place they would meet with hospitality, in another with unfriendly suspicion of all strangers. Through talk and stories The Rat began to know the country almost as Marco knew it. That was part of the game too—because it was always “the game,” they called it. Another part was The Rat’s training of his memory, and bringing home his proofs of advance at night when he returned from his walk and could describe, or recite, or roughly sketch all he had seen in his passage from one place to another. Marco’s part was to recall and sketch faces. Loristan one night gave him a number of photographs of people to commit to memory. Under each face was written the name of a place.

      “Learn these faces,” he said, “until you would know each one of them at once wheresoever you met it. Fix them upon your mind, so that it will be impossible for you to forget them. You must be able to sketch any one of them and recall the city or town or neighborhood connected with it.”

      Even this was still called “the game,” but Marco began to know in his secret heart that it was so much more, that his hand sometimes trembled with excitement as he made his sketches over and over again. To make each one many times was the best way to imbed it in his memory. The Rat knew, too, though he had no reason for knowing, but mere instinct. He used to lie awake in the night and think it over and remember what Loristan had said of the time coming when Marco might need a comrade in his work. What was his work to be? It was to be something like “the game.” And they were being prepared for it. And though Marco often lay awake on his bed when The Rat lay awake on his sofa, neither boy spoke to the other of the thing his mind dwelt on. And Marco worked as he had never worked before. The game was very exciting when he could prove his prowess. The four gathered together at night in the back sitting-room. Lazarus was obliged to be with them because a second judge was needed. Loristan would mention the name of a place, perhaps a street in Paris or a hotel in Vienna, and Marco would at once make a rapid sketch of the face under whose photograph the name of the locality had been written. It was not long before he could begin his sketch without more than a moment’s hesitation. And yet even when this had become the case, they still played the game night after night. There was a great hotel near the Place de la Concorde in Paris, of which Marco felt he should never hear the name during all his life without there starting up before his mental vision a tall woman with fierce black eyes and a delicate high-bridged nose across which the strong eyebrows almost met. In Vienna there was a palace which would always bring back at once a pale cold-faced man with a heavy blonde lock which fell over his forehead. A certain street in Munich meant a stout genial old aristocrat with a sly smile; a village in Bavaria, a peasant with a vacant and simple countenance. A curled and smoothed man who looked like a hair-dresser brought up a place in an Austrian mountain town. He knew them all as he knew his own face and No. 7 Philibert Place.

      But still night after night the game was played.

      Then came a night when, out of a deep sleep, he was awakened by Lazarus touching him. He had so long been secretly ready to answer any call that he sat up straight in bed at the first touch.

      “Dress quickly and come down stairs,” Lazarus said. “The Prince is here and wishes to speak with you.”

      Marco made no answer but got out of bed and began to slip on his clothes.

      Lazarus touched The Rat.

      The Rat was as ready as Marco and sat upright as he had done.

      “Come down with the young Master,” he commanded. “It is necessary that you should be seen and spoken to.” And having given the order he went away.

      No one heard the shoeless feet of the two boys as they stole down the stairs.

      An elderly man in ordinary clothes, but with an unmistakable face, was sitting quietly talking to Loristan who with a gesture called both forward.

      “The Prince has been much interested in what I have told him of your game,” he said in his lowest voice. “He wishes to see you make your sketches, Marco.”

      Marco looked very straight into the Prince’s eyes which were fixed intently on him as he made his bow.

      “His Highness does me honor,” he said, as his father might have said it. He went to the table at once and took from a drawer his pencils and pieces of cardboard.

      “I should know he was your son and a Samavian,” the Prince remarked.

      Then his keen and deep-set eyes turned themselves on the boy with the crutches.

      “This,” said Loristan, “is the one who calls himself The Rat. He is one of us.”

      The Rat saluted.

      “Please tell him, sir,” he whispered, “that the crutches don’t