The Frances Hodgson Burnett MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson Burnett

he said to Marco, “I am at your command, but the Master left me with an order which I was to repeat to you. He requested you not to read the newspapers until he himself could see you again.”

      Both boys fell back.

      “Not read the papers!” they exclaimed together.

      Lazarus had never before been quite so reverential and ceremonious.

      “Your pardon, sir,” he said. “I may read them at your orders, and report such things as it is well that you should know. There have been dark tales told and there may be darker ones. He asked that you would not read for yourself. If you meet again—when you meet again”—he corrected himself hastily—“when you meet again, he says you will understand. I am your servant. I will read and answer all such questions as I can.”

      The Rat handed him the paper and they returned to the back room together.

      “You shall tell us what he would wish us to hear,” Marco said.

      The news was soon told. The story was not a long one as exact details had not yet reached London. It was briefly that the head of the Maranovitch party had been put to death by infuriated soldiers of his own army. It was an army drawn chiefly from a peasantry which did not love its leaders, or wish to fight, and suffering and brutal treatment had at last roused it to furious revolt.

      “What next?” said Marco.

      “If I were a Samavian—” began The Rat and then he stopped.

      Lazarus stood biting his lips, but staring stonily at the carpet. Not The Rat alone but Marco also noted a grim change in him. It was grim because it suggested that he was holding himself under an iron control. It was as if while tortured by anxiety he had sworn not to allow himself to look anxious and the resolve set his jaw hard and carved new lines in his rugged face. Each boy thought this in secret, but did not wish to put it into words. If he was anxious, he could only be so for one reason, and each realized what the reason must be. Loristan had gone to Samavia—to the torn and bleeding country filled with riot and danger. If he had gone, it could only have been because its danger called him and he went to face it at its worst. Lazarus had been left behind to watch over them. Silence was still the order, and what he knew he could not tell them, and perhaps he knew little more than that a great life might be lost.

      Because his master was absent, the old soldier seemed to feel that he must comfort himself with a greater ceremonial reverence than he had ever shown before. He held himself within call, and at Marco’s orders, as it had been his custom to hold himself with regard to Loristan. The ceremonious service even extended itself to The Rat, who appeared to have taken a new place in his mind. He also seemed now to be a person to be waited upon and replied to with dignity and formal respect.

      When the evening meal was served, Lazarus drew out Loristan’s chair at the head of the table and stood behind it with a majestic air.

      “Sir,” he said to Marco, “the Master requested that you take his seat at the table until—while he is not with you.”

      Marco took the seat in silence.

      At two o’clock in the morning, when the roaring road was still, the light from the street lamp, shining into the small bedroom, fell on two pale boy faces. The Rat sat up on his sofa bed in the old way with his hands clasped round his knees. Marco lay flat on his hard pillow. Neither of them had been to sleep and yet they had not talked a great deal. Each had secretly guessed a good deal of what the other did not say.

      “There is one thing we must remember,” Marco had said, early in the night. “We must not be afraid.”

      “No,” answered The Rat, almost fiercely, “we must not be afraid.”

      “We are tired; we came back expecting to be able to tell it all to him. We have always been looking forward to that. We never thought once that he might be gone. And he was gone. Did you feel as if—” he turned towards the sofa, “as if something had struck you on the chest?”

      “Yes,” The Rat answered heavily. “Yes.”

      “We weren’t ready,” said Marco. “He had never gone before; but we ought to have known he might some day be—called. He went because he was called. He told us to wait. We don’t know what we are waiting for, but we know that we must not be afraid. To let ourselves be afraid would be breaking the Law.”

      “The Law!” groaned The Rat, dropping his head on his hands, “I’d forgotten about it.”

      “Let us remember it,” said Marco. “This is the time. ‘Hate not. Fear not!’” He repeated the last words again and again. “Fear not! Fear not,” he said. “Nothing can harm him.”

      The Rat lifted his head, and looked at the bed sideways.

      “Did you think—” he said slowly—“did you ever think that perhaps he knew where the descendant of the Lost Prince was?”

      Marco answered even more slowly.

      “If any one knew—surely he might. He has known so much,” he said.

      “Listen to this!” broke forth The Rat. “I believe he has gone to tell the people. If he does—if he could show them—all the country would run mad with joy. It wouldn’t be only the Secret Party. All Samavia would rise and follow any flag he chose to raise. They’ve prayed for the Lost Prince for five hundred years, and if they believed they’d got him once more, they’d fight like madmen for him. But there would not be any one to fight. They’d all want the same thing! If they could see the man with Ivor’s blood in his veins, they’d feel he had come back to them—risen from the dead. They’d believe it!”

      He beat his fists together in his frenzy of excitement. “It’s the time! It’s the time!” he cried. “No man could let such a chance go by! He must tell them—he must. That must be what he’s gone for. He knows—he knows—he’s always known!” And he threw himself back on his sofa and flung his arms over his face, lying there panting.

      “If it is the time,” said Marco in a low, strained voice—“if it is, and he knows—he will tell them.” And he threw his arms up over his own face and lay quite still.

      Neither of them said another word, and the street lamp shone in on them as if it were waiting for something to happen. But nothing happened. In time they were asleep.

      XXIX

      ‘TWIXT NIGHT AND MORNING

      After this, they waited. They did not know what they waited for, nor could they guess even vaguely how the waiting would end. All that Lazarus could tell them he told. He would have been willing to stand respectfully for hours relating to Marco the story of how the period of their absence had passed for his Master and himself. He told how Loristan had spoken each day of his son, how he had often been pale with anxiousness, how in the evenings he had walked to and fro in his room, deep in thought, as he looked down unseeingly at the carpet.

      “He permitted me to talk of you, sir,” Lazarus said. “I saw that he wished to hear your name often. I reminded him of the times when you had been so young that most children of your age would have been in the hands of nurses, and yet you were strong and silent and sturdy and traveled with us as if you were not a child at all—never crying when you were tired and were not properly fed. As if you understood—as if you understood,” he added, proudly. “If, through the power of God a creature can be a man at six years old, you were that one. Many a dark day I have looked into your solemn, watching eyes, and have been half afraid; because that a child should answer one’s gaze so gravely seemed almost an unearthly thing.”

      “The chief thing I remember of those days,” said Marco, “is that he was with me, and that whenever I was hungry or tired, I knew he must be, too.”

      The feeling that they were “waiting” was so intense that it filled the days with strangeness. When the postman’s knock was heard at the door, each of them endeavored not to start. A letter might some day come which would tell them—they did not know what. But no letters came. When they