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round it that he might make a note in his memory of its size and form and its entrances, and guess at the size of its gardens. This he did because it was part of his game, and part of his strange training.
    When he came back to the front, he saw that in the great entrance court within the high iron railings an elegant but quiet-looking closed carriage was drawing up before the doorway. Marco stood and watched with interest to see who would come out and enter it. He knew that kings and emperors who were not on parade looked merely like well-dressed private gentlemen, and often chose to go out as simply and quietly as other men. So he thought that, perhaps, if he waited, he might see one of those well-known faces which represent the highest rank and power in a monarchical country, and which in times gone by had also represented the power over human life and death and liberty.
    ‘I should like to be able to tell my father that I have seen the King and know his face, as I know the faces of the tsar and the two emperors.’
    There was a little movement among the tall menservants in the royal scarlet liveries, and an elderly man descended the steps attended by another who walked behind him. He entered the carriage, the other man followed him, the door was closed, and the carriage drove through the entrance gates, where the sentries saluted.
    Marco was near enough to see distinctly. The two men were talking as if interested. The face of the one farthest from him was the face he had often seen in shop-windows and newspapers. The boy made his quick, formal salute. It was the King; and, as he smiled and acknowledged his greeting, he spoke to his companion.
    ‘That fine lad salutes as if he belonged to the army,’ was what he said, though Marco could not hear him.
    His companion leaned forward to look through the window. When he caught sight of Marco, a singular expression crossed his face.
    ‘He does belong to an army, sir,’ he answered, ‘though he does not know it. His name is Marco Loristan.’
    Then Marco saw him plainly for the first time. He was the man with the keen eyes who had spoken to him in Samavian.

chapter four

    the rat
    Marco would have wondered very much if he had heard the words, but, as he did not hear them, he turned toward home wondering at something else. A man who was in intimate attendance on a king must be a person of importance. He no doubt knew many things not only of his own ruler’s country, but of the countries of other kings. But so few had really known anything of poor little Samavia until the newspapers had begun to tell them of the horrors of its war – and who but a Samavian could speak its language? It would be an interesting thing to tell his father – that a man who knew the King had spoken to him in Samavian, and had sent that curious message.
    Later he found himself passing a side street and looked up it. It was so narrow, and on either side of it were such old, tall, and sloping-walled houses that it attracted his attention. It looked as if a bit of old London had been left to stand while 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 endof it. Another thing than its queerness attracted him. He heard a clamour 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 clamour of play or wrangling, and had found a temporary friend or so.
    Halfway 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 grey flagged space, shut in by the railings of a black, deserted, and ancient graveyard behind a