“In that thought which flashed into my mind almost the next second.  It came like lightning.  All at once I knew if I ran to the Chancellor and said the woman was a spy, it would startle him into listening to me; and that then I could give him the Sign; and that when I gave him the Sign, he would know I was speaking the truth and would protect me.”

“It was a splendid thought!” The Rat said.  “And it was quick.  But it was you who thought of it.”

“All thinking is part of the Big Thought,” said Marco slowly.  “It knows—­It knows.  And the outside part of us somehow broke the chain that linked us to It.  And we are always trying to mend the chain, without knowing it.  That is what our thinking is—­trying to mend the chain.  But we shall find out how to do it sometime.  The old Buddhist told my father so—­just as the sun was rising from behind a high peak of the Himalayas.”  Then he added hastily, “I am only telling you what my father told me, and he only told me what the old hermit told him.”

“Does your father believe what he told him?” The Rat’s bewilderment had become an eager and restless thing.

“Yes, he believes it.  He always thought something like it, himself.  That is why he is so calm and knows so well how to wait.”

“Is that it!” breathed The Rat.  “Is that why?  Has—­has he mended the chain?” And there was awe in his voice, because of this one man to whom he felt any achievement was possible.

“I believe he has,” said Marco.  “Don’t you think so yourself?”

“He has done something,” The Rat said.

He seemed to be thinking things over before he spoke again—­and then even more slowly than Marco.

“If he could mend the chain,” he said almost in a whisper, “he could find out where the descendant of the Lost Prince is.  He would know what to do for Samavia!”

He ended the words with a start, and his whole face glowed with a new, amazed light.

“Perhaps he does know!” he cried.  “If the help comes like thoughts—­as yours did—­perhaps his thought of letting us give the Sign was part of it.  We—­just we two every-day boys—­are part of it!”

“The old Buddhist said—­” began Marco.

“Look here!” broke in The Rat.  “Tell me the whole story.  I want to hear it.”

It was because Loristan had heard it, and listened and believed, that The Rat had taken fire.  His imagination seized upon the idea, as it would have seized on some theory of necromancy proved true and workable.

With his elbows on the table and his hands in his hair, he leaned forward, twisting a lock with restless fingers.  His breath quickened.

“Tell it,” he said, “I want to hear it all!”

“I shall have to tell it in my own words,” Marco said.  “And it won’t be as wonderful as it was when my father told it to me.  This is what I remember: