“He gave it to me just before he opened the private door,” Marco explained.  “And he said to me, ’It will not be long now.  After Samavia, go back to London as quickly as you can—­as quickly as you can!’”

“I wonder—­what he meant?” The Rat said, slowly.  A tremendous thought had shot through his mind.  But it was not a thought he could speak of to Marco.

“I cannot tell.  I thought that it was for some reason he did not expect me to know,” Marco said.  “We will do as he told us.  As quickly as we can.”  They looked over the newspapers, as they did every day.  All that could be gathered from any of them was that the opposing armies of Samavia seemed each to have reached the culmination of disaster and exhaustion.  Which party had the power left to take any final step which could call itself a victory, it was impossible to say.  Never had a country been in a more desperate case.

“It is the time!” said The Rat, glowering over his map.  “If the Secret Party rises suddenly now, it can take Melzarr almost without a blow.  It can sweep through the country and disarm both armies.  They’re weakened—­they’re half starved—­they’re bleeding to death; they want to be disarmed.  Only the Iarovitch and the Maranovitch keep on with the struggle because each is fighting for the power to tax the people and make slaves of them.  If the Secret Party does not rise, the people will, and they’ll rush on the palaces and kill every Maranovitch and Iarovitch they find.  And serve them right!”

“Let us spend the rest of the day in studying the road-map again,” said Marco.  “To-night we must be on the way to Samavia!”

XXVI

ACROSS THE FRONTIER

That one day, a week later, two tired and travel-worn boy-mendicants should drag themselves with slow and weary feet across the frontier line between Jiardasia and Samavia, was not an incident to awaken suspicion or even to attract attention.  War and hunger and anguish had left the country stunned and broken.  Since the worst had happened, no one was curious as to what would befall them next.  If Jiardasia herself had become a foe, instead of a friendly neighbor, and had sent across the border galloping hordes of soldiery, there would only have been more shrieks, and home-burnings, and slaughter which no one dare resist.  But, so far, Jiardasia had remained peaceful.  The two boys—­one of them on crutches—­had evidently traveled far on foot.  Their poor clothes were dusty and travel-stained, and they stopped and asked for water at the first hut across the line.  The one who walked without crutches had some coarse bread in a bag slung over his shoulder, and they sat on the roadside and ate it as if they were hungry.  The old grandmother who lived alone in the hut sat and stared at them without any curiosity.  She may have vaguely wondered why any one crossed into Samavia in these days.  But she did not care to