“It is nearly over now,” Marco said, after they had thrown themselves down in the forest in the early hours of one dewy morning.  “He said ’After Samavia, go back to London as quickly as you can—­as quickly as you can.’  He said it twice.  As if—­something were going to happen.”

“Perhaps it will happen more suddenly than we think—­the thing he meant,” answered The Rat.

Suddenly he sat up on his elbow and leaned towards Marco.

“We are in Samavia!” he said “We two are in Samavia!  And we are near the end!”

Marco rose on his elbow also.  He was very thin as a result of hard travel and scant feeding.  His thinness made his eyes look immense and black as pits.  But they burned and were beautiful with their own fire.

“Yes,” he said, breathing quickly.  “And though we do not know what the end will be, we have obeyed orders.  The Prince was next to the last one.  There is only one more.  The old priest.”

“I have wanted to see him more than I have wanted to see any of the others,” The Rat said.

“So have I,” Marco answered.  “His church is built on the side of this mountain.  I wonder what he will say to us.”

Both had the same reason for wanting to see him.  In his youth he had served in the monastery over the frontier—­the one which, till it was destroyed in a revolt, had treasured the five-hundred-year-old story of the beautiful royal lad brought to be hidden among the brotherhood by the ancient shepherd.  In the monastery the memory of the Lost Prince was as the memory of a saint.  It had been told that one of the early brothers, who was a decorator and a painter, had made a picture of him with a faint halo shining about his head.  The young acolyte who had served there must have heard wonderful legends.  But the monastery had been burned, and the young acolyte had in later years crossed the frontier and become the priest of a few mountaineers whose little church clung to the mountain side.  He had worked hard and faithfully and was worshipped by his people.  Only the secret Forgers of the Sword knew that his most ardent worshippers were those with whom he prayed and to whom he gave blessings in dark caverns under the earth, where arms piled themselves and men with dark strong faces sat together in the dim light and laid plans and wrought schemes.

This Marco and The Rat did not know as they talked of their desire to see him.

“He may not choose to tell us anything,” said Marco.  “When we have given him the Sign, he may turn away and say nothing as some of the others did.  He may have nothing to say which we should hear.  Silence may be the order for him, too.”

It would not be a long or dangerous climb to the little church on the rock.  They could sleep or rest all day and begin it at twilight.  So after they had talked of the old priest and had eaten their black bread, they settled themselves to sleep under cover of the thick tall ferns.