XXVII

“IT IS THE LOST PRINCE!  IT IS IVOR!”

Many times since their journey had begun the boys had found their hearts beating with the thrill and excitement of things.  The story of which their lives had been a part was a pulse-quickening experience.  But as they carefully made their way down the steep steps leading seemingly into the bowels of the earth, both Marco and The Rat felt as though the old priest must hear the thudding in their young sides.

“‘The Forgers of the Sword.’  Remember every word they say,” The Rat whispered, “so that you can tell it to me afterwards.  Don’t forget anything!  I wish I knew Samavian.”

At the foot of the steps stood the man who was evidently the sentinel who worked the lever that turned the rock.  He was a big burly peasant with a good watchful face, and the priest gave him a greeting and a blessing as he took from him the lantern he held out.

They went through a narrow and dark passage, and down some more steps, and turned a corner into another corridor cut out of rock and earth.  It was a wider corridor, but still dark, so that Marco and The Rat had walked some yards before their eyes became sufficiently accustomed to the dim light to see that the walls themselves seemed made of arms stacked closely together.

“The Forgers of the Sword!” The Rat was unconsciously mumbling to himself, “The Forgers of the Sword!”

It must have taken years to cut out the rounding passage they threaded their way through, and longer years to forge the solid, bristling walls.  But The Rat remembered the story the stranger had told his drunken father, of the few mountain herdsmen who, in their savage grief and wrath over the loss of their prince, had banded themselves together with a solemn oath which had been handed down from generation to generation.  The Samavians were a long-memoried people, and the fact that their passion must be smothered had made it burn all the more fiercely.  Five hundred years ago they had first sworn their oath; and kings had come and gone, had died or been murdered, and dynasties had changed, but the Forgers of the Sword had not changed or forgotten their oath or wavered in their belief that some time—­some time, even after the long dark years—­the soul of their Lost Prince would be among them once more, and that they would kneel at the feet and kiss the hands of him for whose body that soul had been reborn.  And for the last hundred years their number and power and their hiding places had so increased that Samavia was at last honeycombed with them.  And they only waited, breathless,—­for the Lighting of the Lamp.

The old priest knew how breathlessly, and he knew what he was bringing them.  Marco and The Rat, in spite of their fond boy-imaginings, were not quite old enough to know how fierce and full of flaming eagerness the breathless waiting of savage full-grown men could be.  But there was a tense-strung thrill in knowing that they who were being led to them were the Bearers of the Sign.  The Rat went hot and cold; he gnawed his fingers as he went.  He could almost have shrieked aloud, in the intensity of his excitement, when the old priest stopped before a big black door!