“Until we reach Melzarr,” he had said with passion to the two gentlemen,—­“until I can stand before my Master and behold him embrace his son—­behold him—­I implore that I may not lose sight of him night or day.  On my knees, I implore that I may travel, armed, at his side.  I am but his servant, and have no right to occupy a place in the same carriage.  But put me anywhere.  I will be deaf, dumb, blind to all but himself.  Only permit me to be near enough to give my life if it is needed.  Let me say to my Master, ‘I never left him.’”

“We will find a place for you,” the elder man said, “and if you are so anxious, you may sleep across his threshold when we spend the night at a hotel.”

“I will not sleep!” said Lazarus.  “I will watch.  Suppose there should be demons of Maranovitch loose and infuriated in Europe?  Who knows!”

“The Maranovitch and Iarovitch who have not already sworn allegiance to King Ivor are dead on battlefields.  The remainder are now Fedorovitch and praising God for their King,” was the answer Baron Rastka made him.

But Lazarus kept his guard unbroken.  When he occupied the next compartment to the one in which Marco traveled, he stood in the corridor throughout the journey.  When they descended at any point to change trains, he followed close at the boy’s heels, his fierce eyes on every side at once and his hand on the weapon hidden in his broad leather belt.  When they stopped to rest in some city, he planted himself in a chair by the bedroom door of his charge, and if he slept he was not aware that nature had betrayed him into doing so.

If the journey made by the young Bearers of the Sign had been a strange one, this was strange by its very contrast.  Throughout that pilgrimage, two uncared-for waifs in worn clothes had traveled from one place to another, sometimes in third- or fourth-class continental railroad carriages, sometimes in jolting diligences, sometimes in peasants’ carts, sometimes on foot by side roads and mountain paths, and forest ways.  Now, two well-dressed boys in the charge of two men of the class whose orders are obeyed, journeyed in compartments reserved for them, their traveling appurtenances supplying every comfort that luxury could provide.

The Rat had not known that there were people who traveled in such a manner; that wants could be so perfectly foreseen; that railroad officials, porters at stations, the staff of restaurants, could be by magic transformed into active and eager servants.  To lean against the upholstered back of a railway carriage and in luxurious ease look through the window at passing beauties, and then to find books at your elbow and excellent meals appearing at regular hours, these unknown perfections made it necessary for him at times to pull himself together and give all his energies to believing that he was quite awake.  Awake he was, and with much on his mind “to work out,”—­so much, indeed, that on the first day of the journey he had decided to give up the struggle, and wait until fate made clear to him such things as he was to be allowed to understand of the mystery of Stefan Loristan.