But none knew it as it was told in a certain quiet but stately room in the palace, where the man once known only as “Stefan Loristan,” but whom history would call the first King Ivor of Samavia, told his share of it to the boy whom Samavians had a strange and superstitious worship for, because he seemed so surely their Lost Prince restored in body and soul—­almost the kingly lad in the ancient portrait—­some of them half believed when he stood in the sunshine, with the halo about his head.

It was a wonderful and intense story, that of the long wanderings and the close hiding of the dangerous secret.  Among all those who had known that a man who was an impassioned patriot was laboring for Samavia, and using all the power of a great mind and the delicate ingenuity of a great genius to gain friends and favor for his unhappy country, there had been but one who had known that Stefan Loristan had a claim to the Samavian throne.  He had made no claim, he had sought—­not a crown—­but the final freedom of the nation for which his love had been a religion.

“Not the crown!” he said to the two young Bearers of the Sign as they sat at his feet like schoolboys—­“not a throne.  ’The Life of my life—­for Samavia.’  That was what I worked for—­what we have all worked for.  If there had risen a wiser man in Samavia’s time of need, it would not have been for me to remind them of their Lost Prince.  I could have stood aside.  But no man arose.  The crucial moment came—­and the one man who knew the secret, revealed it.  Then—­Samavia called, and I answered.”

He put his hand on the thick, black hair of his boy’s head.

“There was a thing we never spoke of together,” he said.  “I believed always that your mother died of her bitter fears for me and the unending strain of them.  She was very young and loving, and knew that there was no day when we parted that we were sure of seeing each other alive again.  When she died, she begged me to promise that your boyhood and youth should not be burdened by the knowledge she had found it so terrible to bear.  I should have kept the secret from you, even if she had not so implored me.  I had never meant that you should know the truth until you were a man.  If I had died, a certain document would have been sent to you which would have left my task in your hands and made my plans clear.  You would have known then that you also were a Prince Ivor, who must take up his country’s burden and be ready when Samavia called.  I tried to help you to train yourself for any task.  You never failed me.”

“Your Majesty,” said The Rat, “I began to work it out, and think it must be true that night when we were with the old woman on the top of the mountain.  It was the way she looked at—­at His Highness.”

“Say ‘Marco,’” threw in Prince Ivor.  “It’s easier.  He was my army, Father.”

Stefan Loristan’s grave eyes melted.

“Say ‘Marco,’” he said.  “You were his army—­and more—­when we both needed one.  It was you who invented the Game!”