No one knows what is going to happen.  How did you learn to drill the club?”

“I hang about barracks.  I watch and listen.  I follow soldiers.  If I could get books, I’d read about wars.  I can’t go to libraries as you can.  I can do nothing but scuffle about like a rat.”

“I can take you to some libraries,” said Marco.  “There are places where boys can get in.  And I can get some papers from my father.”

“Can you?” said The Rat.  “Do you want to join the club?”

“Yes!” Marco answered.  “I’ll speak to my father about it.”

He said it because the hungry longing for companionship in his own mind had found a sort of response in the queer hungry look in The Rat’s eyes.  He wanted to see him again.  Strange creature as he was, there was attraction in him.  Scuffling about on his low wheeled platform, he had drawn this group of rough lads to him and made himself their commander.  They obeyed him; they listened to his stories and harangues about war and soldiering; they let him drill them and give them orders.  Marco knew that, when he told his father about him, he would be interested.  The boy wanted to hear what Loristan would say.

“I’m going home now,” he said.  “If you’re going to be here to-morrow, I will try to come.”

“We shall be here,” The Rat answered.  “It’s our barracks.”

Marco drew himself up smartly and made his salute as if to a superior officer.  Then he wheeled about and marched through the brick archway, and the sound of his boyish tread was as regular and decided as if he had been a man keeping time with his regiment.

“He’s been drilled himself,” said The Rat.  “He knows as much as I do.”

And he sat up and stared down the passage with new interest.

V

“Silence is still the order”

They were even poorer than usual just now, and the supper Marco and his father sat down to was scant enough.  Lazarus stood upright behind his master’s chair and served him with strictest ceremony.  Their poor lodgings were always kept with a soldierly cleanliness and order.  When an object could be polished it was forced to shine, no grain of dust was allowed to lie undisturbed, and this perfection was not attained through the ministrations of a lodging house slavey.  Lazarus made himself extremely popular by taking the work of caring for his master’s rooms entirely out of the hands of the overburdened maids of all work.  He had learned to do many things in his young days in barracks.  He carried about with him coarse bits of table-cloths and towels, which he laundered as if they had been the finest linen.  He mended, he patched, he darned, and in the hardest fight the poor must face—­the fight with dirt and dinginess—­he always held his own.  They had nothing but dry bread and coffee this evening, but Lazarus had made the coffee and the bread was good.