“Where did you learn it?” The Rat asked, when the arms were stacked again and Marco was sitting by him as he had sat the previous day.

“From an old soldier.  And I like to watch it, as you do.”

“If you were a young swell in the Guards, you couldn’t be smarter at it,” The Rat said.  “The way you hold yourself!  The way you stand!  You’ve got it!  Wish I was you!  It comes natural to you.”

“I’ve always liked to watch it and try to do it myself.  I did when I was a little fellow,” answered Marco.

“I’ve been trying to kick it into these chaps for more than a year,” said The Rat.  “A nice job I had of it!  It nearly made me sick at first.”

The semicircle in front of him only giggled or laughed outright.  The members of it seemed to take very little offense at his cavalier treatment of them.  He had evidently something to give them which was entertaining enough to make up for his tyranny and indifference.  He thrust his hand into one of the pockets of his ragged coat, and drew out a piece of newspaper.

“My father brought home this, wrapped round a loaf of bread,” he said.  “See what it says there!”

He handed it to Marco, pointing to some words printed in large letters at the head of a column.  Marco looked at it and sat very still.

The words he read were:  “The Lost Prince.”

“Silence is still the order,” was the first thought which flashed through his mind.  “Silence is still the order.”

“What does it mean?” he said aloud.

“There isn’t much of it.  I wish there was more,” The Rat said fretfully.  “Read and see.  Of course they say it mayn’t be true—­but I believe it is.  They say that people think some one knows where he is—­at least where one of his descendants is.  It’d be the same thing.  He’d be the real king.  If he’d just show himself, it might stop all the fighting.  Just read.”

Marco read, and his skin prickled as the blood went racing through his body.  But his face did not change.  There was a sketch of the story of the Lost Prince to begin with.  It had been regarded by most people, the article said, as a sort of legend.  Now there was a definite rumor that it was not a legend at all, but a part of the long past history of Samavia.  It was said that through the centuries there had always been a party secretly loyal to the memory of this worshiped and lost Fedorovitch.  It was even said that from father to son, generation after generation after generation, had descended the oath of fealty to him and his descendants.  The people had made a god of him, and now, romantic as it seemed, it was beginning to be an open secret that some persons believed that a descendant had been found—­a Fedorovitch worthy of his young ancestor—­and that a certain Secret Party also held that, if he were called back to the throne of Samavia, the interminable wars and bloodshed would reach an end.

The Rat had begun to bite his nails fast.