Marco went forward and laid the sketch down before him.

“Look at it,” he said.  “I remember him well enough to draw that.  I thought of it all at once—­that I could make a sort of picture.  Do you think it is like him?” Loristan examined it closely.

“It is very like him,” he answered.  “You have made me feel entirely safe.  Thanks, Comrade.  It was a good idea.”

There was relief in the grip he gave the boy’s hand, and Marco turned away with an exultant feeling.  Just as he reached the door, Loristan said to him: 

“Make the most of this gift.  It is a gift.  And it is true your mind has had good training.  The more you draw, the better.  Draw everything you can.”

Neither the street lamps, nor the noises, nor his thoughts kept Marco awake when he went back to bed.  But before he settled himself upon his pillow he gave himself certain orders.  He had both read, and heard Loristan say, that the mind can control the body when people once find out that it can do so.  He had tried experiments himself, and had found out some curious things.  One was that if he told himself to remember a certain thing at a certain time, he usually found that he did remember it.  Something in his brain seemed to remind him.  He had often tried the experiment of telling himself to awaken at a particular hour, and had awakened almost exactly at the moment by the clock.

“I will sleep until one o’clock,” he said as he shut his eyes.  “Then I will awaken and feel quite fresh.  I shall not be sleepy at all.”

He slept as soundly as a boy can sleep.  And at one o’clock exactly he awakened, and found the street lamp still throwing its light through the window.  He knew it was one o’clock, because there was a cheap little round clock on the table, and he could see the time.  He was quite fresh and not at all sleepy.  His experiment had succeeded again.

He got up and dressed.  Then he went down-stairs as noiselessly as before.  He carried his shoes in his hands, as he meant to put them on only when he reached the street.  He made his sign at his father’s door, and it was Loristan who opened it.

“Shall I go now?” Marco asked.

“Yes.  Walk slowly to the other side of the street.  Look in every direction.  We do not know where he will come from.  After you have given him the sign, then come in and go to bed again.”

Marco saluted as a soldier would have done on receiving an order.

Then, without a second’s delay, he passed noiselessly out of the house.

Loristan turned back into the room and stood silently in the center of it.  The long lines of his handsome body looked particularly erect and stately, and his eyes were glowing as if something deeply moved him.

“There grows a man for Samavia,” he said to Lazarus, who watched him.  “God be thanked!”

Lazarus’s voice was low and hoarse, and he saluted quite reverently.