Because any school-boy who knew the map could have done the same thing, Marco drew them.  He also knew the stations the Secret Two would arrive at and leave by when they entered a city, the streets they would walk through and the very uniforms they would see; but of these things he said nothing.  The reality his knowledge gave to the game was, however, a thrilling thing.  He wished he could have been free to explain to The Rat the things he knew.  Together they could have worked out so many details of travel and possible adventure that it would have been almost as if they had set out on their journey in fact.

As it was, the mere sketching of the route fired The Rat’s imagination.  He forged ahead with the story of adventure, and filled it with such mysterious purport and design that the Squad at times gasped for breath.  In his glowing version the Secret Two entered cities by midnight and sang and begged at palace gates where kings driving outward paused to listen and were given the Sign.

“Though it would not always be kings,” he said.  “Sometimes it would be the poorest people.  Sometimes they might seem to be beggars like ourselves, when they were only Secret Ones disguised.  A great lord might wear poor clothes and pretend to be a workman, and we should only know him by the signs we had learned by heart.  When we were sent to Samavia, we should be obliged to creep in through some back part of the country where no fighting was being done and where no one would attack.  Their generals are not clever enough to protect the parts which are joined to friendly countries, and they have not forces enough.  Two boys could find a way in if they thought it out.”

He became possessed by the idea of thinking it out on the spot.  He drew his rough map of Samavia on the flagstones with his chalk.

“Look here,” he said to Marco, who, with the elated and thrilled Squad, bent over it in a close circle of heads.  “Beltrazo is here and Carnolitz is here—­and here is Jiardasia.  Beltrazo and Jiardasia are friendly, though they don’t take sides.  All the fighting is going on in the country about Melzarr.  There is no reason why they should prevent single travelers from coming in across the frontiers of friendly neighbors.  They’re not fighting with the countries outside, they are fighting with themselves.”  He paused a moment and thought.

“The article in that magazine said something about a huge forest on the eastern frontier.  That’s here.  We could wander into a forest and stay there until we’d planned all we wanted to do.  Even the people who had seen us would forget about us.  What we have to do is to make people feel as if we were nothing—­nothing.”

They were in the very midst of it, crowded together, leaning over, stretching necks and breathing quickly with excitement, when Marco lifted his head.  Some mysterious impulse made him do it in spite of himself.

“There’s my father!” he said.