is forehead resting on his hand, as if absorbed in
thought. Then he made a gesture to Marco.

"Come here, Comrade," he said.

Marco went to him.

"To-night some one may come to talk with me about grave things," he
said. "I think he will come, but I cannot be quite sure. It is
important that he should know that, when he comes, he will find me
quite alone. He will come at a late hour, and Lazarus will open the
door quietly that no one may hear. It is important that no one should
see him. Some one must go and walk on the opposite side of the street
until he appears. Then the one who goes to give warning must cross the
pavement before him and say in a low voice, 'The Lamp is lighted!' and
at once turn quietly away."

What boy's heart would not have leaped with joy at the mystery of it!
Even a common and dull boy who knew nothing of Samavia would have felt
jerky. Marco's voice almost shook with the thrill of his feeling.

"How shall I know him?" he said at once. Without asking at all, he
knew he was the "some one" who was to go.

"You have seen him before," Loristan answered. "He is the man who
drove in the carriage with the King."

"I shall know him," said Marco. "When shall I go?"

"Not until it is half-past one o'clock. Go to bed and sleep until
Lazarus calls you." Then he added, "Look well at his face before you
speak. He will probably not be dressed as well as he was when you saw
him first."

Marco went up-stairs to his room and went to bed as he was told, but it
was hard to go to sleep. The rattle and roaring of the road did not
usually keep him awake, because he had lived in the poorer quarter of
too many big capital cities not to be accustomed to noise. But
to-night it seemed to him that, as he lay and looked out at the
lamplight, he heard every bus and cab which went past. He could not
help thinking of the people who were in them, and on top of them, and
of the people who were hurrying along on the pavement outside the
broken iron railings. He was wondering what they would think if they
knew that things connected with the battles they read of in the daily
papers were going on in one of the shabby houses they scarcely gave a
glance to as they went by them. It must be something connected with
the war, if a man who was a great diplomat and the companion of kings
came in secret to talk alone with a patriot who was a Samavian.
Whatever his father was doing was for the good of Samavia, and per