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.

"Your--sir!" he said. "God save the Prince!"

"Yes," Loristan answered, after a moment's hesitation,--"when he is
found." And he went back to his table smiling his beautiful smile.

The wonder of silence in the deserted streets of a great city, after
midnight has hushed all the roar and tumult to rest, is an almost
unbelievable thing. The stillness in the depths of a forest or on a
mountain top is not so strange. A few hours ago, the tumult was
rushing past; in a few hours more, it will be rushing past again.

But now the street is a naked thing; a distant policeman's tramp on the
bare pavement has a hollow and almost fearsome sound. It seemed
especially so to Marco as he crossed the road. Had it ever been so
empty and deadly silent before? Was it so every night? Perhaps it
was, when he was fast asleep on his lumpy mattress with the light from
a street lamp streaming into the room. He listened for the step of the
policeman on night-watch, because he did not wish to be seen. There
was a jutting wall where he could stand in the shadow while the man
passed. A policeman would stop to look questioningly at a boy who
walked up and down the pavement at half-past one in the morning. Marco
could wait until he had gone by, and then come out into the light and
look up and down the road and the cross streets.

He heard his approaching footsteps in a few minutes, and was safely in
the shadows before he could be seen. When the policeman passed, he
came out and walked slowly down the road, looking on each side, and now
and then looking back. At first no one was in sight. Then a late