ave some food,
and then we will talk together." He made a slight gesture in the
direction of the chair at the right hand of his own place.

The Rat hesitated again. What a swell he was! With that wave of the
hand he made you feel as if you were a fellow like himself, and he was
doing you some honor.

"I'm not--" The Rat broke off and jerked his head toward Marco. "He
knows--" he ended, "I've never sat at a table like this before."

"There is not much on it." Loristan made the slight gesture toward the
right-hand seat again and smiled. "Let us sit down."

The Rat obeyed him and the meal began. There were only bread and
coffee and a little butter before them. But Lazarus presented the cups
and plates on a small japanned tray as if it were a golden salver.
When he was not serving, he stood upright behind his master's chair, as
though he wore royal livery of scarlet and gold. To the boy who had
gnawed a bone or munched a crust wheresoever he found them, and with no
thought but of the appeasing of his own wolfish hunger, to watch the
two with whom he sat eat their simple food was a new thing. He knew
nothing of the every-day decencies of civilized people. The Rat liked
to look at them, and he found himself trying to hold his cup as
Loristan did, and to sit and move as Marco was sitting and
moving--taking his bread or butter, when it was held at his side by
Lazarus, as if it were a simple thing to be waited upon. Marco had had
things handed to him all his life, and it did not make him feel
awkward. The Rat knew that his own father had once lived like this.
He himself would have been at ease if chance had treated him fairly.
It made him scowl to think of it. But in a few minutes Loristan began
to talk about the copy of the map of Samavia. Then The Rat forgot
everything else and was ill at ease no more. He did not know that
Loristan was leading him on to explain his theories about the country
and the people and the war. He found himself telling all that he had
read, or overheard, or THOUGHT as he lay awake in his garret. He had
thought out a great many things in a way not at all like a boy's. His
strangely concentrated and over-mature mind had been full of military
schemes which Loristan listened to with curiosity and also with
amazement. He had become extraordinarily clever in one direction
because he had fixed all his mental powers on one thing. It seemed
scarcely natural that an untaught vagabond lad