nd the places which, whether they called themselves
museums or not, were storehouses or relics of antiquity. There were
always the blessed "free days," when he could climb any marble steps,
and enter any great portal without paying an entrance fee. Once
inside, there were plenty of plainly and poorly dressed people to be
seen, but there were not often boys as young as himself who were not
attended by older companions. Quiet and orderly as he was, he often
found himself stared at. The game he had created for himself was as
simple as it was absorbing. It was to try how much he could remember
and clearly describe to his father when they sat together at night and
talked of what he had seen. These night talks filled his happiest
hours. He never felt lonely then, and when his father sat and watched
him with a certain curious and deep attention in his dark, reflective
eyes, the boy was utterly comforted and content. Sometimes he brought
back rough and crude sketches of objects he wished to ask questions
about, and Loristan could always relate to him the full, rich story of
the thing he wanted to know. They were stories made so splendid and
full of color in the telling that Marco could not forget them.

III

THE LEGEND OF THE LOST PRINCE

As he walked through the streets, he was thinking of one of these
stories. It was one he had heard first when he was very young, and it
had so seized upon his imagination that he had asked often for it. It
was, indeed, a part of the long-past history of Samavia, and he had
loved it for that reason. Lazarus had often told it to him, sometimes
adding much detail, but he had always liked best his father's version,
which seemed a thrilling and living thing. On their journey from
Russia, during an hour when they had been forced to wait in a cold
wayside station and had found the time long, Loristan had discussed it
with him. He always found some such way of making hard and comfortless
hours easier to live through.

"Fine, big lad--for a foreigner," Marco heard a man say to his
companion as he passed them this morning. "Looks like a Pole or a
Russian."

It was this which had led his thoughts back to the story of the Lost
Prince. He knew that most of the people who looked at him and called
him a "foreigner" had not even heard of Samavia. Those who chanced to
recall its existence knew of it only as a small fierce country, so
placed upon the map that the larger countries which