be long before it may be his part to do work in which he
will need a comrade who can be trusted--as a rock can be trusted."

He had said the very words The Rat's own mind had given to him.

"A Rock! A Rock!" the boy broke out. "Let me show you, sir. Send me
with him for a servant. The crutches are nothing. You've seen that
they're as good as legs, haven't you? I've trained myself."

"I know, I know, dear lad." Marco had told him all of it. He gave him
a gracious smile which seemed as if it held a sort of fine secret.
"You shall go as his aide-de-camp. It shall be part of the game."

He had always encouraged "the game," and during the last weeks had even
found time to help them in their plannings for the mysterious journey
of the Secret Two. He had been so interested that once or twice he had
called on Lazarus as an old soldier and Samavian to give his opinions
of certain routes--and of the customs and habits of people in towns and
villages by the way. Here they would find simple pastoral folk who
danced, sang after their day's work, and who would tell all they knew;
here they would find those who served or feared the Maranovitch and who
would not talk at all. In one place they would meet with hospitality,
in another with unfriendly suspicion of all strangers. Through talk
and stories The Rat began to know the country almost as Marco knew it.
That was part of the game too--because it was always "the game," they
called it. Another part was The Rat's training of his memory, and
bringing home his proofs of advance at night when he returned from his
walk and could describe, or recite, or roughly sketch all he had seen
in his passage from one place to another. Marco's part was to recall
and sketch faces. Loristan one night gave him a number of photographs
of people to commit to memory. Under each face was written the name of
a place.

"Learn these faces," he said, "until you would know each one of them at
once wheresoever you met it. Fix them upon your mind, so that it will
be impossible for you to forget them. You must be able to sketch any
one of them and recall the city or town or neighborhood connected with
it."

Even this was still called "the game," but Marco began to know in his
secret heart that it was so much more, that his hand sometimes trembled
with excitement as he made his sketches over and over again. To make
each one many times was the best way to imbed it in his memory. The
Rat knew, t