uty and happiness. For he was
never seen again.

In every nook and cranny, high and low, they sought for him, believing
that the king himself had made him prisoner in some secret place, or
had privately had him killed. The fury of the people grew to frenzy.
There were new risings, and every few days the palace was attacked and
searched again. But no trace of the prince was found. He had vanished
as a star vanishes when it drops from its place in the sky. During a
riot in the palace, when a last fruitless search was made, the king
himself was killed. A powerful noble who headed one of the uprisings
made himself king in his place. From that time, the once splendid
little kingdom was like a bone fought for by dogs. Its pastoral peace
was forgotten. It was torn and worried and shaken by stronger
countries. It tore and worried itself with internal fights. It
assassinated kings and created new ones. No man was sure in his youth
what ruler his maturity would live under, or whether his children would
die in useless fights, or through stress of poverty and cruel, useless
laws. There were no more shepherds and herdsmen who were poets, but on
the mountain sides and in the valleys sometimes some of the old songs
were sung. Those most beloved were songs about a Lost Prince whose name
had been Ivor. If he had been king, he would have saved Samavia, the
verses said, and all brave hearts believed that he would still return.
In the modern cities, one of the jocular cynical sayings was, "Yes,
that will happen when Prince Ivor comes again."

In his more childish days, Marco had been bitterly troubled by the
unsolved mystery. Where had he gone--the Lost Prince? Had he been
killed, or had he been hidden away in a dungeon? But he was so big and
brave, he would have broken out of any dungeon. The boy had invented
for himself a dozen endings to the story.

"Did no one ever find his sword or his cap--or hear anything or guess
anything about him ever--ever--ever?" he would say restlessly again and
again.

One winter's night, as they sat together before a small fire in a cold
room in a cold city in Austria, he had been so eager and asked so many
searching questions, that his father gave him an answer he had never
given him before, and which was a sort of ending to the story, though
not a satisfying one:

"Everybody guessed as you are guessing. A few very old shepherds in
the mountains who like to believe ancient histories