"To the Power--to the Strength-place--to the Thought that does things.
The Buddhist hermit, who told my father about it, called it 'The
Thought that thought the World.'"

A reluctant suspicion betrayed itself in The Rat's eyes.

"Do you mean you prayed?" he inquired, with a slight touch of disfavor.

Marco's eyes remained fixed upon him in vague thoughtfulness for a
moment or so of pause.

"I don't know," he said at last. "Perhaps it's the same thing--when
you need something so much that you cry out loud for it. But it's not
words, it's a strong thing without a name. I called like that when I
was shut in the wine-cellar. I remembered some of the things the old
Buddhist told my father."

The Rat moved restlessly.

"The help came that time," he admitted. "How did it come to-night?"

"In that thought which flashed into my mind almost the next second. It
came like lightning. All at once I knew if I ran to the Chancellor and
said the woman was a spy, it would startle him into listening to me;
and that then I could give him the Sign; and that when I gave him the
Sign, he would know I was speaking the truth and would protect me."

"It was a splendid thought!" The Rat said. "And it was quick. But it
was you who thought of it."

"All thinking is part of the Big Thought," said Marco slowly. "It
KNOWS--It KNOWS. And the outside part of us somehow broke the chain
that linked us to It. And we are always trying to mend the chain,
without knowing it. That is what our thinking is--trying to mend the
chain. But we shall find out how to do it sometime. The old Buddhist
told my father so--just as the sun was rising from behind a high peak
of the Himalayas." Then he added hastily, "I am only telling you what
my father told me, and he only told me what the old hermit told him."

"Does your father believe what he told him?" The Rat's bewilderment
had become an eager and restless thing.

"Yes, he believes it. He always thought something like it, himself.
That is why he is so calm and knows so well how to wait."

"Is THAT it!" breathed The Rat. "Is that why? Has--has he mended the
chain?" And there was awe in his voice, because of this one man to
whom he felt any achievement was possible.

"I believe he has," said Marco. "Don't you think so yourself?"

"He has done something," The Rat said.

He seemed to be thinking things over before he spoke again--and then
even more slowly than Marco.

"If he could m