end the chain," he said almost in a whisper, "he could
find out where the descendant of the Lost Prince is. He would know
what to do for Samavia!"

He ended the words with a start, and his whole face glowed with a new,
amazed light.

"Perhaps he does know!" he cried. "If the help comes like thoughts--as
yours did--perhaps his thought of letting us give the Sign was part of
it. We--just we two every-day boys--are part of it!"

"The old Buddhist said--" began Marco.

"Look here!" broke in The Rat. "Tell me the whole story. I want to
hear it."

It was because Loristan had heard it, and listened and believed, that
The Rat had taken fire. His imagination seized upon the idea, as it
would have seized on some theory of necromancy proved true and workable.

With his elbows on the table and his hands in his hair, he leaned
forward, twisting a lock with restless fingers. His breath quickened.

"Tell it," he said, "I want to hear it all!"

"I shall have to tell it in my own words," Marco said. "And it won't
be as wonderful as it was when my father told it to me. This is what I
remember:

"My father had gone through much pain and trouble. A great load was
upon him, and he had been told he was going to die before his work was
done. He had gone to India, because a man he was obliged to speak to
had gone there to hunt, and no one knew when he would return. My
father followed him for months from one wild place to another, and,
when he found him, the man would not hear or believe what he had come
so far to say. Then he had jungle-fever and almost died. Once the
natives left him for dead in a bungalow in the forest, and he heard the
jackals howling round him all the night. Through all the hours he was
only alive enough to be conscious of two things--all the rest of him
seemed gone from his body: his thought knew that his work was
unfinished--and his body heard the jackals howl!"

"Was the work for Samavia?" The Rat put in quickly. "If he had died
that night, the descendant of the Lost Prince never would have been
found--never!" The Rat bit his lip so hard that a drop of blood started
from it.

"When he was slowly coming alive again, a native, who had gone back and
stayed to wait upon him, told him that near the summit of a mountain,
about fifty miles away, there was a ledge which jutted out into space
and hung over the valley, which was thousands of feet below. On the
ledge there was a hut in which there liv