trained to seem to know only the language of the country he was
temporarily living in? But he had not forgotten. He had remembered
well, and was thankful that he had betrayed nothing. "Even exiles may
be Samavian soldiers. I am one. You must be one," his father had said
on that day long ago when he had made him take his oath. Perhaps
remembering his training was being a soldier. Never had Samavia needed
help as she needed it to-day. Two years before, a rival claimant to
the throne had assassinated the then reigning king and his sons, and
since then, bloody war and tumult had raged. The new king was a
powerful man, and had a great following of the worst and most
self-seeking of the people. Neighboring countries had interfered for
their own welfare's sake, and the newspapers had been full of stories
of savage fighting and atrocities, and of starving peasants.

Marco had late one evening entered their lodgings to find Loristan
walking to and fro like a lion in a cage, a paper crushed and torn in
his hands, and his eyes blazing. He had been reading of cruelties
wrought upon innocent peasants and women and children. Lazarus was
standing staring at him with huge tears running down his cheeks. When
Marco opened the door, the old soldier strode over to him, turned him
about, and led him out of the room.

"Pardon, sir, pardon!" he sobbed. "No one must see him, not even you.
He suffers so horribly."

He stood by a chair in Marco's own small bedroom, where he half pushed,
half led him. He bent his grizzled head, and wept like a beaten child.

"Dear God of those who are in pain, assuredly it is now the time to
give back to us our Lost Prince!" he said, and Marco knew the words
were a prayer, and wondered at the frenzied intensity of it, because it
seemed so wild a thing to pray for the return of a youth who had died
five hundred years before.

When he reached the palace, he was still thinking of the man who had
spoken to him. He was thinking of him even as he looked at the
majestic gray stone building and counted the number of its stories and
windows. He walked round it that he might make a note in his memory of
its size and form and its entrances, and guess at the size of its
gardens. This he did because it was part of his game, and part of his
strange training.

When he came back to the front, he saw that in the great entrance court
within the high iron railings an elegant but quiet-looking closed
carriage