ce suddenly dropped--as if
it dropped into a pit. "You'll see it all. But I shall not."

Then Marco awoke from his dream and lifted his head. "Why not?" he
demanded. It sounded like a demand.

"Because I know better than to expect it!" The Rat groaned. "You've
taken me a long way, but you can't take me to the palace of a king.
I'm not such a fool as to think that, even of your father--"

He broke off because Marco did more than lift his head. He sat upright.

"You bore the Sign as much as I did," he said. "We bore it together."

"Who would have listened to ME?" cried The Rat. "YOU were the son of
Stefan Loristan."

"You were the friend of his son," answered Marco. "You went at the
command of Stefan Loristan. You were the ARMY of the son of Stefan
Loristan. That I have told you. Where I go, you will go. We will say
no more of this--not one word."

And he lay down again in the silence of a prince of the blood. And The
Rat knew that he meant what he said, and that Stefan Loristan also
would mean it. And because he was a boy, he began to wonder what Mrs.
Beedle would do when she heard what had happened--what had been
happening all the time a tall, shabby "foreigner" had lived in her
dingy back sitting-room, and been closely watched lest he should go
away without paying his rent, as shabby foreigners sometimes did. The
Rat saw himself managing to poise himself very erect on his crutches
while he told her that the shabby foreigner was--well, was at least the
friend of a King, and had given him his crown--and would be made a
prince and a Commander-in-Chief--and a Prime Minister--because there
was no higher rank or honor to give him. And his son--whom she had
insulted--was Samavia's idol because he had borne the Sign. And also
that if she were in Samavia, and Marco chose to do it he could batter
her wretched lodging-house to the ground and put her in a prison--"and
serve her jolly well right!"

The next day passed, and the next; and then there came a letter. It was
from Loristan, and Marco turned pale when Lazarus handed it to him.
Lazarus and The Rat went out of the room at once, and left him to read
it alone. It was evidently not a long letter, because it was not many
minutes before Marco called them again into the room.

"In a few days, messengers--friends of my father's--will come to take
us to Samavia. You and I and Lazarus are to go," he said to The Rat.

"God be thanked!" said Lazarus. "God