ovitch who have not already sworn allegiance to
King Ivor are dead on battlefields. The remainder are now Fedorovitch
and praising God for their King," was the answer Baron Rastka made him.

But Lazarus kept his guard unbroken. When he occupied the next
compartment to the one in which Marco traveled, he stood in the
corridor throughout the journey. When they descended at any point to
change trains, he followed close at the boy's heels, his fierce eyes on
every side at once and his hand on the weapon hidden in his broad
leather belt. When they stopped to rest in some city, he planted
himself in a chair by the bedroom door of his charge, and if he slept
he was not aware that nature had betrayed him into doing so.

If the journey made by the young Bearers of the Sign had been a strange
one, this was strange by its very contrast. Throughout that
pilgrimage, two uncared-for waifs in worn clothes had traveled from one
place to another, sometimes in third- or fourth-class continental
railroad carriages, sometimes in jolting diligences, sometimes in
peasants' carts, sometimes on foot by side roads and mountain paths,
and forest ways. Now, two well-dressed boys in the charge of two men
of the class whose orders are obeyed, journeyed in compartments
reserved for them, their traveling appurtenances supplying every
comfort that luxury could provide.

The Rat had not known that there were people who traveled in such a
manner; that wants could be so perfectly foreseen; that railroad
officials, porters at stations, the staff of restaurants, could be by
magic transformed into active and eager servants. To lean against the
upholstered back of a railway carriage and in luxurious ease look
through the window at passing beauties, and then to find books at your
elbow and excellent meals appearing at regular hours, these unknown
perfections made it necessary for him at times to pull himself together
and give all his energies to believing that he was quite awake. Awake
he was, and with much on his mind "to work out,"--so much, indeed, that
on the first day of the journey he had decided to give up the struggle,
and wait until fate made clear to him such things as he was to be
allowed to understand of the mystery of Stefan Loristan.

What he realized most clearly was that the fact that the son of Stefan
Loristan was being escorted in private state to the country his father
had given his life's work to, was never for a moment forgott