sted. The boy wanted to hear what Loristan would say.

"I'm going home now," he said. "If you're going to be here to-morrow,
I will try to come."

"We shall be here," The Rat answered. "It's our barracks."

Marco drew himself up smartly and made his salute as if to a superior
officer. Then he wheeled about and marched through the brick archway,
and the sound of his boyish tread was as regular and decided as if he
had been a man keeping time with his regiment.

"He's been drilled himself," said The Rat. "He knows as much as I do."

And he sat up and stared down the passage with new interest.

V

"SILENCE IS STILL THE ORDER"

They were even poorer than usual just now, and the supper Marco and his
father sat down to was scant enough. Lazarus stood upright behind his
master's chair and served him with strictest ceremony. Their poor
lodgings were always kept with a soldierly cleanliness and order. When
an object could be polished it was forced to shine, no grain of dust
was allowed to lie undisturbed, and this perfection was not attained
through the ministrations of a lodging house slavey. Lazarus made
himself extremely popular by taking the work of caring for his master's
rooms entirely out of the hands of the overburdened maids of all work.
He had learned to do many things in his young days in barracks. He
carried about with him coarse bits of table-cloths and towels, which he
laundered as if they had been the finest linen. He mended, he patched,
he darned, and in the hardest fight the poor must face--the fight with
dirt and dinginess--he always held his own. They had nothing but dry
bread and coffee this evening, but Lazarus had made the coffee and the
bread was good.

As Marco ate, he told his father the story of The Rat and his
followers. Loristan listened, as the boy had known he would, with the
far-off, intently-thinking smile in his dark eyes. It was a look which
always fascinated Marco because it meant that he was thinking so many
things. Perhaps he would tell some of them and perhaps he would not.
His spell over the boy lay in the fact that to him he seemed like a
wonderful book of which one had only glimpses. It was full of pictures
and adventures which were true, and one could not help continually
making guesses about them. Yes, the feeling that Marco had was that
his father's attraction for him was a sort of spell, and that others
felt the same thing. When he stood and talked to c