stood out among all others as more distinguished than the most
noticeable of them. When he walked down a street, people turned to
look at him even oftener than they turned to look at Marco, and the boy
felt as if it was not merely because he was a big man with a handsome,
dark face, but because he looked, somehow, as if he had been born to
command armies, and as if no one would think of disobeying him. Yet
Marco had never seen him command any one, and they had always been
poor, and shabbily dressed, and often enough ill-fed. But whether they
were in one country or another, and whatsoever dark place they seemed
to be hiding in, the few people they saw treated him with a sort of
deference, and nearly always stood when they were in his presence,
unless he bade them sit down.

"It is because they know he is a patriot, and patriots are respected,"
the boy had told himself.

He himself wished to be a patriot, though he had never seen his own
country of Samavia. He knew it well, however. His father had talked
to him about it ever since that day when he had made the promises. He
had taught him to know it by helping him to study curious detailed maps
of it--maps of its cities, maps of its mountains, maps of its roads.
He had told him stories of the wrongs done its people, of their
sufferings and struggles for liberty, and, above all, of their
unconquerable courage. When they talked together of its history,
Marco's boy-blood burned and leaped in his veins, and he always knew,
by the look in his father's eyes, that his blood burned also. His
countrymen had been killed, they had been robbed, they had died by
thousands of cruelties and starvation, but their souls had never been
conquered, and, through all the years during which more powerful
nations crushed and enslaved them, they never ceased to struggle to
free themselves and stand unfettered as Samavians had stood centuries
before.

"Why do we not live there," Marco had cried on the day the promises
were made. "Why do we not go back and fight? When I am a man, I will
be a soldier and die for Samavia."

"We are of those who must LIVE for Samavia--working day and night," his
father had answered; "denying ourselves, training our bodies and souls,
using our brains, learning the things which are best to be done for our
people and our country. Even exiles may be Samavian soldiers--I am
one, you must be one."

"Are we exiles?" asked Marco.

"Yes," was the answer. "