Loristan walked slowly up and down the back sitting-room and listened to Marco, who sat by the small fire and talked.
“Go on,'' he said, whenever the boy stopped. “I want to hear it all. He's a strange lad, and it's a splendid game.''
Marco was telling him the story of his second and third visits to the inclosure behind the deserted church-yard. He had begun at the beginning, and his father had listened with a deep interest.
A year later, Marco recalled this evening as a thrilling memory, and as one which would never pass away from him throughout his life. He would always be able to call it all back. The small and dingy back room, the dimness of the one poor gas-burner, which was all they could afford to light, the iron box pushed into the corner with its maps and plans locked safely in it, the erect bearing and actual beauty of the tall form, which the shabbiness of worn and mended clothes could not hide or dim. Not even rags and tatters could have made Loristan seem insignificant or undistinguished. He was always the same. His eyes seemed darker and more wonderful than ever in their remote thoughtfulness and interest as he spoke.
“Go on,'' he said. “It is a splendid game. And it is curious.
He has thought it out well. The lad is a born soldier.''
“It is not a game to him,'' Marco said. “And it is not a game to me. The Squad is only playing, but with him it's quite different. He knows he'll never really get what he wants, but he feels as if this was something near it. He said I might show you the map he made. Father, look at it.''
He gave Loristan the clean copy of The Rat's map of Samavia. The city of Melzarr was marked with certain signs. They were to show at what points The Rat--if he had been a Samavian general --would have attacked the capital. As Marco pointed them out, he explained The Rat's reasons for his planning.
Loristan held the paper for some minutes. He fixed his eyes on it curiously, and his black brows drew themselves together.
“This is very wonderful!'' he said at last. “He is quite right. They might have got in there, and for the very reasons he hit on.
How did he learn all this?''
“He thinks of nothing else now,'' answered Marco. “He has always thought of wars and made plans for battles. He's not like the rest of the Squad. His father is nearly always drunk, but he is very well educated, and, when he is only half drunk, he likes to talk.
The Rat asks him questions then, and leads him on until he finds out a great deal. Then he begs old newspapers, and he hides himself in corners and listens to what people are saying. He says he lies awake at night thinking it out, and he thinks about it all the day. That was why he got up the Squad.''
Loristan had continued examining the paper.
“Tell him,'' he said, when he refolded and handed it back, “that I studied his map, and he may be proud of it. You may also tell him--'' and he smiled quietly as he spoke--“that in my opinion he is right. The Iarovitch would have held Melzarr to-day if he had led them.''
Marco was full of exultation.
“I thought you would say he was right. I felt sure you would.
That is what makes me want to tell you the rest,'' he hurried on.
“If you think he is right about the rest too--'' He stopped awkwardly because of a sudden wild thought which rushed upon him.
“I don't know what you will think,'' he stammered. “Perhaps it will seem to you as if the game--as if that part of it could--could only be a game.''
He was so fervent in spite of his hesitation that Loristan began to watch him with sympathetic respect, as he always did when the boy was trying to express something he was not sure of. One of the great bonds between them was that Loristan was always interested in his boyish mental processes--in the way in which his thoughts led him to any conclusion.
“Go on,'' he said again. “I am like The Rat and I am like you.
It has not seemed quite like a game to me, so far.''
He sat down at the writing-table and Marco, in his eagerness, drew nearer and leaned against it, resting on his arms and lowering his voice, though it was always their habit to speak at such a pitch that no one outside the room they were in could distinguish what they said.
“It is The Rat's plan for giving the signal for a Rising,'' he said.
Loristan made a slight movement.
“Does he think there will be a Rising?'' he asked.
“He says that must be what the Secret Party has been preparing for all these years. And it must come soon. The other nations see that the fighting must be put an end to even if they have to stop it themselves. And if the real King is found--but when The Rat bought the newspaper there was nothing in it about where he was.
It was only a sort of rumor. Nobody seemed to know anything.''
He stopped a few seconds, but he did not utter the words which were in his mind. He did not say: “But YOU know.''
“And The Rat has a plan for giving the signal?'' Loristan said.
Marco forgot his first feeling of hesitation. He began to see the plan again as he had seen it when The Rat talked. He began to speak as The Rat had spoken, forgetting that it was a game.
He made even a clearer picture than The Rat had made of the two vagabond boys--one of them a cripple--making their way from one place to another, quite free to carry messages or warnings where they chose, because they were so insignificant and poor-looking that no one could think of them as anything but waifs and strays, belonging to nobody and blown about by the wind of poverty and chance. He felt as if he wanted to convince his father that the plan was a possible one. He did not quite know why he felt so anxious to win his approval of the scheme--as if it were real--as if it could actually be done. But this feeling was what inspired him to enter into new details and suggest possibilities.
“A boy who was a cripple and one who was only a street singer and a sort of beggar could get almost anywhere,'' he said.
