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Just as he reached the door, Loristan said to him: "Make the most of this gift. It is a gift. And it is true your mind has had good training. The more you draw, the better. Draw everything you can." Neither the street lamps, nor the noises, nor his thoughts kept Marco awake when he went back to bed. But before he settled himself upon his pillow he gave himself certain orders.
The woman who kept the lodging-house had gone to bed, and so had the other lodgers and the maid of all work. All the lights were out except the one he saw a glimmer of under the door of his father's room. When he had been a mere baby, he had been taught to make a special sign on the door when he wished to speak to Loristan. He stood still outside the back sitting-room and made it now.
At a certain hour he was to present himself at a certain shop and receive a package. "Let him do it alone," Loristan said to Marco. "He will be better pleased. His desire is to feel that he is trusted to do things alone." So they parted at a street corner, Marco to walk back to No. 7 Philibert Place, The Rat to execute his commission.
Loristan was standing at the opening of the archway as Marco had stood that first day. He raised his right hand in return salute and came forward. "I was passing the end of the street and remembered the Barracks was here," he explained. "I thought I should like to look at your men, Captain." He smiled, but it was not a smile which made his words really a joke.
People turned and stared at his wild pale face as he almost shot past them. He had left himself barely breath enough to speak with when he reached the house and banged on the door with his crutch to save time. Both Loristan and Lazarus came to answer. The Rat leaned against the door gasping. "He's found! He's all right!" he panted. "Some one had locked him in a house and left him.
So, as Loristan had told him he would, he slept deeply and long; in fact, he slept through all the night. When he awakened it was morning, and Lazarus was standing by the side of the sofa looking down at him. "You will want to make yourself clean," he said. "It must be done." "Clean!" said The Rat, with his squeaky laugh.
But Loristan did not look as if he thought him stupid. Quite the contrary. He kept his handsome eyes fixed on him still in that curious way, as if he were studying him as if he were much more than twelve years old, and he were deciding to tell him something. "Comrade at arms," he said, with the smile which always gladdened Marco's heart, "you have kept your oath of allegiance like a man.
"Perhaps only boyhood," said Loristan, "could have dared to imagine it." "The Prince thanks you," he said after a few more words spoken aside to his visitor. "We both thank you. You may go back to your beds." And the boys went. A week had not passed before Marco brought to The Rat in their bedroom an envelope containing a number of slips of paper on each of which was written something.
"Yes, he would have come," Marco said. "He would have come if he had seen that he could help his people," Loristan answered, as if he were not reflecting on a story which was probably only a kind of legend. "But he was very young, and Samavia was in the hands of the new dynasty, and filled with his enemies. He could not have crossed the frontier without an army. Still, I think he died young."
"You could not fail even the weakest thing in the world." There was a moment's silence in which the two pairs of eyes dwelt on each other with the deepest meaning, and then Loristan rose to his feet. "The end will be all that our hearts most wish," he said. "To-morrow you may begin the new part of 'the Game. You may go to Paris."
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