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Updated: May 28, 2025
Marco's joy was exuberant but only for a moment; then he grew thoughtful, then sad; and when he heard me tell Dowley I should have Dickon, the boss mason, and Smug, the boss wheelwright, out there, too, the coal-dust on his face turned to chalk, and he lost his grip. But I knew what was the matter with him; it was the expense.
I am glad of it. Once a guide, always a guide." He knelt down to measure Marco's foot, and Marco bent a little forward. "The Lamp is lighted," he said. There was no one in the shop, but the door was open and people were passing in the narrow street; so the shoemaker did not lift his red head. He went on measuring. "God be thanked!" he said, in a low voice.
The restless questioning had so directed the older man's attention to his son and Marco that nothing could have been said to Heinrich without his observing it. "I could not have spoken if he had been the man," Marco said to himself. Their very exit from the shop seemed a little hurried. When they were fairly in the street, The Rat made a clutch at Marco's arm.
The hours of Marco's unexplained absence had been terrible to Loristan and to Lazarus. They had reason for fears which it was not possible for them to express. As the night drew on, the fears took stronger form.
They felt only that a personage was before them, and that it was not possible to question his air of absolute and serene authority. He laid his hand on Marco's shoulder and held it there as he spoke. When Marco looked up at him and felt the closeness of his touch, it seemed as if it were an embrace as if he had caught him to his breast. "My boy knew nothing of these people," he said.
He sometimes, indeed, awakened from his deep sleep on the hard and narrow sofa in Marco's room, and found that he was saying them half aloud to himself. The hardness of the sofa did not prevent his resting as he had never rested before in his life. By contrast with the past he had known, this poor existence was comfort which verged on luxury.
He held himself within call, and at Marco's orders, as it had been his custom to hold himself with regard to Loristan. The ceremonious service even extended itself to The Rat, who appeared to have taken a new place in his mind. He also seemed now to be a person to be waited upon and replied to with dignity and formal respect.
The rest was torn, I can not describe the impression that sad letter made on me; I turned it over and saw on the other side Marco's address and the date that of the evening previous. "Is she dead? Who is dead?" I cried going to the alcove. "Dead! Who?" Marco opened her eyes. She saw me with the letter in my hand. "It is my mother," she said, "who is dead. You are not coming?"
In 1271, when Marco was seventeen years old, he accompanied his father and uncle on a journey through the Holy Land, Persia and Tartary, and at length to the Empire of China then called Ca-thay'. It took the travelers three years to reach Cathay. Marco's father and uncle had been in Cathay once before and had entertained Kublai Khan by telling him about the manners and customs of Europe.
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.
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