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"Comrade!" said The Rat, taking his hand. "We will face death and danger together!" "God save Samavia!" answered Marco. And the game was at an end for the day. The primest thing, the Squad said, The Rat had ever made up for them. "'E wos a wonder, he wos!"
He had been to Samavia, and knew a great deal about it. He said it was one of the most beautiful countries he had ever traveled in and the most fertile. That's what they all say of it." The group before him knew nothing of fertility or open country. They only knew London back streets and courts.
Then the strange story of the uncrowned kings who, wandering in other lands, lived and died in silence and seclusion, often laboring with their hands for their daily bread, but never forgetting that they must be kings, and ready, even though Samavia never called. Perhaps the whole story would fill too many volumes to admit of it ever being told fully.
It seemed to make exquisitely real to him the fact that he was in Samavia that the Lamp was lighted and his work was nearly done. The Rat awakened when he did, and for a few minutes both lay on their backs without speaking. At last Marco said, "The stars are coming out. We can begin to climb, Aide-de-camp." Then they both got up and looked at each other. "The last one!" The Rat said.
Among all those who had known that a man who was an impassioned patriot was laboring for Samavia, and using all the power of a great mind and the delicate ingenuity of a great genius to gain friends and favor for his unhappy country, there had been but one who had known that Stefan Loristan had a claim to the Samavian throne.
If there had risen a wiser man in Samavia's time of need, it would not have been for me to remind them of their Lost Prince. I could have stood aside. But no man arose. The crucial moment came and the one man who knew the secret, revealed it. Then Samavia called, and I answered." He put his hand on the thick, black hair of his boy's head. "There was a thing we never spoke of together," he said.
Through all the hours he was only alive enough to be conscious of two things all the rest of him seemed gone from his body: his thought knew that his work was unfinished and his body heard the jackals howl!" "Was the work for Samavia?" The Rat put in quickly. "If he had died that night, the descendant of the Lost Prince never would have been found never!"
He seized Loristan's hand, and knelt on one knee and kissed it. An English or American boy could not have done such a thing from unaffected natural impulse. But he was of warm Southern blood. "I took my oath of allegiance to you, Father, when I took it to Samavia. It seems as if you were Samavia, too," he said, and kissed his hand again.
He had made no claim, he had sought not a crown but the final freedom of the nation for which his love had been a religion. "Not the crown!" he said to the two young Bearers of the Sign as they sat at his feet like schoolboys "not a throne. 'The Life of my life for Samavia. That was what I worked for what we have all worked for.
Then perhaps sometime he married somebody and had a son, and told him as a secret who he was and all about Samavia." The Rat began to look vengeful. "If I'd bin him I'd have told him not to forget what the Maranovitch had done to me. I'd have told him that if I couldn't get back the throne, he must see what he could do when he grew to be a man.
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