u 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 n