k with you?" asked Marco.

"Wouldn't you mind walking with a cripple?"

"Don't call yourself that," said Marco. "We can talk together, and try
to remember everything we see as we go along."

"I want to learn to remember things. I'd like to train myself in that
way too," The Rat answered. "I'd give anything to know some of the
things your father taught you. I've got a good memory. I remember a
lot of things I don't want to remember. Will you go this morning?"

That morning they went, and Loristan was told the reason for their
walk. But though he knew one reason, he did not know all about it.
When The Rat was allowed his "turn" of the boot-brushing, he told more
to Lazarus.

"What I want to do," he said, "is not only walk as fast as other people
do, but faster. Acrobats train themselves to do anything. It's
training that does it. There might come a time when he might need some
one to go on an errand quickly, and I'm going to be ready. I'm going
to train myself until he needn't think of me as if I were only a
cripple who can't do things and has to be taken care of. I want him to
know that I'm really as strong as Marco, and where Marco can go I can
go."

"He" was what he always said, and Lazarus always understood without
explanation.

"'The Master' is your name for him," he had explained at the beginning.
"And I can't call him just 'Mister' Loristan. It sounds like cheek.
If he was called 'General' or 'Colonel' I could stand it--though it
wouldn't be quite right. Some day I shall find a name. When I speak
to him, I say 'Sir.'"

The walks were taken every day, and each day were longer. Marco found
himself silently watching The Rat with amazement at his determination
and endurance. He knew that he must not speak of what he could not
fail to see as they walked. He must not tell him that he looked tired
and pale and sometimes desperately fatigued. He had inherited from his
father the tact which sees what people do not wish to be reminded of.
He knew that for some reason of his own The Rat had determined to do
this thing at any cost to himself. Sometimes his face grew white and
worn and he breathed hard, but he never rested more than a few
minutes, and never turned back or shortened a walk they had planned.

"Tell me something about Samavia, something to remember," he would say,
when he looked his worst. "When I begin to try to remember, I
forget--other things."

So, as they went on their way, t