re.

"You might, if you were with other people who thought in the same way,"
he said, "and if you hadn't found out that it is such a mistake to
think in that way, that it's even stupid. But, you see, if you were I,
you would have lived with my father, and he'd have told you what he
knows--what he's been finding out all his life."

"What's he found out?"

"Oh!" Marco answered, quite casually, "just that you can't set savage
thoughts loose in the world, any more than you can let loose savage
beasts with hydrophobia. They spread a sort of rabies, and they always
tear and worry you first of all."

"What do you mean?" The Rat gasped out.

"It's like this," said Marco, lying flat and cool on his hard pillow
and looking at the reflection of the street lamp on the ceiling. "That
day I turned into your Barracks, without knowing that you'd think I was
spying, it made you feel savage, and you threw the stone at me. If it
had made me feel savage and I'd rushed in and fought, what would have
happened to all of us?"

The Rat's spirit of generalship gave the answer.

"I should have called on the Squad to charge with fixed bayonets.
They'd have half killed you. You're a strong chap, and you'd have hurt
a lot of them."

A note of terror broke into his voice. "What a fool I should have
been!" he cried out. "I should never have come here! I should never
have known HIM!" Even by the light of the street lamp Marco could see
him begin to look almost ghastly.

"The Squad could easily have half killed me," Marco added. "They could
have quite killed me, if they had wanted to do it. And who would have
got any good out of it? It would only have been a street-lads'
row--with the police and prison at the end of it."

"But because you'd lived with him," The Rat pondered, "you walked in as
if you didn't mind, and just asked why we did it, and looked like a
stronger chap than any of us--and different--different. I wondered
what was the matter with you, you were so cool and steady. I know now.
It was because you were like him. He'd taught you. He's like a
wizard."

"He knows things that wizards think they know, but he knows them
better," Marco said. "He says they're not queer and unnatural. They're
just simple laws of nature. You have to be either on one side or the
other, like an army. You choose your side. You either build up or
tear down. You either keep in the light where you can see, or you
stand in the dark and