rain so beat against and streamed down the windows of the
third-class carriage in which Marco and The Rat sat that they could not
see through them.

They had made their homeward journey much more rapidly than they had
made the one on which they had been outward bound. It had of course
taken them some time to tramp back to the frontier, but there had been
no reason for stopping anywhere after they had once reached the
railroads. They had been tired sometimes, but they had slept heavily
on the wooden seats of the railway carriages. Their one desire was to
get home. No. 7 Philibert Place rose before them in its noisy
dinginess as the one desirable spot on earth. To Marco it held his
father. And it was Loristan alone that The Rat saw when he thought of
it. Loristan as he would look when he saw him come into the room with
Marco, and stand up and salute, and say: "I have brought him back,
sir. He has carried out every single order you gave him--every single
one. So have I." So he had. He had been sent as his companion and
attendant, and he had been faithful in every thought. If Marco would
have allowed him, he would have waited upon him like a servant, and
have been proud of the service. But Marco would never let him forget
that they were only two boys and that one was of no more importance
than the other. He had secretly even felt this attitude to be a sort
of grievance. It would have been more like a game if one of them had
been the mere servitor of the other, and if that other had blustered a
little, and issued commands, and demanded sacrifices. If the faithful
vassal could have been wounded or cast into a dungeon for his young
commander's sake, the adventure would have been more complete. But
though their journey had been full of wonders and rich with beauties,
though the memory of it hung in The Rat's mind like a background of
tapestry embroidered in all the hues of the earth with all the
splendors of it, there had been no dungeons and no wounds. After the
adventure in Munich their unimportant boyishness had not even been
observed by such perils as might have threatened them. As The Rat had
said, they had "blown like grains of dust" through Europe and had been
as nothing. And this was what Loristan had planned, this was what his
grave thought had wrought out. If they had been men, they would not
have been so safe.

From the time they had left the old priest on the hillside to begin
their journey ba