The Lost Prince | Page 3

the 60 days following each date you
prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU
DON'T HAVE TO?

The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning
machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright
licenses, and every other sort of contribution you can think of. Money
should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois Benedictine
College".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN
ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

Scanned by Charles Keller with OmniPage Professional OCR software
donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226. Contact Mike Lough


THE LOST PRINCE
Francis Hodgson Burnett

CONTENTS
I The New Lodgers at No. 7 Philibert Place II A Young Citizen of the
World III The Legend of the Lost Prince IV The Rat V ``Silence Is Still
the Order'' VI The Drill and the Secret Party VII ``The Lamp Is
Lighted!'' VIII An Exciting Game IX ``It Is Not a Game'' X The
Rat-and Samavia XI Come with Me XII Only Two Boys XIII Loristan
Attends a Drill of the Squad XIV Marco Does Not Answer XV A
Sound in a Dream XVI The Rat to the Rescue XVII ``It Is a Very Bad
Sign'' XVIII ``Cities and Faces'' XIX ``That Is One!'' XX Marco Goes
to the Opera XXI ``Help!'' XXII A Night Vigil XXIII The Silver Horn
XXIV ``How Shall We Find Him? XXV A Voice in the Night XXVI
Across the Frontier XXVII ``It is the Lost Prince! It Is Ivor!'' XXVIII
``Extra! Extra! Extra!'' XXIX 'Twixt Night and Morning XXX The
Game Is at an End XXXI ``The Son of Stefan Loristan''

THE LOST PRINCE

I
THE NEW LODGERS AT NO. 7 PHILIBERT PLACE
There are many dreary and dingy rows of ugly houses in certain parts
of London, but there certainly could not be any row more ugly or
dingier than Philibert Place. There were stories that it had once been
more attractive, but that had been so long ago that no one remembered
the time. It stood back in its gloomy, narrow strips of uncared-for,
smoky gardens, whose broken iron railings were supposed to protect it
from the surging traffic of a road which was always roaring with the
rattle of busses, cabs, drays, and vans, and the passing of people who
were shabbily dressed and looked as if they were either going to hard
work or coming from it, or hurrying to see if they could find some of it
to do to keep themselves from going hungry. The brick fronts of the
houses were blackened with smoke, their windows were nearly all dirty
and hung with dingy curtains, or had no curtains at all; the strips of
ground, which had once been intended to grow flowers in, had been
trodden down into bare earth in which even weeds had forgotten to
grow. One of them was used as a stone-cutter's yard, and cheap
monuments, crosses, and slates were set out for sale, bearing
inscriptions beginning with ``Sacred to the Memory of.'' Another had
piles of old lumber in it, another exhibited second-hand furniture,
chairs with unsteady legs, sofas with horsehair stuffing bulging out of
holes in their covering, mirrors with blotches or cracks in them. The
insides of the houses were as gloomy as the outside. They were all
exactly alike. In each a dark entrance passage led to narrow stairs going
up to bedrooms, and to narrow steps going down to a basement kitchen.
The back bedroom looked out on small, sooty, flagged yards, where
thin cats quarreled, or sat on the coping of the brick walls hoping that
sometime they might feel the sun; the front rooms looked over the
noisy road, and through their windows came the roar and rattle of it. It
was shabby and cheerless on the brightest days, and on foggy or rainy
ones it was the most forlorn place in London.

At least that was what one boy thought as he stood near the iron
railings watching the passers-by on the morning on which this story
begins, which was also the morning after he had been brought by his
father to live as a lodger in the back sitting-room of the house No. 7.
He was a boy about twelve years old, his name was Marco Loristan,
and he was the kind of boy people look at a second time when they
have looked at him once. In the first place, he was a very big boy--tall
for his years, and with a particularly strong frame. His shoulders were
broad and his arms and legs were long and powerful. He was quite used
to hearing people say, as they glanced at him, ``What a fine, big lad!''
And then they always looked again at