The Lost Prince | Page 4

his face. It was not an English
face or an American one, and was very dark in coloring. His features
were strong, his black hair grew on his head like a mat, his eyes were
large and deep set, and looked out between thick, straight, black lashes.
He was as un- English a boy as one could imagine, and an observing
person would have been struck at once by a sort of SILENT look
expressed by his whole face, a look which suggested that he was not a
boy who talked much.
This look was specially noticeable this morning as he stood before the
iron railings. The things he was thinking of were of a kind likely to
bring to the face of a twelve-year-old boy an unboyish expression.
He was thinking of the long, hurried journey he and his father and their
old soldier servant, Lazarus, had made during the last few days--the
journey from Russia. Cramped in a close third-class railway carriage,
they had dashed across the Continent as if something important or
terrible were driving them, and here they were, settled in London as if
they were going to live forever at No. 7 Philibert Place. He knew,
however, that though they might stay a year, it was just as probable that,
in the middle of some night, his father or Lazarus might waken him
from his sleep and say, ``Get up-- dress yourself quickly. We must go
at once.'' A few days later, he might be in St. Petersburg, Berlin, Vienna,
or Budapest, huddled away in some poor little house as shabby and
comfortless as No. 7 Philibert Place.
He passed his hand over his forehead as he thought of it and watched

the busses. His strange life and his close association with his father had
made him much older than his years, but he was only a boy, after all,
and the mystery of things sometimes weighed heavily upon him, and
set him to deep wondering.
In not one of the many countries he knew had he ever met a boy whose
life was in the least like his own. Other boys had homes in which they
spent year after year; they went to school regularly, and played with
other boys, and talked openly of the things which happened to them,
and the journeys they made. When he remained in a place long enough
to make a few boy-friends, he knew he must never forget that his whole
existence was a sort of secret whose safety depended upon his own
silence and discretion.
This was because of the promises he had made to his father, and they
had been the first thing he remembered. Not that he had ever regretted
anything connected with his father. He threw his black head up as he
thought of that. None of the other boys had such a father, not one of
them. His father was his idol and his chief. He had scarcely ever seen
him when his clothes had not been poor and shabby, but he had also
never seen him when, despite his worn coat and frayed linen, he had
not stood out among all others as more distinguished than the most
noticeable of them. When he walked down a street, people turned to
look at him even oftener than they turned to look at Marco, and the boy
felt as if it was not merely because he was a big man with a handsome,
dark face, but because he looked, somehow, as if he had been born to
command armies, and as if no one would think of disobeying him. Yet
Marco had never seen him command any one, and they had always
been poor, and shabbily dressed, and often enough ill-fed. But whether
they were in one country or another, and whatsoever dark place they
seemed to be hiding in, the few people they saw treated him with a sort
of deference, and nearly always stood when they were in his presence,
unless he bade them sit down.
``It is because they know he is a patriot, and patriots are respected,'' the
boy had told himself.
He himself wished to be a patriot, though he had never seen his own

country of Samavia. He knew it well, however. His father had talked to
him about it ever since that day when he had made the promises. He
had taught him to know it by helping him to study curious detailed
maps of it--maps of its cities, maps of its mountains, maps of its roads.
He had told him stories of the wrongs done its people, of their
sufferings and struggles for liberty, and, above all, of their
unconquerable courage. When they talked together of its history,
Marco's boy-blood burned and leaped in his veins, and he