His idol had said that he was “one of them” and he was watching and putting him to tests so that he might find out how much he was one of them.  And he was doing it for some grave reason of his own.  This thought possessed The Rat’s whole mind.  Perhaps he was wondering if he should find out that he was to be trusted, as a rock is to be trusted.  That he should even think that perhaps he might find that he was like a rock, was inspiration enough.

“Sir,” he said one night when they were alone together, because The Rat had been copying a road-map.  His voice was very low—­“do you think that—­sometime—­you could trust me as you trust Marco?  Could it ever be like that—­ever?”

“The time has come,” and Loristan’s voice was almost as low as his own, though strong and deep feeling underlay its quiet—­“the time has come when I can trust you with Marco—­to be his companion—­to care for him, to stand by his side at any moment.  And Marco is—­Marco is my son.”  That was enough to uplift The Rat to the skies.  But there was more to follow.

“It may not be long before it may be his part to do work in which he will need a comrade who can be trusted—­as a rock can be trusted.”

He had said the very words The Rat’s own mind had given to him.

“A Rock!  A Rock!” the boy broke out.  “Let me show you, sir.  Send me with him for a servant.  The crutches are nothing.  You’ve seen that they’re as good as legs, haven’t you?  I’ve trained myself.”

“I know, I know, dear lad.”  Marco had told him all of it.  He gave him a gracious smile which seemed as if it held a sort of fine secret.  “You shall go as his aide-de-camp.  It shall be part of the game.”

He had always encouraged “the game,” and during the last weeks had even found time to help them in their plannings for the mysterious journey of the Secret Two.  He had been so interested that once or twice he had called on Lazarus as an old soldier and Samavian to give his opinions of certain routes—­and of the customs and habits of people in towns and villages by the way.  Here they would find simple pastoral folk who danced, sang after their day’s work, and who would tell all they knew; here they would find those who served or feared the Maranovitch and who would not talk at all.  In one place they would meet with hospitality, in another with unfriendly suspicion of all strangers.  Through talk and stories The Rat began to know the country almost as Marco knew it.  That was part of the game too—­because it was always “the game,” they called it.  Another part was The Rat’s training of his memory, and bringing home his proofs of advance at night when he returned from his walk and could describe, or recite, or roughly sketch all he had seen in his passage from one place to another.  Marco’s part was to recall and sketch faces.  Loristan one night gave him a number of photographs of people to commit to memory.  Under each face was written the name of a place.