this was its last great peal. The storm was at an end. Only fainter and fainter rumblings and mutterings and paler and paler darts followed. Even they were soon over, and the cataracts in the paths had rushed themselves silent. But the darkness was still deep.
It was deep to blackness in the hollow of the evergreen. Marco stood in it, streaming with rain, but feeling nothing because he was full of thought. He pushed aside his greenery and kept his eyes on the place in the blackness where the windows must be, though he could not see them. It seemed that he waited a long time, but he knew it only seemed so really. He began to breathe quickly because he was waiting for something.
Suddenly he saw exactly where the windows were—because they were all lighted!
His feeling of relief was great, but it did not last very long. It was true that something had been gained in the certainty that his man had not left Vienna. But what next? It would not be so easy to follow him if he chose only to go out secretly at night. What next? To spend the rest of the night watching a lighted window was not enough. Tomorrow night it might not be lighted. But he kept his gaze fixed upon it. He tried to fix all his will and thought-power on the person inside the room. Perhaps he could reach him and make him listen, even though he would not know that any one was speaking to him. He knew that thoughts were strong things. If angry thoughts in one man’s mind will create anger in the mind of another, why should not sane messages cross the line?
“I must speak to you. I must speak to you!” he found himself saying in a low intense voice. “I am outside here waiting. Listen! I must speak to you!”
He said it many times and kept his eyes fixed upon the window which opened on to the balcony. Once he saw a man’s figure cross the room, but he could not be sure who it was. The last distant rumblings of thunder had died away and the clouds were breaking. It was not long before the dark mountainous billows broke apart, and a brilliant full moon showed herself sailing in the rift, suddenly flooding everything with light. Parts of the garden were silver white, and the tree shadows were like black velvet. A silvery lance pierced even into the hollow of Marco’s evergreen and struck across his face.
Perhaps it was this sudden change which attracted the attention of those inside the balconied room. A man’s figure appeared at the long windows. Marco saw now that it was the Prince. He opened the windows and stepped out on to the balcony.
“It is all over,” he said quietly. And he stood with his face lifted, looking at the great white sailing moon.
He stood very still and seemed for the moment to forget the world and himself. It was a wonderful, triumphant queen of a moon. But something brought him back to earth. A low, but strong and clear, boy-voice came up to him from the garden path below.
“The Lamp is lighted. The Lamp is lighted,” it said, and the words sounded almost as if some one were uttering a prayer. They seemed to call to him, to arrest him, to draw him.
He stood still a few seconds in dead silence. Then he bent over the balustrade. The moonlight had not broken the darkness below.
“That is a boy’s voice,” he said in a low tone, “but I cannot see who is speaking.”
“Yes, it is a boy’s voice,” it answered, in a way which somehow moved him, because it was so ardent. “It is the son of Stefan Loristan. The Lamp is lighted.”
“Wait. I am coming down to you,” the Prince said.
In a few minutes Marco heard a door open gently not far from where he stood. Then the man he had been following so many days appeared at his side.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“Before the gates closed. I hid myself in the hollow of the big shrub there, Highness,” Marco answered.
“Then you were out in the storm?”
“Yes, Highness.”
The Prince put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I cannot see you—but it is best to stand in the shadow. You are drenched to the skin.”
“I have been able to give your Highness—the Sign,” Marco whispered. “A storm is nothing.”
There was a silence. Marco knew that his companion was pausing to turn something over in his mind.
“So-o?” he said slowly, at length. “The Lamp is lighted, And YOU are sent to bear the Sign.” Something in his voice made Marco feel that he was smiling.
“What a race you are! What a race—you Samavian Loristans!”
He paused as if to think the thing over again.
“I want to see your face,” he said next. “Here is a tree with a shaft of moonlight striking through the branches. Let us step aside and stand under it.”
Marco did as he was told. The shaft of moonlight fell upon his uplifted face and showed its young strength and darkness, quite splendid for the moment in a triumphant glow of joy in obstacles overcome. Raindrops hung on his hair, but he did not look draggled, only very wet and picturesque. He had reached his man. He had given the Sign.
The Prince looked him over with interested curiosity.
“Yes,” he said in his cool, rather dragging voice. “You are the son of Stefan Loristan. Also you must be taken care of. You must come with me. I have trained my household to remain in its own quarters until I require its service. I have attached to my own apartments a good safe little room where I sometimes keep people. You can dry your clothes and sleep there. When the gardens are opened again, the rest will be easy.”
But though he stepped out from under the trees and began to move towards the palace in the shadow, Marco noticed that he moved hesitatingly, as if he had not quite decided what he should do. He stopped rather suddenly and turned again to Marco, who was following him.
“There is some one in the room I just now left,” he said, “an old man—whom it might interest to see you. It might also be a good thing for him to feel interest in you. I choose that he shall see you—as you are.”
“I am at your command, Highness,” Marco answered. He knew his companion was smiling again.
“You have been in training for more centuries than you know,” he said; “and your father has prepared you to encounter the unexpected without surprise.”
They passed under the balcony and paused at a low stone doorway hidden behind shrubs. The door was a beautiful one, Marco saw when it was opened, and the corridor disclosed was beautiful also, though it had an air of quiet and aloofness which was not so much secret as private. A perfect though narrow staircase mounted from it to the next floor. After ascending it, the Prince led the way through a short corridor and stopped at the door at the end of it. “We are going in here,” he said.
It was a wonderful room—the one which opened on to the balcony. Each piece of furniture in it, the hangings, the tapestries, and pictures on the wall were all such as might well have found themselves adorning a museum. Marco remembered the common report of his escort’s favorite amusement of collecting wonders and furnishing his house with the things others exhibited only as marvels of art and handicraft. The place was rich and mellow with exquisitely chosen beauties.
In a massive chair upon the heart sat a figure with bent head. It was a tall old man with white hair and moustache. His elbows rested upon the arm of his chair and he leaned his forehead on his hand as if he were weary.
Marco’s companion crossed the room and stood beside him, speaking in a lowered voice. Marco could not at first hear what he said. He himself stood quite still, waiting. The white-haired man lifted his head and listened. It seemed as though almost at once he was singularly interested. The lowered voice was slightly raised at last and Marco heard the last two sentences:
“The only son of Stefan Loristan. Look at him.”
The old man in the chair turned slowly and looked, steadily, and with questioning curiosity touched with grave surprise. He had