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again if he intended to. I’ve invented things about him because these chaps like to hear me tell them. They’re only stories.’
    ‘We likes ’im,’ a voice called out, ‘becos ’e wos the right sort; ’e’d fight, ’e would, if ’e was in Samavia now.’
    Marco rapidly asked himself how much he might say. He decided and spoke to them all.
    ‘He is not part of a legend. He’s part of Samavian history,’ he said. ‘I know something about him too.’
    ‘How did you find it out?’ asked The Rat.
    ‘Because my father’s a writer, he’s obliged to have books and papers, and he knows things. I like to read, and I go into the free libraries. You can always get booksand papers there. Then I ask my father questions. All the newspapers are full of things about Samavia just now.’ Marco felt that this was an explanation which betrayed nothing. It was true that no one could open a newspaper at this period without seeing news and stories of Samavia.
    The Rat saw possible vistas of information opening up before him.
    ‘Sit down here,’ he said, ‘and tell us what you know about him. Sit down, you fellows.’
    There was nothing to sit on but the broken flagged pavement, but that was a small matter. Marco himself had sat on flags or bare ground often enough before, and so had the rest of the lads. He took his place near The Rat, and the others made a semicircle in front of them. The two leaders had joined forces, so to speak, and the followers fell into line at ‘attention’.
    Then the newcomer began to talk. It was a good story, that of the Lost Prince, and Marco told it in a way which gave it reality. How could he help it? He knew, as they could not, that it was real. He who had pored over maps of little Samavia since his seventh year, who had studied them with his father, knew it as a country he could have found his way to any part of if he had been dropped in any forest or any mountain of it. He knew every highway and byway, and in the capital city of Melzarr could almost have made his way blindfolded. He knew the palaces and the forts, the churches, the poor streets and the rich ones. His father had once shown him a plan of the royal palace which they had studied together until the boy knew each apartment and corridor in it by heart. But this hedid not speak of. He knew it was one of the things to be silent about. But of the mountains and the emerald velvet meadows climbing their sides and only ending where huge bare crags and peaks began, he could speak. He could make pictures of the wide fertile plains where herds of wild horses fed, or raced and sniffed the air; he could describe the fertile valleys where clear rivers ran and flocks of sheep pastured on deep sweet grass. He could speak of them because he could offer a good enough reason for his knowledge of them. It was not the only reason he had for his knowledge, but it was one which would serve well enough.
    ‘That torn magazine you found had more than one article about Samavia in it,’ he said to The Rat. ‘The same man wrote four. I read them all in a free library. He had been to Samavia, and knew a great deal about it. He said it was one of the most beautiful countries he had ever travelled in – and the most fertile. That’s what they all say of it.’
    The group before him knew nothing of fertility or open country. They only knew London back streets and courts. Most of them had never travelled as far as the public parks, and in fact scarcely believed in their existence. They were a rough lot, and as they had stared at Marco at first sight of him, so they continued to stare at him as he talked. When he told of the tall Samavians who had been like giants centuries ago, and who had hunted the wild horses and captured and trained them to obedience by a sort of strong and gentle magic, their mouths fell open. This was the sort of thing to allure any boy’s imagination.
    ‘Blimme, if I wouldn’t ’ave liked ketchin’ one o’ them ’orses,’