Fathers and sons -- Fiction; People with disabilities -- Fiction; Princes -- Fiction; Refugees -- Fiction
Neither the street lamps, nor the noises, nor his thoughts kept Marco
awake when he went back to bed. But before he settled himself upon his
pillow he gave himself certain orders. He had both read, and heard
Loristan say, that the mind can control the body when people once find
out that it can do so. He had tried experiments himself, and had found
out some curious things. One was that if he told himself to remember a
certain thing at a certain time, he usually found that he _did_ remember
it. Something in his brain seemed to remind him. He had often tried the
experiment of telling himself to awaken at a particular hour, and had
awakened almost exactly at the moment by the clock.
"I will sleep until one o'clock," he said as he shut his eyes. "Then I
will awaken and feel quite fresh. I shall not be sleepy at all."
He slept as soundly as a boy can sleep. And at one o'clock exactly he
awakened, and found the street lamp still throwing its light through the
window. He knew it was one o'clock, because there was a cheap little
round clock on the table, and he could see the time. He was quite fresh
and not at all sleepy. His experiment had succeeded again.
He got up and dressed. Then he went down-stairs as noiselessly as
before. He carried his shoes in his hands, as he meant to put them on
only when he reached the street. He made his sign at his father's door,
and it was Loristan who opened it.
"Shall I go now?" Marco asked.
"Yes. Walk slowly to the other side of the street. Look in every
direction. We do not know where he will come from. After you have given
him the sign, then come in and go to bed again."
Marco saluted as a soldier would have done on receiving an order.
Then, without a second's delay, he passed noiselessly out of the house.
Loristan turned back into the room and stood silently in the center of
it. The long lines of his handsome body looked particularly erect and
stately, and his eyes were glowing as if something deeply moved him.
"There grows a man for Samavia," he said to Lazarus, who watched him.
"God be thanked!"
Lazarus's voice was low and hoarse, and he saluted quite reverently.
"Your--sir!" he said. "God save the Prince!"
"Yes," Loristan answered, after a moment's hesitation,--"when he is
found." And he went back to his table smiling his beautiful smile.
* * * * *
The wonder of silence in the deserted streets of a great city, after
midnight has hushed all the roar and tumult to rest, is an almost
unbelievable thing. The stillness in the depths of a forest or on a
mountain top is not so strange. A few hours ago, the tumult was rushing
past; in a few hours more, it will be rushing past again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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