adding much detail, but he had always liked best his father's version,
which seemed a thrilling and living thing. On their journey from Russia,
during an hour when they had been forced to wait in a cold wayside
station and had found the time long, Loristan had discussed it with him.
He always found some such way of making hard and comfortless hours
easier to live through.

"Fine, big lad--for a foreigner," Marco heard a man say to his companion
as he passed them this morning. "Looks like a Pole or a Russian."

It was this which had led his thoughts back to the story of the Lost
Prince. He knew that most of the people who looked at him and called him
a "foreigner" had not even heard of Samavia. Those who chanced to recall
its existence knew of it only as a small fierce country, so placed upon
the map that the larger countries which were its neighbors felt they
must control and keep it in order, and therefore made incursions into
it, and fought its people and each other for possession. But it had not
been always so. It was an old, old country, and hundreds of years ago it
had been as celebrated for its peaceful happiness and wealth as for its
beauty. It was often said that it was one of the most beautiful places
in the world. A favorite Samavian legend was that it had been the site
of the Garden of Eden. In those past centuries, its people had been of
such great stature, physical beauty, and strength, that they had been
like a race of noble giants. They were in those days a pastoral people,
whose rich crops and splendid flocks and herds were the envy of less
fertile countries. Among the shepherds and herdsmen there were poets who
sang their own songs when they piped among their sheep upon the mountain
sides and in the flower-thick valleys. Their songs had been about
patriotism and bravery, and faithfulness to their chieftains and their
country. The simple courtesy of the poorest peasant was as stately as