



Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines








THE LOST PRINCE

Francis Hodgson Burnett



CONTENTS


      I  The New Lodgers at No. 7 Philibert Place
     II  A Young Citizen of the World
    III  The Legend of the Lost Prince
     IV  The Rat
      V  "Silence Is Still the Order"
     VI  The Drill and the Secret Party
    VII  "The Lamp Is Lighted!"
   VIII  An Exciting Game
     IX  "It Is Not a Game"
      X  The Rat--and Samavia
     XI  Come with Me
    XII  Only Two Boys
   XIII  Loristan Attends a Drill of the Squad
    XIV  Marco Does Not Answer
     XV  A Sound in a Dream
    XVI  The Rat to the Rescue
   XVII  "It Is a Very Bad Sign"
  XVIII  "Cities and Faces"
    XIX  "That Is One!"
     XX  Marco Goes to the Opera
    XXI  "Help!"
   XXII  A Night Vigil
  XXIII  The Silver Horn
   XXIV  "How Shall We Find Him?"
    XXV  A Voice in the Night
   XXVI  Across the Frontier
  XXVII  "It is the Lost Prince!  It Is Ivor!"
 XXVIII  "Extra!  Extra!  Extra!"
   XXIX  'Twixt Night and Morning
    XXX  The Game Is at an End
   XXXI  "The Son of Stefan Loristan"




THE LOST PRINCE



I

THE NEW LODGERS AT NO. 7 PHILIBERT PLACE

There are many dreary and dingy rows of ugly houses in certain parts of
London, but there certainly could not be any row more ugly or dingier
than Philibert Place.  There were stories that it had once been more
attractive, but that had been so long ago that no one remembered the
time.  It stood back in its gloomy, narrow strips of uncared-for, smoky
gardens, whose broken iron railings were supposed to protect it from
the surging traffic of a road which was always roaring with the rattle
of busses, cabs, drays, and vans, and the passing of people who were
shabbily dressed and looked as if they were either going to hard work
or coming from it, or hurrying to see if they could find some of it to
do to keep themselves from going hungry.  The brick fronts of the
houses were blackened with smoke, their windows were nearly all dirty
and hung with dingy curtains, or had no curtains at all; the strips of
ground, which had once been intended to grow flowers in, had been
trodden down into bare earth in which even weeds had forgotten to grow.
One of them was used as a stone-cutter's yard, and cheap monuments,
crosses, and slates were set out for sale, bearing inscriptions
beginning with "Sacred to the Memory of."  Another had piles of old
lumber in it, another exhibited second-hand furniture, chairs with
unsteady legs, sofas with horsehair stuffing bulging out of holes in
their covering, mirrors with blotches or cracks in them.  The insides
of the houses were as gloomy as the outside.  They were all exactly
alike.  In each a dark entrance passage led to narrow stairs going up
to bedrooms, and to narrow steps going down to a basement kitchen.  The
back bedroom looked out on small, sooty, flagged yards, where thin cats
quarreled, or sat on the coping of the brick walls hoping that sometime
they might feel the sun; the front rooms looked over the noisy road,
and through their windows came the roar and rattle of it.  It was
shabby and cheerless on the brightest days, and on foggy or rainy ones
it was the most forlorn place in London.

At least that was what one boy thought as he stood near the iron
railings watching the passers-by on the morning on which this story
begins, which was also the morning after he had been brought by his
father to live as a lodger in the back sitting-room of the house No. 7.

He was a boy about twelve years old, his name was Marco Loristan, and
he was the kind of boy people look at a second time when they have
looked at him once.  In the first place, he was a very big boy--tall
for his years, and with