feeling. Just as he reached the door, Loristan said to him:

"Make the most of this gift. It is a gift. And it is true your mind has had good training. The more you draw, the better. Draw everything you can."

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. succeeded again.

His experiment had

He got up and dressed. Then he went downstairs 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. But now the street is a naked thing; a distant policeman's tramp on the bare pavement has a hollow and almost fearsome sound. It seemed especially so to Marco as he crossed the road. Had it ever been so empty and deadly silent before? Was it so every night? Perhaps it was, when he was fast asleep on his lumpy mattress with the light from a street lamp streaming into the room. He listened for the step of the policeman on nightwatch, because he did not wish to be seen. There was a jutting wall where he could stand in the shadow while the man passed. A policeman would stop to look questioningly at a boy who walked up and down the pavement at half-past one in the morning. Marco could wait until he had gone by, and then come out into the light and look up and down the road and the cross streets.

He heard his approaching footsteps in a few minutes, and was safely in the shadows before he could be seen. When the policeman passed, he came out and wa ed slowly down the road, looking on each side, and now and then looking back. At first no one was in sight. Then a late hansom-cab came tinkling along. But the people in it were returning from some festivity, and were laughing and talking, and noticed nothing but their own joking. Then there was silence again, and for a long time, as it seemed to Marco, no one was to be seen. It was not really so long as it appeared, because he was anxious. Then a very early vegetable-wagon on the way from the country to Covent Garden Market came slowly lumbering by with its driver almost asleep on his piles of potatoes and cabbages. After it had passed, there was stillness and emptiness once more, until the policeman showed himself again on his beat, and Marco slipped into the shadow of the wall as he had done before.

When he came out into the light, he had begun to hope that the time would not seem long to his father. It had not really been long, he told himself, it had only seemed so. But his father's anxiousness would be greater than his could be. Loristan knew all that depended on the coming of this great man who sat side by side with a king in his carriage and talked to him as if he knew him well.

IN your histories and books of medieval romance, you have undoubtedly read about pages-lithe, slim lads who sat at the foot of the throne and at a sign, or a "What ho!" ran swiftly hither and thither for their majesties, upon pressing errands of state. These pages wore long hose and slashed doublets; lace flounces fell about their wrists; their slippers were decorated with buckles of finely wrought gold, and their caps with graceful, drooping feathers.

One of your very best friends, the dictionary, says that a page is “(a) A boy attendant upon a person of rank or distinction; (b) A boy who attends upon the members of a legislative body; as, a Senate page."

And these very page-boys of the United States Senate perform just about the same duties as did the silken-clad ones in the centuries past. Instead of sitting at the foot of a throne, the Senate pages are placed on the steps surrounding the dais which holds the chair occupied by the Vice-President of the United States, whose chief duty it is to preside over the sessions of the upper branch of our legislature.

There are sixteen pages, and eight are seated on each side of the Vice-President's desk. Instead of the gaudy, glowing costumes of the early pages, our boys wear knickerbocker suits of blue or black wool, white shirts and collars, and neckties of any desired color. The suits must be thoroughly brushed and pressed, linen immaculate, shoes the blackest of the black, and stockings guiltless of a single darn.

Each morning at nine, the pages report to the chief of the pages, Mr. Edwin Halsey, and woe to the boy whose attire and general appearance are not up to the mark! Woe to the page whose teeth and finger-nails do not show signs of proper and exquisite care, whose tie is not adjusted precisely as it should be! Mr. Halsey keeps a careful record, on which the marks for conduct, efficiency, appearance, and intelligence displayed by each page are duly entered.

After passing the scrutiny of the chief of the pages the real work of the day begins, and until five o'clock the lads find scant time for rest or amusement. Each boy has the desks of six senators to look after, and on these desks must be placed every morning the file of the current Congressional Record, together with the bills, resolutions, and documents of the previous day. All told, ninety-six desks are in the senate-cham

ber, and each day of the session ninety-six inkwells must be cleaned and freshly filled. Each desk has a sand bottle, but as most of the senators prefer blotting-paper to the old-fashioned way of tossing sand upon newly written sheets, the pages have little work with the sand bottles.

Two antiquated snuff-boxes, which did strenuous duty long years ago, still occupy a place of honor in the Senate, and though seldom used nowadays, must be kept filled with snuff by the pages. Sometimes, when a new member is sworn in, he will be solemnly invited by a brother member to try a pinch of snuff; but there is really little call for it, although it is still religiously purchased by the United States Government for the use of the senators.

On every desk must go newly sharpened, finely pointed lead-pencils, also penholders containing new pens. As many of the senators are decidedly particular about large, small, sharp, or stub penpoints, the page must be extremely careful to supply the desired kind.

The Vice-President's gavel is carefully, formally put away each night, and as carefully and formally restored by a page each morning to its place in front of the presiding officer. It would be a decided breach of page-etiquette-involving a considerable fine for the negligent pageshould the Vice-President attempt to call the Senate to order and find no gavel with which to do so.

When the desks have been fully arranged and the hour of twelve arrives, the pages file in and take their allotted places on the steps of the rostrum. Down goes the gavel; the Honorable Senate is in session; the chaplain offers prayer, and the real work of the day begins in earnest. From now until adjournment the pages are actually "on the jump." A senator desires a copy of a record of three days, or perhaps thirty years, ago. He claps his hands smartly, and the page nearest to him speeds down the aisle and takes the order. Sometimes it is plainly written out; more often it is hurriedly mumbled. And right here is where the page must exert his intelligence, and with sense and logic swiftly do the required errand. Naturally, the boys must know every member of not only the Senate, but of the House as well, and they must be absolutely familiar with every hole and corner of the Capitol, the House and Senate office-buildings, and the Library of Congress. Legislators and employees