embling hands which sought him. "I do not know in truth
what it is you say, my good woman," he replied, stepping back.

"Michael!" again cried his aged mother.

"My name is not Michael. I never was your son! I am Nicholas Korpanoff,
a merchant at Irkutsk."

And suddenly he left the public room, whilst for the last time the words
re-echoed, "My son! my son!"

Michael Strogoff, by a desperate effort, had gone. He did not see his
old mother, who had fallen back almost inanimate upon a bench. But when
the postmaster hastened to assist her, the aged woman raised herself.
Suddenly a thought occurred to her. She denied by her son! It was not
possible. As for being herself deceived, and taking another for him,
equally impossible. It was certainly her son whom she had just seen; and
if he had not recognized her it was because he would not, it was because
he ought not, it was because he had some cogent reasons for acting thus!
And then, her mother's feelings arising within her, she had only one
thought--"Can I, unwittingly, have ruined him?"

"I am mad," she said to her interrogators. "My eyes have deceived me!
This young man is not my child. He had not his voice. Let us think no
more of it; if we do I shall end by finding him everywhere."

Less than ten minutes afterwards a Tartar officer appeared in the
posting-house. "Marfa Strogoff?" he asked.

"It is I," replied the old woman, in a tone so calm, and with a face so
tranquil, that those who had witnessed the meeting with her son would
not have known her.

"Come," said the officer.

Marfa Strogoff, with firm step, followed the Tartar. Some moments
afterwards she found herself in the chief square in the presence of
Ivan Ogareff, to whom all the details of this scene had been immediately
reported.

Ogareff, suspecting the truth, interrogated the old Siberian woman. "Thy
name?" he asked in a rough voice.

"Marfa Strogoff."

"Thou hast a son?"

"Yes."

"He is a courier of the Czar?"

"Yes."

"Where is he?"

"At Moscow."

"Thou hast no news of him?"

"No news."

"Since how long?"

"Since two months."

"Who, then, was that young man whom thou didst call thy son a few
moments ago at the posting-house?"

"A young Siberian whom I took for him," replied Marfa Strogoff. "This is
the tenth man in whom I have thought I recognized my son since the town
has been so full of strangers. I think I see him everywhere."

"So this young man was not Michael Strogoff