d returned to the window, but this time
his attention was diverted by the interest of the scene before him.
Therefore, when the clerk had finished telegraphing the last lines
dictated by Blount, Alcide Jolivet noiselessly took his place at the
wicket, and, just as his rival had done, after quietly depositing a
respectable pile of roubles on the shelf, he delivered his dispatch,
which the clerk read aloud: "Madeleine Jolivet, 10, Faubourg Montmartre,
Paris.

"From Kolyvan, Government of Omsk, Siberia, 6th August.

"Fugitives are escaping from the town. Russians defeated. Fiercely
pursued by the Tartar cavalry."

And as Harry Blount returned he heard Jolivet completing his telegram by
singing in a mocking tone:

"II est un petit homme, Tout habille de gris, Dans Paris!"

Imitating his rival, Alcide Jolivet had used a merry refrain of
Beranger.

"Hallo!" said Harry Blount.

"Just so," answered Jolivet.

In the meantime the situation at Kolyvan was alarming in the extreme.
The battle was raging nearer, and the firing was incessant.

At that moment the telegraph office shook to its foundations. A shell
had made a hole in the wall, and a cloud of dust filled the office.

Alcide was just finishing writing his lines; but to stop, dart on the
shell, seize it in both hands, throw it out of the window, and return to
the wicket, was only the affair of a moment.

Five seconds later the shell burst outside. Continuing with the greatest
possible coolness, Alcide wrote: "A six-inch shell has just blown up the
wall of the telegraph office. Expecting a few more of the same size."

Michael Strogoff had no doubt that the Russians were driven out of
Kolyvan. His last resource was to set out across the southern steppe.

Just then renewed firing broke out close to the telegraph house, and a
perfect shower of bullets smashed all the glass in the windows. Harry
Blount fell to the ground wounded in the shoulder.

Jolivet even at such a moment, was about to add this postscript to
his dispatch: "Harry Blount, correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, has
fallen at my side struck by--" when the imperturbable clerk said calmly:
"Sir, the wire has broken." And, leaving his wicket, he quietly took his
hat, brushed it round with his sleeve, and, still smiling, disappeared
through a little door which Michael had not before perceived.

The house was surrounded by Tartar soldiers, and neither Michael nor the
reporters could effect their retr