of dry leaves, which his companion had arranged for him in the shade of
a birch tree.

"Bah! it's nothing! You would do as much for me."

"I am not quite so sure," said Blount candidly.

"Nonsense, stupid! All English are generous."

"Doubtless; but the French?"

"Well, the French--they are brutes, if you like! But what redeems them
is that they are French. Say nothing more about that, or rather, say
nothing more at all. Rest is absolutely necessary for you."

But Harry Blount had no wish to be silent. If the wound, in prudence,
required rest, the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph was not a man to
indulge himself.

"M. Jolivet," he asked, "do you think that our last dispatches have been
able to pass the Russian frontier?"

"Why not?" answered Alcide. "By this time you may be sure that my
beloved cousin knows all about the affair at Kolyvan."

"How many copies does your cousin work off of her dispatches?" asked
Blount, for the first time putting his question direct to his companion.

"Well," answered Alcide, laughing, "my cousin is a very discreet person,
who does not like to be talked about, and who would be in despair if she
troubled the sleep of which you are in need."

"I don't wish to sleep," replied the Englishman. "What will your cousin
think of the affairs of Russia?"

"That they seem for the time in a bad way. But, bah! the Muscovite
government is powerful; it cannot be really uneasy at an invasion of
barbarians."

"Too much ambition has lost the greatest empires," answered Blount, who
was not exempt from a certain English jealousy with regard to Russian
pretensions in Central Asia.

"Oh, do not let us talk politics," cried Jolivet. "It is forbidden by
the faculty. Nothing can be worse for wounds in the shoulder--unless it
was to put you to sleep."

"Let us, then, talk of what we ought to do," replied Blount. "M.
Jolivet, I have no intention at all of remaining a prisoner to these
Tartars for an indefinite time."

"Nor I, either, by Jove!"

"We will escape on the first opportunity?"

"Yes, if there is no other way of regaining our liberty."

"Do you know of any other?" asked Blount, looking at his companion.

"Certainly. We are not belligerents; we are neutral, and we will claim
our freedom."

"From that brute of a Feofar-Khan?"

"No; he would not understand," answered Jolivet; "but from his
lieutenant, Ivan Ogareff."

"He is a villain."

"No doubt; but the villain is a Russi