Englishman spoke, strange to say, in French.
"Have Messieurs the correspondents no news? No letter in the _Post_?
None in the _Morning Chronicle_? How disappointing! Ha! what's this?
Two columns in the _Times_. How admirably that excellent paper is
served! Let's see what it says."

He hastily ran his eye down the columns, muttering to himself: "Ha!
mostly strong language--finding fault. How kind of you to be
dissatisfied with the administration, and to tell us why. The siege
practically suspended, eh? Fuses won't fit the shells--so much the
better, then the mortars can't fire.

"But that's no news: my friends and good masters will have found that
out for themselves. Anything else? 'Our new battery, which is only
seven hundred yards from the enemy's guns, is nearly completed.'
Which battery does he mean? Has he referred to it before?"

And Mr. Hobson, as we shall still call him, got up from his seat and
took a volume down from the shelf. It was labelled "T. 14, M. 55."
These expressions expanded meant that it contained extracts from the
_Times_, the 14th volume, for May, 1855.

After referring to an alphabetical index, he quickly turned over the
leaves of the book till he found a certain page.

"Ah! here it is," he said. "'We have commenced another battery just in
front of the quarries, the nearest to the enemy's works. It will be
armed with the heaviest ordnance,' &c. &c. And now it is nearly ready.
That must be passed on without delay."

Mr. Hobson turned to his desk and indited a telegram. It was addressed
to Arrowsmith, Hull, and said--

"New shop, as already indicated, will be opened at once. Let our
Gothenburg correspondent know."

"I will take it over myself. But let me first see whether there is
anything to add."

He resumed his reading, and presently came to the following passage:--

"'Lord Lyons had just returned from a cruise in the Black Sea. This
confirms my impression that some new movement is contemplated.
Regiments have been placed under orders, and there is great stir among
the fleet. A secret expedition is on the point of being despatched
somewhere, but the real destination no one as yet knows. Camp-gossip
is, of course, busy; but I will not repeat the idle and misleading
rumours that are on every lip.'

"Another expedition planned! I must know more of this. Where can it be
going? Is it meant for the Sea of Azof and Kertch, like the last,
which alarmed us so, and never got so far?

"Wha