e sitting-room.

Soudeikin nodded in reply, and the five left the house by the back
door.

It was then after half-past four. Fortunately it was a dark cloudy
morning, and the streets of the town were utterly deserted. By ones
and twos they stole through the by-streets and lanes without meeting
a soul, until Soudeikin at length stopped at a house on the eastern
edge of the town about a mile from the Tobolsk road.

He tapped at one of the windows. The door was softly opened by an
invisible hand, and they entered and passed through a dark passage
and out into a stable-yard behind the house. Under a shed they found
a troika, or three-horse sleigh, with the horses ready harnessed, in
charge of a man dressed as a mujik.

They got in without a word, all but Soudeikin, who went to the
horses' heads, while the other man went and opened the gates of the
yard. The bells had been removed from the harness, and the horses'
feet made no sound as Soudeikin led them out through the gate. Ivan
took the reins, and Colston held out his hand from the sleigh. There
was a roll of notes in it, and as he gave it to Soudeikin he
whispered--

"Farewell! If we succeed, the Master shall know how well you have
done your part."

Soudeikin took the money with a salute and a whispered farewell, and
Ivan trotted his horses quietly down the lane and swung round into
the road at the end of it.

So far all had gone well, but the supreme moment of peril had yet to
come. A mile away down the road was the guard-house on the Tobolsk
road leading out of the town, and this had to be passed before there
was even a chance of safety.

As there was no hope of getting the sleigh past unobserved, Colston
had determined to trust to a rush when the moment came. He had given
Natasha and the Princess a magazine pistol apiece, and held a brace
in his own hands; so among them they had a hundred shots.

Ivan kept his horses at an easy trot till they were within a hundred
yards of the guard-house. Then, at a sign from Colston, he suddenly
lashed them into a gallop, and the sleigh dashed forward at a
headlong speed, swept round the curve past the guard-house, hurling
one of the sentries on guard to the earth, and away out on to the
Tobolsk road.

The next instant the notes of a bugle rang out clear and shrill just
as another sounded from the other end of the town. Colston at once
guessed what had happened. The inspector of the patrols, in going his
rounds, had c