whom contact, either
physical or moral, is unpleasant. Then, as he looked more attentively
through the dusk, he perceived, near the cottage, a large caravan, the
usual traveling dwelling of the Zingaris or gypsies, who swarm in Russia
wherever a few copecks can be obtained.

As the gypsy took two or three steps forward, and was about to
interrogate Michael Strogoff more closely, the door of the cottage
opened. He could just see a woman, who spoke quickly in a language which
Michael Strogoff knew to be a mixture of Mongol and Siberian.

"Another spy! Let him alone, and come to supper. The papluka is waiting
for you."

Michael Strogoff could not help smiling at the epithet bestowed on him,
dreading spies as he did above all else.

In the same dialect, although his accent was very different, the
Bohemian replied in words which signify, "You are right, Sangarre!
Besides, we start to-morrow."

"To-morrow?" repeated the woman in surprise.

"Yes, Sangarre," replied the Bohemian; "to-morrow, and the Father
himself sends us--where we are going!"

Thereupon the man and woman entered the cottage, and carefully closed
the door.

"Good!" said Michael Strogoff, to himself; "if these gipsies do not wish
to be understood when they speak before me, they had better use some
other language."

From his Siberian origin, and because he had passed his childhood in the
Steppes, Michael Strogoff, it has been said, understood almost all
the languages in usage from Tartary to the Sea of Ice. As to the exact
signification of the words he had heard, he did not trouble his head.
For why should it interest him?

It was already late when he thought of returning to his inn to take some
repose. He followed, as he did so, the course of the Volga, whose waters
were almost hidden under the countless number of boats floating on its
bosom.

An hour after, Michael Strogoff was sleeping soundly on one of those
Russian beds which always seem so hard to strangers, and on the morrow,
the 17th of July, he awoke at break of day.

He had still five hours to pass in Nijni-Novgorod; it seemed to him an
age. How was he to spend the morning unless in wandering, as he had done
the evening before, through the streets? By the time he had finished
his breakfast, strapped up his bag, had his podorojna inspected at the
police office, he would have nothing to do but start. But he was not a
man to lie in bed after the sun had risen; so he rose, dressed himself,