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are advancing by forced marches towards the Ural Mountains;
but some weeks must pass before they can attack the Tartars."

"And your majesty's brother, his Highness the Grand Duke,
is now isolated in the government of Irkutsk, and is no longer
in direct communication with Moscow?"

"That is so."

"But by the last dispatches, he must know what measures have
been taken by your majesty, and what help he may expect from
the governments nearest Irkutsk?"

"He knows that," answered the Czar; "but what he does not know is,
that Ivan Ogareff, as well as being a rebel, is also playing the part
of a traitor, and that in him he has a personal and bitter enemy.
It is to the Grand Duke that Ogareff owes his first disgrace;
and what is more serious is, that this man is not known to him.
Ogareff's plan, therefore, is to go to Irkutsk, and, under an
assumed name, offer his services to the Grand Duke. Then, after gaining
his confidence, when the Tartars have invested Irkutsk, he will
betray the town, and with it my brother, whose life he seeks.
This is what I have learned from my secret intelligence; this is
what the Grand Duke does not know; and this is what he must know!"

"Well, sire, an intelligent, courageous courier . . ."

"I momentarily expect one."

"And it is to be hoped he will be expeditious," added the chief
of police; "for, allow me to add, sire, that Siberia is a favorable
land for rebellions."

"Do you mean to say. General, that the exiles would make common
cause with the rebels?" exclaimed the Czar.

"Excuse me, your majesty," stammered the chief of police,
for that was really the idea suggested to him by his uneasy
and suspicious mind.

"I believe in their patriotism," returned the Czar.

"There are other offenders besides political exiles in Siberia,"
said the chief of police.

"The criminals? Oh, General, I give those up to you!
They are the vilest, I grant, of the human race.
They belong to no country. But the insurrection, or rather,
the rebellion, is not to oppose the emperor; it is raised
against Russia, against the country which the exiles have not
lost all hope of again seeing--and which they will see again.
No, a Russian would never unite with a Tartar, to weaken,
were it only for an hour, the Muscovite power!"

The Czar was right in trusting to the patriotism of those whom
his policy kept, for a time, at a distance. Clemency, which was
the foundation of his justice, when he could himself direct its effects,
the modifications he had adopted with regard to applications for the
formerly terrible ukases, warranted the belief that he was not mistaken.
But even without this powerful element of success in regard to
the Tartar rebellion, circumstances were not the less very serious;
for it was to be feared that a large part of the Kirghiz population
would join the rebels.

The Kirghiz are divided into three hordes, the greater, the lesser,
and the middle, and number nearly four hundred thousand "tents,"

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