“Let him come to the headquarters and ask for my tent,” said McKay.  “There is my name on a piece of paper; if he shows that to the sentry they will let him through.”

“Very good, sare; you wait and see.”

“No humbug, mind, Joe; or I’ll be down on you!” added the provost-marshal.  “Is that all you want, McKay?”

Our hero expressed himself quite satisfied, and, with many thanks to the provost-marshal, he remounted and rode away.

CHAPTER II.

AMONG THE COSSACKS.

McKay was in His tent next morning finishing dressing when his servant brought him a piece of crumpled paper and said there was a messenger waiting to see him.  The paper was the pass given the day before to Valetta Joe; its bearer was a nondescript-looking ruffian, in a long shaggy cloak of camel’s hair, whose open throat and bare legs hinted at a great scantiness of wardrobe beneath.  He wore an old red fez, stained purple, on the back of his bullet-head; he had a red, freckled face, red eyebrows, red eyes, red hair, and a pointed red beard, both of which were very ragged and unkempt.

“Have you got anything to tell me?” asked McKay, sharply, in English; and when the other shook his head he tried him in French, Spanish, and last of all in Italian.

“News,” replied the visitor, at length, laconically; “ten dollars.”

McKay put the money in his hand and was told briefly—­

“To-morrow—­sortie—­Woronzoff Road.”

And this was all the fellow would say.

McKay passed on this information to his chief, but rather doubtfully, declining to vouch for it, or say whence it had come.

It was felt, however, that no harm could be done in accepting the news as true and preparing for a Russian attack.  The event proved the wisdom of this course.  The sortie was made next night.  A Russian column of considerable strength advanced some distance along the Woronzoff Road, but finding the English on the alert immediately retired.

The next piece of information that reached McKay from the same source, but by a different messenger, was more readily credited.  He learnt this time that the Russians intended to establish a new kind of battery in front of the Karabel suburb.

“What kind?” asked McKay.

The messenger, a hungry-looking Tartar who spoke broken English, but when encouraged explained himself freely in Russian, said—­

“Big guns; they sink one end deep into the ground, the other point very high.”

“I understand.  They want to give great elevation, so as to increase the range.”

“Yes, you see.  They will reach right into your camp.”

Again the information proved correct.  Within a couple of days the camps of the Third and Fourth Divisions, hitherto deemed safe from the fire of the fortress, were disturbed by the whistling of round-shot in their midst.  The fact was reported in due course to headquarters.