“Here they are, sir, the whole lot—­Times, ’Tizer, Morning Chronicle, and Morning Post.”

“Why do you oblige me to ask for them?  Can’t you bring them as I have told you?  It makes me so late with my work.”  And, having delivered himself of these testy remarks, he threw himself into an arm-chair and proceeded to devour the morning’s news.

“Nothing fresh from the East?” As he now talked to himself, this smooth-shaven, typical 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?