As we walked I noticed at the side of the road a black spot.  It attracted and fixed my attention.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing to the spot.

“It is the murderer Pouzikoff whom I shot,” answered the Lieutenant.  “I would have shot both Kanine and the wife of Pouzikoff but I was sorry for Kanine’s wife and children and I haven’t learned the lesson of shooting women.  Now I shall send them along with you under the surveillance of my soldiers to Uliassutai.  The same result will come, for the Mongols who try them for the murder will surely kill them.”

This is what happened at Tisingol, on whose shores the will-o’-the-wisp flits over the marshy pools and near which runs the cleavage of over two hundred miles that the last earthquake left in the surface of the land.  Maybe it was out of this cleavage that Pouzikoff, Kanine and the others who have sought to infect the whole world with horror and crime made their appearance from the land of the inferno.  One of Lieutenant Ivanoff’s soldiers, who was always praying and pale, called them all “the servants of Satan.”

Our trip from Tisingol to Uliassutai in the company of these criminals was very unpleasant.  My friend and I entirely lost our usual strength of spirit and healthy frame of mind.  Kanine persistently brooded and thought while the impudent woman laughed, smoked and joked with the soldiers and several of our companions.  At last we crossed the Jagisstai and in a few hours descried at first the fortress and then the low adobe houses huddled on the plain, which we knew to be Uliassutai.

CHAPTER XXV

HARASSING DAYS

Once more we found ourselves in the whirl of events.  During our fortnight away a great deal had happened here.  The Chinese Commissioner Wang Tsao-tsun had sent eleven envoys to Urga but none had returned.  The situation in Mongolia remained far from clear.  The Russian detachment had been increased by the arrival of new colonists and secretly continued its illegal existence, although the Chinese knew about it through their omnipresent system of spies.  In the town no Russian or foreign citizens left their houses and all remained armed and ready to act.  At night armed sentinels stood guard in all their court-yards.  It was the Chinese who induced such precautions.  By order of their Commissioner all the Chinese merchants with stocks of rifles armed their staffs and handed over any surplus guns to the officials, who with these formed and equipped a force of two hundred coolies into a special garrison of gamins.  Then they took possession of the Mongolian arsenal and distributed these additional guns among the Chinese vegetable farmers in the nagan hushun, where there was always a floating population of the lowest grade of transient Chinese laborers.  This trash of China now felt themselves strong, gathered together in excited discussions and evidently were preparing for some outburst of