Page:By order of the Czar.djvu/396

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384 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.

stiff English back.

Two subordinate officials were detailed to the service of the English traveler.

They carried Philip Forsyth, with his chains and long grey cloak, insensible as he was, and placed him inside the Russian carriage.

Dick gave the driver a handful of roubles, begging him to hurry on to the nearest post, which fortunately was within a short distance.

Anna Klosstock parted with her companion without disclosing any more emotion than was concentrated into her grip of Dick Chetwynd's hand. It was from the eyes of the stolid Englishman that the tears streamed, not from those of the suffering martyr, Anna Klosstock.


CHAPTER XLIX.

AN OLD MAN AND HIS DAUGHTER.

TRAVELERS who know Siberia and readers who have studied the literature of the subject need not be told that it is not always winter in that vast region of the Russian Empire, which is larger than Europe, and has nearly as much variety of climate. If this last claim, however, be somewhat exaggerative, it must at least be confessed that there are tracts of Siberia which can boast of flowers and gardens, song-birds, butterflies, clear streams, pleasant lakes, and fertile valleys. A great portion of the country in the provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk, and including the steppes of Baraba and Ishim, are of rare fertility ; they are, indeed, the granaries of Russia. The valley of the Yenesei, in Western Siberia, north of the Sayansk Moun- tains, is not unworthy in its summer months to be com- pared with the valley of the Severn in England.