Bob’s sensations were by no means agreeable as he kept pace perforce with the Cossack’s horse. The trot, fortunately, soon slackened to a quick amble, or he must soon have been utterly exhausted. In spite of the cold, the exertion of walking fast, heavily clothed as he was, made him uncomfortably hot, and his physical temperature was matched by his mental condition. He was in a rage; not at being made a prisoner: that was only to have been expected: but at being tied up like a dog, reminding him of the curs he had seen chained to bakers’ carts in French villages. Anger, however, was a mere waste of energy, as he soon saw; at present he could only make the best of a bad case,—keep up his courage and his pace without reminders from the evil-looking knout he saw ready to the Cossack’s hand. As he trudged along, two reflections were uppermost in his mind. One was that, having been captured and treated with indignity, he was justified in regarding himself now as a combatant; this gave him a little consolation. The other was, that in Chang-Wo, the Manchu, he had an enemy of a particularly dangerous kind. He remembered Kobo’s story of him; and the knowledge that this same man was doing desperate work for the Russians in Korea was not reassuring. The Manchu had evidently recognized him as the stranger who had saved the little Japanese from his vengeance in the Ueno Park, and clearly bore him no good-will on that account. The road was a difficult one, leading over the rugged hills. Darkness fell, and still the troop pushed on. At length, when Bob felt on the point of collapsing, they rode into a town or village of fair size, which, as he afterwards learnt, was Yong-cheng, on the Pekin high-road. He expected that now at least he would be allowed rest and food, but as soon as the Cossacks arrived at the place they took him before a Russian officer of some rank, apparently a lieutenant-colonel. When preliminary explanations had been given, the colonel ordered the prisoner to stand before him, and in peremptory tones began to question him in French. Bob’s French was not very fluent, but he answered as well as he could, repeating the replies he had previously given. He refused to say who had been in his company before he made off on the Cossack’s horse, and assured the Russian that he knew absolutely nothing of any communications that may have passed between this person and spies on shore. His persistence made the officer more and more angry, until at last the latter shouted: "You’re a liar! Tell me the truth, or I’ll hang you on the spot." "I have already told you the truth," said Bob quietly. "I don’t know whom my friend may have met at Yongampo, and if I did, I could not tell you—surely you must see that?" "You’re an insolent puppy. A means will be found to loosen your tongue. I’ll give you a night to come to your senses.—Take him away."