'We'll fight if the worst comes to the worst; but as it is we've a very fair chance of escape. We have our revolvers.' As they crossed the brow of the hill a wild shout borne by the wind told them that the Count had been right. They had been seen. Litvinoff stopped the horses, and the two men got out, leaving the counterfeit presentment of themselves, which the secretary's deft hands had invested with a very real appearance. The Count gave two tremendous lashes, the horses sprang madly forward at three times the pace they had made hitherto, and the two fugitives plunged through the snow to the left of the road. 'Don't go too fast,' whispered Litvinoff; 'you'll need all your wind presently. We've a fair start now, and they can't follow on horseback.' They had not gone two hundred yards before they heard the troop sweep by. 'We weren't a minute too soon,' the secretary said. 'There goes another of them,' said the Count, as again they caught the sound of a horse's snow-muffled hoofs. On they went, struggling over rough ground, sometimes waist-deep in snowdrifts, sometimes tripping over concealed stones or broken wood. 'We shall do it now,' said Litvinoff. 'They're on us, by God!' cried the secretary at the same instant. They turned; they had been tracked, but only by one man. One of the pursuers, who had been a little behind the others, either better trained in this sort of sport than his fellows, or guided by some sixth sense, seemed to have divined what they had done, and had dismounted just at the right place, and followed them on foot. He gave a yell of triumph as he saw a grey figure struggling up the incline before him. 'Aha, Mr Secretary,' he cried, and, raising his carbine, fired; the grey figure stumbled forward into the snow. '_You're_ done for, at any rate!' The Cossack's triumph was a short one. As he dashed forward to secure his fallen quarry, another figure sprang from the snowy brushwood a little ahead of him, walked calmly towards him, raised a revolver, and shot him through the heart. * * * * * A week or two later one of those short and inaccurate paragraphs which date from St Petersburg appeared in several European papers. It was to the effect that Count Michael Litvinoff had been captured, after a desperate struggle, near the frontier, and that his private secretary, a young Englishman, had been shot in the fray. But the French papers knew better, and that report was promptly contradicted. The _Débats_, while confirming the news of the secretary's death, asserted that Count Michael Litvinoff was at that moment at the Hôtel du Louvre, and his bankers would have confirmed the statement.