A telegram came from Irkutsk to seize and bring to Verhneudinsk as propagandists the postmaster’s son and daughter--twenty-one and eighteen. Twenty Cossacks surrounded the house at three in the morning. The two were arrested, taken to the mayor’s house, and lodged there. The next day they were started on the trail to Kiahta. Once over the border, there would be no more hope. Quickly the leading men of the colony assembled and telegraphed the Russian ambassador at Peking, knowing that if the ambassador had official cognizance, he could not safely authorize an arrest on Chinese soil by the Cossacks of the Guard. The response was delayed, but there was pressure enough upon the consul to get the prisoners held at the mining-camp beyond Iro until the answer was received. At length the ambassador replied that Chinese suzerainty must be respected. The two were free. But the father had been advised to resign his post and accept a station which was offered him at Kalgan, where there were only three Russians, all warranted proof against propaganda. Beyond the Russian consulate, six versts, is the Chinese town called, as are many of these trading-posts, Maimachen, or place of trade. One can get there by the solitary Cossack-driven droshky that the Russian colony supports. But more appropriately we go on pony-back, borrowing an army-saddle and a purple fleece-lined _shuba_, whose skirts reach around the knees, and whose long sleeves fold over the hands, keeping a rider reasonably warm in cold weather. The houses of Mongol Urga are soon left behind, the stockaded lamasery is passed on the left, and we are on a big open plain. A few minutes’ gallop takes us past the consulate. Beyond it stands a compound girded by a stockade of saplings, within which are the low mud walls of straggling houses, amid which the gilded eaves of a more pretentious residence lift themselves above the rest. A troop of pig-tailed horsemen trots past: the white tunics of the riders are covered, back and breast, with red ideograph letters, which stigmatize the bearers as of the lowest caste--soldiers of the Celestial service. The man in front holds aloft a gilded pear-shaped standard, and between the ranks lumbers a covered cart with closed shutters. The cavalcade wheels to the right and turns in, dipping the standard as they pass under the gargoyle-tipped beams of the gateway. Servants come running out of the great house. From the cart is helped down a Manchu of pallid face and short gray mustache. That wooden house, girded by mud huts, is the seat of government for this greatest _eimuck_ in Mongolia. The figure robed in cheap blue cotton is lord of life and death, the _Zinzin_, Viceroy for the Emperor of China.