"We had better wait till we get to the House," said Beauregard. "We
must have peace, for I have got the most vexatious business to speak
about." And again he wrinkled his anxious brows and stared in front of
him.
They entered a private room where the fire had burned itself out, and
the lights fell on heavy furniture and cheerless solitude. Beauregard
spread himself out in an arm-chair, and stared at the ceiling.
Wratislaw, knowing his chief's manners, stood before the blackened grate
and waited.
"Fetch me an atlas--that big one, and find the map of the Indian
frontier." Wratislaw obeyed and stretched the huge folio on the table.
The elder man ran his forefinger in a circle.
"There--that wretched radius is the plague of my life. Our reports stop
short at that line, and reliable information begins again some hundreds
of miles north. Meanwhile--between?" And he shrugged his shoulders.
"I got news to-day in a roundabout way from Taghati. That's the town
just within the Russian frontier there. It seems that the whole country
is in a ferment. The hill tribes are out and the Russian frontier line
is threatened. So they say. I have the actual names of the people who
are making the row. Russian troops are being massed along the line
there. The whole place, you know, has been for long a military beehive
and absurdly over-garrisoned, so there is no difficulty about the
massing.
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