BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
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opened all gates and ways before him, and the morning after his arrival in the city on the Kama he was once more en route, this time by the Ural Mountains railroad, for Ekaterinburg.
Two days of travel brought him to the station near the summit of the mountains. The weather was cold ; there had been heavy frosts in the hills, the faded foliage was beginning to shrivel and fall. The scenery was wild and impressive, suggesting Switzerland and the Alleghany Mountains, the country dotted here and there with mining camps and villages that might have belonged to the early settlements of Canada and the United States. The rail- way was a remarkable work of engineering, and, while Dick was loath to leave it at Ekaterinburg for the wilder and more difficult country beyond, he was nevertheless satisfied to have reached the point where his journey must be continued by road.
At this last railway station on the Ural slope he had information of a band of exiles who had passed through the city of Ekaterinburg at about the time mentioned by the prison governor at Moscow.
Dick was now some hundred and fifty miles from the Siberian frontier, and on a certain calculation with a local official he was informed that it might be quite possible to overtake Captain Karakazov before he reached the boundary.
While the distance from Ekaterinburg had to be covered by a public vehicle, well horsed, but traveling over diffi- cult roads, its progress was very rapid compared with the slow march of the fettered prisoners. The journey was relieved at various posts on the way, where horses were changed, the rate of traveling being at about eight miles an hour ; the inn accommodation at night rough as it could be, but not inhospitable, and Dick found com- panions who were civil, but with whom he could hold little
