impatient of men; yet, from a certain contraction of his eyebrows
every now and then, a careful observer would have seen that he was
burning to be off.

For two hours he kept walking about the streets, only to find
himself invariably at the fair again. As he passed among the groups
of buyers and sellers he discovered that those who came from
countries on the confines of Asia manifested great uneasiness.
Their trade was visibly suffering. Another symptom also was marked.
In Russia military uniforms appear on every occasion. Soldiers are
wont to mix freely with the crowd, the police agents being almost
invariably aided by a number of Cossacks, who, lance on shoulder,
keep order in the crowd of three hundred thousand strangers.
But on this occasion the soldiers, Cossacks and the rest, did not put
in an appearance at the great market. Doubtless, a sudden order
to move having been foreseen, they were restricted to their barracks.

Moreover, while no soldiers were to be seen, it was not so with
their officers. Since the evening before, aides-decamp, leaving the
governor's palace, galloped in every direction. An unusual movement was
going forward which a serious state of affairs could alone account for.
There were innumerable couriers on the roads both to Wladimir
and to the Ural Mountains. The exchange of telegraphic dispatches
with Moscow was incessant.

Michael Strogoff found himself in the central square when the report
spread that the head of police had been summoned by a courier to
the palace of the governor-general. An important dispatch from Moscow,
it was said, was the cause of it.