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.