The bright silver coins proved too exciting for the cupidity of the pursuers, who loitered to pick them up, tumbling, scrambling, rising and falling over each other, with shouts, curses, and maledictions, their fire-arms sometimes exploding the while; and so the whole were speedily left behind, as the kabitka, guarded now by Balgonie alone, was driven along a lonely and unfrequented road, that led to the little town of Pomphela. "Thanks, dear Usakoff--thanks for your presence of mind," said Balgonie; "I had forgot all about those roubles." "Silver has achieved for us what neither our lead or steel would have done!" "But, to lighten the kabitka, let us throw out those remaining bags--this perilous lumber, the intended recapture of which has nearly cost us our lives--honour--all, at the hands of Vlasfief." "Nay, nay, never! Lumber, say you? The roubles are Natalie's--hers and mine--hers and yours, when you wed her; they have saved us once, and may do so again," replied Usakoff cheerfully, as the sun burst forth in his clear October splendour, and they saw the dome-shaped cupola of the Church of Pomphela rising with a golden gleam from amid the white morning haze. There Balgonie's uniform and a display of gold and roubles operated powerfully on the Postmaster, who, without asking for passports or other papers, at once, and in the name of the Empress, supplied them with fresh horses for the frontier, towards which, after procuring some proper nourishment and restoratives for Natalie, they pushed on without a moment of unnecessary delay. "Ah," thought Balgonie, with a shudder and a prayer; "had Jagouski's name not been omitted in that order of Weymarn, where would she have been now?" Pale with sorrow and long suffering, her face was still beautiful, though sorely wasted; the deep thoughtful eyes had yet a wealth--a world of tenderness in their liquid depths; and the long dark hair was thick, soft, and wavy as ever, as it fell in masses behind the small, compact, and finely-formed head. Yet withal, her wretchedness had been extreme, having been so suddenly and rudely rent from all those habits of luxury and tender nurture, which had become, as it were, a second nature; and often, very often, had it occurred to her in her later misery of soul "that the repose of the grave is sweet, and that there cometh after death a levelling and making even of things which would at last cure all her evils." But all was changed now; and, as she laid her head on Charlie's breast, she felt content--almost happy; and the horrors that hung over her family alone prevented her, as yet, from being completely so.