The door was soon unfastened, and thereat appeared a figure, not unlike an Esquimaux, bearing a pine torch. He was a man of great stature and muscular development, clad in a caftan of coarse, thick, and warm material, girt by a broad belt in which a long and rusty knife was stuck; he had on bark shoes and long leggings of sheepskin, which, like Bryan O'Linn's breeches, had "the skinny side out and the hairy side in;" and he cultivated one long lock of grizzled hair behind his right ear in the old fashion of the Black Cossacks; but this appendage was concealed by the hood and tippet of fur which he wore. This man, however, did not belong to any of the nomadic military tribes, but was a species of Russian gipsy, a half-breed. He held up the pine torch, and its flaring light tipped with a lurid, weird, and uncertain glow his fierce, tawny, and repulsive visage, causing his cunning and almond-shaped eyes to gleam redly, like two carbuncles, from under their thick and impending brows, which were nearly as shaggy as the moustache that blended with his greasy and uncombed beard; and in the same light the head of Podatchkine's lance and the hafts of his sabre, dagger, and pistols glittered at times, being the only bright parts of his remarkably dingy costume. "Is it you, Michail Podatchkine--and _alone_?" he asked surlily. "Yes; even so, alone. Dost think I have the evil eye about me that you stare so, Nicholas Paulovitch?" "God forbid!" replied Nicholas with a shudder, for this idea is the grossest and the greatest of all Russian superstitious; "but I expected two--yourself and another." "Who told you so?" "Olga Paulowna, my sister, who yesterday saw you at Krejko." "True, I remember. Now listen, old friend and comrade----" "Hush, the girl is within and may hear you." "Well," said Podatchkine, lowering his voice, while the other extinguished his torch, half closed the door of his hut, and drew nearer the speaker, "by order of General Weymarn, Governor of St. Petersburg, General of the Cavalry, Director-General of the Canals, Bridges, and Highways----" "And the devil knows all what more!" said the other impatiently. "Well?" "I am ordered to guide this Carl Ivanovitch Balgonie, who is a stranger, to the gates of Schlusselburg, as he bears to Bernikoff a dispatch of importance; but I have been promised a heavy sum----" "Ah! how much say you?" "I have said nothing yet." "But you spoke of a heavy sum." "Two hundred silver roubles." "Two hundred silver roubles!" exclaimed Nicholas, opening his avaricious eyes with wonder, and then closing them again, so that they looked like two narrow slits. "Yes, every _denusca_, if I, by fair means or by foul, prevent the delivery of that paper into the hands of old Bernikoff." "He whose dagger tickled the throat of Peter III.: and by whom are you offered this, friend Podatchkine?" "I can trust you: well, by the Lieutenant Apollo Usakoff." "The grandson of the Hetman Mazeppa!"