"The same; and by Basil Mierowitz----" "Well, and what the devil have I to do with all this?" growled the half-breed. "Much: fifty roubles will be yours, Paulovitch, if you will assist me," said Podatchkine in a husky whisper. "Let us talk over this: dismount, and come in." "Nay, there is Olga Paulowna: then I have other work to do; but give me a drink, for I am sorely athirst." The other speedily brought him a painted bowl full of foamy quass, which the Cossack Corporal, for so we may term him, drained to the dregs; though it is a liquor, to any but a Russian, horrible as the water of Cocytus. "Let us be wary, friend Podatchkine," said the woodman: "the knout is not an angel, but it teaches us to tell the truth alike of ourselves and of others." Refreshed by his bitter draught, the Corporal shook the gathering snow-flakes from the sleeves of his fur shoubah, and resumed somewhat garrulously: "My next instructions are, that the dispatch, which is from the Empress herself (whom God and our Lady of Kazan long preserve!), and which bears the imperial seal, shall never be delivered; but must be obtained by me for Basil Mierowitz and the Lieutenant Usakoff, now detached upon the Livonian frontier, and who both know as little as I care, that its bearer is actually their own dearest and most valued friend! I misled the Hospodeen Balgonie, lured him to the river's brink, and left him there, in the hope that he and his horse might become frozen on the steppe or in the forest, where I could rob him at ease; but the man seems made of iron, and, to my astonishment, I saw him swim the Louga. I thought all gone, he, the dispatch, and my 200 roubles, when he plunged his horse into the river; but he stoutly won the opposite bank, and has made his way straight to the dwelling of Count Mierowitz, where now, I doubt not, he is safely housed." "It seems to me, friend Podatchkine, that you took a great deal of useless trouble when you had your dagger and pistols," said the other, suspiciously. "Nay, if he was to perish thus, suspicion might too readily fall upon me, for he is a favourite officer of the Empress, and of Weymarn too. My plan is this: I may get the dispatch to-night in yonder castle of Count Mierowitz." "And if not?" "Then I shall again lure and mislead Balgonie, and bring him here in the night." "What then?" asked the woodman doggedly. "How dull we are, Paulovitch. We shall drug and drown him; thus shall he die without a wound. I will take back the dispatch to Novgorod; and you can carry the body on his horse to St. Petersburg, where a sum will be given you for finding it. The poor stranger, they will say, has perished amid our keen Russian frosts, and that will be all. Nicholas Paulovitch, the carcass will be well worth twenty roubles to thee." "And thy fifty?" "You shall receive when the affair is over, and when you come to me at Novgorod, where I am quartered."