"Yet tarry here you must," said she, with a smile, the beauty of which proved very bewildering: "the Louga is coated with ice this morning, but not so thick, however, that it might not be broken by throwing a five-kopec piece from here; but to travel yet would only kill you, Carl Ivanovitch, and cannot be thought of just now." Then as she glided away, with her beaming smile, her white hands and taper arms, her rustling dress of scarlet silk trimmed with snowy miniver, and all the sense of perfume that pervaded her, Balgonie sighed wearily yet pleasantly, and half thought that beautiful figure a dream, as he turned on his soft and luxurious pillow, and marvelled whether his past or his present existence was the real one. A captain in the ducal Regiment of Smolensko and not yet twenty-five! Same ten years ago, his future seemed to point to a very different course of life. Far from Russian steppes and icy streams, their forests and barbarity, his mind had been wandering home to Britain's happier shore; and he might have said with the Bard who sang the "Course of Time,"-- "Nor do I of that Isle remember aught, Of prospect more sublime and beautiful, Than Scotia's northern battlement of hills, Which first I from my father's house beheld, At dawn of life; beloved in memory still, And standard yet of rural imagery." His story is a brief one, and not very startling, save for its rapid career of injustice. Charles Balgonie, son of John Balgonie of that Ilk in Strathearn, had come into the world during that which was perhaps the most stupid, lifeless, and impoverished era of Scottish existence, the middle of the reign of George II.; when the country was without trade, energy, or enterprise, and when nothing flourished save that which prospers there more than ever even under the rule of her present Majesty, and will do so apparently unto the end of time,--gloomy fanaticism and canting hypocrisy: more among the laity certainly, who make a trade and cloak of outward religion, than among the clergy, who dare not be liberal, even if so disposed; for without a public and noisy exhibition of sanctity, few have ever had much chance of place or profit north of the Tweed. Moreover, Charlie was born at a time when to be a Scotsman or an Irishman was almost a political crime in the eyes of their somewhat illiberal fellow-subjects, and when for either to attain eminence in the service of their native country was nearly an impossibility; and hence the Scots crowded to the armies and fleets of Russia and Holland, and the Irish to those of France and Spain.