"All is arranged for freeing the prisoner of S. (chlusselburg) by a stratagem. A dispatch that may counteract, if not baffle our plans, and fatally compromise us all, has been sent by old Weymarn to St. Petersburg. I know not who the bearer is; but be assured of this, _he will never reach it alive_. We have set Podatchkine on his track, and he, worthy Livonian, for two hundred roubles, would skin his own father alive." After reading this pleasant epistle, little wonder is it that Natalie was found by Mariolizza, as the twilight deepened, half senseless upon her bed, cold, in tears, and utterly miserable. CHAPTER IX. DELUDED. A lover has occasionally been likened to a fool, as being a man possessed by one idea, his mistress. This was certainly somewhat of poor Charlie Balgonie's state of mind. He saw only the dark eyes, the half drooped lids, and the farewell glance of Natalie; so full of hidden and tender meaning; and while thinking of her and of her last words and promises, their mutual hopes of the future, based almost entirely on Basil, he fell an easy prey to the plans and schemes of the wily Corporal Podatchkine, who saw only his anticipated two hundred silver roubles; and who, knowing the country as well as if it had been every acre, rood, and verst his own property, led him on and on he knew not where; but, at all events, two hours after they should have met the caravan, they found themselves, to all appearance, lost in a dense forest of dark pine trees. Failing the caravan, having now proceeded, as he believed, some twenty miles or so, Balgonie had thoughts of passing the night at the house of a friend of Count Mierowitz, a _duornin_, of whom he had been told by Mariolizza, who laughingly assured him, that this personage was "a fine Russian gentleman of the old school, who beat his wife regularly every Thursday and Saturday with a whip of thongs," and was seldom sober. Those duornins were country gentlemen, who held their lands by knights' service, and were bound to attend the Czar on horseback in time of war. Formerly it was sufficient to send a man well armed and mounted; but Peter the Great first compelled them or their sons to serve in person, if they could not pay for a substitute. In short, though he knew it not, Balgonie had been for the last two hours riding merely in a wide circle, and, by the careful guidance of Podatchkine, was now not many miles from the hut of the gipsy woodman, Nicholas Paulovitch; and, consequently, he was much nearer the Castle of Louga than he had the least idea of. On this night there was a glorious Aurora in the north, and full of his love, his own tender thoughts, and inspired by the beauty of the scene, it seemed to the somewhat provoked Podatchkine, that the dreaming Captain was quite disposed to pass the night where he was.