"Scarcely, as it lies fully a hundred versts beyond Velie," said Nicholas. "Is the distance so great?" exclaimed Balgonie, little knowing that it was even more, and all unsuspicious of how these wretches were deluding him.* * The cottage of those assassins is said to have been situated ten versts, or about eight miles distant from Louga on the road to Velie. _Vide_ dispatch from General Weymarn to the Empress, dated 8th August, "concerning Carl Ivanovitoh Balgonie, a Scottish Captain in the Regiment of Smolensko."--_Utrecht Gazette_. "But, Excellency, we may prove more able guides than Michail Podatchkine," said the gipsy woodman; "for we--that is the Stepniak and I--must proceed to St. Petersburg to-morrow, on a little piece of business we shall have to perform together." "Poor devils!" thought Podatchkine, "if you take his body to St. Petersburg, you will both be accused of murder and knouted, as sure as my name is Michail; so I shall save my fifty silver roubles." Even at the present day in Russia, few will venture to receive or meddle with a dead body, or attempt to succour a dying or a drowning person, in dread of the dangerous accusations and extortions of the police. A sound, as of footsteps, and of something like a drinking vessel falling on the floor of an upper apartment, made the woodman start up with an oath of astonishment and alarm. He hurriedly applied a ladder to the trap which gave admission to this place, and ascended into it; but returned almost immediately to say, "there was no one there." The evident surprise and alarm of the three men at this trivial occurrence, is said to have been the first cause of exciting Balgonie's suspicion. He glanced at the Stepniak, who sat silently observant in a corner, drinking his quass, with his feet resting against the rude peitchka, or stone stove, which was built into the log wall of the cottage, and when surveying his vast bulk and colossal stature, together with his singularly ferocious aspect, the reflection occurred to him, that he should have placed his pistols in his girdle instead of leaving them in the holsters of the saddle. He was the reverse of timid; he was "brave even to rashness, and had faced death many times" (to quote General Weymarn) since his career of wandering began; but the idea certainly did flash upon his mind, that his situation in that lonely forest had its perils, and that two men more repulsive in aspect and in bearing than the gipsy and Stepniak, he had never seen, even in Russia. Was it some mysterious and intuitive sense of danger drawing near that made such thoughts pass through the steady mind of Balgonie?