Personally, Balgonie felt that he was no match for either of the powerful giants below--men whose bodily strength was quite equal to their ferocity, and whose daggers and hatchets might make mince-meat of him. Moreover, they had now deprived Podatchkine of his sabre and loaded pistols, and were thus more completely armed. Charlie had his hand on his sword--a handsome Turkish sabre; but relinquishing the ideas either of attack or defence, while the glow of rage rose in his breast and cheek, he thought only of immediate flight. "If you would save your life and the dispatch of the Empress, follow me this instant, and get your horse before they return: you have not a moment to lose." It was the gipsy girl who spoke again, in her low earnest whisper, and with perfect decision. "Then I owe my escape--my safety----" "To my gratitude. Pass through the window and descend by the wall." "Women," says a certain philosopher, "are not at all inferior to men in coolness and courage, and perhaps much less in resolution than is commonly imagined; the reason they appear so is, because women affect to be more afraid than they really are, and men pretend to be less." Balgonie found that the courageous girl to whose guidance he now trusted himself, had been enabled to reach the window by standing on the roof of the outhouse, or shed, in which Podatchkine had stabled their horses. The whole edifice being built of squared logs, was not very high, and it afforded easy means of ascent and descent, by the interstices consequent to its rude construction by the hatchet. He soon leaped to the ground, and softly assisted her to descend. "Here is your horse: you see, Hospodeen, that your kindness to the poor gipsy girl was not thrown away." Balgonie looked rapidly to his bit and girth, adjusted himself in his saddle, hooked up the hilt of his sabre, and shortened his rein, almost unaware of the black tragedy being so coolly and deliberately acted on the other side of the cottage. "Ten versts farther from this will bring you to the monastery of the Troitza, which you will know by its three domes. You have but to ride straight westward by the forest path; God keep you, and may you and the beautiful Hospoza be happy in your loves!" "Tell me, gipsy girl----" "Ah, I can foretell nothing, save that in love mere merit is of little matter." "What is of most importance--beauty?" "No." "What then?" "Success, Hospodeen." He almost laughed, as he slipped into her hand two xervonitz (the largest coins he had), and in a moment more was galloping over the soft grass of the forest path she had indicated. "By Jove," thought he, as he spurred on, "I shall not be sorry when this infernal dispatch is safe in the hands of old Bernikoff; and to think of that wretch of a Podatchkine! I always expected the fellow to be a rogue, but not of so deep a dye!"