Charlie thought of her kinsman, Nicholas Paulovitch, and instinctively grasped one of the pistols at his girdle, on seeing the dark and bearded face of a man appear among the ivy leaves some twenty feet above him. A rope ladder was lowered, and whatever doubts or misgivings were in his mind, he felt himself constrained now to go through the adventure to its end. He clambered up, and on the great screen of ivy being lifted aside, found himself face to face with his old friend Basil Mierowitz, the subaltern of his company, who, grasping both his hands with kindly warmth of manner, led him into a cavern or grotto, one of a series of many, into which the granite rocks had there been hollowed by some long past convulsion of nature. Another hand was instantly laid on his,--a smaller and softer one,--and two beautiful dark eyes were bending tenderly on his face. "Natalie!" he exclaimed, in a tremulous voice, and would have pressed her to his breast, but for the presence of Basil and several other men. Amid the twilight of the cavern, he could perceive its rough natural walls and arch, with hazy but sunny rays that streamed faintly in the background, athwart the obscurity, as if the vault communicated with other galleries in the rock, through which the upper light of day stole in by the crannies and chasms. He was also enabled to see, that with Natalie, her brother Basil, and her cousin Usakoff, who had been a Lieutenant of the Valikolutz Grenadiers, there were about twenty men in the place, all clad in sheepskin shoubahs, canvas doublets, or the caftan, the invariable dress of the Russian peasant, and nearly all had red serge breeches, rough boots, and girdles of rope or untanned leather. Though attired like woodmen or labouring serfs, all these men had unmistakably the bearing of well-trained soldiers: all were strong, active, and resolute in aspect; and Balgonie had no doubt that they were those natives of the Ukraine, the deserters from the Livonian frontier, of whom Bernikoff had spoken; for against the walls of the cavern were ranged a number of muskets and bayonets, with sets of accoutrements, sabres, and pistols. There, too, stood a regimental drum, decorated with the imperial arms, and the forbidden name of the Emperor _Ivan_! Every moment seemed to increase the perils that surrounded the luckless Balgonie, for now he was in the very den of the conspirators. All carried in their girdles a dagger or knife and double brace of pistols. They seemed to be chiefly soldiers of the Regiment of Valikolutz: and his sudden appearance among them, in the full uniform of the Smolensko Infantry, evidently excited, if it did not alarm them; for discipline becomes so completely a habit--a second nature; and, as if the presence of an epaulette rendered them uneasy, they all withdrew into the back or more obscure portion of the cavern, leaving him and their two leaders together.