"Oh! Basil--Usakoff--my friends, if indeed I may yet dare to call you so, and live," said Balgonie, in a voice that was broken by emotion, "for what rash and dreadful purpose do I find you and these unfortunate fellows here?" "You, and all Russia too, shall learn ere long," replied Mierowitz calmly and sternly, yet with a grave and noble air, with which his coarse canvas caftan assorted oddly. "And poor Natalie!" exclaimed Balgonie, in a tone of grief and reproach; "have you no pity for her?" "Until Natalie informed me, I knew not, my friend, Carl Ivanovitch, that _you_ were the bearer of that secret dispatch, which might have cost you limb or life, when it was too late to arrest those I had set upon your track." "Well, certainly, I was not much indebted to the good offices of your rogue, Podatchkine." "The Corporal's orders were simply to abstract the document, and bring it to me; not to slay its bearer, unless such a catastrophe became unavoidable." "He fell into his own snare--a dark and deadly one." "Happily you escaped it; and I have saved two hundred silver roubles, for the service of the Emperor." "Who do you mean?" asked Balgonie, in a whisper. "Ivan--the Prisoner of Schlusselburg!" exclaimed Usakoff, with enthusiasm. "Alas!" added Balgonie, "you court but your own destruction." "Think not so; but join us, and share our perils and our glory," replied the other. "I am bound by allegiance to the Empress." "You are but a tool in her hands, Carl Balgonie." "Perhaps so; but one with a devilish sharp edge, I hope," replied Balgonie, who felt only genuine sorrow; and a silence of nearly a minute ensued. The manner and voice of Basil Mierowitz were singularly soft and winning, yet he was bold and resolute; and though a young man, he had all the free and easy bearing of a courtly soldier, blended with something of the calm severity of a priest--a manner that was very impressive. The Polish and Cossack blood that mingled in the veins of Apollo Usakoff gave a freer and bolder, perhaps a wilder, bearing and style of language; his nose was aquiline, and expressed fierceness of disposition; yet his features otherwise were essentially delicate and noble, and his eyes were strangely beautiful in colour and variety of expression. They were dark grey, encircled by a ring of light, clear brown; and when he spoke, or became excited, the iris contracted and expanded, as the blood flowed and ebbed in his fiery and enthusiastic heart, for he was a grandson of the Hetman Mazeppa--that Pole, whose story is so well known, and who, after being bound naked on a wild and maddened horse, to punish him for having an intrigue with a noble lady of his own country, was carried by his steed through woods and wastes, and herds of wolves and bears, into the heart of the Ukraine, where he lived to become the prince and leader of those wild Cossacks who dwell upon the banks of the Dnieper.