Читать книгу The Secret Dispatch; or, The Adventures of Captain Balgonie онлайн

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He hurriedly, and with a tremor that increased, examined each of his pockets in succession, then his sabretasche, and lastly the pocket of the robe-de-chambre; but the dispatch—the dispatch of the Empress—entrusted to him as a chosen man by Lieutenant-General Weymarn was gone!

Lost, or abstracted, it was irretrievably gone!

Was he the victim of treachery or of a snare? Was it a dream that the voluptuous and beautiful Natalie, with her snowy skin, her dreamy eyes, and her fascinating smile, had been hovering about him—a dream or a reality?

Alas! he knew not; for again the walls and windows were whirling round him in wild career, and he sank on the floor insensible.

Poor Charlie Balgonie knew not that the morning on which he made this alarming discovery was that of the second day since his arrival at the Castle of Louga.

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Scarcely had Charlie Balgonie achieved the passage of the Louga, and, in the dark, forced his panting horse up the wooded bank towards the lighted windows of the castle, than his guide and orderly, Corporal Michail Podatchkine, who, for reasons which were his own, and which shall ultimately be explained, had decoyed him many, many versts to the southward of his proper route and then abandoned him, while he still cautiously followed, and watched him plunge into the perilous stream—watched him in the hope that he might perish in its icy current; Corporal Podatchkine, we say, had barely seen that the officer's safety was certain and assured, than he turned his horse's head, and with a hoarse malediction on his bearded mouth, rode away in an opposite direction.