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

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There he found Balgonie, certainly too ill and weak either to recognise him or understand what he was about; so the faithful Cossack made a rapid and skilful investigation of all the officer's pockets, and especially his sabretasche, for the dispatch.

Not a vestige of it was to be found.

"What the devil can he have done with it?" muttered the bewildered Corporal, as he thought of his 200 silver roubles; "can he have lost it in the river, or swallowed it?"

The truth is, that Natalie Mierowna had her doubts about the fidelity of Podatchkine, and even of some of her own domestics, and aware of the risk run by the stranger if he lost a dispatch of the Empress, she had, prior to the introduction of the Corporal, secured the document, and at that moment it was hidden in her own fair bosom until she could secure it in a safer place.

In her bosom! Poor Natalie! Alas, she little knew its contents, and the horrors they were yet to produce!

Baffled thus in his attempt to secure it, there was no resource for the faithful warrior of the steppes now but to take up his quarters, which he was nothing loth to do, at the Castle of the Louga, and there quietly and comfortably to smoke his pipe by the kitchen stove; await the recovery or the death, he cared not which, of Balgonie; and to concert further measures with the huge gipsy, Nicholas Paulovitch, whom he saw daily.