Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 March 1904 — The Secret Dispatch [ARTICLE]

The Secret Dispatch

By JAMES GRANT

CHAPTER lll.—(Continued.) “Nay. if lie was to perish tints, suspijeton might too readily fall upon me; for ike is a favorite officer of the Empress, land of We.vmam, too. Mv plan is this: [1 may get the dispatch to-uiglit iu yonder castle.” “And if not?” “Then I shall again hire and mislead Balgonie, and bring him here in the Sight." “What then?” asked the woodman, doggedly. "How dull ive are, Panlaritch, We •hall drug and drown him; Unis shall he •die without a wound. I will take back the dispatch to Novgorod, nnd you enn • carry the body on his horse to St. Petcrs’barg, where a sum will be given you for finding it. The poor stranger, they will . aay, has perished amid our keen Russian Jrosts, and that will be all. Nicholas fipaulovitch. the carcass will be well rvorth twenty roubles to thee.” “And thy fifty?” “You shall receive when the affair is •Ter, and when you come to me at Novgorod, where I am quartered.” “By the bones of my tribe, 1 am with goo, Podatchkine!” exclaimed the hnlfjbreed with ferocious joy. Then they ■hook heartily their hard and dingy hands —hands that had wrought many a deed •f merciless cruelty. A few minutes more nnd these worthy compatriots had separated. There was a third person who had •verheard the first savage Plot, and who felt her heart stirred with pity and terror for Balgonie, who had given her a silver kopec at Krejko but yesterday—the gypsy girl, Olga Paulowua. the sister of Nicholas Fauloviteh; and she resolved to baffle both conspirators if site could.

CHAPTER IV. Corporal Podatclikine was an admirable specimen of his own type of Russian. His thick black scrubby hair was cut straight across the forehead in a line with the eyebrows, and at each side it hung perpendicularly down below the ears, and was,. moreover, cut square •cross the neck behind; and he kept alternately scratching* and smoothing liis rugged front, nervously and assiduously, when he removed his fur Cossack cap; and, full of affected concern, even to exhibiting tears in his small, cunning eyes, presented himself to Natalie Mierowhn next morning, and besought her to have him “conducted to the chamber of his brave, his beloved captain, his comrade •nd brother, who was, he now learned, •eriously ill, helpless and delirious" — •nd, in fact, just as the cunning corporal wished him to bc % , There he found Btngonie. certainly too ill and weak either to recognize him or understand what he was about; so the faithful Cossack made a rapid and skillful investigation of all the officer's pockets for the dispatch. Not a vestige of lit was to be found. “What can he have done with it?” [muttered the bewildered corporal; “can ftie have lost it in the river, or swallowfed it?” The truth is that Natalie Mierowna |fcnd her doubts about the fidelity of PoIdntehkine, and even of some of her own 'domestics, and aware of the risk rtln liy 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 seen re it in n safer place. Poor Natalie! Alas, she little knew its contents, and the horrors they were yet to produce. Raffled thus in his attempt to secure tt. there was no resource for the faithful warrior of the steppes now but to take up his quarters which he was; nothing loath to do. at the Castle of the I.oiiga, •nd there quietly await the recovery or ti death, he cared not which, of Bulgnui< and to concert furjjier measures with the huge gypsy. Nicholas Pauloviteh, whom he saw daily. It was no feverish dream or Balgonie that Natalie Mierowna had been hovering about his bedside; for she and her cousin Mariolizza had been his especial nurses.

In loss than three days the feverish delirium subsided, sense completely returned, and the young captain appeared to be laboring under a species of influenza. "ily dispatch!” he frequently said aloud —''1 must he gone with my dispatch !” “Mighr it not be intrusted to Corporal I’odutehkineV" asked Natalie one morning, as she personally gave him his warm and soothing drink with her own hand, Katmka. the maid, standing demurely by with a silver salver. "Impossible. Hosphozn, for so I may rail you; an otlleer alone can carry n dispatch for the empress. Its coutootst-are most urgent; this delay, over which I have no control, may be visited by royal disfavor, even punishment; and I fear that the air of Tobolsk or Arkutsk would 111 suit a Scotsman's lungs, Natalie Miefow na.” "Yet tarry here you must.” she said, with a smile, the beauty of which proved very bewildering; “the Longa is coated with ice this morning, but not so thick, however, that it might not he broken by throwing a stone from here; but to travel jet would only kill you, Carl lvanovitch, •ml cannot be thought of just now.” Then she glided away, with her-beam-ing smile, her white hands bnd taper • tun, her rustling dress or scarlet silk trimmed with snowy miniver, and all the •ense of perfume that pervaded her. Bnlgooie sighed wearily yet pleasantly, and half thought that beautiful figure • dream, ns he turned on his sort and luxurious pillow and marveled whether his past or his present existence was the vaal one. CHAPTER V. CkariM Rulgonie, son of John R*l gouie of Htratkcaru, had come into the world during that which was perhaps the ■MBt stupid, lifeless and impoverished •mi of Scottish existence, the middle of Iks reign of George 11. By the early death of his parents. fJharUa had been cast, in his extreme

boyhood, upon the tender mercies of a bachelor uncle, Mr. Gamaliel Balgonie, a hard-hearted, grasping, avaricious merchant in Dundee. In the lovely vale of Strnthearn stood the home of Charlie Balgonie. On the death of his parents his small paternal estate of a few hundred per annum would have become his inheritance, but the relation before mentioned —the paternal uncle, Gamaliel, suddenly produced a will, by which, to the profound astonishment of all, the entire estate was left to him as a return for certain loans and sums advanced to the deceased, of which, however, no proOf could he found; but it was a veritable deathbed will; written accurately by a notary, and duly signed. Though tremulous and shaky, strangely so —and rather unlike the usual signature of the deceased laird, three men there were, accounted good, worthy and religious men, who solemnly deposed to having seen “the hand of the dead man pen those words.” It was a case which made some noise in those days, because thirty-six hours after the alleged signature was given John Balgonie died. The law of Scotland requires that, lifter framing, nnd signing such a deed, the testator must have been able to go once at least to church or market. How it came to pass we know not now, but the dispute, though without a basis, was brought before the supreme court by spam friends of the orphan, for there were not a few persons in Stratliearn who alleged that John Balgonie’s hand had certainly traced the signature which was sworn to so solemnly as his—but had dono so after death; the pen. being placed in the fingers of the corpse, which Were guided by those of the pious and worthy merchant of Dundee, who Wanted his nephew’s little patrimony in aid of certain speculations of his own. Fending a decision, the bereaved boy was removed to the busy town on Tayside, and was left to solace his sorrows at school, “prior, as he supposed, to becoming a drudge in his affectionate uncle's counting house, when the last of his slender inheritance had been frittered away in the fangs of the law. One day his worthy uncle Gam returned to Edinburgh by the packet. The ease had been decided against him," and the court was about to name trustees to look after the estate of the orphan boy. Mr. Gamaliel Balgonie was unusually grave, stern and abstracted; but he deliberately seated himself at his desk, ind while humming,, as was his wont, a of a psalm, lie penned a letter addressed to the captain of a vessel then lying in the harbor, and gave it to his nephew for immediate delivery, desiring him to wait for the answer.

The boy, then in his fifteenth year, started on his errand with alacrity. He soon found the ship, which was moored at some distance from the shore, with her fore-topsails loose, to indicate that she was ready for sea; yet Charlie had no suspicion of the trap into which lie was running or the cruel fate that awaited him. The skipper, a-rough, surly and brutal looking man. eyed the boy keenly, while tearing the letter into minute fragments, after Ire had perused it, with a grim smile of satisfaction. He then went to a locker, whore lie poured out a glass of milk. “Drink that, my lad.” said lie, “while I write an answer to your uncle,” Charlie drained the glass; hut scarcely had lie done so when the cabin seemed to he whirling round him; he thought that he was becoming seasick, and was in the act of staggering toward the cabin stairs when lie was felled to the floor by a blow from the skipper's heavy band —a blow dealt cruelly and unsparingly. He recovered consciousness some time after, to find himself—stiff, sore and bloody, front a wound in the temple—lying on deck in the moonlight, with some twenty-five other boys, several of whom were in the same state of stupor in which they had been brought on board. To bis horror and dismay, Charlie now found that *tlie ship was at sea, and running between the dangerous reef known as the Bell Rock and the Hat sandy shore of Barrig; and that, through the machinations of Uncle Gamaliel, bo had been lured into the hands of one of the most notorious plantation crimps that ever infested the Scottish coast, Captain Znehariah > Coffin of New England, whose Craft, the I’iscatona, was a letter of marque, carrying twelve six-pounders and fighting her own way. After this the Piscatonn was' liauled up, in order to go north about by Cape Wrath, having on board nearly fifty boys. Storms came on when the Piseatona entered the Pcntland Firth, and four days after Dunnet Head with its flinty brow, 400 feet in height, had vanished into the wrack and mist astern, a sudden cry of tire caused every heart to i thrill on board the lawless vessel. Whether an act of treachery or not, it was Impossible to ascertain; but it had j broken out near tin; ship's magazine, to j wliich.lt Mtnniunieated with f-rigliPhd raj pidity, for suddenly, while the crew were I all running fore and aft with buckets, | h dreadful explosion seemed to rend the [ Piscntoiia in tuo. Half of the main deck was blown away with two of the ! boats. A whirlwind of fragments flew I in every direction, and then the flames shot into the air in scorching volumes. Discipline, or such a system of it as Zaclnmnli Cotfln maintained on board, was totally at an end. Some of the crow lowered the only remaining boat and fought like wild beasts for possession of it, knocking each other into the water without mercy. Captain ,Curtin cocked liis pistols at the gangway, shot one iiinu dead and swore that lie would kill the next man who dared to precede him; but he was struck from behind by an iron marline spike and, falling, together with his savage dog, into the flaming gulf that yawned amidships, was seen no more. Some of the crew ultimately pushed off the boat; others sprang overboard and held on to the spirrs and booms. But these perished miscrifhly after being half scorched. Some were crushed to death by the falling yards and masts. Many

held oh to the fore and main chains, till these became so unbearably hot that they had to drop off, with screams of despair —when they sank, faint, weary and helpless, to the bottom at last How it all happened Charlie Balgonie never kuew. hours after the whole affair was over and the detested Piscotona had burned down to her waterline and sank, leaving all the sea around her discolored and covered with floating pieces of charred wood anil the buoyant parts of her cargo, he found himself adrift in the wide and stormy Fentland Firth, but wedged with comparative safety in a large fragment of the foretop, to which, the yard being still attached by the sling, a certain amount of steadiness was given; yet his heart leaped painfully each lime when the fragment of wreck rose on the summit of a green glassy wave or went surging down into the dark nnd watery trough between. To add to the terrors of his lonely situation, the sun had sunk amid gloomy purplo clouds and a rainy night was drawing on. Half drowned, the poor boy soon became faint and exhausted, nnd would seem to have dropped into a species of stupor, for when roused by the sound of strange voices he found himself close by a groat nnd towering ship, which lay to, now right in'the wind’s eye with her mainyard aback nnd her gur.ports' and hammock nettings full of weather beaten faces, gazing at Kim with eagerness agid curiosity in the twilight, while a boat was lowered and pulled steadily toward him by six sailors clad in dark green. She proved to be a Russian fifty-gun ship, the Anne Ivanowna, commanded by Thomas Mackenzie, one of the many Scottish admirals who have bravely carried the Russian flag in the Baltic and the Black sen. His youthful countryman became his protege. The worthy admiral sought to make a sailor of Charlie, but the latter had seen quite enough of the sea while on board the Pisoatonn, and while he was clinging like a limpet or barnacle to the piece of drifting wreck; so he became.a soldier, end served under General Ochterlony, of Gtiynd, in the Regiment of Smolensko, where as n cadet his superior smartnosa, intelligence ami education, not less than his courage, soon distinguished him among his thiek-pated Russiap Thus in less than ten years lie becamo, as vve find him, Captain Carl Ivanovitck Balgonie, the most trusted aide-de-camp of Lieutenant General Weymarn, commander-in-chief of the city and district of Bt. Petersburg.

CHAPTER VI. “You can neve; 1 kndw. Ivanovitch Balgonie,. how much I pitied you ” “You, lady?” was the joyous response. “That is, I nad Ma riolizza.” said NaTaTie Alierowna, iliglitly blushing,/“when we found you sunk on a fever bed in a foreign land, so far from your country, your friends, your mother perhaps, for you are young enough, I think, to miss lier still at sut,h a time, although a soldier.” “Far, indeed, in many ways!” replied Balgonie, with n bitter smile, as he thought of I'ncla Gam, or perhaps it was illness that had weakened him. “I have a country, to which it is more than probable I shall never return; but father, mother or friends I have none there —all who loved me once have gone to the silent grave before me.” “AH?” “Yes, lady.” “But ypu are making many friends in Russia,” said Mariolixza cheerfully; “there are my cousin, Basil Mierowitz, and my brother, Apollo Usakoff, who bolh, I know, love you as a brother.” “True, and most grateful am I'to them for their regard, for Ixjtli are polished gentlemen. I have old General Weyinarn, too, though I know not what lie will think of this delay in delivering the imperial dispatch.” “Alas, that most tiresome dispatch!” exclaimed Natalie. “But I forgot,” she added, with a curl of her short upper lip; “those who proceed on the errands of the Empress Catharine would need seven-league hoots, or the carpet of the prince in the fairy tale, which transports ed the owner at a wish.” “Hush, cousin,” said Ma riolizza, glancing timidly around. But no one was imar, save Corporal I’odatchkine, who was at a little distance on the terrace, when this conversation took place two days after Balgonie became convalescent, and fully a week since tbe niglit of peril on which he swam the I.ouga. “I cannot describe to yflu, ladies, the relief that came to ray mind ill discovering that it had neither been lost nor stolen, but was safe ” ‘“ln Natalie’s bosom!” said Mariolizza, laughing. (To be continued.)