"I am in haste to be gone!—the prisoner—you hear me, sir?" said Balgonie impatiently.
"By all the devils, you seem more anxious about the prisoner than the treasure!" responded Vlasfief sulkily, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe, but still delayed to move.
"You have my orders—I come in the name of the Empress—let there be no delay, Captain Vlasfief," was the curt reply.
"Bring in two Cossacks of the escort; the money is here in seventy bags, each containing a thousand roubles."
"Excuse me, but the order of the Imperial Treasurer says expressly eighty sealed bags of a thousand each," said Balgonie, trembling with anxiety, yet compelled to appear to take an interest when he really felt none.
"Ten thousand are missing," said Vlasfief, leisurely, refilling his pipe.
"Missing!"
"Yes. Suppose," he added in a whisper, "suppose we divide the lost sum between us, and offer a thousand to the Treasurer."
"Impossible, sir!" said Balgonie, with a fiery and impatient manner.
"Well, well—there are the other ten sealed bags," added Captain Vlasfief, with a dark and stealthy frown of greed and hate, as the Cossacks tossed the whole among the straw of the kabitka: "it matters little; but I hope you may not find the road beset, and so lose the whole."