"Ah," thought Balgonie, with a shudder and a prayer; "had Jagouski's name not been omitted in that order of Weymarn, where would she have been now?"
Pale with sorrow and long suffering, her face was still beautiful, though sorely wasted; the deep thoughtful eyes had yet a wealth—a world of tenderness in their liquid depths; and the long dark hair was thick, soft, and wavy as ever, as it fell in masses behind the small, compact, and finely-formed head.
Yet withal, her wretchedness had been extreme, having been so suddenly and rudely rent from all those habits of luxury and tender nurture, which had become, as it were, a second nature; and often, very often, had it occurred to her in her later misery of soul "that the repose of the grave is sweet, and that there cometh after death a levelling and making even of things which would at last cure all her evils."
But all was changed now; and, as she laid her head on Charlie's breast, she felt content—almost happy; and the horrors that hung over her family alone prevented her, as yet, from being completely so.
No trace of pursuers were behind them now, though their flight must by this time have been known both in the capital and at Schlusselburg. But in those days there were neither railroads nor electric telegraphs; so, riding on more leisurely, Balgonie changed horses again near Viborg, and erelong the great Lake of Saima appeared before them, with the distant hills of Swedish Finland beyond its friendly waters.
A boat was procured there; the kabitka was abandoned; and, with a shout of joy, Usakoff assisted the Finnish boatman to hoist the great lug-sail to catch the breeze of a balmy and beautiful evening, as they bade a long farewell to Russia and all its terrors.
In a quaint old Church of Finland, by the eastern shore of the Lake of Saima, and in view of its little archipelago of granite isles,—a lonely little fane, buried amid groves of plum and cherry trees, built of wood and painted red, with a little holy bell jangling in its humble belfry,—Charlie Balgonie and his fugitive bride were united by the old Curate, with the consent of the Lutheran Bishop of Heinola; and there a thousand roubles spent among the poor spread in the primitive district a happiness, the tradition of which is still remembered with many a grateful exaggeration.
After this, poor Usakoff, finding himself perhaps, as a third person, rather in the way, left them to become a soldier of fortune; and he is supposed to have perished in one of the Polish struggles for freedom; at least, they heard of him no more, after their final journey to Scotland.
Two years before these events, it would appear that Charlie's uncle, "the godly and upright" Gamaliel Balgonie, merchant, magistrate, and elder, had departed in peace to sin no more, leaving the lands and possessions of Balgonie unimpaired; and a long tombstone in that famous city of the dead, the Howff of Dundee, records at length all the virtues which his contemporaries in general and the Presbytery in particular believed him to possess.
So Carl Ivanovitch became once more Balgonie of that Ilk; and the roubles of Natalie added many a turret and many an acre to his patrimonial dwelling in beautiful Strathearn.