Left in this miserable den to his own reflections and to darkness—when Nicholas descended with the pine torch, carefully closed the trap-door and secured it on the lower side by a wooden bolt, moreover, softly removing the ladder—Charlie Balgonie placed his sword conveniently at hand, and cast himself upon the pile of skins that were to form his bed, and thought he had often fared worse in the bivouacs of Silesia and Bavaria.
"So—he is safe," said Nicholas Paulovitch, looking upward with a grin of savage satisfaction at the closed trap, as he replaced the loutchin on the table, and then closely scrutinised the Corporal, whose eyes had already become red and inflamed.
"Hush!" said Podatchkine, "take care."
"Why?" asked Nicholas, in a hoarse whisper.
"Because all may not be yet as you wish it, and in Russia sometimes the tongue flays the shoulders and cuts off the head."
"True," said the hitherto taciturn Stepniak, who was carefully feeling the keen edge of his hatchet; "as the Tartars have it, 'when you have spoken the word, it rules over you; while it is yet unspoken, you rule over it.' But it seems to me, Michail Podatchkine, that you have taken a great deal of trouble, and wasted much time in the matter of this dispatch. As you passed through the forest together, why the devil did you not give him a good tzchick"—(which we can only render "prod")—"in the back with your lance?"
"Because, if a wound is found on him, folks might say he had been murdered; and he must bear not a scar."
"And neither shall you, friend Podatchkine," said Paulovitch with a cruel grin.
"Come—don't make unpleasant jests," growled the Corporal, with a yawn and a shudder; "wounds have not been fashionable since Orloff and Bernikoff supped with Peter III."
"You grow wary as you grow older, Corporal."