"How is it that you intrust me so freely to visit your prisoner?" asked Charlie, who began to fear that Bernikoff might be laying some snare for him, by according this hitherto unwonted permission.
"Do you really wish to know?"
"Yes, Colonel—why I in particular—I only?"
"Because you are the safest man in Russia to have this liberty."
"How?"
"As a soldier of fortune,—a stranger among us,—you can have no sympathy with anything but the strict and steady execution of your duty; and the line of that," added Bernikoff, darting a keen glance at the Scot, "as with us all, lies in fidelity to the Empress."
"True," replied Balgonie, with something of sadness in his tone, and very little of enthusiasm.
"Thus, were I to order you to blow Ivan Antonovitch from the mouth of a cannon, I should expect you to obey!"
"I trust that no such test of my obedience will ever be necessary," replied Balgonie, with a hauteur which Bernikoff was somewhat unused to see among his subordinates.
"We shall have some other and more troublesome prisoners in Schlusselburg ere long," said the Governor, with knitted brows.