This wood, we found, was of tall high pines, where walking was not difficult, a wide wilderness of trees which, hour after hour, we traversed in the vain endeavor to find the rough path which our guide told us led for a hundred miles from Alavo down to Tammerfors, the manufacturing center of the country.  But to discover a path in a forest forty miles wide is a matter of considerable difficulty, and for hours we wandered on and on, but alas! always in vain.

Faint and hungry, yet we still kept courage.  Fortunately we found a little spring, and all three of us drank eagerly with our hands.  But of food we had nothing, save a small piece of hard rye bread which the Finn had in his pocket, the remains of his evening meal; and this we gave to Elma, who, half famished, ate it quickly.  We knew quite well that it would be an easy matter to die of starvation in that great trackless forest, therefore we kept on undaunted, while the yellow autumn sun struggled through the dark pines, glinting on the straight gray trunks and reflecting a golden light in that dead unbroken silence.

How many miles we trudged I have no idea.  It was a consolation to know that we now had no pursuers, yet what fate lay before us we knew not.  If we could only find that forest-road we might come across some wood-cutter’s hut, where we could obtain rough food of some sort, yet our guide, used as he was to those enormous woods of central Finland, was utterly out of his bearings, and no mark of civilization attracted his quick, experienced eye.  The light above gradually faded, and over a sharp stone Elma stumbled and ripped her shoe.

I looked at my watch, and found that it was already five o’clock.  In an hour it would be dark, the beginning of the long northern night.  Elma, who was weary and footsore, asked by signs to be permitted to lay down and rest.  Therefore we gathered a bed of dried leaves for her, and she lay down, and while we watched she was soon asleep.  The Finn, who declared that he did not suffer from the cold, removed his coat and placed it tenderly upon her shoulders.

While there was still a ray of light I watched her white refined features as she slept, and was sorely tempted to bend and imprint a kiss upon that soft inviting cheek.  Yet I had no right to do so—­no right to take such an advantage.

The long cold night passed wearily, and the howling of the wolves caused me to grip my revolver, yet at daybreak we arose refreshed, and notwithstanding the terrible pangs of hunger now gnawing at our vitals, we were prepared to renew our desperate dash for liberty.

Although I had paper, I possessed no pencil with which to write, therefore I could only communicate by signs with the mysterious prisoner of Kajana, the beautiful dark-eyed girl who held me irrevocably beneath the spell of her beauty.  All the little acts of homage I was able to perform she accepted with a quiet, calm dignity, while in her deep luminous eyes I read an unfathomable mystery.