“We are searching for a woman who has escaped from Kajana,” was the reply.  “Have you seen any woman here?”

“No,” responded the wood-cutter.  “We never see any woman out in these woods.”

The police-officer strode into the inner room, glanced around to make certain that no one was concealed there, and then returning to me asked, “Who are you?”

“That is my own affair,” I answered.

The mystery of Elma’s disappearance while we had slept annoyed me.  She seemed to have fled from me in secret.  Yet could she have received some warning that the police were in search of her?  She was deaf, therefore she could not have been alarmed by the banging on the door.

“Your identity is my affair,” declared the man with the fair, bristly beard, an average type of the uncouth officer of police.

“Who is your chief?” I inquired, as a sudden thought occurred to me.

“Melnikoff, at Helsingfors.”

“Then this is not in the district of Abo?”

“No.  But what difference does it make?  Who are you?”

“Gordon Gregg, British subject,” I replied.

“And you are the drosky-driver from Abo,” remarked the fellow, turning to Felix.  “Exactly as I thought.  You are the pair who bribed the nun at Kajana, and succeeded in releasing the Englishwoman.  In the name of the Czar, I arrest you!”

The old wood-cutter turned pale as death.  We certainly were in grave peril, for I foresaw the danger of falling into the hands of Baron Oberg, the Strangler of Finland.  Yet we had a satisfaction in knowing that, be the mystery what it might, Elma had escaped.

“And on what charge, pray, do you presume to arrest me?” I inquired as coolly as I could.

“For aiding a prisoner to escape.”

“Then I wish to say, first, that you have no power to arrest me; and, secondly, that if you wish me to give you satisfaction, I am perfectly willing to do so, providing you first accompany me down to Abo.”

“It is outside my district,” growled the fellow, but I saw that his hesitancy was due to his uncertainty as to whom I really might be.

“I desire you to take me to the Chief of Police Boranski, who will make all the explanation necessary.  Until we have an interview with him, I refuse to give any information concerning myself,” I said.

“But you have a passport?”

I drew it from my pocket, saying—­

“It proves, I think, that my name is what I have told you.”

The fellow, standing astride, read it, and handed it back to me.

“Where is the woman?” he demanded.  “Tell me.”

“I don’t know,” was my reply.

“Perhaps you will tell me,” he said, turning to the old wood-cutter with a sinister expression upon his face.  “Remember, these fugitives are found in your house, and you are liable to arrest.”

“I don’t know—­indeed I don’t!” protested the old fellow, trembling beneath the officer’s threat.  Like all his class, he feared the police, and held them in dread.