of those gigantic forests from which millions of trunks were floated down to the sea annually had now been suspended, the great landowners were deserting the country, and there was silence and depression everywhere.  Finland had been separated for economic purposes from the more civilized countries, and bound to the poverty-stricken, artificially isolated and oppressed Russia.  The double-headed eagle was everywhere, and the people sat silent and brooding beneath its black shadow.

“There will be an uprising here before long,” declared the German confidentially, as we were taking tea one day on the wooden balcony of the hotel where the sea and the low-lying islands stretched out before us in the pale yellow of the autumn sundown.  “The people will revolt, as they did in Poland.  The Finnish Government can only appeal to the Czar through the Governor-General, and one can easily imagine that their suggestions never reach the Emperor.  It is said here that the harsher and more corrupt the official, the greater honor does he receive from Petersburg.  But trouble is brewing for Russia,” he added.  “A very serious trouble—­depend upon it.”

I looked upon the gray dismal scene, the empty port, the silent quay, the dark line of gloomy pine forest away beyond the town, the broken coast and the wide expanse of water glittering in the northern sunset.  Yes.  The very silence seemed to forbode evil and mystery.  Truly what I saw of Finland impressed me even more than what I had witnessed in the far-off eastern provinces of European Russia.

My object, however, was not to inquire into the internal condition of Finland, or of her resentment of her powerful conqueror.  I was there to find that unfortunate girl who had written so strangely to her old school friend and whose portrait had, for some hidden reason, been destroyed.

On the morning of the third day after my arrival at Abo, while sitting on the hotel veranda reading an old copy of the Paris Journal, many portions of which had been “blacked out” by the censor, the Chief of Police, in his dark green uniform, entered and saluted before me.

“Your Excellency, may I be permitted to speak with you in private?”

“Certainly,” I responded, rising and conducting him to my bedroom, where I closed the door, invited him to a seat, and myself sat upon the edge of the bed.

“I have made various inquiries,” he said, “and I think I have found the lady your Excellency is seeking.  My information, however, must be furnished to you in strictest confidence,” he added, “because there are reasons why I should withhold her whereabouts from you.”

“What do you mean?” I inquired.  “What reasons?”

“Well—­the lady is living in Finland in secret.”

“Then she is alive!” I exclaimed quickly.  “I thought she was dead.”

“To the world she is dead,” responded Michael Boranski, stroking his red beard.  “For that reason the information I give you must be treated as confidential.”