taken away, and all my money.  And he brought me to Virballen, after I had been kept in a sort of prison for three or four weeks.  There I was taken off the train for Berlin and put across the border, without any money or passports.  The German lieutenant himself was going to send me to Berlin, but then the news came that war had been declared, and he advised me to walk.  I was held up at the first village I came to, and I got as far as this.  You saw what happened here in this little village.”

“That is very, very strange,” said Boris, vastly puzzled.  “Do you know what charge was made against you?”

“No!  Some tommyrot about a conspiracy against the Czar.  But just what it was I was never told.  I am forbidden to re-enter Russia.”

“I don’t understand at all,” said Boris.  “Mikail can’t want to keep your mother’s property for himself.  He is a very rich man—­by far the richest of the family, though none of the Suvaroffs are poor.  And I know about your mother’s lands, because they are next to our own.”

“The money that comes from them has always been sent to her,” said Fred.  “That was what I was thinking of, too.  There was no trouble, you see, until it seemed that we might want to live on the place from time to time.”

“Yes.  My father has had something to do with the arrangements.  Your mother is well off, even without her own property, isn’t she?”

“Yes.  My father was not a millionaire, but he always had plenty,” answered Fred, very frankly.

“Mikail did hate the idea of her marriage,” said Boris, reflectively.  “I could understand this better if I thought that he was trying to keep her inheritance from her to show his dislike.  But it cannot be that.  There is something very mysterious.  I wish my father were here!  I think perhaps he would understand.”

“Where is he, Boris?”

“With the army by this time!  He did not believe there would be war, to the very last.  That is the only reason I am still here.  But he himself was called back as soon as things began to look serious.  I stayed here with my tutor but he is gone now.  He is a German, and has been called out.  It is fortunate that my father had gone, because the Germans would have held him, of course, if he had been here.  They have come here three or four times to look for him, but now I think they have decided that we have told the truth, and that he is not here.”

“How did you happen to come to my aid in such a fashion?  I was beginning to think that I was in serious danger down there.”

“You were, Fred!  They thought you were an English spy.  And they hate the English worse than they do us, I think.  They have thought that the English should be on their side.  When they found it could not be so, they thought that at least England would be afraid to fight.”

“I see that.  But you—­what brought you out?”

“I know those people.  And when I saw that they were attacking someone, it seemed to me that I couldn’t just stand by and look on.  It was sure to be someone on my own side that they were treating so—­the cowards!  But a mob is always cowardly.  And, of course, I knew that I could manage easily with the automobile.  They were sure to scatter when they saw it coming, because they are afraid of motors, anyway.”