It made up for all the trouble he had had since he had first seen his uncle.  He was more puzzled than ever, after what Boris had told him, to account for the behavior of Mikail Suvaroff.

“I’ll bet there’s some explanation,” he said to himself.  “I certainly hope so!  Seeing Boris makes me inclined to like these Russian relatives a whole lot, and I’d like to think that Uncle Mikail could square himself somehow.  He’s got a whole lot to make up for, of course.”

Though he did feel that very strongly, he was able now to frame a thought that had come to him more than once after he had become certain that it was Prince Suvaroff who had caused his arrest.  And that was that Suvaroff had seemed far too big and important a man to do a small, petty thing.

“He’s got a wrong idea of me, some way,” Fred decided.  “He has heard something, or made up his mind to something that isn’t so.  Well, I hope I get back to Russia and stay out of jail long enough to find out what was wrong.  Perhaps this war will make a difference, especially if I’m lucky enough to be able do something for ’Holy Russia’.”

Fred moved along quietly while he was thinking of the extraordinary sequence of events that had brought him to where he now was, flashing his light on the arrows, and looking for the double mark that would show him he had reached the spot of which Boris had told him.  But when he got there he had no need of any sign, for he could hear voices distinctly on the other side of a very thin wall.  Boris was speaking.

“I’m so sorry, Herr Hauptmann,” Boris was saying, in faultless German.  “I did see some of the peasants chivying a fellow down below.  And I did go out, of course, in my car, to see if I could help him.  I got him away from them.  But he didn’t come all the way back.  He wanted to go on, and it’s not just the time I should choose for entertaining guests.  So I didn’t urge him to stay.”

“I’m sorry to seem to doubt your word.  In fact, Prince, I don’t,” said a rumbling voice, that of the German captain Boris had been addressing, as Fred could guess.  “But was this person you rescued so—­chivalrously—­an Englishman?”

“I really don’t know, Herr Hauptmann.  He might have been.  Or an American.  One or the other, I should think.”

“Clever Boris!” thought Fred.  “He’ll tell him some truth and some fiction!  He has got to deceive him, of course—­that’s war.”

“I have reason, Prince, to think that he was an English spy,” the captain went on.  “You will allow my men to make a search?  And, by the way, I shall be sorry to take away your servants, but my orders are to arrest and send to detention camps every man of military age I find here.”

“I understand, captain.  I am entirely in your hands, of course.  I should like to know if it will be possible for me to return soon to Russia?”

“You must go to higher officers than myself, Prince,” said the captain.  “If it rested with me—!  But, of course, it does not.  If you see your father soon, however, will you give him my compliments?  And tell him from me that I should esteem it an honor if we should meet in the field?”