That was all he could find out.  He arranged for word of Boris’s seizure to be sent to his father, and then closed his circuit and went below, in search of old Vladimir.

By now it was afternoon, and Fred began to think that if Boris had been coming back that day he would have arrived already.  Plainly, it seemed to him, Colonel Goldapp must have decided to retain him as a prisoner.  He wanted to get down near the parsonage again, but he was afraid to venture out by the secret passage.  He didn’t know how thoroughly he had frightened the soldier who had so nearly caught him.  If the man had recovered his wits and decided that it was no ghost, but a very substantial and real person who had bowled him over, there would doubtless be a guard in the hollow, by the outer entrance of the tunnel.  And, in any case, it was too risky to seek egress by that means again in broad daylight.

“Vladimir,” he said, when he found the old servant, “I want you to make me look like a German, if you can.  Disguise me, so that I may go down toward the village safely.  Is it possible?”

Vladimir studied him for a moment.

“I think so,” he said.  “There are plenty of clothes here, and there is a man who has often helped when there were to be private theatricals.”

The transformation was soon completed, and when he looked at himself in a glass Fred had to laugh.  His clothes were those of a Prussian peasant, and a few very slight changes in his appearance had been made by the man to whom Vladimir had spoken.  They worked wonders, and Fred decided that he could go anywhere in Prussia now with impunity.

“Is it safe for you to leave the house?” he asked Vladimir.

“Yes, for they think that I am harmless,” said the old man.

“I wish to know how to open the door of the tunnel from the outside,” said Fred.  “But I think it would be unsafe to go there directly.  It will be better for you to start out and get there as if you had gone by chance.  It is near the parsonage where my cousin is, and if anyone questions you, you could say, I should think, that you wanted to be near your master.”

“Yes,” said Vladimir.  “That would be safe.”

“Then do you go there and stay, unless they drive you away.  I will go there, too, if I can, and if the coast is clear and no one is watching, you can show me.  Unless, indeed, you can tell me now?”

“It will be better for me to show you,” said Vladimir.  “The looks of the outside change constantly.  A storm will destroy a bush, or some other landmark there, and, though I could touch the proper spot in the darkness myself, I would find it hard to describe it to you.  I will start at once?”

“Yes.  And I will come to you, if it is safe, as soon as I can.  I should not be more than ten minutes behind you in reaching the hollow.”

Nothing about the whole adventure upon which he had embarked so strangely, and with so little intention on his own part, impressed Fred more than the unquestioning obedience old Vladimir yielded to him.  More than ever before, he realized that the Suvaroffs must indeed be as great a family as his mother had declared.  Though she had become a true American, Mrs. Waring had never ceased to love the land of her birth, and she had always tried to impress Fred with her own feeling for the great house to which she had belonged.