learn something
regarding this Baron Oberg and his niece. Frank Hutcheson had written me
declaring that the weather in Leghorn was now perfect, and expressing
wonder that I did not return. I was his only English friend, and I knew
how dull he was when alone. Even his Majesty's Consuls sometimes suffer
from homesickness, and long for the smell of the London gutters and a
glass of homely bitter ale.

But you, my reader, who have lived in a foreign land for any length of
time, know well how wearisome becomes the life, however brilliant, and
how sweet are the recollections of our dear gray old England with her
green fields, her muddy lanes, and the bustling streets of her gray,
grimy cities. You have but one "home," and England Is still your home,
even though you may become the most bigoted of cosmopolitans and may
have no opportunity of speaking your native tongue the whole year
through.

Duty--the duty of a man who had learned strange facts and knew that a
defenseless woman was a victim--called me to Finland. Therefore, with my
passport properly vised and my papers all in order, I one night left
Hull for Stockholm by the weekly Wilson service. Four days of rough
weather in the North Sea and the Baltic brought me to the Swedish
capital, whence on the following day I took the small steamer which
plies three times a week around the Aland Islands, and then across the
Gulf of Bothnia to Korpo, and through the intricate channels and among
those low-lying islands to the gray lethargic town of Abo.

It was not the first occasion on which I had trod Russian soil, and I
knew too well the annoyances of the bureaucracy. Finland, however, is
perhaps the most severely governed of any of the Czar's dominions, and I
had my first taste of its stern, relentless officialdom at the moment of
landing on the half-deserted quay.

In the wooden passport office the uniformed official, on examining my
passport, discovered that at the Russian Consulate-General they had
forgotten to date the vise which had been impressed with a rubber stamp.
It was signed by the Consul-General, but the date was missing, whereupon
the man shook his head and handed back the document curtly, saying in
Russian, which I understood fairly well, although I spoke badly--

"This is not in order. It must be returned to London and dated before
you can proceed."

"But it is not my fault," I protested. "It is the fault of the clerk at
the Consulate-General."

"You shoul