in my
possession because I intended to resume my journey in the following
summer. It was in order that I should be permitted to go where I liked,
and to see what I liked without official hindrance, that his Majesty the
Emperor had, at the instigation of the Ministry of the Interior, given
me that most valuable document.

Sight of it had changed the Chief of Police from a burly bully into a
whining coward, for he saw that he had torn up the passport of a guest
of the Czar, and the consequence was most serious if I complained. He
begged of me to pardon him, urging all manner of excuses, and humbling
himself before me as well as before his two inferiors, who now regarded
me with awe.

"I will atone for the insult in any way your high Excellency desires,"
declared the official. "I will serve your Excellency in any way he may
command."

His words suggested a brilliant idea. I had this man in my power; he
feared me.

"Well," I said after some reluctance, "there is a little matter in which
you might be of some assistance. If you will, I will reconsider my
decision of complaining to Petersburg."

"And what is that, Excellency?" he gasped eagerly.

"I desire to know the whereabouts of a young English lady named Elma
Heath," I said, and I wrote down the name for him upon a piece of paper.
"Age about twenty, and was at school at Chichester, in England. She is a
niece of a certain Baron Oberg."

"Baron Oberg!" he repeated, looking at me rather strangely, I thought.

"Yes, as she is a foreigner she will be registered in your books. She is
somewhere in your province, but where I do not know. Tell me where she
is, and I will say nothing more about my passport," I added.

"Then your high Excellency wishes to see the young lady?" he said
reflectively, with the paper in his hand.

"Yes."

"In that case, it being commanded by the Emperor that I shall serve your
Excellency, I will have immediate inquiries made," was his answer. "When
I discover her whereabouts, I will do myself the pleasure of calling at
your Excellency's hotel."

And I left the fellow, very satisfied that I had turned his
officiousness and hatred of the English to very good account.

On that gray, dreary northern coast the long winter was fast setting in.
Poor oppressed Finland suffers under a hard climate with August frosts,
an eight months' winter in the north, and five months of frost in the
south. Idling in sleepy Abo, where the public buildings were