gh, alas! she could not hear my voice.
"Let us at least make a dash for freedom."

She recognized my intentions in a moment, and allowed herself to be
conducted down the long intricate corridor, walking stealthily, and
making no noise.

I had seized the old horn lantern, and as the nun held back, not daring
to accompany us, we stole on alone, turning back along the stone
corridor until I recognized the door of the room to which I had been
first conducted. All was silent, and as we crept along on tiptoe I felt
the girl's grip upon my arm, a grip that told me that she placed her
faith in me as her deliverer.

I own that it was a rash and headstrong act, for even beyond the lake
how could we ever hope to penetrate those interminable inhospitable
forests, so far from any hiding-place. Yet I felt it my duty to attempt
the rescue. And besides, had not her marvelous beauty enmeshed me; had I
not felt by some unaccountable intuition at the first moment we had met
that our lives were linked in the future? She clung to me as though
fearful of discovery, as we went forward in silence along that dark, low
corridor where I knew the strong door in the tower opened upon the
lake. Once in the boat, and we could row back to where the horses
awaited us, and then away. The woman had not arrested our progress or
raised an alarm, after all. Once I had mistrusted her, but I now saw
that her heart was really filled with pity for the poor girl now at my
side.

Without a sound we crept forward until within a few yards from that
unlocked door where the boat awaited us below, when, of a sudden, the
uncertain light of the lantern fell upon something that shone and a deep
voice cried out of the darkness in Russian--

"Halt! or I fire!"

And, startled, we found ourselves looking down the muzzle of a loaded
carbine.

A huge sentry stood with his back to the secret exit, his dark eyes
shining beneath his peaked cap, as he held his weapon to his shoulder
within six feet of us.

The big, bearded fellow demanded fiercely who I was.

My heart sank within me. I had acted recklessly, and had fallen into the
hands of his Excellency, the Baron Xavier Oberg, the unscrupulous
Governor-General--fallen into a trap which, it seemed, had been very
cleverly prepared for me.

I was a prisoner in the terrible fortress whence no single person save
the guards had ever been known to emerge--the Bastille of "The Strangler
of Finland!"

I saw I was lost.