, I think, that my name is what I have told you."

The fellow, standing astride, read it, and handed it back to me.

"Where is the woman?" he demanded. "Tell me."

"I don't know," was my reply.

"Perhaps you will tell me," he said, turning to the old wood-cutter with
a sinister expression upon his face. "Remember, these fugitives are
found in your house, and you are liable to arrest."

"I don't know--indeed I don't!" protested the old fellow, trembling
beneath the officer's threat. Like all his class, he feared the police,
and held them in dread.

"Ah, you don't remember, I suppose!" he smiled. "Well, perhaps your
memory will be refreshed by a month or two in prison. You are also
arrested."

"But, your Excellency, I--"

"Enough!" blared the bristly officer. "You have given shelter to
conspirators. You know the penalty in Finland for that, surely?"

"But these gentlemen are surely not conspirators!" the poor old man
protested. "His Excellency is English, and the English do not plot."

"We shall see afterwards," he laughed. And then, turning to the agent of
police at his side, he gave him orders to search the log-hut carefully,
an investigation in which one of the men from the outside joined. They
upset everything and pried everywhere.

"You may find papers or letters," said the officer. "Search thoroughly."
And in every corner they rummaged, even to taking up a number of boards
in the inner room which Elma had occupied. But they found nothing.

A dozen times was the old wood-cutter questioned, but he stubbornly
refused to admit that he had ever set eyes upon Elma, while I insisted
on my right to return to Abo and see Boranski. I knew, of course, by
what we had overheard said by the prison-guards, that the
Governor-General was extremely anxious to recapture the girl with whom,
I frankly admit, I had now so utterly fallen in love. And it appeared
that no effort was being spared to search for us. Indeed, the whole of
the police in the provinces of Abo and of Helsingfors seemed to be
actively making a house-to-house search.

But what could be the truth of Elma's disappearance? Had she fled of her
own accord, or had she once more fallen a victim to some ingenious and
dastardly plot. That gray dress of hers might, I recollected, betray her
if she dared to venture near any town, while her affliction would, of
itself, be plain evidence of identification. All I hoped was that she
had gone and hidden herself in the