escape from Kajana, and I have explained the reason."

We ate a hearty meal in company at the _Sampalinna_, a restaurant built
like a Swiss chalet, and at noon I entered the train on the first stage
of my slow, tedious journey through the great silent forests and along
the shores of the lakes of Southern Finland, by way of Tavestehus and
Viborg, to Petersburg.

I was alone in the compartment, and sat moodily watching the panorama of
wood and river as we slowly wound up the tortuous ascents and descended
the steep gradients. I had not even a newspaper with which to while away
the time, only my own apprehensive thoughts of whither my helpless love
was being conducted.

Surely to no man was there ever presented such a complicated problem as
that which I was now trying so vigorously to solve. I loved Elma Heath.
The more I reflected, the deeper did her sweet countenance and tender
grace impress themselves upon my heart. I loved her, therefore I was
striving to overtake her.

The steamer, I learned, would call at Hango and Helsingfors. Would they,
I wonder, disembark at either of those places? Was the man whom I had
known as Hornby, the owner of the _Lola_, taking her to place her again
in the fiendish hands of Xavier Oberg? The very thought of it caused me
to hold my breath.

Daylight came at last, cold and gray, over those dreary interminable
marshes where game, especially snipe, seemed abundant, and at a small
station at the head of a lake called Davidstadt I took my morning glass
of tea; then we resumed our journey down to Viborg, where a short,
thick-set Russian of the commercial class, but something of a dandy,
entered my compartment, and we left express for Petersburg.

We had passed by a small station called Galitsina, near which were many
villas occupied in summer by families from Petersburg, and were
traveling through the dense gloomy pine-woods, when my fellow-traveler,
having asked permission to smoke, commenced to chat affably. He seemed a
pleasant fellow, and told me that he was a wool merchant, and that he
had been having a pleasant vacation trout fishing in the Vuoski above
the falls of the Imatra, where the pools between the rapids abound with
fish.

He had told me that on account of the shore being so full of weeds and
the clearness of the water, fishing from the banks was almost an
impossibility, and how they had to accustom themselves to troll from a
boat so small as to only accommodate the rowe