one.

The recollection stamped on my memory is of a grey, cheerless town where
it rained hard almost the whole time, and a bitter wind blowing over the
quays which moaned and sobbed like a lost banshee.

I was asked to luncheon at the British Legation, and this proved a very
fortunate occurrence for us all, as the minister was so kind as to go to
great trouble in getting us a special permit from the Swedish Foreign
Office to sleep at Boden. Boden is a fortified frontier town and no
foreigners are, as a rule, allowed to stay the night there, but have to
go on to Lulea, and return to Boden the next morning. We started off on
the next lap of our northern journey that evening, and again through
the minister's kind intervention were lucky in getting a carriage to
ourselves in a very full train, and arrived twenty-four hours later at
Boden.

It was extraordinarily interesting to sleep in that little shanty at
Boden, partly, no doubt, because it was not ordinarily allowed. The
forbidden has always charms. It was the most glorious starlight night I
have ever seen, but bitterly cold, with the thermometer ten degrees
below zero, and everything sparkling with hoar frost. It was here we
nearly lost a bishop. A rather pompous Anglican bishop had been
travelling in the same train from Stockholm, and hearing that we
insignificant females had been permitted to sleep at Boden, he did not
see why he should not do the same and save himself the tiresome journey
to Lulea and back. So in spite of all remonstrances he insisted on
alighting at Boden, and with the whole force of his ecclesiastical
authority announced his intention of staying there. However, it was not
allowed after all, and he missed the train, and while we were
comfortably having our supper in the little inn, we saw the poor bishop
and his chaplain being driven off to Lulea. They turned up again next
morning, but so late that we were afraid they had got lost on the way
the night before.

All the next morning we went through the same kind of country, past
innumerable frozen lakelets, and copses of stubby pines and silver
birches, till we arrived at Karungi where the railway ends. We made
friends with a most delightful man, who was so good in helping us all
the way through that we christened him St. Raphael, the patron saint of
travellers. He was a fur trader from Finland, and had immense stores of
information about the land and the queer beasts that live in it. He was
a so