. I did not think it referred to the revealing spirit.

"You have been deceived by the woman who has given you your
instructions," I remarked to him, when his excitement had subsided a
little. "I fancy I can guess her name."

"Yes. It is the Princess Y----," he confessed.

Bewildering personality! Again, as I heard her name connected with an
intrigue of the basest kind, a criminal conspiracy to influence the
ruler of Russia by feigned revelations from the spirits of the dead,
I recalled the sight I had last had of her, kneeling in her oratory,
scourging herself before--my portrait!

There was no longer any fear that M. Auguste would prove obdurate on
the question of terms. He pocketed his first five hundred rubles, and
departed, vowing that the Baltic fleet should never get farther than
Libau, if it was in the power of spirits to prevent it.

Desirous to relieve Lord Bedale's mind as far as possible I
despatched the following wire to him the next morning:

Sailing of Baltic Fleet postponed indefinitely. No danger
for the present. Watch Germany.

I sent a fuller account of the situation to a son of Mr. Katahashi,
who was in England, nominally attached to the staff of the Imperial
Bank, but really on business of a confidential character which it
would be indiscreet on my part to indicate.

I may say that I particularly cautioned the young Japanese to avoid
any action calculated to give the least color to the German legends
about warships being secretly manufactured in British yards to the
order of the Mikado's Government.

Every reader who has followed the course of the war with any
attention will recollect the history of the fleet thus detained by my
contrivance.

Week after week, and month after month, the Baltic Fleet was declared
to be on the point of departure. Time after time the Czar went on
board to review it in person, and speak words of encouragement to the
officers and crew. And every time, after everything had been
pronounced ready, some mysterious obstacle arose at the last moment
to detain the fleet in Russian waters.

Journalists, naval experts, politicians and other ill-informed
persons invented or repeated all sorts of explanations to account for
the series of delays.

Only in the very innermost circles of the Russian Court it was
whispered that the guardian spirit of the great Peter, the founder of
Russia's naval power, had repeatedly come to warn his descendant of
disasters i