I feel that its cold silence and dreariness will drive me mad.

In winter the place is like an ice-well." The fact that the Baron was ruler of Finland amazed me, for I had half-expected him to be some clever adventurer.

Yet as the events of the past flashed through my brain, I recollected that in Rannoch Wood had been found the miniature of the Russian Order of Saint Anne, a distinction which, in all probability, had been conferred upon him.

If so, the coincidence, to say the least, was a remarkable one.

I questioned my companion further regarding the Baron.
"Ah, m'sieur," she declared, "they call him 'The Strangler of the Finns,' It was he who ordered the peasants of Kasko to be flogged until four of them died--and the Czar gave him the Star of White Eagle for it--he who suppressed half the newspapers and put eighteen editors in prison for publishing a report of a meeting of the Swedes in Helsingfors; he who encourages corruption and bribery among the officials for the furtherance of Russian interests; he who has ordered Russian to be the official language, who has restricted public education, who has overtaxed and ground down the people until now the mine is laid, and Finland is ready for open revolt.