reat your prisoners as honored
guests. We prefer our own methods.'"

CHAPTER XXIV

BACK TO ENGLAND

We started for England the next night, second class, and travelled right
through, as I stood the journey better than any of us expected. After we
crossed the frontier, I doubt if any of our fellow travellers, or any
one else, for the matter of that, had the least suspicion that I was a
prisoner being taken back to stand my trial on the gravest of all
charges, and not merely an invalid, assiduously tended by my two
companions. I didn't even realize the fact myself at the time,--or at
least I only realized it now and then.

"Well, Mr. Wynn, you've looked your last on Russia, and jolly glad I
should be if I were you," Freeman remarked cheerfully when we were in
the train again, on the way to Konigsberg.

"Looked my last,--what do you mean?" Even as I spoke I remembered why he
was in charge of me, and laughed.

"Oh, I suppose you think you're going to hang me on this preposterous
murder charge."

He was upset that I should imagine him guilty of such a breach of what
he called professional etiquette, as, it seemed, any reference to my
present position would have been.

"I meant that, if you wanted to go back, you wouldn't be allowed to.
They've fired you out, and won't have you again at any price," he
explained stiffly.

"Oh, won't they? I guess they will if I want to go. Look here, Freeman,
I bet you twenty dollars, say five pounds English, that I'll be back in
Russia within six months from this date,--that is, if I think fit,--and
that they'll admit me all right. You'd have to trust me, for I can't
deposit the stakes at present; I will when we get back to England. Is it
a deal?"

His answer was enigmatic, and I took it as complimentary.

"Well, you are a cough-drop!" he exclaimed. "No, I can't take the
bet,--'twouldn't be professional; though I'd like to know, without
prejudice, as the lawyers say, why on earth you should want to go back.
I should have thought you'd had quite enough of it."

I could not tell him the real reason,--that, if I lived, I should never
rest till I had at least learned the fate of Anne Pendennis.

"There's a fascination about it," I explained. "They're back in the
middle ages there; and you never know what's going to happen next, to
yourself or any one else."

"Well, I'm--blessed! You'd go back just for that!"

"Why, certainly," I assented.

There were several things I'