Page:William Le Queux - The Czar's Spy.djvu/313

Rh 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 a small station called Galitsina, near which were many villas, occupied in summer by families from Petersburg, were travelling through the dense gloomy pine-woods, when my fellow-traveller, 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 rower and the fisherman.

Then he remarked suddenly –

"You are English, I presume – possibly from Helsingfors?"

"No," I answered. "From Abo. I crossed from Stockholm, and am going to Petersburg."

"And I also. I live in Petersburg," he added. "We may perhaps meet one day. Do you know the capital?"

I explained that I had visited it once before, and