On the evening of the second day we reached the Russo-Prussian frontier.  Moller’s evident anxiety as to whether we should be able to cross it safely showed us plainly that the matter was one of some danger.  His good friend from the other side duly turned up with a small carriage, as arranged, and in this conveyance drove Minna, myself, and Robber through by paths to a certain point, whence he led us on foot to a house of exceedingly suspicious exterior, where, after handing us over to a guide, he left us.  There we had to wait until sundown, and had ample leisure in which to realise that we were in a smugglers’ drinking den, which gradually became filled to suffocation with Polish Jews of most forbidding aspect.

At last we were summoned to follow our guide.  A few hundred feet away, on the slope of a hill, lay the ditch which runs the whole length of the Russian frontier, watched continually and at very narrow intervals by Cossacks.  Our chance was to utilise the few moments after the relief of the watch, during which the sentinels were elsewhere engaged.  We had, therefore, to run at full speed down the hill, scramble through the ditch, and then hurry along until we were beyond the range of the soldiers’ guns; for the Cossacks were bound in case of discovery to fire upon us even on the other side of the ditch.  In spite of my almost passionate anxiety for Minna, I had observed with singular pleasure the intelligent behaviour of Robber, who, as though conscious of the danger, silently kept close to our side, and entirely dispelled my fear that he would give trouble during our dangerous passage.  At last our trusted helpmeet reappeared, and was so delighted that he hugged us all in his arms.  Then, placing us once more in his carriage, he drove us to the inn of the Prussian frontier village, where my friend Moller, positively sick with anxiety, leaped sobbing and rejoicing out of bed to greet us.

It was only now that I began to realise the danger to which I had exposed, not only myself, but also my poor Minna, and the folly of which I had been guilty through my ignorance of the terrible difficulties of secretly crossing the frontier—­difficulties concerning which Moller had foolishly allowed me to remain in ignorance.

I was simply at a loss to convey to my poor exhausted wife how extremely I regretted the whole affair.

And yet the difficulties we had just overcome were but the prelude to the calamities incidental to this adventurous journey which had such a decisive influence on my life.  The following day, when, with courage renewed, we drove through the rich plain of Tilsit to Arnau, near Konigsberg, we decided, as the next stage of our journey, to proceed from the Prussian harbour of Pillau by sailing vessel to London.  Our principal reason for this was the consideration of the dog we had with us.  It was the easiest way to take him.  To convey him by coach from Konigsberg to Paris was out of the question, and railways were