port, and a passport quite in order, I have got)."

"And why are you on your travels?"

"For the reason that I am so--I can say no more. I look back from a
given place, and wave my hand, and am gone again as a feather floats
before the wind."

* * * * *

"Silence!" a threatening voice near the barraque broke in. "I am the
foreman here."

The voice of the ex-soldier replied:

"What workmen are these of yours? They are mere sectarians, fellows who
are for ever singing hymns."

To which someone else added:

"Besides, old devil that you are, aren't you bound to finish all
building work before the beginning of a Sunday?"

"Let us throw their tools into the stream."

"Yes, and start a riot," was Silantiev's comment as he squatted before
the embers of the fire.

Around the barraque, picked out against the yellow of its framework, a
number of dark figures were surging to and fro as around a
conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to pieces--at all
events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood against stone, and
then the strident, hilarious command:

"Hold on there! I'LL soon put things to rights! Carpenters, just hand
over the saw!"

Apparently there were three men in charge of the proceedings: the one a
red-bearded muzhik in a seaman's blouse; the second a tall man with
hunched shoulders, thin legs, and long arms who kept grasping the
foreman by the collar, shaking him, and bawling, "Where are your
lathes? Bring them out!" (while noticeable also was a broad-shouldered
young fellow in a ragged red shirt who kept thrusting pieces of
scantling through the windows of the barraque, and shouting, "Catch
hold of these! Lay them out in a row!"); and the third the ex-soldier
himself. The last-named, as he jostled his way among the crowd, kept
vociferating, viciously, virulently, and with a curious system of
division of his syllables:

"Aha-a, ra-abble, secta-arians. Yo-ou would have nothing to say to me,
you Se-erbs! Yet I say to YOU: Go along, my chickens, for the re-est of
us are ti-ired of you, and come to sa-ay so!"

"What does he want?" asked Silantiev quietly as he lit a cigarette.
"Vodka? Oh, THEY'LL give him vodka!... Yet are you not sorry for
fellows of that stamp?"

Through the blue tobacco-smoke he gazed into the glowing embers; until
at last he took a charred stick, and collected the embers into a heap
glowing red-gold like a bouquet of fiery poppies; and as h