l streets
where quiet people live--lawyers and merchants, professors at the
university or at one or other of the numerous schools and colleges
facing the river and looking across it towards the English Quay.

It was to one of these streets that Cartoner had told his driver to
proceed, and the man had some difficulty in finding the number. It was a
house like any other in the street--like any other in any other street.
For St. Petersburg is a monstrous town, showing a flat face to the
world, exhibiting to the sky a flat expanse of roof broken here and
there by some startling inequality, the dagger-like spire of St. Peter
and St. Paul, the great roof of the Kasan Cathedral, the dome of St.
Isaac's--the largest cathedral in the world.

When the sleigh at length drew up with a shrill clang of bells the
door-keeper came from beneath the great porch without enthusiasm. His
was a quiet house, and he did not care for strangers, especially at this
time, when every man looked askance at a new-comer and the police gave
the dvorniks no peace. He seemed to recognize Cartoner, however, for he
raised his hand to his peaked cap when he answered that the gentleman
asked for was within.

"On the second floor. You will remember the door," he said, over his
shoulder, as Cartoner, having paid the driver, hurried towards the
house, leaving the dvornik to bring the luggage.

Cartoner's summons at the door on the second floor was answered by
a clumsy Russian maid-servant, who smiled a broad, good-natured
recognition when she saw him, and, turning without a word, led the
way along a narrow passage. The smell of tobacco smoke and a certain
bareness of wall and floor suggested a bachelor's home. The maid opened
the door of a room and stood aside for Cartoner to pass in.

Seated near an open wood-fire was a man with grizzled hair and a short,
brown beard, which had the look of concealing a determined chin. He
was in the act of filling a wooden pipe from a jar on the table, and he
stood up, pipe in hand, to greet the new-comer.

"Ah!" he said. "I was wondering if you would come, or if you had got
other work to do."

"No, I am at the same work. And you?"

"As you see," replied the bearded man, dragging forward a chair with his
foot and seating himself again before the fire. "I am here still, where
you left me"--he paused to make a brief calculation--"five years ago. I
stayed here all through the war--all through the Berlin Congress, when
i