ce, where, in a teeming population,
one life more or less seems of little value. The rosy hue of sunset was
fading to a clear green, and in the midst of a cloudless sky,
Jupiter--very near the earth at that time--shone intense, and brilliant
like a lamp. It was an evening such as only Russia and the great North
lands ever see, where the sunset is almost in the north and the sunrise
holds it by the hand. Over the whole scene there hung a clear,
transparent night, green and shimmering, which would never be darker
than an English twilight.

The two living men carried the nameless, unrecognizable dead to a
resting-place beneath a stunted pine a few paces removed from the road.
They laid him decently at full length, crossing his soil-begrimed hands
over his breast, tying the handkerchief down over his face.

Then they turned and left him, alone in that luminous night. A waif that
had fallen by the great highway without a word, without a sign. A
half-run race--a story cut off in the middle; for he was a young man
still; his hair, all dusty, draggled, and bloodstained, had no streak of
gray; his hands were smooth and youthful. There was a vague suspicion of
sensual softness about his body, as if this might have been a man who
loved comfort and ease, who had always chosen the primrose path, had
never learned the salutary lesson of self-denial. The incipient
stoutness of limb contrasted strangely with the drawn meagreness of his
body, which was contracted by want of food. Paul Alexis was right. This
man had died of starvation, within ten miles of the great Volga, within
nine miles of the outskirts of Tver, a city second to Moscow, and once
her rival. Therefore it could only be that he had purposely avoided the
dwellings of men; that he was a fugitive of some sort or another. Paul's
theory that this was an Englishman had not been received with enthusiasm
by Steinmetz; but that philosopher had stooped to inspect the narrow,
tell-tale fingers. Steinmetz, be it noted, had an infinite capacity for
holding his tongue.

They mounted their horses and rode away without looking back. But they
did not speak, as if each were deep in his own thoughts. Material had
indeed been afforded them, for who could tell who this featureless man
might be? They were left in a state of hopeless curiosity, as who,
having picked up a page with "Finis" written upon it, falls to wondering
what the story may have been.

Steinmetz had thrown the bridle of t