was settin' outside his gate on one o' them
stools they have. And he was talkin' to one o' them istvostchiks."
(cabmen).

His thin, sun-browned face, furrowed with whimsical lines, with its
faint-blue eyes that wandered from his hearer to the allurement of
the window and back again, overhung the desk as he spoke, drawling in
those curiously soft tones of his an unconvincing narrative of sore
provocation and the subsequent fight. He was a man in the later
twenties, lean and slack-limbed; the workman's blouse of coarse
linen, belted about him, and the long Russian boots which he wore,
gave him, by contrast with the humor and sophistication of his face
and the controlled ease of his attitude as he lounged, something of
the effect of a man in fancy dress. Actually he belonged to the class
familiar to missionaries and consuls of world-tramps, those songless
troubadours for whom no continent is large enough and no ocean too
wide. With his slightly parted lips of wonder and interest, a pair of
useful fists and a passport granted by the American Minister in
Spain, he had worked his way up the Mediterranean to the Levant,
drifted thence by way of the Black Sea to Nikolaieff, and remained
there ever since. Riveter in the shipyards, winch driver on the
wharves, odd-man generally along the waterside, he and his troubles
had come to Selby's notice before.

The vice-consul sniffed and stared unsympathetically as the recital
wandered unhurried to its end. For him, the picaroon who leaned upon
his desk was scarcely more than a tramp; Selby had respectability for
a religion; and his beaky, irritable face, behind the glasses that
straddled across his nose, answered Tim Waters's mild conciliatory
gaze with stiff hostility. The dvornik and the istvostchik, it
seemed, had laughed loudly and significantly as Waters went by, and
he had turned to inquire into the joke.

"Because, y'see, Mr. Selby, them Russians just don't laugh in a
general way, except they're wantin' to start something. An' I heard
'em say 'Amerikanetz' just as plain as I can see you settin' there.
So, a' course, I knowed it was me they was pickin' on." The fight had
followed; Tim Waters, while he told of it, raised the hand in which
he held his cap and looked thoughtfully at a row of swollen and
abraded knuckles; and lastly, the police had intervened.

"It was that big sergeant with the medals," said the victim. "Come at
me with his sword, he did. Seems like it ain't s