ogol Street through its brisk, disorderly
traffic of trams and droschkies and gained the farther sidewalk hard
by where a rank of little cabs stood along the gutter. A large sedate
officer, moving like a traction-engine, jostled him back into the
gutter; he swore silently, and heard a shout go up behind him, a
blatant roar of jeers and laughter. Startled, he turned; the
istvostchiks, the padded, long-skirted drivers of the little waiting
cabs, were gathered together in the roadway; their bearded and brutal
faces, discolored with the cold, were agape and hideous with their
laughter; and in the forefront of them, pointing with a great hand
gloved to the likeness of a paw, stood and roared hoarsely the
particular istvostchik on whose account he had suffered the protocol
and the prison. The discord of their mirth rilled the street; the big
men, padded out under their clothes to a grotesque obesity, their
long coats hanging to their heels giving them the aspect of figures
out of a Noah's Ark, drew all eyes. The beginnings of a crowd
gathered to watch and listen.

"The Amerikanetz," the foremost istvostchik was roaring. "Look at
him! Look at his clothes! Just out of prison Look at him!"

Everybody looked; the word "Amerikanetz" fled from lip to lip like a
witticism. Waters, stunned by the suddenness of it all, daunted and
overwhelmed, turned to move away, to get out of sound and hearing.
Forthwith a fresh howl went up. He caught at his self-possession and
turned back.

The moment had epic possibilities; the istvostchiks were not fewer
than eight in number and the crowd was with them. Waters's face was
dark and calm and his movements had the deliberate quiet of purpose.
Another instant and Nikolaieff would have been gladdened and
scandalized by something much more spectacular than a pogrom. The
leading istvostchik, still pointing and bellowing, was inviting
disaster; when from behind him, ploughing through the onlookers',
came the overdue policeman, traffic baton in hand.

"Circulate, circulate!" he cried to the loiterers, waving at them
with his stick. "It is not permitted to congregate. Circulate,
gentlemen!"

He advanced into the clear space of roadway behind the rearmost cab,
between Waters and his tormentors. His darting official eye fell on
the former, standing in his conspicuous blouse, his thin face tense
and dire.

"And this?" he demanded. "What is this?"

A chorus of explanations from the istvostchiks answe