e two lean, withered, ragged, identically similar denizens
of Hellas had been baring their sharp white teeth at intervals, and
saying apologetically:

"What has angered you, sir?"

Finally, regardless of the Greeks' words, the ex-soldier had beat his
breast like a drum, and shouted in accents of increased venom:

"Now, where are you living? In Russia, do you say? Then who is
supporting you there? Aha-a-a! Russia, it is said, is a good
foster-mother. I expect you say the same."

And, lastly, he had approached a fat, grey-headed, bemedalled gendarme,
and complained to him:

"Everyone curses us born Russians, yet everyone comes to live with
us--Greeks, Germans, Songs, and the lot. And while they get their
livelihood here, and cat and drink their fill, they continue to curse
us. A scandal, is it not?"

* * * * *

The third member of our party was a man of about thirty who wore a
Cossack cap over his left ear, and had a Cossack forelock, rounded
features, a large nose, a dark moustache, and a retrousse lip. When the
volatile young engineering student first brought him to us and said,
"Here is another man for you," the newcomer glanced at me through the
lashes of his elusive eyes--then plunged his hands into the pockets of
his Turkish overalls. Just as we were departing, however, he withdrew
one hand from the left trouser pocket, passed it slowly over the dark
bristles of his unshaven chin, and asked in musical tones:

"Do you come from Russia?"

"Whence else, I should like to know?" snapped the ex-soldier gruffly.

Upon this the newcomer twisted his right-hand moustache then replaced
his hand in his pocket. Broad-shouldered, sturdy, and well-built
throughout, he walked with the stride of a man who is accustomed to
cover long distances. Yet with him he had brought neither wallet nor
gripsack, and somehow his supercilious, retrousse upper lip and thickly
fringed eyes irritated me, and inclined me to be suspicious of, and
even actively to dislike, the man.

Suddenly, while we were proceeding along the causeway by the side of
the rivulet, he turned to us, and said, as he nodded towards the
sportively coursing water:

"Look at the matchmaker!"

The ex-soldier hoisted his bleached eyebrows, and gazed around him for
a moment in bewilderment. Then he whispered:

"The fool!"

But, for my own part, I considered that what the man had said was
apposite; that the rugged, boisterous little r