eral people had
to be let into the secret.

Yuzitch presently appeared through the same low door and, coming up to
Bodlevski, explained that the passport would cost twenty rubles.
Bodlevski paid the money over in advance, and Yuzitch led him into a
back room. On the table burned a tallow candle, which hardly lit up
the faces of seven people who were grouped round it, one of them being
the red-nosed man who was reading the _Police News._ The seven men
were all from the districts of Vilna and Vitebsk, and were specialists
in the art of fabricating passports.

The red-nosed man approached Bodlevski: "We must get acquainted with
each other," he said amiably. "I have the honor to present myself!"
and he bowed low; "Former District Secretary Pacomius Borisovitch
Prakkin. Let me request you first of all to order some vodka; my hand
shakes, you know," he added apologetically. "I don't want it so much
for myself as for my hand--to steady it."

Bodlevski gave him some change, which the red-nosed man put in his
pocket and at once went to the sideboard for a flask of vodka which he
had already bought. "Let us give thanks! And now to business!" he
said, smacking his lips after a glass of vodka.

A big, red-haired man, one of the group of seven, drew from his pocket
two vials. In one was a sticky black fluid; in the other, something as
clear as water.

"We are chemists, you see," the red-nosed man explained to Bodlevski
with a grin, and then added:

"Finch! on guard!"

A young man, who had been lolling on a couch in the corner, rose and
took up a position outside the door.

"Now, brothers, close up!" cried the red-nosed man, and all stood in
close order, elbow to elbow, round the table. "And now we take a
newspaper and have it handy on the table! That is in case," he
explained to Bodlevski, "any outsider happened in on us--which Heaven
prevent! We aren't up to anything at all; simply reading the political
news! You catch on?"

"How could I help catching on?"

"Very well. And now let us make everything as clear as in a
looking-glass. What class do you wish to make the person belong to?
The commercial or the nobility?"

"I think the nobility would be best," said Bodlevski.

"Certainly! At least that will give the right of free passage through
all the towns and districts of the Russian Empire. Let us see. Have we
not something that will suit?"

And Pacomius Borisovitch, opening his portfolio, filled with all kinds
of