up the window with resentful haste.

"Don't do that!" said the third man, pausing in the doorway and speaking
in French easily and pleasantly. "Don't do that--if you want the air!"

The boy started and looked round.

"I thank you! But I do not need the air!"

The man smiled acquiescence, but as he stepped into the carriage he took
a sharp look at the boy's clothes--the common Russian clothes--and a
slightly questioning, slightly satirical expression crossed his face. He
was a man who knew his world the globe over, and in his bearing lurked
the toleration, the kindly scepticism that such knowledge breeds.

"As you please!" he said, settling himself comfortably in the corner by
the door, while the elder of his companions--a tall, spare
American--crossed his long legs and lighted a thin black cigar, and the
younger--a spruce young Englishman wearing an eye-glass and a small
mustache--wrapped himself in his rugs, took a clean pocket-handkerchief
from his dressing-case, and opened a large bundle of illustrated
papers--French, German, and English.

For a space the train rocked on. No one attempted to speak, and the
Russian boy continued to stand by the window, pretending to look through
the blurred panes, in reality wondering how he could with least
commotion pass down the carriage to his own vacated place.

At last the man with the long cigar broke the silence in a slow, cool
voice that betrayed his nationality.