He ordered a cup of coffee in Russian, and sought his cigarette-case. He
opened it and laid it on the table in front of Cartoner. He was a fair
young man, with an energetic manner and the clear, ruddy complexion of a
high-born Briton.

"Englishman?" he said, with an easy and friendly nod.

"Yes," answered Cartoner, taking the proffered cigarette. His manner was
oddly stiff.

"Thought you were," said the other, who, though his clothes were English
and his language was English, was nevertheless not quite an Englishman.
There was a sort of eagerness in his look, a picturesque turn of the
head--a sense, as it were, of the outwardly pictorial side of existence.
He moved his chair, in order to turn his back on a Russian officer who
was seated near, and did it absently, as if mechanically closing his eye
to something unsightly and conducive to discomfort. Then he turned to
his coffee with a youthful spirit of enjoyment.

"All this would be mildly amusing," he said, "at say any other hour of
the twenty-four, but at three in the morning it is rather poor fun. Do
you succeed in sleeping in these German schlafwagens?"

"I can sleep anywhere," replied Cartoner, and his companion glanced at
him inquiringly. It seemed that he was sleepy now, and did not wish to
talk.

"I know Alexandrowo pretty well," the other volunteered, nevertheless,
"and the ways of these gentlemen. With some of them I am quite on