"Yes, sir."
"Age?"
"Seventeen."
"Charged with being a vagabond, found without papers or documents, and unable to give a satisfactory account of yourself."
Godfrey bowed. The colonel glanced through the paper by his side signed by the governor at Kiakhta, and saying that the prisoner had been most favourably reported upon by a wealthy Buriat, a government contractor with whom he had been living out on the plains.
"You persist in giving no further account of yourself?" the governor asked.
"I would rather say nothing further, sir," Godfrey replied.
"You are not a Russian," the governor said sharply.
"I am a Russian born," the lad replied.