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: