"No," he remarked. "I have never visited that part of the country, or indeed, been so far from home."
"But this place is further still?"
"Further still?"
"Yes—from Kursk."
He laughed.
"I must tell you the truth," he said. "I am not a Kurskan at all, but a Pskovian. The reason why I told the ex-soldier that I was from Kursk was that I neither liked him nor cared to tell him the whole truth-he was not worth the trouble. And as for my real name, it is Paul, not Vasili—Paul Nikolaev Silantiev—and is so marked on my passport (for a passport, and a passport quite in order, I have got)."
"And why are you on your travels?"
"For the reason that I am so—I can say no more. I look back from a given place, and wave my hand, and am gone again as a feather floats before the wind."
"Silence!" a threatening voice near the barraque broke in. "I am the foreman here."