“Because of my dress?”
“Well, you look like a runaway monk or an unfrocked priest.... But your face is not at all suited; it looks more like a soldier’s. God knows what kind of man you are!” Efimushka cast a curious glance at the stranger. The other sighed, readjusted his hat, wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and asked the deputy:
“Do you smoke?”
“Happy to afford you the pleasure. To be sure, I do!”
He drew out of his bosom a soiled pouch and, lowering his head, without decreasing his gait, began to fill a clay pipe with tobacco.
“Well, have your smoke.” The prisoner paused, inclined his head to receive a light from a match held by the convoy, and drew in his cheeks. A thin blue smoke rose in the air.
“You haven’t told me as yet to what class you belong.”
“The gentry,” replied the prisoner curtly, and spat out sideways.
“So that’s it! How come you, then, to be strolling about without a passport?”
“I simply choose to.”