When you first step into the third-class carriage it is like entering pandemonium. It is almost dark, save for a feeble candle that gutters peevishly over the door, and all the inmates are yelling and throwing their boxes and baskets and bundles about. This is only the process of installation; it all quiets down presently, and everybody is seated with his bed unfolded, if he has one, his luggage stowed away, his provisions spread out, as if he had been living there for years and meant to remain there for many years to come. This particular carriage was full. The people in it were workmen going home for the winter, peasants, merchants, and mechanics. Opposite to my seat were two workmen (painters), and next to them a peasant with a big grey beard. Sitting by the farther window was a well-dressed mechanic. The painter lighted a candle and stuck it on a small movable table that projected from my window; he produced a small bottle of vodka from his pocket, a kettle for tea, and some cold sausage, and general conversation began. The guard came to tell the people who had come to see their friends off--there were numbers of them in the carriage, and they were most of them drunk--to go. The guard looked at my ticket for Vologda and asked me where I was ultimately going to. I said “Viatka,” upon which the mechanic said: “So am I; we will go together and get our tickets together at Vologda.” The painter and the mechanic engaged in conversation, and it appeared that they both came from Kronstadt. The painter had worked there for twenty years, and he cross-questioned the mechanic with evident pleasure, winking at me every now and then. The mechanic went into the next compartment for a moment, and the painter then said to me with glee: “He is lying; he says he has worked in Kronstadt, and he doesn’t know where such and such things are.” The mechanic came back, “Who is the Commandant at Kronstadt?” asked the painter. The mechanic evidently did not know, and gave a name at random. The painter laughed triumphantly and said that the Commandant was some one else. Then the mechanic volunteered further information to show his knowledge of Kronstadt; he talked of another man who worked there, a tall man; the painter said that the man was short. The mechanic said that he was employed in the manufacture of shells. They talked of the disorders at Kronstadt last year. The painter said that he and his son lay among cabbages while the fighting was going on. He added that the matter had nearly ended in the total destruction of Kronstadt. “God forbid,” said the peasant sitting next to me. No sympathy was expressed with the mutineers. The painter at last told the mechanic that he had lived for twenty years at Kronstadt, and that he, the mechanic, was a liar. The mechanic protested feebly. He was an obvious liar, but why he told these lies I have no idea. Perhaps he was not a mechanic at all. Possibly he was a spy. He professed to be a