The interior of the car was warm but sordid. Living utensils and army paraphernalia were strewn around, with scraps of food. In an alcove behind, two rumpled bunks showed indistinctly. Outside the wind was blowing, bringing down the febrile, incessant tootings of locomotive switchers up the yards, where swarthy engineers in lambskin hats signaled their yardmen with maximum of noise and blunder. They were lean-jawed, copper-faced men with khaki shirts torn open roughly at their throats. One had the insignia of the United States Engineering Corps (officially known as the “Stevens Mission”) on his pocket. The others were Red Triangle “secretaries.” And the air was blue with their pipe smoke. They talked horrors which will never be written in books. A pause came in their conversation. The locomotive blasts died down. For a time the silence was so deep the only sound was the crackle of the flames in the stove or a meditative tapping of a briar-stem against the smaller man’s teeth. The deepness of that silence was suddenly disturbed by a noise. It was a noise like a cry. It was followed by a thud. Some one had fallen on the outside steps. A burly young fellow from Scranton, Pennsylvania, in charge of the Y. train at the moment, leapt up and opened the door. “What do you want?” he cried irritably into the dark. Some drunken trainman was probably after “_pappyroose_”—Russian cigarettes—again. “Give me a hand, will you? This is the Y. car, isn’t it? I’m—all—in!” “My God!” cried the Y. man. “It’s a Yank!” They helped the stranger into the car. The door was closed, shutting out the murky night. The stranger sank on an inverted box by the wall shelf and for a minute leaned his forehead over on his wrist. Then he raised a gaunt, haggard face and looked at each man in turn. The three saw a fellow countryman of twenty-eight or thirty who might have come through the well-known Inferno as amanuensis for the late Mr. Dante. His uniform was foul with grease, dried mud, stains of origin beyond explanation. His eyes were deep-sunken. Hair fell an inch over his collar. His thin beard was stringy and ragged. He wore an old Russian hat with a great chunk of the lamb-wool missing in front. “I just got in,” he said, “train pulled in a few minutes ago—haven’t eaten anything for two days—rode for the past forty-eight hours packed away in a dark berth behind two stinking Chinamen. Who’s got a—cigarette?” Three pairs of hands began frantically fumbling in six pairs of pockets. “What’s your name, ’bo? Where’ve you come from—now?” “Forge is my name—Nat Forge. I’ve just come through from—from—Moscow.” _Crack!_ One of the briars had fallen to the floor and the hard-rubber stem had broken in two pieces. “Forge? Nat Forge? God in heaven! Are you—the fellow—that started in toward Moscow with Dick Wiley a year ago? Where’s Wiley?” “Dead,” responded Nat simply. “They shot him. Let me have that cigarette.”