When he sold a book, the old man regarded it with regret, and fairly smelled the purchaser, with whom he talked in an extremely loud and rapid voice. Sometimes, however, he lowered his voice to a whisper, when his dark glasses would fix themselves upon the face of the customer. Often on seeing to the door a student who had bought a book, he followed him with a smile, and nodded his head queerly. Once he shook his finger at the back of a man who had just left, a short, handsome fellow with fine black tendrils on a pale face. The largest number of customers were students and people having a certain resemblance to them. Sometimes old men came. These rummaged long among the books, and haggled sharply over the prices. An almost daily visitor was a man who wore a chimney-pot and on his right hand a large gold ring set with a stone. He had a broad pimply nose on a stout flat shaven face. When Dorimedont Lukin played chess with the master, he snuffled loud and tugged at his ear with his left hand. He often brought books and paper parcels, over which the master nodded his head approvingly and smiled quietly. He would then hide them in the table, or in a corner on a shelf in back of him. Yevsey did not see his master pay for these books, but he did see him sell them. One of the students began to visit the shop more frequently than the others. He was a tall, blue-eyed young man with a carrot-colored mustache and a cap stuck back on his neck, leaving bare a large white forehead. He spoke in a thick voice, laughed aloud, and always bought many old journals. Once the master pointed out a book to him that Dorimedont had brought; and while the student glanced through it, the old man told him something in a quick whisper. "Interesting!" exclaimed the student, smiling amiably. "Ah, you old sinner, aren't you afraid, eh?" The master sighed and answered: "If you absolutely feel it's the truth, you ought to help it along in whatever little ways you can." They whispered a long time. Finally the student said aloud: "Well, then, agreed! Remember my address." The old man took the address down on a piece of paper, and when Dorimedont came and asked, "Well, what's new, Matvey Matveyevich?" the master handed him the address, and said with a smile: "There's the new thing." "S-so--Nikodim Arkhangelsky," read Dorimedont. "That's business. We'll look up this Nikodim." Sometime after, upon sitting down to play chess, he announced to the master: "That Nikodim turned out to be a fish with plenty of roe. We found something of pretty nearly everything in his place." "Return the books to me," said the master. "Certainly," and Dorimedont snuffled. The blue-eyed student never appeared again. The short young man with the black mustache also vanished after the master had given Dorimedont his address. All this was strange. It fed the boy's suspicions, and indicated some mystery and enigma.