alterations on stamps and coinage, the intrusive Teuton element, the
alien uniforms cropping up everywhere, the new orientation of social
life; such things he was prepared for, but this personal evidence of his
subject state came on him unawares, at a moment when he had, so to speak,
laid his armour aside. Cicely spoke lightly of the hateful formality
that had been forced on them; would he, too, come to regard things in the
same acquiescent spirit?




CHAPTER III: "THE METSKIE TSAR"


"I was in the early stages of my fever when I got the first inkling of
what was going on," said Yeovil to the doctor, as they sat over their
coffee in a recess of the big smoking-room; "just able to potter about a
bit in the daytime, fighting against depression and inertia, feverish as
evening came on, and delirious in the night. My game tracker and my
attendant were both Buriats, and spoke very little Russian, and that was
the only language we had in common to converse in. In matters concerning
food and sport we soon got to understand each other, but on other
subjects we were not easily able to exchange ideas. One day my tracker
had been to a distant trading-store to get some things of which we were
in need; the store was eighty miles from the nearest point of railroad,
eighty miles of terribly bad roads, but it was in its way a centre and
transmitter of news from the outside world. The tracker brought back
with him vague tidings of a conflict of some sort between the 'Metskie
Tsar' and the 'Angliskie Tsar,' and kept repeating the Russian word for
defeat. The 'Angliskie Tsar' I recognised, of course, as the King of