When the game was finished, and when, the side of the lower-grade stranger having won, he should have ridden on one of our officers, Ensign D⁠⸺, the latter blushed, turned aside to the seats, and offered the stranger some cigarettes by way of ransom. When the mulled wine had been ordered, and one could hear Nikita’s bustling arrangements in the orderlies’ tent, and how he sent a messenger for cinnamon and cloves, and could then see his back, first here and then there, bulging the dirty sides of the tent⁠—we, the seven of us, sat down by the little table, drinking tea in turns out of the three tumblers, and looking out over the plain, which began to veil itself in evening twilight, while we talked and laughed over the different incidents of the game. The stranger in the sheepskin coat took no part in the conversation, persistently refused the tea I repeatedly offered him, and, sitting on the ground Tartar-fashion, made cigarettes one after the other out of tobacco-dust and smoked them, evidently not so much for his own pleasure as to give himself an appearance of being occupied.