peeped the points of a collar close against each shaven cheek.  A few wisps of thin gray hair were brushed smoothly across the top of his bald head.  His face, which must have been beautiful in its day, had preserved in age the harmonious simplicity of its lines.  What amazed me was its even, almost deathlike pallor.  He seemed to me to be prodigiously old.  A faint smile, a mere momentary alteration in the set of his thin lips acknowledged my blushing confusion; and I became greatly interested to see him reach into the inside breastpocket of his coat.  He extracted therefrom a lead pencil and a block of detachable pages, which he handed to my uncle with an almost imperceptible bow.

“I was very much astonished, but my uncle received it as a matter of course.  He wrote something at which the other glanced and nodded slightly.  A thin wrinkled hand—­the hand was older than the face—­patted my cheek and then rested on my head lightly.  An un-ringing voice, a voice as colourless as the face itself, issued from his sunken lips, while the eyes, dark and still, looked down at me kindly.

“‘And how old is this shy little boy?’”

“Before I could answer my uncle wrote down my age on the pad.  I was deeply impressed.  What was this ceremony?  Was this personage too great to be spoken to?  Again he glanced at the pad, and again gave a nod, and again that impersonal, mechanical voice was heard:  ’He resembles his grandfather.’

“I remembered my paternal grandfather.  He had died not long before.  He, too, was prodigiously old.  And to me it seemed perfectly natural that two such ancient and venerable persons should have known each other in the dim ages of creation before my birth.  But my uncle obviously had not been aware of the fact.  So obviously that the mechanical voice explained:  ’Yes, yes.  Comrades in ’31.  He was one of those who knew.  Old times, my dear sir, old times....’

“He made a gesture as if to put aside an importunate ghost.  And now they were both looking down at me.  I wondered whether anything was expected from me.  To my round, questioning eyes my uncle remarked:  ’He’s completely deaf.’  And the unrelated, inexpressive voice said:  ’Give me your hand.’

“Acutely conscious of inky fingers I put it out timidly.  I had never seen a deaf person before and was rather startled.  He pressed it firmly and then gave me a final pat on the head.

“My uncle addressed me weightily:  ’You have shaken hands with Prince
Roman S---------.  It’s something for you to remember when you grow up.’

“I was impressed by his tone.  I had enough historical information to
know vaguely that the Princes S--------- counted amongst the sovereign
Princes of Ruthenia till the union of all Ruthenian lands to the kingdom
of Poland, when they became great Polish magnates, sometime at the
beginning of the 15th Century.  But what concerned me most was the
failure of the fairy-tale glamour.  It was shocking to discover a prince