For a long while he could not get a match to light against the trunk of a birch tree.

The soft scales of the white bark rubbed off the phosphorus, and the light went out.

At last one of the matches burned, and the fragrant cigar smoke, hovering uncertainly in flat, wide coils, stretched away forwards and upwards over a bush under the overhanging branches of a birch tree.

Watching the streak of smoke, Sergey Ivanovitch walked gently on, deliberating on his position.

"Why not?" he thought.