Baboushka seemed to enjoin caution for the stranger hooked up his trailing sabre, wrapped his cloak around him and came on less noisily.

Certainly the old hag did not beg of him, but hastened to leave the street.
If the new-comer had been the night guardian coming on duty, the student might have lost any misgiving about the vagrants or their ruler; but he was not sure that in him was a friend.
This was an officer, not a gendarme or military policeman.

Cloak and uniform were dark blue and fine.

He bore himself with the swagger of a personage of no inconsiderable rank, and also of some degree in the nobility.

Tall, burly, overbearing, the stranger took a dislike to him from this one glance, and would have hesitated to appeal to him for assistance had he felt in danger.
But the beggars had flocked into the rich quarter, and their chieftainess vanished.