At the last meeting with their counsel she had asked him to bring her poison, but suddenly she had changed her mind. What if he and the others, she thought, should consider that she was doing it merely to become conspicuous, or out of cowardice, that instead of dying modestly and unnoticed, she was attempting to glorify herself. And she added hastily:

"No, it isn't necessary."

And now she desired but one thing—to be able to explain to people, to prove to them so that they should have not the slightest doubt that she was not at all a heroine, that it was not terrible to die, that they should not feel sorry for her, nor trouble themselves about her. She wished to be able to explain to them that she was not at all to blame that she, who was so young and so insignificant, was to undergo such a martyr's death, and that so much trouble should be made on her account.

Like a person who is actually accused of a crime, Musya sought justification. She endeavored to find something that would at least make her sacrifice more momentous, which might give it real value. She reasoned:

"Of course, I am young and could have lived for a long time. But—"

And as a candle darkens in the glare of the rising sun, so her youth and her life seemed dull and dark compared to that great and resplendent radiance which would shine above her simple head. There was no justification.

But perhaps that peculiar something which she bore in her soul—boundless love, boundless eagerness to do great deeds, her boundless contempt for herself—was a justification in itself. She felt that she was really not to blame that she was hindered from doing the things she could have done, which she had wished to do—that she had been smitten upon the threshold of the temple, at the foot of the altar.

But if that were so, if a person is appreciated not only for what he has done, but also for what he had intended to do—then—then she was worthy of the crown of the martyr!

"Is it possible?" thought Musya bashfully. "Is it possible that I am worthy of it? That I deserve that people should weep for me, should be agitated over my fate, over such a little and insignificant girl?"

And she was seized with sudden joy. There were no doubts, no hesitations—she was received into their midst—she entered justified the ranks of those noble people who always ascend to heaven through fires, tortures and executions. Bright peace and tranquillity and endless, calmly radiant happiness! It was as if she had already departed from earth and was nearing the unknown sun of truth and life, and was in-corporeally soaring in its light.

"And that is—Death? That is not Death!" thought Musya blissfully.

And if scientists, philosophers and hangmen from the world over should come to her cell, spreading before her books, scalpels, axes and nooses, and were to attempt to prove to her that Death existed, that a human being dies and is killed, that there is no immortality, they would only surprise her. How could there be no deathlessness, since she was already deathless? Of what other deathlessness, of what other death, could there be a question, since she was already dead and immortal, alive in death, as she had been dead in life?

And if a coffin were brought into her cell with her own decomposing body in it, and she were told:

"Look! That is you!"

She would look and would answer:

"No, it is not I."

And if they should attempt to convince her, frightening her by the ominous sight of her own decomposed body, that it was she—she, Musya, would answer with a smile:

"No. You think that it is I, but it isn't. I am the one you are speaking to; how can I be the other one?"

"But you will die and become like that."

"No, I will not die."

"You will be executed. Here is the noose."

"I will be executed, but I will not die. How can I die, when I am already—now—immortal?"

And the scientists and philosophers and hangmen would retreat, speaking—with a shudder:

"Do not touch this place. It is holy." What else was Musya thinking about? She was thinking of many things, for to her the thread of life was not broken by Death, but kept winding along calmly and evenly. She thought of her comrades, of those who were far away, and who in pain and sorrow were living through the execution together with them, and of those near by who were to mount the scaffold with her. She was surprised at Vasily—that he should have been so disturbed—he, who had always been so brave, and who had jested with Death. Thus, only on Tuesday morning, when all together they had attached explosive projectiles to their belts, which several hours later were to tear them into pieces, Tanya Kovalchuk's hands had trembled with nervousness, and it had become necessary to put her aside, while Vasily jested, made merry, turned about, and was even so reckless that Werner had said sternly:

"You must not be too familiar with Death."

What was he afraid of now? But this incomprehensible fear was so foreign to Musya's soul that she ceased searching for the cause of it—and suddenly she was seized with a desperate desire to see Seryozha Golovin, to laugh with him. She meditated a little while, and then an even more desperate desire came over her to see Werner and to convince him of something. And imagining to herself that Werner was in the next cell, driving his heels into the ground with his distinct, measured steps, Musya spoke, as if addressing him:

"No, Werner, my dear; it is all nonsense; it isn't at all important whether or not you are killed. You are a sensible man, but you seem to be playing chess, and that by taking one figure after another the game is won. The important thing, Werner, is that we ourselves are ready to die. Do you understand? What do those people think? That there is nothing more terrible than death. They themselves have invented Death, they are themselves afraid of it, and they try to frighten us with it. I should like to do this—I should like to go out alone before a whole regiment of soldiers and fire upon them with a revolver. It would not matter that I would be alone, while they would be thousands, or that I might not kill any of them. It is that which is important—that they are thousands. When thousands kill one, it means that the one has conquered. That is true, Werner, my dear...."

But this, too, became so clear to her that she did not feel like arguing further—Werner must understand it himself. Perhaps her mind simply did not want to stop at one thought—just as a bird that soars with ease, which sees endless horizons, and to which all space, all the depth, all the joy of the soft and caressing azure are accessible. The bell of the clock rang unceasingly, disturbing the deep silence. And into this harmonious, remote, beautiful sound the thoughts of the people flowed, and also began to ring for her; and the smoothly gliding images turned into music. It was just as if, on a quiet, dark night, Musya was riding along a broad, even road, while the easy springs of the carriage rocked her and the little bells tinkled. All alarm and agitation had passed, the fatigued body had dissolved in the darkness, and her joyously wearied fancy calmly created bright images, carried away by their color and their peaceful tranquillity. Musya recalled three of her comrades who had been hanged but a short time before, and their faces seemed bright and happy and near to her—nearer than those in life. Thus does a man think with joy in the morning of the house of his friends where he is to go in the evening, and a greeting rises to his smiling lips.

Musya became very tired from walking. She lay down cautiously on the cot and continued to dream with slightly closed eyes. The clock-bell rang unceasingly, stirring the mute silence, and bright, singing images floated calmly before her. Musya thought:

"Is it possible that this is Death? My God! How beautiful it is! Or is it Life? I do not know. I do not know. I will look and listen."

Her hearing had long given way to her imagination—from the first moment of her imprisonment. Inclined to be very musical, her ear had become keen in the silence, and on this background of silence, out of the meagre bits of reality, the footsteps of the guards in the corridors, the ringing of the clock, the rustling of the wind on the iron roof, the creaking of the lantern—it created complete musical pictures. At first Musya was afraid of them, brushed them away from her as if they were the hallucinations of a sickly mind. But later she understood that she herself was well, and that this was no derangement of any kind—and she gave herself up to the dreams calmly.

And now, suddenly, she seemed to hear clearly and distinctly the sounds of military music. In astonishment, she opened her eyes, lifted her head—outside the window was black night, and the clock was striking. "Again," she thought calmly, and closed her eyes. And as soon as she did so the music resounded anew. She could hear distinctly how the soldiers, a whole regiment, were coming from behind the corner of the fortress, on the right, and now they were passing her window. Their feet beat time with measured steps upon the frozen ground: One—two! One—two! She could even hear at times the leather of the boots creaking, how suddenly some one's foot slipped and immediately recovered its steps. And the music came ever nearer—it was an entirely unfamiliar but a very loud and spirited holiday march. Evidently there was some sort of celebration in the fortress.

Now the band came up alongside of her window and the cell was filled with merry, rhythmic, harmoniously blended sounds. One large brass trumpet brayed harshly out of tune, now too late, now comically running ahead—Musya could almost see the little soldier playing it, a great expression of earnestness on his face—and she laughed.

Then everything moved away. The footsteps died out—One—two! One—two! At a distance the music sounded still more beautiful and cheerful. The trumpet resounded now and then with its merry, loud brass voice, out of tune,—and then everything died away. And the clock on the tower struck again, slowly, mournfully, hardly stirring the silence.

"They are gone!" thought Musya, with a feeling of slight sadness. She felt sorry for the departing sounds, which had been so cheerful and so comical. She was even sorry for the departed little soldiers, because those busy soldiers, with their brass trumpets and their creaking boots, were of an entirely different sort, not at all like those at whom she had felt like firing a revolver.

"Come again!" she begged tenderly. And more came. The figures bent over her, they surrounded her in a transparent cloud and lifted her up, where the migrating birds were soaring and screaming, like heralds. On the right of her, on the left, above and below her—they screamed like heralds. They called, they announced from afar their flight. They flapped their wide wings and the darkness supported them, even as the light had supported them. And on their convex breasts, cleaving the air asunder, the city far below reflected a blue light. Musya's heart beat ever more evenly, her breathing grew ever more calm and quiet. She was falling asleep. Her face looked fatigued and pale. Beneath her eyes were dark circles, her girlish, emaciated hands seemed so thin,—but upon her lips was a smile. To-morrow, with the rise of the sun, this human face would be distorted with an inhuman grimace, her brain would be covered with thick blood, and her eyes would bulge from their sockets and look glassy,—but now she slept quietly and smiled in her great immortality.

Musya fell asleep.

And the life of the prison went on, deaf and sensitive, blind and sharp-sighted, like eternal alarm itself. Somewhere people were walking. Somewhere people were whispering. A gun clanked. It seemed as if some one shouted. Perhaps no one shouted at all—perhaps it merely seemed so in the silence.

The little casement window in the door opened noiselessly. A dark, mustached face appeared in the black hole. For a long time it stared at Musya in astonishment—and then disappeared as noiselessly as it had appeared.

The bells rang and sang, for a long time, painfully. It seemed as if the tired Hours were climbing up a high mountain toward midnight, and that it was becoming ever harder and harder to ascend. They fall, they slip, they slide down with a groan—and then again, they climb painfully toward the black height.

Somewhere people were walking. Somewhere people were whispering. And they were already harnessing the horses to the black carriages without lanterns.



CHAPTER VIII THERE IS DEATH AS WELL AS LIFE

Sergey Golovin never thought of death, as though it were something not to be considered, something that did not concern him in the least. He was a strong, healthy, cheerful youth, endowed with that calm, clear joy of living which causes every evil thought and feeling that might injure life to disappear from the organism without leaving any trace. Just as all cuts, wounds and stings on his body healed rapidly, so all that weighed upon his soul and wounded it immediately rose to the surface and disappeared. And he brought into every work, even into his enjoyments, the same calm and optimistic seriousness,—it mattered not whether he was occupied with photography, with bicycling or with preparations for a terroristic act. Everything in life was joyous, everything in life was important, everything should be done well.

And he did everything well: he was an excellent sailor, an expert shot with the revolver. He was as faithful in friendship as in love, and a fanatic believer in the "word of honor." His comrades laughed at him, saying that if the most notorious spy told him upon his word of honor that he was not a spy, Sergey would believe him and would shake hands with him as with any comrade. He had one fault,—he was convinced that he could sing well, whereas in fact he had no ear for music and even sang the revolutionary songs out of tune, and felt offended when his friends laughed at him.

"Either you are all asses, or I am an ass," he would declare seriously and even angrily. And all his friends as seriously declared: "You are an ass. We can tell by your voice."

But, as is sometimes the case with good people, he was perhaps liked more for this little foible than for his good qualities.

He feared death so little and thought of it so little that on the fatal morning, before leaving the house of Tanya Kovalchuk, he was the only one who had breakfasted properly, with an appetite. He drank two glasses of tea with milk, and a whole five-copeck roll of bread. Then he glanced at Werner's untouched bread and said:

"Why don't you eat? Eat. We must brace up."

"I don't feel like eating."

"Then I'll eat it. May I?"

"You have a fine appetite, Seryozha."

Instead of answering, Sergey, his mouth full, began to sing in a dull voice, out of tune:

"Hostile whirlwinds are blowing over us..."

After the arrest he at first grew sad; the work had not been done well, they had failed; but then he thought: "There is something else now that must be done well—and that is, to die," and he cheered up again. And however strange it may seem, beginning with the second morning in the fortress, he commenced devoting himself to gymnastics according to the unusually rational system of a certain German named Mueller, which absorbed his interest. He undressed himself completely and, to the alarm and astonishment of the guard who watched him, he carefully went through all the prescribed eighteen exercises. The fact that the guard watched him and was apparently astonished, pleased him as a propagandist of the Mueller system; and although he knew that he would get no answer he nevertheless spoke to the eye staring in the little window:

"It's a good system, my friend, it braces you up. It should be introduced in your regiment," he shouted convincingly and kindly, so as not to frighten the soldier, not suspecting that the guard considered him a harmless lunatic.

The fear of death came over him gradually. It was as if somebody were striking his heart a powerful blow with the fist from below. This sensation was rather painful than terrible. Then the sensation was forgotten, but it returned again a few hours later, and each time it grew more intense and of longer duration, and thus it began to assume vague outlines of some great, even unbearable fear.

"Is it possible that I am afraid?" thought Sergey in astonishment. "What nonsense!"

It was not he who was afraid,—it was his young, sound, strong body, which could not be deceived either by the exercises prescribed by the Mueller system, or by the cold rub-downs. On the contrary, the stronger and the fresher his body became after the cold water, the keener and the more unbearable became the sensations of his recurrent fear. And just at those moments when, during his freedom, he had felt a special influx of the joy and power of life,—in the mornings after he had slept soundly and gone through his physical exercises,—now there appeared this deadening fear which was so foreign to his nature. He noticed this and thought:

"It is foolish, Sergey! To die more easily, you should weaken the body and not strengthen it. It is foolish!"

So he dropped his gymnastics and the rub-downs. To the soldier he shouted, as if to explain and justify himself:

"Never mind that I have stopped. It's a good thing, my friend,—but not for those who are to be hanged. But it's very good for all others."

And, indeed, he began to feel somewhat better. He tried also to eat less, so as to grow still weaker, but notwithstanding the lack of pure air and exercises, his appetite was very good,—it was difficult for him to control it, and he ate everything that was brought to him. Then he began to manage differently—before starting to eat he would pour out half into the pail, and this seemed to work. A dull drowsiness and faintness came over him.

"I'll show you what I can do!" he threatened his body, and at the same time sadly, yet tenderly he felt his flabby, softened muscles with his hand.

Soon, however, his body grew accustomed to this regime as well, and the fear of death appeared again—not so keen, nor so burning, but more disgusting, somewhat akin to a nauseating sensation. "It's because they are dragging it out so long," thought Sergey. "It would be a good idea to sleep all the time till the day of the execution," and he tried to sleep as much as possible. At first he succeeded, but later, either because he had slept too much, or for some other reason, insomnia appeared. And with it came eager, penetrating thoughts and a longing for life.

"I am not afraid of this devil!" he thought of Death. "I simply feel sorry for my life. It is a splendid thing, no matter what the pessimists say about it. What if they were to hang a pessimist? Ah, I feel sorry for life, very sorry! And why does my beard grow now? It didn't grow before, but suddenly it grows—why?"

He shook his head mournfully, heaving long, painful sighs. Silence—then a sigh; then a brief silence again—followed by a longer, deeper sigh.

Thus it went on until the trial and the terrible meeting with his parents. When he awoke in his cell the next day he realized clearly that everything between him and life was ended, that there were only a few empty hours of waiting and then death would come,—and a strange sensation took possession of him. He felt as though he had been stripped, stripped entirely,—as if not only his clothes, but the sun, the air, the noise of voices and his ability to do things had been wrested from him. Death was not there as yet, but life was there no longer,—there was something new, something astonishing, inexplicable, not entirely reasonable and yet not altogether without meaning,—something so deep and mysterious and supernatural that it was impossible to understand.

"Fie, you devil!" wondered Sergey, painfully. "What is this? Where am I? I—who am I?"

He examined himself attentively, with interest, beginning with his large prison slippers, ending with his stomach where his coat protruded. He paced the cell, spreading out his arms and continuing to survey himself like a woman in a new dress which is too long for her. He tried to turn his head, and it turned. And this strange,, terrible, uncouth creature was he, Sergey Golovin, and soon he would be no more!

Everything became strange.

He tried to walk across the cell—and it seemed strange to him that he could walk. He tried to sit down—and it seemed strange to him that he could sit. He tried to drink some water—and it seemed strange to him that he could drink, that he could swallow, that he could hold the cup, that he had fingers and that those fingers were trembling. He choked, began to cough and while coughing, thought: "How strange it is that I am coughing."

"Am I losing my reason?" thought Sergey, growing cold. "Am I coming to that, too? The devil take them!"

He rubbed his forehead with his hand, and this also seemed strange to him. And then he remained breathless, motionless, petrified for hours, suppressing every thought, all loud breathing, all motion,—for every thought seemed to him but madness, every motion—madness. Time was no more; it appeared transformed into space, airless and transparent, into an enormous square upon which all were there—the earth and life and people. He saw all that at one glance, all to the very end, to the mysterious abyss—Death. And he was tortured not by the fact that Death was visible, but that both Life and Death were visible at the same time. The curtain which through eternity has hidden the mystery of life and the mystery of death was pushed aside by a sacrilegious hand, and the mysteries ceased to be mysteries—yet they remained incomprehensible, like the Truth written in a foreign tongue. There were no conceptions in his human mind, no words in his human language that could define what he saw. And the words "I am afraid" were uttered by him only because there were no other words, because no other conceptions existed, nor could other conceptions exist which would grasp this new, un-human condition. Thus would it be with a man if, while remaining within the bounds of human reason, experience and feelings, he were suddenly to see God Himself. He would see Him but would not understand, even though he knew that it was God, and he would tremble with inconceivable sufferings of incomprehension.

"There is Mueller for you!" he suddenly uttered loudly, with extreme conviction, and shook his head. And with that unexpected break in his feelings, of which the human soul is so capable, he laughed heartily and cheerfully.

"Oh, Mueller! My dear Mueller! Oh, you splendid German! After all you are right, Mueller, and I am an ass!"

He paced the cell quickly several times and to the great astonishment of the soldier who was watching him through the peephole, he quickly undressed himself and cheerfully went through all the eighteen exercises with the greatest care. He stretched and expanded his young, somewhat emaciated body, sat down for a moment, drew deep breaths of air and exhaled it, stood up on tip-toe, stretched his arms and his feet. And after each exercise he announced, with satisfaction:

"That's it! That's the real way, Mueller!" His cheeks flushed; drops of warm, pleasant perspiration came from the pores of his body, and his heart beat soundly and evenly.

"The fact is, Mueller," philosophized Sergey, expanding his chest so that the ribs under his thin, tight skin were outlined clearly,—"the fact is, that there is a nineteenth exercise—to hang by the neck motionless. That is called execution. Do you understand, Mueller? They take a live man, let us say Sergey Golovin, they swaddle him as a doll and they hang him by the neck until he is dead. It is a foolish exercise, Mueller, but it can't be helped,—we have to do it."

He bent over on the right side and repeated:

"We have to do it, Mueller."



CHAPTER IX DREADFUL SOLITUDE

Under the same ringing of the clock, separated from Sergey and Musya by only a few empty cells, but yet so painfully desolate and alone in the whole world as though no other soul existed, poor Vasily Kashirin was passing the last hours of his life in terror and in anguish.

Perspiring, his moist shirt clinging to his body, his once curly hair disheveled, he tossed about in the cell convulsively and hopelessly, like a man suffering from an unbearable physical torture. He would sit down for awhile, then start to run again, he would press his forehead against the wall, stop and seek something with his eyes—as if looking for some medicine. His expression changed as though he had two different faces. The former, the young face, had disappeared somewhere, and a new one, a terrible face that had seemed to have come out of the darkness, had taken its place.

The fear of death had come upon him all at once and taken possession of him completely and forcibly. In the morning, while facing almost certain death, he had been care-free and had scorned it, but toward evening when he was placed in a cell in solitary confinement, he was whirled and carried away by a wave of mad fear. So long as he went of his own free will to face danger and death, so long as he had death, even though it seemed terrible, in his own hands, he felt at ease. He was even cheerful; in the sensation of boundless freedom, of brave and firm conviction of his fearless will, his little, shrunken, womanish fear was drowned, leaving no trace. With an infernal machine at his girdle, he made the cruel force of dynamite his own, also its fiery death-bearing power. And as he walked along the street, amidst the bustling, plain people, who were occupied with their affairs, who were hurriedly avoiding the dangers from the horses of carriages and cars, he seemed to himself as a stranger from another, unknown world, where neither death nor fear was known.

And suddenly this harsh, wild, stupefying change. He can no longer go where he pleases, but he is led where others please. He can no longer choose the place he likes, but he is placed in a stone cage, and locked up like a thing. He can no longer choose freely, like all people, between life and death, but he will surely and inevitably be put to death. The incarnation of will-power, life and strength an instant before, he has now become a wretched image of the most pitiful weakness in the world. He has been transformed into an animal waiting to be slaughtered, a deaf-mute object which may be taken from place to place, burnt and broken. It matters not what he might say, nobody would listen to his words, and if he endeavored to shout, they would stop his mouth with a rag. Whether he can walk alone or not, they will take him away and hang him.

And if he should offer resistance, struggle or lie down on the ground—they will overpower him, lift him, bind him and carry him, bound, to the gallows. And the fact that this machine-like work will be performed over him by human beings like himself, lent to them a new, extraordinary and ominous aspect—they seemed to him like ghosts that came to him for this one purpose, or like automatic puppets on springs. They would seize him, take him, carry him, hang him, pull him by the feet. They would cut the rope, take him down, carry him off and bury him.

From the first day of his imprisonment the people and life seemed to him to have turned into an incomprehensibly terrible world of phantoms and automatic puppets. Almost maddened with fear, he attempted to picture to himself that human beings had tongues and that they could speak, but he could not—they seemed to him to be mute. He tried to recall their speech, the meaning of the words that people used in their relations with one another—but he could not. Their mouths seemed to open, some sounds were heard; then they moved their feet and disappeared. And nothing more.

Thus would a man feel if he were at night alone in his house and suddenly all objects were to come to life, start to move and overpower him. And suddenly they would all begin to judge him: the cupboard, the chair, the writing-table and the divan. He would cry and toss about, entreating, calling for help, while they would speak among themselves in their own language, and then would lead him to the scaffold,—they, the cupboard, the chair, the writing-table and the divan. And the other objects would look on.

To Vasily Kashirin, who was condemned to death by hanging, everything now seemed like children's playthings: his cell, the door with the peephole, the strokes of the wound-up clock, the carefully molded fortress, and especially that mechanical puppet with the gun who stamped his feet in the corridor, and the others who, frightening him, peeped into his cell through the little window and handed him the food in silence. And that which he was experiencing was not the fear of death; death was now rather welcome to him. Death with all its eternal mysteriousness and incomprehensibility was more acceptable to his reason than this strangely and fantastically changed world. What is more, death seemed to have been destroyed completely in this insane world of phantoms and puppets, having lost its great and enigmatic significance, becoming something mechanical and only for that reason terrible. He would be seized, taken, led, hanged, pulled by the feet, the rope would be cut, he would be taken down, carried off and buried.

And the man would have disappeared from the world.

At the trial the nearness of his comrades brought Kashirin to himself. For an instant he imagined he saw real people; they were sitting and trying him, speaking like human beings, listening, apparently understanding him. But as he mentally rehearsed the meeting with his mother he clearly felt with the terror of a man who is beginning to lose his reason and who realizes it, that this old woman in the black little kerchief was only an artificial, mechanical puppet, of the kind that can say "pa-pa," "ma-ma," but somewhat better constructed. He tried to speak to her, while thinking at the same time with a shudder:

"O Lord! That is a puppet. A mother doll. And there is a soldier-puppet, and there, at home, is a father-puppet, and this is the puppet of Vasily Kashirin."

It seemed to him that in another moment he would hear somewhere the creaking of the mechanism, the screeching of un-oiled wheels. When his mother began to cry, something human again flashed for an instant, but at the very first words it disappeared again, and it was interesting and terrible to see that water was flowing from the eyes of the doll.

Then, in his cell, when the terror had become unbearable, Vasily Kashirin attempted to pray. Of all that had surrounded his childhood days in his father's house under the guise of religion only a repulsive, bitter and irritating sediment remained; but faith there was none. But once, perhaps in his earliest childhood, he had heard a few words which had filled him with palpitating emotion and which remained during all his life enwrapped with tender poetry. These words were:

"The joy of all the afflicted..."

It had happened, during painful periods in his life, that he whispered to himself, not in prayer, without being definitely conscious of it, these words: "The joy of all the afflicted"—and suddenly he would feel relieved and a desire would come over him to go to some dear friend and question gently:

"Our life—is this life? Eh, my dearest, is this life?"

And then suddenly it would appear laughable to him and he would feel like mussing up his hair, putting forth his knee and thrusting out his chest as though to receive heavy blows; saying: "Here, strike!"

He did not tell anybody, not even his nearest comrades, about his "joy of all the afflicted" and it was as though he himself did not know about it,—so deeply was it hidden in his soul. He recalled it but rarely and cautiously.

Now when the terror of the insoluble mystery, which appeared so plainly before him, enveloped him completely, even as the water in high-flood covers the willow twigs on the shore,—a desire came upon him to pray. He felt like kneeling, but he was ashamed of the soldier and, folding his arms on his chest, he whispered softly:

"The joy of all the afflicted!" And he repeated tenderly, in anguish: "Joy of all the afflicted, come to me, help Vaska Kashirin."

"Long ago, while he was yet in his first term at the university and used to go off on a spree sometimes, before he had made the acquaintance of Werner and before he had entered the organization, he used then to call himself half-boastingly, half-pityingly, "Vaska Kashirin,"—and now for some reason or other he suddenly felt like calling himself by the same name again. But the words had a dead and toneless sound. "The joy of all the afflicted!"

Something stirred. It was as though some one's calm and mournful image had flashed up in the distance and died out quietly, without illuminating the deathly gloom. The wound-up clock in the steeple struck. The soldier in the corridor made a noise with his gun or with his saber and he yawned, slowly, at intervals.

"Joy of all the afflicted! You are silent! Will you not say anything to Vaska Kashirin?"

He smiled patiently and waited. All was empty within his soul and about him. And the calm, mournful image did not reappear. He recalled, painfully and unnecessarily, wax candles burning; the priest in his vestments; the ikon painted on the wall. He recalled his father, bending and stretching himself, praying and bowing to the ground, while looking sidewise to see whether Vaska was praying, or whether he was planning some mischief. And a feeling of still greater terror came over Vasily than before the prayer.

Everything now disappeared.

Madness came crawling painfully. His consciousness was dying out like an extinguishing bonfire, growing icy like the corpse of a man who had just died, whose heart is still warm but whose hands and feet had already become stiffened with cold. His dying reason flared up as red as blood again and said that he, Vasily Kashirin, might perhaps become insane here, suffer pains for which there is no name, reach a degree of anguish and suffering that had never been experienced by a single living being; that he might beat his head against the wall, pick his eyes out with his fingers, speak and shout whatever he pleased, that he might plead with tears that he could endure it no longer,—and nothing would happen. Nothing could happen.

And nothing happened. His feet, which had a consciousness and life of their own, continued to walk and to carry his trembling, moist body. His hands, which had a consciousness of their own, endeavored in vain to fasten the coat which was open at his chest and to warm his trembling, moist body.

His body quivered with cold. His eyes stared. And this was calm itself embodied.

But there was one more moment of wild terror. That was when people entered his cell. He did not even imagine that this visit meant that it was time to go to the execution; he simply saw the people and was frightened like a child.

"I will not do it! I will not do it!" he whispered inaudibly with his livid lips and silently retreated to the depth of the cell, even as in childhood he shrank when his father lifted his hand.

"We must start."

The people were speaking, walking around him, handing him something. He closed his eyes, he shook a little,—and began to dress himself slowly. His consciousness must have returned to him, for he suddenly asked the official for a cigarette. And the official generously opened his silver cigarette-case upon which was a chased figure in the style of the decadents.



CHAPTER X. THE WALLS ARE FALLING

The unidentified man, who called himself Werner, was tired of life and struggle. There was a time when he loved life very dearly, when he enjoyed the theater, literature and social intercourse. Endowed with an excellent memory and a firm will, he had mastered several European languages and could easily pass for a German, a Frenchman or an Englishman. He usually spoke German with a Bavarian accent, but when he felt like it, he could speak like a born Berliner. He was fond of dress, his manners were excellent and he alone, of all the members of the organization, dared attend the balls given in high society, without running the risk of being recognized as an outsider.

But for a long time, altogether unnoticed by his comrades, there had ripened in his soul a dark contempt for mankind; contempt mingled with despair and painful, almost deadly fatigue. By nature rather a mathematician than a poet, he had not known until now any inspiration, any ecstasy and at times he felt like a madman, looking for the squaring of a circle in pools of human blood. The enemy against whom he struggled every day could not inspire him with respect. It was a dense net of stupidity, treachery and falsehood, vile insults and base deceptions. The last incident which seemed to have destroyed in him forever the desire to live, was the murder of the provocateur which he had committed by order of the organization. He had killed him in cold blood, but when he saw that dead, deceitful, now calm, and after all pitiful, human face, he suddenly ceased to respect himself and his work. Not that he was seized with a feeling of repentance, but he simply stopped appreciating himself. He became uninteresting to himself, unimportant, a dull stranger. But being a man of strong, unbroken will-power, he did not leave the organization. He remained outwardly the same as before, only there was something cold, yet painful in his eyes. He never spoke to anyone of this.

He possessed another rare quality: just as there are people who have never known headaches, so Werner had never known fear. When other people were afraid, he looked upon them without censure but also without any particular compassion, just as upon a rather contagious illness from which, however, he himself had never suffered. He felt sorry for his comrades, especially for Vasya Kashirin; but that was a cold, almost official pity, which even some of the judges may have felt at times.

Werner understood that the execution was not merely death, that it was something different,—but he resolved to face it calmly, as something not to be considered; to live until the end as if nothing had happened and as if nothing could happen. Only in this way could he express his greatest contempt for capital punishment and preserve his last freedom of the spirit which could not be torn away from him. At the trial—and even his comrades who knew well his cold, haughty fearlessness would perhaps not have believed this,—he thought neither of death nor of life,—but concentrated his attention deeply and coolly upon a difficult chess game which he was playing. A superior chess player, he had started this game on the first day of his imprisonment and continued it uninterruptedly. Even the sentence condemning him to death by hanging did not remove a single figure from his imaginary chessboard. Even the knowledge that he would not be able to finish this game, did not stop him; and the morning of the last day that he was to remain on earth he started by correcting a not altogether successful move he had made on the previous day. Clasping his lowered hands between his knees, he sat for a long time motionless, then he rose and began to walk, meditating. His walk was peculiar: he leaned the upper part of his body slightly forward and stamped the ground with his heels firmly and distinctly. His steps usually left deep, plain imprints even on dry ground. He whistled softly, in one breath, a simple Italian melody, which helped his meditation.

But this time for some reason or other the thing did not work well. With an unpleasant feeling that he had made some important, even grave blunder, he went back several times and examined the game almost from the beginning. He found no blunder, yet the feeling about a blunder committed not only failed to leave him, but even grew ever more intense and unpleasant. Suddenly an unexpected and offensive thought came into his mind: Did the blunder perhaps consist in his playing chess simply because he wanted to distract his attention from the execution and thus shield himself against the fear of death which is apparently inevitable in every person condemned to death?

"No. What for?" he answered coldly and closed calmly his imaginary chessboard. And with the same concentration with which he had played chess, he tried to give himself an account of the horror and the helplessness of his situation. As though he were going through a strict examination, he looked over the cell, trying not to let anything escape. He counted the hours that remained until the execution, made for himself an approximate and quite exact picture of the execution itself and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well?" he said to some one half-questioningly. "Here it is. Where is the fear?"

Indeed there was no fear. Not only was it not there, but something entirely different, the reverse of fear, developed—a sensation of confused, but enormous and savage joy. And the error, which he had not yet discovered, no longer called forth in him vexation or irritation,—it seemed to speak loudly of something good and unexpected, as though he had believed a dear friend of his to be dead, and that friend turned out to be alive, safe and sound and laughing.

Werner again shrugged his shoulders and felt his pulse,—his heart was beating faster than usual, but soundly and evenly, with a specially ringing throb. He looked about once more, attentively, like a novice for the first time in prison,—examined the walls, the bolts, the chair which was screwed to the floor, and thought:

"Why do I feel so easy, so joyous and free? Yes, so free? I think of the execution to-morrow—and I feel as though it is not there. I look at the walls—and I feel as though they are not here, either. And I feel so free, as though I were not in prison, but had just come out of some prison where I had spent all my life. What does this mean?"

His hands began to tremble,—something Werner had not experienced before. His thoughts fluttered ever more furiously. It was as if tongues of fire had flashed up in his mind, and the fire wanted to burst forth and illumine the distance which was still dark as night. Now the light pierced through and the widely illuminated distance began to shine.

The fatigue that had tormented Werner during the last two years had disappeared; the dead, cold, heavy serpent with its closed eyes and mouth clinched in death, had fallen away from his breast. Before the face of death, beautiful Youth came back to him physically. Indeed, it was more than beautiful Youth. With that wonderful clarity of the spirit which in rare moments comes over man and lifts him to the loftiest peaks of meditation, Werner suddenly perceived both life and death, and he was awed by the splendor of the unprecedented spectacle. It seemed to him that he was walking along the highest mountain-ridge, which was narrow like the blade of a knife, and on one side he saw Life, on the other side—Death,—like two sparkling, deep, beautiful seas, blending in one boundless, broad surface at the horizon.

"What is this? What a divine spectacle!" he said slowly, rising involuntarily and straightening himself, as if in the presence of a supreme being. And destroying the walls, space and time with the impetuosity of his all-penetrating look, he cast a wide glance somewhere into the depth of the life he was to forsake.

And life appeared to him in a new light. He did not strive, as before, to clothe in words that which he had seen; nor were there such words in the still poor, meager human language. That small, cynical and evil feeling which had called forth in him a contempt for mankind and at times even an aversion for the sight of a human face, had disappeared completely. Thus, for a man who goes up in an airship, the filth and litter of the narrow streets disappear and that which was ugly becomes beautiful.

Unconsciously Werner stepped over to the table and leaned his right hand on it. Proud and commanding by nature, he had never before assumed such a proud, free, commanding pose, had never turned his head and never looked as he did now,—for he had never yet been as free and dominant as he was here in the prison, with but a few hours from execution and death.

Now men seemed new to him,—they appeared amiable and charming to his clarified vision. Soaring over time, he saw clearly how young mankind was, that but yesterday it had been howling like a beast in the forests; and that which had seemed to him terrible in human beings, unpardonable and repulsive, suddenly became very dear to him,—like the inability of a child to walk as grown people do, like a child's unconnected lisping, flashing with sparks of genius; like a child's comical blunders, errors and painful bruises.

"My dear people!" Werner suddenly smiled and at once lost all that was imposing in his pose; he again became a prisoner who finds his cell narrow and uncomfortable under lock, and he was tired of the annoying, searching eye staring at him through the peephole in the door. And, strange to say, almost instantly he forgot all that he had seen a little while before so clearly and distinctly; and, what is still stranger, he did not even make an effort to recall it. He simply sat down as comfortably as possible, without the usual stiffness of his body, and surveyed the walls and the bars with a faint and gentle, strange, un-Werner-like smile. Still another new thing happened to Werner,—something that had never happened to him before: he suddenly started to weep.

"My dear comrades!" he whispered, crying bitterly. "My dear comrades!"

By what mysterious ways did he change from the feeling of proud and boundless freedom to this tender and passionate compassion? He did not know, nor did he think of it. Did he pity his dear comrades, or did his tears conceal something else, a still loftier and more passionate feeling?-His suddenly revived and rejuvenated heart did not know this either. He wept and whispered:

"My dear comrades! My dear, dear comrades!"

In this man, who was bitterly weeping and smiling through tears, no one could have recognized the cold and haughty, weary, yet daring Werner—neither the judges, nor the comrades, nor even he himself.



CHAPTER XI ON THE WAY TO THE SCAFFOLD

Before placing the condemned people in coaches, all five were brought together in a large cold room with a vaulted ceiling, which resembled an office, where people worked no longer, or a deserted waiting-room. They were now permitted to speak to one another.

Only Tanya Kovalchuk availed herself at once of the permission. The others firmly and silently shook each other's hands, which were as cold as ice and as hot as fire,—and silently, trying not to look at each other, they crowded together in an awkward, absent-minded group. Now that they were together, they felt somewhat ashamed of what each of them had experienced when alone; and they were afraid to look, so as not to notice or to show that new, peculiar, somewhat shameful sensation that each of them felt or suspected the others of feeling.

But after a short silence they glanced at each other, smiled and immediately began to feel at ease and unrestrained, as before. No change seemed to have occurred, and if it had occurred, it had come so gently over all of them that it could not be discerned in any one separately. All spoke and moved about strangely: abruptly, by jolts, either too fast or too slowly. Sometimes they seemed to choke with their words and repeated them a number of times; sometimes they did not finish a phrase they had started, or thought they had finished—they did not notice it. They all blinked their eyes and examined ordinary objects curiously, not recognizing them, like people who had worn eye-glasses and had suddenly taken them off; and all of them frequently turned around abruptly, as though some one behind them was calling them all the time and showing them something. But they did not notice this, either. Musya's and Tanya Kovalchuk's cheeks and ears were burning; Sergey was at first somewhat pale, but he soon recovered and looked as he always did.

Only Vasily attracted everybody's attention. Even among them, he looked strange and terrible. Werner became agitated and said to Musya in a low voice, with tender anxiety:

"What does this mean, Musyechka? Is it possible that he—— What? I must go to him."

Vasily looked at Werner from the distance, as though not recognizing him, and he lowered his eyes.

"Vasya, what have you done with your hair? What is the matter with you? Never mind, my dear, never mind, it will soon be over. We must keep up, we must, we must."

Vasily was silent. But when it seemed that he would no longer say anything, a dull, belated, terribly remote answer came—like an answer from the grave:

"I'm all right. I hold my own."

Then he repeated:

"I hold my own."

Werner was delighted.

"That's the way, that's the way. Good boy. That's the way."

But his eyes met Vasily's dark, wearied glance fixed upon him from the distance and he thought with instant sorrow: "From where is he looking? From where is he speaking?" and with profound tenderness, with which people address a grave, he said:

"Vasya, do you hear? I love you very much."

"So do I love you very much," answered the tongue, moving with difficulty.

Suddenly Musya took Werner by the hand and with an expression of surprise, she said like an actress on the stage, with measured emphasis:

"Werner, what is this? You said, 'I love'? You never before said 'I love' to anybody. And why are you all so—tender and serene? Why?"

"Why?"

And like an actor, also accentuating what he felt, Werner pressed Musya's hand firmly:

"Yes, now I love very much. Don't tell it to the others,—it isn't necessary, I feel somewhat ashamed, but I love deeply."

Their eyes met and flashed up brightly, and everything about them seemed to have plunged in darkness. It is thus that in the flash of lightning all other lights are instantly darkened and the heavy yellow flame casts a shadow upon earth.

"Yes," said Musya, "yes, Werner."

"Yes," he answered, "yes, Musya, yes."

They understood each other and something was firmly settled between them at this moment. And his eyes glistening, Werner again became agitated and quickly stepped over to Sergey.

"Seryozha!"

But Tanya Kovalchuk answered. Almost crying with maternal pride, she tugged Sergey frantically by the sleeve.

"Listen, Werner! I am crying here for him, I am wearing myself to death, and he is occupying himself with gymnastics!"

"According to the Mueller system?" smiled Werner.

Sergey knit his brow confusedly.

"You needn't laugh, Werner. I have convinced myself conclusively—"

All began to laugh. Drawing strength and courage from one another, they gradually regained their poise—became the same as they used to be. They did not notice this, however, and thought that they had never changed at all. Suddenly Werner interrupted their laughter and said to Sergey very earnestly:

"You are right, Seryozha. You are perfectly right."

"No, but you must understand," said Golovin gladly. "Of course, we—"

But at this point they were asked to start. And their jailers were so kind as to permit them to ride in pairs, as they pleased. Altogether the jailers were extremely kind; even too kind. It was as if they tried partly to show themselves humane and partly to show that they were not there at all, but that everything was being done as by machinery. But they were all pale.

"Musya, you go with him." Werner pointed at Vasily, who stood motionless.

"I understand," Musya nodded. "And you?"

"I? Tanya will go with Sergey, you go with Vasya.... I will go alone. That doesn't matter, I can do it, you know."

When they went out in the yard, the moist, soft darkness rushed warmly and strongly against their faces, their eyes, taking their breath away, then suddenly it penetrated their bodies tenderly and refreshingly. It was hard to believe that this wonderful effect was produced simply by the spring wind, the warm, moist wind. And the really wonderful spring night was filled with the odor of melting snow, and through the boundless space the noise of drops resounded. Hastily and frequently, as though trying to overtake one another, little drops were falling, striking in unison a ringing tune. Suddenly one of them would strike out of tune and all was mingled in a merry splash in hasty confusion. Then a large, heavy drop would strike firmly and again the fast, spring melody resounded distinctly. And over the city, above the roofs of the fortress, hung a pale redness in the sky reflected by the electric lights.

"U-ach!" Sergey Golovin heaved a deep sigh and held his breath, as though he regretted to exhale from his lungs the fine, fresh air.

"How long have you had such weather?" inquired Werner. "It's real spring."

"It's only the second day," was the polite answer. "Before that we had mostly frosty weather."

The dark carriages rolled over noiselessly one after another, took them in by twos, started off into the darkness—there where the lantern was shaking at the gate. The convoys like gray silhouettes surrounded each carriage; the horseshoes struck noisily against the ground, or plashed upon the melting snow.

When Werner bent down, about to climb into the carriage, the gendarme whispered to him:

"There is somebody else going along with you."

Werner was surprised.

"Where? Where is he going? Oh, yes! Another one? Who is he?"

The gendarme was silent. Indeed, in a dark corner a small, motionless but living figure pressed close to the side of the carriage. By the reflection of the lantern Werner noticed the flash of an open eye. Seating himself, Werner pushed his foot against the other man's knee.

"Excuse me, comrade."

The man made no reply. It was only when the carriage started, that he suddenly asked in broken Russian, speaking with difficulty:

"Who are you?"

"I am Werner, condemned to hanging for the attempt upon N—. And you?"

"I am Yanson. They must not hang me."

They were riding thus in order to appear two hours later face to face before the inexplicable great mystery, in order to pass from Life to Death—and they were introducing each other. Life and Death moved simultaneously, and until the very end Life remained life, to the most ridiculous and insipid trifles.

"What have you done, Yanson?"

"I killed my master with a knife. I stole money."

It seemed from the tone of his voice that Yanson was falling asleep. Werner found his flabby hand in the darkness and pressed it. Yanson withdrew it drowsily.

"Are you afraid?" asked Werner.

"I don't want to be hanged."

They became silent. Werner again found the Esthonian's hand and pressed it firmly between his dry, burning palms. Yanson's hand lay motionless, like a board, but he made no longer any effort to withdraw it.

It was close and suffocating in the carriage. The air was filled with the smell of soldiers' clothes, mustiness, and the leather of wet boots. The young gendarme who sat opposite Werner breathed warmly upon him, and in his breath there was the odor of onions and cheap tobacco. But some brisk, fresh air came in through certain clefts, and because of this, spring was felt even more intensely in this small, stifling, moving box, than outside. The carriage kept turning now to the right, now to the left, now it seemed to turn back. At times it seemed as though they had been turning around on one and the same spot for hours for some reason or other. At first a bluish electric light penetrated through the lowered, heavy window shades; then suddenly, after a certain turn it grew dark, and only by this could they guess that they had turned into deserted streets in the outskirts of the city and that they were nearing the S. railroad station. Sometimes during sharp turns, Werner's live, bent knee would strike against the live, bent knee of the gendarme, and it was hard to believe that the execution was approaching.

"Where are we going?" Yanson asked suddenly. He was somewhat dizzy from the continuous turning of the dark box and he felt slightly sick at his stomach.

Werner answered and pressed the Esthonian's hand more firmly. He felt like saying something especially kind and caressing to this little, sleepy man, and he already loved him as he had never loved anyone in his life.

"You don't seem to sit comfortably, my dear man. Move over here, to me."

Yanson was silent for awhile, then he replied:

"Well, thank you. I'm sitting all right. Are they going to hang you too?"

"Yes," answered Werner, almost laughing with unexpected jollity, and he waved his hand easily and freely, as though he were speaking of some absurd and trifling joke which kind but terribly comical people wanted to play on him.

"Have you a wife?" asked Yanson.

"No. I have no wife. I am single."

"I am also alone. Alone," said Yanson.

Werner's head also began to feel dizzy. And at times it seemed that they were going to some festival; strange to say, almost all those who went to the scaffold experienced the same sensation and mingled with sorrow and fear there was a vague joy as they anticipated the extraordinary thing that was soon to befall them. Reality was intoxicated with madness and Death, united with Life, brought forth apparitions. It seemed very possible that flags were waving over the houses.

"We have arrived!" said Werner gayly when the carriage stopped, and he jumped out easily. But with Yanson it was a rather slow affair: silently and very drowsily he resisted and would not come out. He seized the knob. The gendarme opened the weak fingers and pulled his hand away. Then Yanson seized the corner of the carriage, the door, the high wheel, but immediately let it go upon the slightest effort on the part of the gendarme. He did not exactly seize these things; he rather cleaved to each object sleepily and silently, and was torn away easily, without any effort. Finally he got up.

There were no flags. The railroad station was dark, deserted and lifeless; the passenger trains were not running any longer, and the train which was silently waiting for these passengers on the way needed no bright light, no commotion. Suddenly Werner began to feel weary. It was not fear, nor anguish, but a feeling of enormous, painful, tormenting weariness which makes one feel like going off somewhere, lying down and closing one's eyes very tightly. Werner stretched himself and yawned slowly. Yanson also stretched himself and quickly yawned several times.

"I wish they'd be quicker about it," said Werner wearily. Yanson was silent, shrinking together.

When the condemned moved along the deserted platform which was surrounded by soldiers, to the dimly lighted cars, Werner found himself near Sergey Golovin; Sergey, pointing with his hand somewhere aside, began to say something, but only the word "lantern" was heard distinctly, and the rest was drowned in slow and weary yawning.

"What did you say?" asked Werner, also yawning.

"The lantern. The lamp in the lantern is smoking," said Sergey. Werner looked around. Indeed, the lamp in the lantern was smoking very much, and the glass had already turned black on top.

"Yes, it is smoking."

Suddenly he thought: "What have I to do with the smoking of the lamp, since—-"

Sergey apparently thought the same, as he glanced quickly at Werner and turned away. But both stopped yawning.

They all went to the cars themselves, only Yanson had to be led by the arms. At first he stamped his feet and his boots seemed to stick to the boards of the platform. Then he bent his knees and fell into the arms of the gendarmes, his feet dangled like those of a very intoxicated man, and the tips of the boots scraped against the wood. It took a long time until he was silently pushed through the door.

Vasily Kashirin also moved himself, unconsciously imitating the movements of his comrades—he did everything as they did. But on boarding the platform of the car, he stumbled, and a gendarme took him by the elbow to support him. Vasily shuddered and screamed shrilly, drawing back his arm:

"Ai!"

"What is it, Vasya?" Werner rushed over to him. Vasily was silent, trembling in every limb. The confused and even offended gendarme explained:

"I wanted to keep him from falling, and he—"

"Come, Vasya, let me hold you," said Werner, about to take him by the arm. But Vasily drew back his arm again and cried more loudly than before:

"Ai!"

"Vasya, it is I, Werner."

"I know. Don't touch me. I'll go myself."

And continuing to tremble he entered the car himself and seated himself in a corner. Bending over to Musya, Werner asked her softly, pointing with his eyes at Vasily:

"How about him?"

"Bad," answered Musya, also in a soft voice. "He is dead already. Werner, tell me, is there such a thing as death?"

"I don't know, Musya, but I think that there is no such thing," replied Werner seriously and thoughtfully.

"That's what I have thought. But he? I was tortured with him in the carriage—it was like riding with a corpse."

"I don't know, Musya. Perhaps there is such a thing as death for some people. Meanwhile, perhaps, but later there will be no death. For me death also existed before, but now it exists no longer."

Musya's somewhat paled cheeks flushed as she asked:

"It did exist, Werner? It did?"

"It did. But not now any longer. Just the same as with you."

A noise was heard in the doorway of the car. Mishka Tsiganok entered, stamping noisily with his heels, breathing loudly and spitting. He cast a swift glance and stopped obdurately.

"No room here, gendarme!" he shouted to the tired gendarme who looked at him angrily. "You make it so that I am comfortable here, otherwise I won't go—hang me here on the lamp-post. What a carriage they gave me, dogs! Is that a carriage? It's the devil's belly, not a carriage!"

But suddenly he bent down his head, stretched out his neck and thus went forward to the others. Out of the disheveled frame of hair and beard his black eyes looked wildly and sharply with an almost insane expression.

"Ah, gentlemen!" he drawled out. "So that's what it is. Hello, master!"

He thrust his hand to Werner and sat down opposite him. And bending closely over to him, he winked one eye and quickly passed his hand over his throat.

"You, too? What?"

"Yes!" smiled Werner.

"Are all of us to be hanged?"

"All."

"Oho!" Tsiganok grinned, showing his teeth, and quickly felt everybody with his eyes, stopping for an instant longer on Musya and Yanson. Then he winked again to Werner.

"The Minister?"

"Yes, the Minister. And you?"

"I am here for something else, master. People like me don't deal with ministers. I am a murderer, master, that's what I am. An ordinary murderer. Never mind, master, move away a little, I haven't come into your company of my own will. There will be room enough for all of us in the other world."

He surveyed them all with one swift, suspicious, wild glance from under his disheveled hair. But all looked at him silently and seriously, even with apparent interest. He grinned, showing his teeth, and quickly clapped Werner on the knee several times.

"That's the way, master! How does the song run? 'Don't rustle, O green little mother forest....'"

"Why do you call me 'master,' since we are all going—"

"Correct," Tsiganok agreed with satisfaction. "What kind of master are you, if you are going to hang right beside me? There is a master for you"; and he pointed with his finger at the silent gendarme. "Eh, that fellow there is not worse than our kind"; he pointed with his eyes at Vasily. "Master! He there, master! You're afraid, aren't you?"

"No," answered the heavy tongue.

"Never mind that 'No.' Don't be ashamed; there's nothing to be ashamed of. Only a dog wags his tail and snarls when he is taken to be hanged, but you are a man. Who is that dope? He isn't one of you, is he?"

He darted his glance rapidly about, and hissing, kept spitting continuously. Yanson, curled up into a motionless bundle, pressed closely into the corner. The flaps of his outworn fur cap stirred, but he maintained silence. Werner answered for him:

"He killed his employer."

"O Lord!" wondered Tsiganok. "Why are such people allowed to kill?"

For some time Tsiganok had been looking sideways at Musya; now turning quickly, he stared at her sharply, straight into her face.

"Young lady, young lady! What about you? Her cheeks are rosy and she is laughing. Look, she is really laughing," he said, clasping Werner's knee with his clutching, iron-like fingers. "Look, look!"

Reddening, smiling confusedly, Musya also gazed straight into his sharp and wildly searching eyes.

The wheels rattled fast and noisily. The small cars kept hopping along the narrow rails. Now at a curve or at a crossing the small engine whistled shrilly and carefully—the engineer was afraid lest he might run over somebody. It was strange to think that so much humane painstaking care and exertion was being introduced into the business of hanging people; that the most insane deed on earth was being committed with such an air of simplicity and reasonableness. The cars were running, and human beings sat in them as people always do, and they rode as people usually ride; and then there would be a halt, as usual.

"The train will stop for five minutes."

And there death would be waiting—eternity—the great mystery, on with friendliness, watching how Yanson's fingers took the cigarette, how the match flared, and then how the blue smoke issued from Yanson's mouth.

"Thanks," said Yanson; "it's good."

"How strange!" said Sergey.

"What is strange?" Werner turned around. "What is strange?"

"I mean—the cigarette."

Yanson held a cigarette, an ordinary cigarette, in his ordinary live hands, and, pale-faced, looked at it with surprise, even with terror. And all fixed their eyes upon the little tube, from the end of which smoke was issuing, like a bluish ribbon, wafted aside by the breathing, with the ashes, gathering, turning black. The light went out.

"The light's out," said Tanya.

"Yes, the light's out."

"Let it go," said Werner, frowning, looking uneasily at Yanson, whose hand, holding the cigarette, was hanging loosely, as if dead. Suddenly Tsiganok turned quickly, bent over to Werner, close to him, face to face, and rolling the whites of his eyes, like a horse, whispered:

"Master, how about the convoys? Suppose we—we? Shall we try?"

"No, don't do it," Werner replied, also in a whisper. "We shall drink it to the bitter end."

"Why not? It's livelier in a fight! Eh? I strike him, he strikes me, and you don't even know how the thing is done. It's just as if you don't die at all."

"No, you shouldn't do it," said Werner, and turned to Yanson. "Why don't you smoke, friend?"

Suddenly Yanson's wizened face became wofully wrinkled, as if somebody had pulled strings which set all the wrinkles in motion. And, as in a dream, he began to whimper, without tears, in a dry, strained voice:

"I don't want to smoke. Aha! aha! aha! Why should I be hanged? Aha! aha! aha!"

They began to bustle about him. Tanya Kovalchuk, weeping freely, petted him on the arm, and adjusted the drooping earlaps of his worn fur cap.

"My dear, do not cry! My own! my dear! Poor, unfortunate little fellow!"

Musya looked aside. Tsiganok caught her glance and grinned, showing his teeth.

"What a queer fellow! He drinks tea, and yet feels cold," he said, with an abrupt laugh. But suddenly his own face became bluish-black, like cast-iron, and his large yellow teeth flashed.

Suddenly the little cars trembled and slackened their speed. All, except Yanson and Kashirin, rose and sat down again quickly.

"Here is the station," said Sergey.

It seemed to them as if all the air had been suddenly pumped out of the car, it became so difficult to breathe. The heart grew larger, making the chest almost burst, beating in the throat, tossing about madly-shouting in horror with its blood-filled voice. And the eyes looked upon the quivering floor, and the ears heard how the wheels were turning ever more slowly—the wheels slipped and turned again, and then suddenly—they stopped.

The train had halted.

Then a dream set in. It was not terrible, rather fantastic, unfamiliar to the memory, strange. The dreamer himself seemed to remain aside, only his bodiless apparition moved about, spoke soundlessly, walked noiselessly, suffered without suffering. As in a dream, they walked out of the car, formed into parties of two, inhaled the peculiarly fresh spring air of the forest. As in a dream, Yanson resisted bluntly, powerlessly, and was dragged out of the car silently.

They descended the steps of the station.

"Are we to walk?" asked some one almost cheerily.

"It isn't far now," answered another, also cheerily.

Then they walked in a large, black, silent crowd amid the forest, along a rough, wet and soft spring road. From the forest, from the snow, a fresh, strong breath of air was wafted. The feet slipped, sometimes sinking into the snow, and involuntarily the hands of the comrades clung to each other. And the convoys, breathing with difficulty, walked over the untouched snow on each side of the road. Some one said in an angry voice:

"Why didn't they clear the road? Did they want us to turn somersaults in the snow?"

Some one else apologized guiltily.

"We cleaned it, your Honor. But it is thawing and it can't be helped."

Consciousness of what they were doing returned to the prisoners, but not completely,—in fragments, in strange parts. Now, suddenly, their minds practically admitted:

"It is indeed impossible to clear the road."

Then again everything died out, and only their sense of smell remained: the unbearably fresh smell of the forest and of the melting snow. And everything became unusually clear to the consciousness: the forest, the night, the road and the fact that soon they would be hanged. Their conversation, restrained to whispers, flashed in fragments.

"It is almost four o'clock."

"I said we started too early."

"The sun dawns at five."

"Of course, at five. We should have—"

They stopped in a meadow, in the darkness. A little distance away, beyond the bare trees, two small lanterns moved silently. There were the gallows.

"I lost one of my rubbers," said Sergey Golovin.

"Really?" asked Werner, not understanding what he said.

"I lost a rubber. It's cold."

"Where's Vasily?"

"I don't know. There he is."

Vasily stood, gloomy, motionless.

"And where is Musya?"

"Here I am. Is that you, Werner?"

They began to look about, avoiding the direction of the gallows, where the lanterns continued to move about silently with terrible suggestiveness. On the left, the bare forest seemed to be growing thinner, and something large and white and flat was visible. A damp wind issued from it.

"The sea," said Sergey Golovin, inhaling the air with nose and mouth. "The sea is there!"

Musya answered sonorously:

"My love which is as broad as the sea!"

"What is that, Musya?"

"The banks of life cannot hold my love, which is as broad as the sea."

"My love which is as broad as the sea," echoed Sergey, thoughtfully, carried away by the sound of her voice and by her words.

"My love which is as broad as the sea," repeated Werner, and suddenly he spoke wonderingly, cheerfully:

"Musya, how young you are!"

Suddenly Tsiganok whispered warmly, out of breath, right into Werner's ear:

"Master! master! There's the forest! My God! what's that? There—where the lanterns are—are those the gallows? What does it mean?"

Werner looked at him. Tsiganok was writhing in agony before his death.

"We must bid each other good-by," said Tanya Kovalchuk.

"Wait, they have yet to read the sentence," answered Werner. "Where is Yanson?"

Yanson was lying on the snow, and about him people were busying themselves. There was a smell of ammonia in the air.

"Well, what is it, doctor? Will you be through soon?" some one asked impatiently.

"It's nothing. He has simply fainted. Rub his ears with snow! He is coming to himself already! You may read the sentence!"

The light of the dark lantern flashed upon the paper and on the white, gloveless hands holding it. Both the paper and the hands quivered slightly, and the voice also quivered:

"Gentlemen, perhaps it is not necessary to read the sentence to you. You know it already. What do you say?"

"Don't read it," Werner answered for them all, and the little lantern was soon extinguished.

The services of the priest were also declined by them all. Tsiganok said:

"Stop your fooling, father—you will forgive me, but they will hang me. Go to—where you came from."

And the dark, broad silhouette of the priest moved back silently and quickly and disappeared. Day was breaking: the snow turned whiter, the figures of the people became more distinct, and the forest—thinner, more melancholy.

"Gentlemen, you must go in pairs. Take your places in pairs as you wish, but I ask you to hurry up."

Werner pointed to Yanson, who was now standing, supported by two gendarmes.

"I will go with him. And you, Seryozha, take Vasily. Go ahead."

"Very well."

"You and I go together, Musechka, shall we not?" asked Tanya Kovalchuk. "Come, let us kiss each other good-by."

They kissed one another quickly. Tsiganok kissed firmly, so that they felt his teeth; Yanson softly, drowsily, with his mouth half open—and it seemed that he did not understand what he was doing.

When Sergey Golovin and Kashirin had gone a few steps, Kashirin suddenly stopped and said loudly and distinctly:

"Good-by, comrades."

"Good-by, comrade," they shouted in answer.

They went off. It grew quiet. The lanterns beyond the trees became motionless. They awaited an outcry, a voice, some kind of noise—but it was just as quiet there as it was among them—and the yellow lanterns were motionless.

"Oh, my God!" some one cried hoarsely and wildly. They looked about. It was Tsiganok, writhing in agony at the thought of death. "They are hanging!"

They turned away from him, and again it became quiet. Tsiganok was writhing, catching at the air with his hands.

"How is that, gentlemen? Am I to go alone? It's livelier to die together. Gentlemen, what does it mean?"

He seized Werner by the hand, his fingers clutching and then relaxing.

"Dear master, at least you come with me? Eh? Do me the favor? Don't refuse."

Werner answered painfully:

"I can't, my dear fellow. I am going with him."

"Oh, my God! Must I go alone, then? My God! How is it to be?"

Musya stepped forward and said softly:

"You may go with me."

Tsiganok stepped back and rolled the whites of his eyes wildly.

"With you!"

"Yes."

"Just think of her! What a little girl! And you're not afraid? If you are, I would rather go alone!"

"No, I am not afraid."

Tsiganok grinned.

"Just think of her! But do you know that I am a murderer? Don't you despise me? You had better not do it. I shan't be angry at you."

Musya was silent, and in the faint light of dawn her face was pale and enigmatic. Then suddenly she walked over to Tsiganok quickly, and, throwing her arms about his neck, kissed him firmly upon his lips. He took her by the shoulders with his fingers, held her away from himself, then shook her, and, with loud smacks, kissed her on the lips, on the nose, on the eyes.

"Come!"

Suddenly the soldier standing nearest them staggered forward, and opening his hands, let his gun drop. He did not stoop down to regain it, but stood for an instant motionless, turned abruptly and, like a blind man, walked toward the forest over the untouched snow.

"Where are you going?" called out another soldier in fright. "Halt!"

But the man continued walking through the deep snow silently and with difficulty. Then he must have stumbled over something, for he waved his arms and fell face downward. And there he remained lying on the snow.

"Pick up the gun, you sour-faced gray-coat, or I'll pick it up," said Tsiganok sternly to the other soldier. "You don't know your business!"

The little lanterns began to move about busily again. Now it was the turn of Werner and Yanson.

"Good-by, master!" called Tsiganok loudly. "We'll meet each other in the other world, you'll see! Don't turn away from me. When you see me, bring me some water to drink—it will be hot there for me!"

"Good-by!"

"I don't want to be hanged!" said Yanson drowsily.

Werner took him by the hand, and then the Esthonian walked a few steps alone. But later they saw him stop and fall down in the snow. Soldiers bent over him, lifted him up and carried him on, and he struggled faintly in their arms. Why did he not cry? He must have forgotten even that he had a voice.

And again the little yellow lanterns became motionless.

"And I, Musechka," said Tanya Kovalchuk mournfully, "must I go alone? We lived together, and now—"

"Tanechka, dearest—"

But Tsiganok took her part heatedly.

Holding her by the hand, as though fearing that some one would take her away from him, he said quickly, in a business-like manner, to Tanya:

"Ah, young lady, you can go alone! You are a pure soul—you can go alone wherever you please! But I—I can't! A murderer!... Understand? I can't go alone! Where are you going, you murderer? they will ask me. Why, I even stole horses, by God! But with her it is just as if—just as if I were with an infant, understand? Do you understand me?"

"I do. Go. Come, let me kiss you once more, Musechka."

"Kiss! Kiss each other!" urged Tsiganok. "That's a woman's job! You must bid each other a hearty good-by!"

Musya and Tsiganok moved forward. Musya walked cautiously, slipping, and by force of habit raising her skirts slightly. And the man led her to death firmly, holding her arm carefully and feeling the ground with his foot.

The lights stopped moving. It was quiet and lonely around Tanya Kovalchuk. The soldiers were silent, all gray in the soft, colorless light of daybreak.

"I am alone," sighed Tanya Kovalchuk suddenly. "Seryozha is dead, Werner is dead—and Vasya, too. I am alone! Soldiers! soldiers! I am alone, alone—"

The sun was rising over the sea.

The bodies were placed in a box. Then they were taken away. With stretched necks, with bulging eyes, with blue, swollen tongues, looking like some unknown, terrible flowers between the lips, which were covered with bloody foam—the bodies were hurried back along the same road by which they had come—alive. And the spring snow was just as soft and fresh; the spring air was just as strong and fragrant. And on the snow lay Sergey's black rubber-shoe, wet, trampled under foot.

Thus did men greet the rising sun.

THE END