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Little Mazin popped up like a cork from a champagne bottle, and said in a staccato voice: "I I swear! I know you have convicted me " He lost breath and paled; his eyes seemed to devour his entire face. He stretched out his hand and shouted: "I upon my honest word! Wherever you send me I'll escape I'll return I'll work always all my life! Upon my honest word!" Sizov quacked aloud.
Their eyes gleamed from darkened countenances; their teeth glistened. Pavel appeared on the spot where Sizov and Makhotin were standing, and his voice rang out: "Comrades!" The mother saw that his face paled and his lips trembled; she involuntarily pushed forward, shoving her way through the crowd. "Where are you going, old woman?"
A man in a gray Caucasian cowl looked into Sizov's face and asked quickly: "What was the sentence?" "Exile." "For all?" "All." "Thank you." The man walked away. "You see," said Sizov. "They inquire." Suddenly they were surrounded by about ten men, youths, and girls, and explanations rained down, attracting still more people. The mother and Sizov stopped.
Sizov touched her lightly with his elbow; she turned to him, and found a look of contentment and slight preoccupation on his face. "Just see how they've intrenched themselves in their defiance! Fine stuff in 'em! Eh? Barons, eh? Well, and yet they're going to be sentenced!" The mother listened, unconsciously repeating to herself: "Who will pass the sentence? Whom will they sentence?"
His face reddened with excitation, his eyes sparkled. For some reason he hid his hands behind his back. Sizov groaned softly, and the mother opened her eyes wide in astonishment. "I declined a defense I'm not going to say anything I don't regard your court as legal! Who are you? Did the people give you the right to judge us? No, they did not! I don't know you."
A hum of sympathy accompanied her. Sizov silently put the people out of her way, and they silently moved aside, obeying a blind impulse to follow her. They walked after her slowly, exchanging brief, subdued remarks on the way. Arrived at the gate of her house, she turned to them, leaning on the fragment of the flag pole, and bowed in gratitude. "Thank you!" she said softly.
He smiled, a bit embarrassed by the transport of his comrades. He looked toward his mother, and nodded his head as if asking, "Is it so?" She answered him all a-tremble, all suffused with warm joy. "There, now the trial has begun!" whispered Sizov. "How he gave it to them! Eh, mother?"
She was pleased that he was so calm and talked so simply; not angrily, not swearing, like the others. Broken exclamations, wrathful words and oaths descended like hail on iron. Pavel looked down on the people from his elevation, and with wide-open eyes seemed to be seeking something among them. "Delegates!" "Let Sizov speak!" "Vlasov!" "Rybin! He has a terrible tongue!"
The next day, after mass, a dapper old man, the smelter Sizov, and the tall, vicious-looking locksmith Makhotin, came to him and told him of the manager's decision. "A few of us older ones got together," said Sizov, speaking sedately, "talked the matter over, and our comrades, you see, sent us over to you, as you are a knowing man among us.
As they walked out, they nodded their heads to their relatives and familiars with a smile, and Ivan Gusev shouted to somebody in a modulated voice: "Don't lose courage, Yegor." The mother and Sizov walked out into the corridor. "Will you go to the tavern with me to take some tea?" the old man asked her solicitously. "We have an hour and a half's time." "I don't want to."
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