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"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?"
A few days later the master died of blood poisoning, and Yanson, when his turn among other robbers and murderers came, was tried and condemned to death. In court he was the same as always; a little man, freckled, with sleepy, glassy eyes. It seemed as if he did not understand in the least the meaning of what was going on about him; he appeared to be entirely indifferent.
"When are they going to hang me?" asked Yanson distrustfully. The warden meditated a moment. "Well, you'll have to wait until they can get together a whole party. It isn't worth bothering for one man, especially for a man like you. It is necessary to work up the right spirit." "And when will that be?" persisted Yanson. He was not at all offended that it was not worth while to hang him alone.
"They'll swing you up so quickly that you'll have no time to kick." "Keep still!" cried the other convoy angrily. But he himself could not refrain from adding: "A robber, too! Why did you take a human life, you fool? You must hang for that!" "They might pardon him," said the first soldier, who began to feel sorry for Yanson. "Oh, yes! They'll pardon people like him, will they?
"And I don't want to be hanged gaga-ga!" laughed Yanson. "Satan!" muttered the inspector, feeling the need of making the sign of the cross. This little man, with his small, wizened face he resembled least of all the devil but there was that in his silly giggling which destroyed the sanctity and the strength of the prison.
"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.
"You had better look out!" said the warden, with an indefinite threat, and he walked away, glancing back of him. Yanson was calm and cheerful throughout the evening. He repeated to himself, "I shall not be hanged," and it seemed to him so convincing, so wise, so irrefutable, that it was unnecessary to feel uneasy.
This was the customary condition of prisoners, and reminded the wardens of cattle being led to slaughter after a staggering blow. "Now he is stunned, now he will feel nothing until his very death," said the warden, looking at him with experienced eyes. "Ivan! Do you hear? Ivan!" "I must not be hanged," answered Yanson, in a dull voice, and his lower jaw again drooped.
But the night became terrible to him. Before this Yanson had felt the night simply as darkness, as an especially dark time, when it was necessary to go to sleep, but now he began to be aware of its mysterious and uncanny nature. In order not to believe in death, it was necessary to hear and see and feel ordinary things about him, footsteps, voices, light, the soup of sour cabbage.
And on Thursday, at midnight a number of people entered Yanson's cell, and one man, with shoulder-straps, said: "Well, get ready. We must go." Yanson, moving slowly and drowsily as before, put on everything he had and tied his muddy-red muffler about his neck. The man with shoulder-straps, smoking a cigarette, said to some one while watching Yanson dress: "What a warm day this will be.
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