Sunrise | Page 4

implement-house is locked? The
poor devils!--old men, too, and women; and how they take their turn at
the slow work, hour after hour, week after week, all through the long,
still nights! Inch by inch it is; and the poor devils become like rabbits,
burrowing for a hole to reach the outer air; and do you know that, after
a time, the first wounds heal, and your fingers become like stumps of
iron--"
He held out his two hands; the ends of the fingers were seamed and
corrugated, as if they had been violently scalded. But he could not hold
them steady--they were trembling with the suppressed passion that
made his whole frame tremble.
"Relay after relay, night after night, week after week, month after
month, until those poor devils of rabbits had actually burrowed a
passage out into the freedom of God's world again. And some said the
Czar himself had heard of it, and would not interfere, for the prisons
were choked; and some said the wife of the governor was Polish, and
had a kind heart; but what did it matter when the time was drawing near?
And always this clever fellow--do you know, sir, his name was Verdt
too?--encouraging, helping, goading these poor people on. Then the last
night--how the miserable rabbits of creatures kept huddled together,
shivering in the dark, till the hour arrived! and then the death-like
stillness they found outside; and the wild wonder and fear of it; and the
old men and the women crying like children to find themselves in the
free air again. Marie Falevitch--that was my sister-in-law--she kissed
me, and was laughing when she whispered, 'Eljen a haza!' I think she
was a little off her head with the long, sleepless nights."
He stopped for a second; his throat seemed choked.
"Did I tell you they had all got out?--the poor devils all wondering
there, and scarcely knowing where to go. And now suppose, sir--ah!
you don't know anything about these things, you happy English
people--suppose you found the black night around you all at once
turned to a blaze of fire--red hell opened on all sides of you, and the
bullets plowing your comrades down; the old men crying for mercy, the

young ones falling only with a groan; the women--my God! Did you
ever hear a woman shriek when she was struck through the heart with a
bullet? Marie Falevitch fell at my feet, but I could not raise her--I was
struck down too. It was a week after that I came to my senses. I was in
the prison, but the prison was not quite so full. Czars and governors
have a fine way of thinning prisons when they get too crowded."
These last words were spoken in a calm, contemptuous way; the man
was evidently trying hard to control the fierce passion that these
memories had stirred up. He had clinched one hand, and put it firmly
on the desk before him, so that it should not tremble.
"Well, now, Mr. Brand," he continued, slowly, "let us suppose that
when you come to yourself again, you hear the rumors that are about:
you hear, for example, that Count Verdt--that exceedingly clever
man--has been graciously pardoned by the Czar for revealing the
villanous conspiracy of his fellow-prisoners; and that he has gone off to
the South with a bag of money. Do you not think that you would
remember the name of that clever person? Do you not think you would
say to yourself, 'Well, it may not be to-day, or to-morrow, or the next
day: _but some day_?'"
Again the dark eyes glowed; but he had a wonderful self-control.
"You would remember the name, would you not, if you had your
sister-in-law, and your only brother, and six or seven of your old
friends and comrades all shot on the one night?"
"This was the same Count Verdt?" Brand asked, eagerly.
"Yes," said the other, after a considerable pause. Then he added, with
an involuntary sigh, "I had been following his movements for some
time; but the Camorra stepped in. They are foolish people, those
Camorristi--foolish and ignorant. They punish for very trifling offences,
and they do not make sufficient warning of their punishments. Then
they are quite imbecile in the way they attempt to regulate labor."
He was now talking in quite a matter-of-fact way. The clinched hand

was relaxed.
"Besides," continued Ferdinand Lind, with the cool air of a critic, "their
conduct is too scandalous. The outer world believes they are nothing
but an association of thieves and cut-throats; that is because they do not
discountenance vulgar and useless crime; because there is not enough
authority, nor any proper selection of members. In the affairs of the
world, one has sometimes to make use of