The Seven Who Were Hanged | Page 8

every swift sensation,
every thought of the other four. She did not give a single thought to the
fact that she, too, was upon trial, that she, too, would be hanged; she
was entirely indifferent to it. It was in her house that the bombs and the
dynamite had been discovered, and, strange though it may seem, it was
she who had met the police with pistol-shots and had wounded one of
the detectives in the head.
The trial ended at about eight o'clock, when it had become dark. Before
Musya's and Golovin's eyes the sky, which had been turning ever bluer,
was gradually losing its tint, but it did not turn rosy, did not smile softly
as in summer evenings, but became muddy, gray, and suddenly grew
cold, wintry. Golovin heaved a sigh, stretched himself, glanced again
twice at the window, but the cold darkness of the night alone was there;
then continuing to tug at his short beard, he began to examine with
childish curiosity the judges, the soldiers with their muskets, and he
smiled at Tanya Kovalchuk. When the sky had darkened Musya calmly,
without lowering her eyes to the ground, turned them to the corner
where a small cobweb was quivering from the imperceptible radiations
of the steam heat, and thus she remained until the sentence was
pronounced.
After the verdict, having bidden good-by to their frock-coated lawyers,
and evading each other's helplessly confused, pitying and guilty eyes,
the convicted terrorists crowded in the doorway for a moment and

exchanged brief words.
"Never mind, Vasya. Everything will be over soon," said Werner.
"I am all right, brother," Kashirin replied loudly, calmly and even
somewhat cheerfully. And indeed, his face had turned slightly rosy, and
no longer looked like that of a decomposing corpse.
"The devil take them; they've hanged us," Golovin cursed quaintly.
"That was to be expected," replied Werner calmly.
"To-morrow the sentence will be pronounced in its final form and we
shall all be placed together," said Tanya Kovalchuk consolingly. "Until
the execution we shall all he together."
Musya was silent. Then she resolutely moved forward.
CHAPTER III
WHY SHOULD I BE HANGED?
Two weeks before the terrorists had been tried the same military district
court, with a different set of judges, had tried and condemned to death
by hanging Ivan Yanson, a peasant.
Ivan Yanson was a workman for a well-to-do farmer, in no way
different from other workmen. He was an Esthonian by birth, from
Vezenberg, and in the course of several years, passing from one farm to
another, he had come close to the capital. He spoke Russian very
poorly, and as his master was a Russian, by name Lazarev, and as there
were no Esthonians in the neighborhood, Yanson had practically
remained silent for almost two years. In general, he was apparently not
inclined to talk, and was silent not only with human beings, but even
with animals. He would water the horse in silence, harness it in silence,
moving about it, slowly and lazily, with short, irresolute steps, and
when the horse, annoyed by his manner, would begin to frolic, to
become capricious, he would beat it in silence with a heavy whip. He

would beat it cruelly, with stolid, angry persistency, and when this
happened at a time when he was suffering from the aftereffects of a
carouse, he would work himself into & frenzy. At such times the crack
of the whip could be heard in the house, with the frightened, painful
pounding of the horse's hoofs upon the board floor of the barn. For
beating the horse his master would beat Yanson, but then, finding that
he could not be reformed, paid no more attention to him.
Once or twice a month Yanson became intoxicated, usually on those
days when he took his master to the large railroad station, where there
was a refreshment bar. After leaving his master at the station, he would
drive off about half a verst away, and there, stalling the sled and the
horse in the snow on the side of the road, he would wait until the train
had gone. The sled would stand sideways, almost overturned, the horse
standing with widely spread legs up to his belly in a snowbank, from
time to time lowering his head to lick the soft, downy snow, while
Yanson would recline in an awkward position in the sled as if dozing
away. The unfastened ear-lappets of his worn fur cap would hang down
like the ears of a setter, and the moist sweat would stand under his little
reddish nose.
Soon he would return to the station, and would quickly become
intoxicated.
On his way back to the farm, the whole ten versts, he would drive at a
fast gallop. The little horse, driven to