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 transfor