ed. The warden,
on learning of the verdict, said to him:

"Well, my friend, they've hanged you!"

"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. He did not believe it,
but considered it as an excuse for postponing the execution, preparatory
to revoking it altogether. And he was seized with joy; the confused,
terrible moment, of which it was so painful to think, retreated far into
the distance, becoming fictitious and improbable, as death always seems.

"When? When?" cried the warden, a dull, morose old man, growing angry.
"It isn't like hanging a dog, which you take behind the barn--and it is
done in no time. I suppose you would like to be hanged like that, you
fool!"

"I don't want to be hanged," and suddenly Yanson frowned strangely. "He
said that I should be hanged, but I don't want it."

And perhaps for the first time in his life he laughed, a hoarse, absurd,
yet gay and joyous laughter. It sounded like the cackling of a goose,
Ga-ga-ga! The warden looked at him in astonishment, then knit his brow
sternly. This strange gayety of a man who was to be executed was an
offence to the prison, as well as to the very executioner; it made them
appear absurd. And suddenly, for the briefest instant, it appeared
to the old warden, who had passed all his life in the prison, and who
looked upon its laws as the laws of nature, that the prison and all the
life within it was something like an insane asylum, in which he, the
warden, was the chief lunatic.

"Pshaw! The devil take you!" and he spat aside. "Why are you giggling
here? This is no dramshop!"

"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. If he laughed longer, it seemed
to the warden as if the walls might fall asunder, the grating melt
and drop out, as if the warden himself might lead the prisoners to
the gates, bowing and saying: "Take a