ess of Yanson, filled him with terror. Still
not daring to realize it clearly, he already felt the inevitability
of approaching death, and felt himself making the first step upon the
gallows, with benumbed feet.

Day quieted him, but night again filled him with fear, and so it was
until one night when he realized fully that death was inevitable, that
it would come in three days at dawn with the sunrise.

He had never thought of what death was, and it had no image to him--but
now he realized clearly, he saw, he felt that it had entered his cell
and was looking for him, groping about with its hands. And to save
himself, he began to run wildly about the room.

But the cell was so small that it seemed that its corners were not sharp
but dull, and that all of them were pushing him into the center of
the room. And there was nothing behind which to hide. And the door was
locked. And it was dark. Several times he struck his body against the
walls, making no sound, and once he struck against the door--it gave
forth a dull, empty sound. He stumbled over something and fell upon
his face, and then he felt that IT was going to seize him. Lying on
his stomach, holding to the floor, hiding his face in the dark, dirty
asphalt, Yanson howled in terror. He lay; and cried at the top of his
voice until some one came. And when he was lifted from the floor and
seated upon the cot, and cold water was poured over his head, he still
did not dare open his tightly closed eyes. He opened one eye, and
noticing some one's boot in one of the corners of the room, he commenced
crying again.

But the cold water began to produce its effect in bringing him to
his senses. To help the effect, the warden on duty, the same old man,
administered medicine to Yanson in the form of several blows upon the
head. And this sensation of life returning to him really drove the
fear of death away. Yanson opened his eyes, and then, his mind utterly
confused, he slept soundly for the remainder of the night. He lay on his
hack, with mouth open, and snored loudly, and between his lashes, which
were not tightly closed, his flat, dead eyes, which were upturned so
that the pupil did not show, could be seen.

Later, everything in the world--day and night, footsteps, voices, the
soup of sour cabbage, produced in him a continuous terror, plunging him
into a state of savage uncomprehending astonishment. His weak mind was
unable to combine these two things which so monstrously