ared
again on the steps of the town hall. His hands were bound; his head
and face were wrapped up in a gray cloth, and he was pushed into a
waiting wagon.

"Farewell, good people!" his voice rang out in the cold evening
twilight. "Search for the truth. Guard it! Believe the man who will
bring you the clean word; cherish him. Don't spare yourselves in the
cause of truth!"

"Silence, you dog!" shouted the voice of the police commissioner.
"Policeman, start the horses up, you fool!"

"What have you to be sorry for? What sort of life have you?"

The wagon started. Sitting in it with a policeman on either side,
Rybin shouted dully:

"For the sake of what are you perishing--in hunger? Strive for
freedom--it'll give you bread and--truth. Farewell, good people!"

The hasty rumble of the wheels, the tramp of the horses, the shout of
the police officer, enveloped his speech and muffled it.

"It's done!" said the peasant, shaking his head. "You wait at the
station a little while, and I'll come soon."

CHAPTER XI

The mother went to the room in the tavern, sat herself at the table in
front of the samovar, took a piece of bread in her hand, looked at it,
and slowly put it back on the plate. She was not hungry; the feeling
in her breast rose again and flushed her with nausea. She grew faint
and dizzy; the blood was sucked from her heart. Before her stood the
face of the blue-eyed peasant. It was a face that expressed nothing
and failed to arouse confidence. For some reason the mother did not
want to tell herself in so many words that he would betray her. The
suspicion lay deep in her breast--a dead weight, dull and motionless.

"He scented me!" she thought idly and faintly. "He noticed--he
guessed." Further than this her thoughts would not go, and she sank
into an oppressive despondency. The nausea, the spiritless stillness
beyond the window that replaced the noise, disclosed something huge,
but subdued, something frightening, which sharpened her feeling of
solitude, her consciousness of powerlessness, and filled her heart with
ashen gloom.

The young girl came in and stopped at the door.

"Shall I bring you an omelette?"

"No, thank you, I don't want it; the shouts frightened me."

The girl walked up to the table and began to speak excitedly in hasty,
terror-stricken tones:

"How the police commissioner beat him! I stood near and could see. All
his teeth were broken. He spit out and h