“Stop, pray, stop, my dearest fellow!” exclaimed the soldier, in a terrified voice, as he raised his musket. At the sight of this gray figure fleeing from pursuit, all his shapeless and terrible fears took a definite form. “Duty--responsibility!” flashed across his mind, and, raising his musket, he aimed at the fugitive. But before pulling the trigger he pitifully shut his eyes. Meanwhile, above the town there rose, hovering in the ether, a harmonious and prolonged chime, marred only by the prison bell, that trembled and fluttered like a wounded bird; and from beyond the wall the sounds of the joyous chant, “Christ is risen,” reached far into the field. Suddenly, above all other sounds, came the report of a musket, followed by a faint, helpless groan, like a plaintive and dying protest. Then for a moment all was still; and only the distant echoes of the vacant field repeated with a sad murmur the last reverberation of the shot amid the silence of the terror-stricken night. THE SIGNAL BY VSEVOLOD MIKAILOVITCH GARSHIN [Illustration] _Garshin, who may be said, for purposes of comparison, to belong to the school of Dostoievski, was all his life subject to attacks of melancholia. Despite the careful nursing of his wife, who was a physician, he threw himself over the stairs of his house in St. Petersburg in 1888, and died from the effects. His first important story, “Four Days,” appeared in 1876, and was the outcome of his experiences in the Servian and Turkish Wars. It is a powerful but gruesome Verestchagin-like study of the horrors of war, and reminds one of Stephen Crane’s “Red Badge of Courage.” In 1883 he was appointed Secretary to the Congress of Russian Railroads, and it was probably at that time that he gained the experience which led to the writing of “The Signal.”_ [Illustration] THE SIGNAL BY VSEVOLOD GARSHIN Translated by Lizzie B. Gorin. Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son. Semen Ivanov served as trackman on the railroad. His watch-house was twelve versts (nearly eight miles) distant from one station and ten from the other. The year before a large weaving mill had been established about four versts away; and its tall chimneys looked black from behind the trees of the wood; and nearer than this, apart from the other watch-houses, there was no human habitation. Semen Ivanov was a sickly, broken-down man. Nine years before he had gone to the war: he served as orderly to an officer and had remained with him during the whole campaign. He starved and froze, and baked in the hot sun, and marched from forty to fifty versts in the frost or in the burning heat. It also happened that he was often under fire, but, thank God, no bullet ever touched him.