“‘Sharp-and-mum, your worship.’ “‘And you?’ “‘Keen-and-spry, your worship.’ “‘And not a soul of you remembers anything that ever happened to you.’ “‘Not a mother’s son of us anything whatever.’ “He couldn’t help it; he laughed out loud. All the rest began to laugh at seeing him laugh! But the thing does not always go off like that. Sometimes they lay about them, these police, with their fists, till you get every tooth in your jaw smashed. Devilish big and strong these fellows, I can tell you. “‘Take them off to the lock-up,’ said he. ‘I’ll see to them in a bit. As for you, stop here!’ “That’s me. “‘Just you go and sit down there.’ “Where he pointed to there was paper, a pen, and ink; so thinks I, ‘What’s he up to now?’ “‘Sit down,’ he says again; ‘take the pen and write.’ “And then he goes and clutches at my ear and gives it a good pull. I looked at him in the sort of way the devil may look at a priest. “‘I can’t write, your worship.’ “‘Write, write!’ “‘Have mercy on me, your worship!’ “‘Write your best; write, write!’ “And all the while he keeps pulling my ear, pulling and twisting. Pals, I’d rather have had three hundred strokes of the cat; I tell you it was hell. “‘Write, write!’ that was all he said.” “Had the fellow gone mad? What the mischief was it? “Bless us, no! A little while before, a secretary had done a stroke of business at Tobolsk: he had robbed the local treasury and gone off with the money; he had very big ears, just as I have. They had sent the fact all over the country. I answered to that description; that’s why he tormented me with his ‘Write, write!’ He wanted to find out if I could write, and to see my hand. “‘A regular sharp chap that! Did it hurt?’ “‘Oh, Lord, don’t say a word about it, I beg.’ “Everybody burst out laughing. “‘Well, you did write?’ “‘What the deuce was there to write? I set my pen going over the paper, and did it to such good account that he left off torturing me. He just gave me a dozen thumps, regulation allowance, and then let me go about my business: to prison, that is.’ “‘Do you really know how to write?’ “‘Of course I did. What d’ye mean? Used to very well; forgotten the whole blessed thing, though, ever since they began to use pens for it.’” Thanks to the gossip talk of the convicts who filled the hospital, time was somewhat quickened for us. But still, Almighty God, how wearied and bored we were! Long, long were the days, suffocating in their monotony, one absolutely the same as another. If only I had had a single book.