“Who do you mean?” asked the presiding judge, who had pronounced the sentence in a deep, bass voice. Every one smiled; some tried to hide their smiles behind their mustaches and their papers. Yanson pointed his index finger at the presiding judge and answered angrily, looking at him askance: “You!” “Well?” Yanson again turned his eyes to the judge who had been silent, restraining a smile, whom he felt to be a friend, a man who had nothing to do with the sentence, and repeated: “He said I should be hanged. Why must I be hanged?” “Take the prisoner away.” But Yanson succeeded in repeating once more, convincingly and weightily: “Why must I be hanged?” He looked so absurd, with his small, angry face, with his outstretched finger, that even the soldier of the convoy, breaking the rule, said to him in an undertone as he led him away from the courtroom: “You are a fool, young man!” “Why must I be hanged?” repeated Yanson stubbornly. “They’ll swing you up so quickly that you’ll have no time to kick.” “Keep still!” cried the other convoy angrily. But he himself could not refrain from adding: “A robber, too! Why did you take a human life, you fool? You must hang for that!” “They might pardon him,” said the first soldier, who began to feel sorry for Yanson. “Oh, yes! They’ll pardon people like him, will they? Well, we’ve talked enough.” But Yanson had become silent again. He was again placed in the cell in which he had already sat for a month and to which he had grown accustomed, just as he had become accustomed to everything: to blows, to vodka, to the dismal, snow-covered fields, with their snow-heaps resembling graves. And now he even began to feel cheerful when he saw his bed, the familiar window with the grating, and when he was given something to eat—he had not eaten anything since morning. He had an unpleasant recollection of what had taken place in the court, but of that he could not think—he was unable to recall it. And death by hanging he could not picture to himself at all. Although Yanson had been condemned to death, there were many others similarly sentenced, and he was not regarded as an important criminal. They spoke to him accordingly, with neither fear nor respect, just as they would speak to prisoners who were not to be executed. 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.”