Then, after a pause, there sounded through the darkness a low wailing note, as if someone had accidentally touched a string, and all at once a rough, sleepy voice broke from a corner of the room, asking angrily-- "Who's there?" A match cracked against the wall. Then there was a little spurt of flame, and then--great heaven!--then were to be heard curses, blows, the crying of a child, appeals, "Oh, for God's sake!" barking of dogs, people running with lights before the windows, uproar in the whole house. Two days later poor Janko stood before the magistrates. Should he be prosecuted as a thief? Of course. The justice and the landlord looked at the culprit as he stood in the dock, his finger in his mouth, with staring, terrified eyes, small, emaciated, dirty, beaten, unable to tell why or wherefore he found himself there, or what they were about to do to him. How, thought the justice, could anyone try a wretched little object like that, only ten years of age, and barely able to stand on its legs? Was he to be sent to prison, or what? One must not be too severe with children. Would it not be well if a watchman took him and gave him a few strokes with a cane, so that he might not steal a second time, and so end the matter? "Just so. A very good idea!" Stach, the watchman, was called. "Take him, and give him a caning as a warning." Stach nodded his stupid, bull head, took Janko under his arm like a kitten, and carried him off to the barn. [Illustration: "HE TOOK JANKO UNDER HIS ARM LIKE A KITTEN."] Either the youngster did not understand what it was all about, or he was too terrified to speak; in either case he uttered not a word, and looked round him like a little frightened bird. How did he know what they wanted with him. It was only when Stach seized him, laid him on the barn floor, and, holding him fast with one hand, turned up his little shirt with the cane, that poor Janko shrieked "Mammy!" and after every blow he cried "Mammy, mammy!" but lower and weaker each time, until after a certain number of strokes, the child was silent, and called for his mother no more.... The poor broken fiddle! You clumsy, wicked Stach! Who ever flogged a child in such a fashion? The poor, tiny fellow was always thin and weakly, and scarcely had breath in his body! At last the mother came and took the child with her, but she had to carry him home. Next day Janko did not rise. On the third day he breathed out his soul in peace, on the hard bed covered by the horsecloth.... As he lay dying, the swallows twittered in the cherry-tree that grew before the window, a sunbeam peered through the pane, and flooded with glory the child's rough hair and his bloodless face. The beam seemed like a track for the little fellow's soul to ascend to heaven.