Nor was Tsajkos long in recognising the new-comer. He limped up to him, rattling the heavy chains he wore on his legs, and clapped Ráby on the back in greeting, while the other occupants of the cell looked on in wide-eyed amazement. "So you have come to it at last, have you, my young friend? Now who would have thought the likes of you would ever have tumbled into this company? Why, I've always known you to be a well-brought-up fellow, who never eat an apple that was not peeled. What can they have against you, I should like to know? 'Not guilty' may do well enough up above there, but you know as well as I, it does not do down here. Folks don't come to a place like this for nothing, we all know that! Now tell us what it is." Disgust and repulsion almost choked Ráby's powers of speech. He covered his face with his hands. "Come now, none of that sort of thing! We want no blubbering here. Don't disgrace the company. If you want to cry, be off to the women's prison; we know you've got two wives already there!" At this, the whole crew yelled with hoarse laughter. "Aha!" exclaimed a voice from the furthest corner. "So that's the celebrated husband, is it? Well, I can tell you what he's here for; the women themselves told me, and they had it from the heydukes; he is a spy." At these words, the whole band were roused to sudden uproar. "A spy! a traitor!" they yelled in chorus. "He'll strangle us at night. Let's squeeze the life out of him now." "Be quiet, all of you," cried old Tsajkos, as he thrust the crowd back. "You don't know what you're talking about. Stop your barking and listen to me. He may be a spy, but he only betrays the gentry, and he'll never turn on us poor folk. If a great lord robs or steals, he's down upon him, but never on us." "That's another matter," shouted the rest. "Then we'll be friends with him." And Ráby had thereupon to submit to the rough greetings of his new comrades in misfortune. "They are not a bad sort," remarked Tsajkos, and he proceeded to point out each individual member of the crew to Ráby, specifying which was a horse-stealer, and which a highwayman, identifying as well the thieves and incendiaries among them. Most of them, however, it turned out, were murderers. To Ráby the whole thing seemed more and more like a ghastly dream. Yet his five senses warranted its reality: the low vault of the cell which surrounded him, the fierce criminal faces of the prisoners, the clinking of the fetters, the dirty grimy hands that grasped his own, the damp, mouldy odour of the dungeon, the taste of the brackish water from the prison well that the old man handed him to revive him--all these things warned him that this was no dream, but a grim reality from which he must find a speedy means of escaping. He looked round, but his companion misconstrued the glance.