"You are the Devil's own son, Ivan; come and let me cuddle you."

The youth rose from the chimney-place trembling in every limb. He had
heard every word they said.

For an instant he remained standing there quite beside himself, half
mad, half senseless from sheer terror and amazement. Presently he began
to gaze about him with desperate alertness, like a wild beast that has
fallen into a trap and looks eagerly for a way out of it, rallying all
its powers for a final struggle, becoming resourceful and inventive in
proportion to its peril, and forgetting the very instinct of life in the
longing for freedom, at last gets to fear nobody and nothing. After
fruitless struggles it surrenders in despair, lies down, closes its
eyes, and the next instant once more begins the hopeless fight for
liberty.

The youth looked down through the opening in the floor. The ladder had
been removed, and in the courtyard below a big shaggy dog was slouching
surlily about and shaking its collar, and from time to time it would
tear at its skin with its teeth or worry its tail and bay at the moon.

And now there is a good sharp knife in the youth's hands. He sticks it
between his teeth and looks carefully around him. In case of need he
would have risked a fight with the dog, and perhaps killed it; but this
could not happen without a great deal of noise, and he wished, at any
price, to escape unnoticed.

The fence, too, surrounding the enclosure, was very high, how was he to
get over it? Nowhere could he see the ladder.

At the extreme end of the house, right opposite the windows of the
headsman's bedroom, was a large mulberry tree, whose wide-spreading
branches bent down over the roof of the house. With the help of these
branches one could easily get to the fence, and then a bold leap down
from the top of it would do the rest.

Like a panther escaping from its cage the young man crept along the
narrow window-ledge of the garret with his knife between his teeth.
Wriggling along on his belly he clutched hold of the ridge of the house,
and crawled cautiously on till he came to the branches of the
mulberry-tree, then he seized an overhanging branch, clambered up it and
scrambled to the very end of it--and all so quietly, without making the
least noise.

From the extreme edge of the branch, however, to the top of the fence he
had to make a timely spring, and in so doing overestimated the strength
of the branch on which he stood--with a gr