mes the case with good people, he was perhaps liked
more for this little foible than for his good qualities.

He feared death so little and thought of it so little that on the fatal
morning, before leaving the house of Tanya Kovalchuk, he was the only
one who had breakfasted properly, with an appetite. He drank two glasses
of tea with milk, and a whole five-copeck roll of bread. Then he glanced
at Werner's untouched bread and said:

"Why don't you eat? Eat. We must brace up."

"I don't feel like eating."

"Then I'll eat it. May I?"

"You have a fine appetite, Seryozha."

Instead of answering, Sergey, his mouth full, began to sing in a dull
voice, out of tune:

"Hostile whirlwinds are blowing over us..."

After the arrest he at first grew sad; the work had not been done well,
they had failed; but then he thought: "There is something else now that
must be done well--and that is, to die," and he cheered up again. And
however strange it may seem, beginning with the second morning in the
fortress, he commenced devoting himself to gymnastics according to
the unusually rational system of a certain German named Mueller, which
absorbed his interest. He undressed himself completely and, to the alarm
and astonishment of the guard who watched him, he carefully went through
all the prescribed eighteen exercises. The fact that the guard watched
him and was apparently astonished, pleased him as a propagandist of
the Mueller system; and although he knew that he would get no answer he
nevertheless spoke to the eye staring in the little window:

"It's a good system, my friend, it braces you up. It should be
introduced in your regiment," he shouted convincingly and kindly, so as
not to frighten the soldier, not suspecting that the guard considered
him a harmless lunatic.

The fear of death came over him gradually. It was as if somebody were
striking his heart a powerful blow with the fist from below. This
sensation was rather painful than terrible. Then the sensation was
forgotten, but it returned again a few hours later, and each time it
grew more intense and of longer duration, and thus it began to assume
vague outlines of some great, even unbearable fear.

"Is it possible that I am afraid?" thought Sergey in astonishment. "What
nonsense!"

It was not he who was afraid,--it was his young, sound, strong body,
which could not be deceived either by the exercises prescribed by the
Mueller system, or by the cold rub-downs. On