n suddenly pumped out of the
car, it became so difficult to breathe. The heart grew larger,
making the chest almost burst, beating in the throat, tossing about
madly-shouting in horror with its blood-filled voice. And the eyes
looked upon the quivering floor, and the ears heard how the wheels were
turning ever more slowly--the wheels slipped and turned again, and then
suddenly--they stopped.

The train had halted.

Then a dream set in. It was not terrible, rather fantastic, unfamiliar
to the memory, strange. The dreamer himself seemed to remain aside,
only his bodiless apparition moved about, spoke soundlessly, walked
noiselessly, suffered without suffering. As in a dream, they walked out
of the car, formed into parties of two, inhaled the peculiarly fresh
spring air of the forest. As in a dream, Yanson resisted bluntly,
powerlessly, and was dragged out of the car silently.

They descended the steps of the station.

"Are we to walk?" asked some one almost cheerily.

"It isn't far now," answered another, also cheerily.

Then they walked in a large, black, silent crowd amid the forest, along
a rough, wet and soft spring road. From the forest, from the snow, a
fresh, strong breath of air was wafted. The feet slipped, sometimes
sinking into the snow, and involuntarily the hands of the comrades clung
to each other. And the convoys, breathing with difficulty, walked over
the untouched snow on each side of the road. Some one said in an angry
voice:

"Why didn't they clear the road? Did they want us to turn somersaults in
the snow?"

Some one else apologized guiltily.

"We cleaned it, your Honor. But it is thawing and it can't be helped."

Consciousness of what they were doing returned to the prisoners, but not
completely,--in fragments, in strange parts. Now, suddenly, their minds
practically admitted:

"It is indeed impossible to clear the road."

Then again everything died out, and only their sense of smell remained:
the unbearably fresh smell of the forest and of the melting snow. And
everything became unusually clear to the consciousness: the forest,
the night, the road and the fact that soon they would be hanged. Their
conversation, restrained to whispers, flashed in fragments.

"It is almost four o'clock."

"I said we started too early."

"The sun dawns at five."

"Of course, at five. We should have--"

They stopped in a meadow, in the darkness. A little distance away,
beyond the bare trees, two sm