n a Swedish barque, working their passage before the
mast. At Stockholm Issy had found a friend, who forwarded them carriage
paid to the capital, whereafter things went well.

"Have you got any food?" asked Cherry Bim suddenly. "They starve you
here. Did you ever eat _schie_? It's hot water smelling of cabbage."

"Have you been tried?" asked Malinkoff, and the man smiled.

"Tried!" he said contemptuously. "Say, what do you think's goin' to
happen to you? Do you think you'll go up before a judge and hire a
lawyer to defend you? Not much. If they try you, it's because they've
got something funny to tell you. Look here."

He leapt up on to the bench with surprising agility and stood on tiptoe,
so that his eyes came level with a little grating in the wall. The
opening gave a view of another cell.

"Look," said Cherry Bim, stepping aside, and Malcolm peered through the
opening.

At first he could see nothing, for the cell was darker than the room he
was in, but presently he distinguished a huddled form lying on the
bench, and even as he looked it was galvanized to life. It was an old
man who had leaped from the bench mumbling and mouthing in his terror.

"I am awake! I am awake!" he screamed in Russian. "_Gospodar_, observe
me! I am awake!"

His wild yells shrunk to a shrill sobbing, and then, with a long sigh,
he climbed back to the bench and turned his back to the wall. Malcolm
exchanged glances with Malinkoff, who had shared the view.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Come down and I'll tell you. Don't let the old man hear you speak--he's
frightened."

"What did he say?" he asked curiously.

Malcolm repeated the words, and Cherry Bim nodded.

"I see. I thought they were stuffing me when they told me, but it's
evidently true. He's a Jew," he went on. "Do you think them guys don't
kill Jews? Don't you make any mistake about that--they'll kill anybody.
This old man has a daughter or a granddaughter, and one of the comrades
got fresh with him, so poor old Moses--I don't know his name but he
looks like the picture of Moses that we had in our Bible at home--shot
at this fellow and broke his jaw, so they sent him to be killed in his
sleep."

"In his sleep?" repeated Malcolm incredulously, and Cherry Bim nodded.

"That's it," he said. "So long as he's awake they won't kill him--at
least they say so. I guess when his time comes they'll settle him,
asleep or awake. The poor old guy thinks that so long as he's awake he's