"He's asleep anyway," said Cherry, nodding towards the recumbent figure
of the priest. "He might have been useful--but I forgot the old man's a
Jew."

"Do you mean----?" said Malinkoff and glanced at the gate.

Cherry nodded again.

"I never thought they'd carry it out according to programme," he said,
"but they did. I heard 'em come in."

There was the thud of a door closing.

"That's the door of his cell. They have taken him out, I guess. The last
fellow they killed in there they hung on a hook--just put a rope round
his neck and pushed him in a bag. He was a long time dying," he said
reflectively, and Malcolm saw that the little man's lower lip was
trembling in spite of his calm, matter-of-fact tone.

Malinkoff had walked across to the priest, and had shaken him awake.

"Father," he said, "a man has just died in the next cell. Would you not
read the Office of the Dead?"

The priest rose with an ill grace.

"Why should I be awakened from my sleep?" he complained. "Who is this
man?"

"I do not know his name," said Malinkoff, "but he is a Jew----"

"A Jew!"

The priest spat on the ground contemptuously.

"What, I speak an office for a Jew?" he demanded, wrath in his face.

"For a man, for a human fellow creature," said Malinkoff sternly, but
the priest had gone back to his hard couch, nor would he leave it, and
Malinkoff, with a shrug of his shoulders, went back to his bed.

"That is Russia--eternal Russia," he said, and he spoke without
bitterness. "Neither Czar nor Soviet will alter it."

They did not go to sleep again. Something was speaking to them from the
next cell, something that whimpered and raised its hands in appeal, and
they welcomed the daylight, but not the diversion which daylight
brought. Again the door banged open, and this time a file of soldiers
stood in the entrance.

"Boris Michaelovitch," said the dark figure in the entrance, "it is the
hour!"

The priest rose slowly. His face was grey, the hands clasped together
before him shook; nevertheless, he walked firmly to the door.

Before the soldiers had closed around him he turned and raised his hand
in blessing, and Malinkoff fell upon his knees.

Again the door slammed and the bolts shot home, and they waited in
silence.

There was no sound for ten minutes, then came a crash of musketry, so
unexpected and so loud that it almost deafened them. A second volley
followed, and after an interval a third, and then silence. Cherry