e crossed his arms. But he soon bad to turn away his head in order
not to see the use the table was put to that stood in the center of the
room, where it had seemed to serve no purpose.

They had lifted the man, still struggling, up onto the little table.
They placed a rope about his neck. Then one of the "judges," one of the
blond young men, who seemed no older than Rouletabille, climbed on the
table and slipped the other end of the rope through a great ring-bolt
that projected from a beam of the ceiling. During this time the man
struggled futilely, and his death-rattle rose at last though the
continued noise of his resistance and its overcoming. But his last
breath came with so violent a shake of the body that the whole
death-apparatus, rope and ring-bolt, separated from the ceiling, and
rolled to the ground with the dead man.

Rouletabille uttered a cry of horror. "You are assassins!" he cried.
But was the man surely dead? It was this that the pale figures with the
yellow hair set themselves to make sure of. He was. Then they brought
two sacks and the dead man was slipped into one of them.

Rouletabille said to them:

"You are braver when you kill by an explosion, you know."

He regretted bitterly that he had not died the night before in the
explosion. He did not feel very brave. He talked to them bravely enough,
but he trembled as his time approached. That death horrified him. He
tried to keep from looking at the other sack. He took the two ikons,
of Saint Luke and of the Virgin, from his pocket and prayed to them. He
thought of the Lady in Black and wept.

A voice in the shadows said:

"He is crying, the poor little fellow."

It was Annouchka's voice.

Rouletabille dried his tears and said:

"Messieurs, one of you must have a mother."

But all the voices cried:

"No, no, we have mothers no more!"

"They have killed them," cried some. "They have sent them to Siberia,"
cried others.

"Well, I have a mother still," said the poor lad. "I will not have the
opportunity to embrace her. It is a mother that I lost the day of my
birth and that I have found again, but--I suppose it is to be said--on
the day of my death. I shall not see her again. I have a friend; I shall
not see him again either. I have two little ikons here for them, and I
am going to write a letter to each of them, if you will permit it. Swear
to me that you will see these reach them."

"I swear it," said, in French, the voice of Annouchk