was paying for his low order of nerves. Already he had lasted twice as
long as any of the others.

Subienkow felt that he could not stand the Cossack's sufferings much
longer. Why didn't Ivan die? He would go mad if that screaming did not
cease. But when it did cease, his turn would come. And there was Yakaga
awaiting him, too, grinning at him even now in anticipation--Yakaga, whom
only last week he had kicked out of the fort, and upon whose face he had
laid the lash of his dog-whip. Yakaga would attend to him. Doubtlessly
Yakaga was saving for him more refined tortures, more exquisite nerve-
racking. Ah! that must have been a good one, from the way Ivan screamed.
The squaws bending over him stepped back with laughter and clapping of
hands. Subienkow saw the monstrous thing that had been perpetrated, and
began to laugh hysterically. The Indians looked at him in wonderment
that he should laugh. But Subienkow could not stop.

This would never do. He controlled himself, the spasmodic twitchings
slowly dying away. He strove to think of other things, and began reading
back in his own life. He remembered his mother and his father, and the
little spotted pony, and the French tutor who had taught him dancing and
sneaked him an old worn copy of Voltaire. Once more he saw Paris, and
dreary London, and gay Vienna, and Rome. And once more he saw that wild
group of youths who had dreamed, even as he, the dream of an independent
Poland with a king of Poland on the throne at Warsaw. Ah, there it was
that the long trail began. Well, he had lasted longest. One by one,
beginning with the two executed at St. Petersburg, he took up the count
of the passing of those brave spirits. Here one had been beaten to death
by a jailer, and there, on that bloodstained highway of the exiles, where
they had marched for endless months, beaten and maltreated by their
Cossack guards, another had dropped by the way. Always it had been