"Aha!" said the warden with satisfaction, seeing him on the following
day. "This is no dramshop for you, my dear!"

With a feeling of pleasant gratification, like a scientist whose
experiment had proved successful again, he examined the condemned man
closely and carefully from head to foot. Now everything would go along
as necessary. Satan was disgraced, the sacredness of the prison and
the execution was re-established, and the old man inquired
condescendingly, even with a feeling of sincere pity:

"Do you want to meet somebody or not?"

"What for?"

"Well, to say good-by! Have you no mother, for instance, or a
brother?"

"I must not be hanged," said Yanson softly, and looked askance at the
warden. "I don't want to be hanged."

The warden looked at him and waved his hand in silence.

Toward evening Yanson grew somewhat calmer.

The day had been so ordinary, the cloudy winter sky looked so
ordinary, the footsteps of people and their conversation on matters of
business sounded so ordinary, the smell of the sour soup of cabbage
was so ordinary, customary and natural that he again ceased believing
in the execution. But the night became terrible to him. Before this
Yanson had felt the night simply as darkness, as an especially dark