Katerin saw her father standing with his back to the old wall of the court and six soldiers before him with their rifles upraised and aimed at the old general.
She fell back against Shimilin, half fainting, but recovering herself, staggered away from the window and fell upon her knees, her head bent toward the icon, moaning prayers.
“Your father can be saved,” warned Shimilin. “Would you send him to execution? Tell me where the money is hidden—or when I lift my hand to the window, the soldiers will fire!”
“We are ready for death. I commend my soul and the soul of my father to God! Better death than life under the cruelty of a Mongol and the treachery of our Cossacks!”
“You will not trust me,” said Shimilin. “I could save you both. Fools! I am ready to risk my own life to save you, yet you will not believe!” He raised his hand to the window.
IV
THE PLACE OF THE VOW
A NEW conductor boarded the train in the night. He was a big fellow, with a body round as a bear’s and covered with many coats. He wore a big sheepskin cap, and carried a smoking lantern which was made of tin and was square, with a red circular glass in one side, a blue one in the other, and white ones on opposite sides. He held the lantern aloft and studied the sleepers on the shelves, making rainbows in the dim light of the car as he turned his prismatic lantern.
Snicking the ice from his whiskers, he waited till the train moved out again, when he promptly lay down in the passage between the sleeping-shelves and began snoring into the red light of the lantern on the floor beside him.
Lieutenant Peter Gordon, who was on a lower shelf, was awake with the first glimmer of gray light through the frosted windows. And as he looked out upon the floor of the car, he was startled by the sanguinary face of the new conductor in the red glow of the lantern as it rattled with the jolting of the car. Peter studied the queer figure prone on the floor, and observed the booted feet stretched out toward the cold stove in the corner.