"They will not pay us anything; they will only give us trouble. It is a sin to feed Russians. Kill them, and that will be the end of it."
They all went their way. The master walked over to Zhilín and said:
"If the ransom does not come in two weeks, I will beat you to death. And if you try to run again I will kill you like a dog. Write a letter, and write it well!"
Paper was brought to them, and they wrote the letters. The stocks were put on them, and they were taken back of the mosque. There was a ditch there, about twelve feet in depth,—and into this ditch they were let down.
VI.
They now led a very hard life. The stocks were not taken off, and they were not let out into the wide world. Unbaked dough was thrown down to them, as to dogs, and water was let down to them in a pitcher. There was a stench in the ditch, and it was close and damp. Kostylín grew very ill, and swelled, and had a breaking out on his whole body; and he kept groaning all the time, or he slept. Zhilín was discouraged: he saw that the situation was desperate. He did not know how to get out of it.
He began to dig, but there was no place to throw the dirt in; the master saw it, and threatened to kill him.
One day he was squatting in the ditch, and thinking of the free world, and he felt pretty bad. Suddenly a cake fell down on his knees, and a second, and some cherries. He looked up,—it was Dina. She looked at him, laughed, and ran away. Zhilín thought: "Maybe Dina will help me."
He cleaned up a place in the ditch, scraped up some clay, and began to make dolls. He made men, horses, and dogs. He thought: "When Dina comes I will throw them to her."
But on the next day Dina did not come. Zhilín heard the tramping of horses; somebody rode by, and the Tartars gathered at the mosque; they quarrelled and shouted, and talked about the Russians. And he heard the old man's voice. He could not make out exactly what it was, but he guessed that the Russians had come close to the village, and that the Tartars were afraid that they might come to the village, and they did not know what to do with the prisoners.