"The Prisoner, for his part, was so upset when he saw the scissors being sharpened that he neglected to respond to the farewell salutes of his friends, which they wafted to him across the barrier of policemen that surrounded the scaffold.
"It seemed to Djorak that he must be in a dream.
"Quite little things of no importance from every period of his life passed before the eyes of his imagination.
"He found himself thinking of a hen that his parents had possessed when he was a very little boy. This hen had been extremely intelligent.
"One day she had found herself unable to break the shell of a snail, so she had gone to the stock-pot and taken out a lettuce-leaf. She came back, her bright eyes twinkling, laid the leaf down before the snail and hid herself.
"Presently the snail began to shoot out his horns.
"Then his head.
"Then his whole body.
"It was exactly what the hen had wished to see.