“He said that I should be hanged.”
“Who do you mean?” asked the presiding judge, who had pronounced the sentence in a deep, bass voice. Every one smiled; some tried to hide their smiles behind their mustaches and their papers. Yanson pointed his index finger at the presiding judge and answered angrily, looking at him askance:
“You!”
“Well?”
Yanson again turned his eyes to the judge who had been silent, restraining a smile, whom he felt to be a friend, a man who had nothing to do with the sentence, and repeated:
“He said I should be hanged. Why must I be hanged?”
“Take the prisoner away.”
But Yanson succeeded in repeating once more, convincingly and weightily:
“Why must I be hanged?”
He looked so absurd, with his small, angry face, with his outstretched finger, that even the soldier of the convoy, breaking the rule, said to him in an undertone as he led him away from the courtroom: