The crowd surrounded Rybin more closely. His voice steadied the mother.
"Did you hear?" said a peasant in a low voice, nudging a blue-eyed neighbor, who did not answer but raised his head and again looked into the mother's face. The other peasant also looked at her. He was younger than he of the blue eyes, with a dark, sparse beard, and a lean freckled face. Then both of them turned away to the side of the steps.
"They're afraid," the mother involuntarily noted. Her attention grew keener. From the elevation of the stoop she clearly saw the dark face of Rybin, distinguished the hot gleam of his eyes. She wanted that he, too, should see her, and raised herself on tiptoe and craned her neck.
The people looked at him sullenly, distrustfully, and were silent. Only in the rear of the crowd subdued conversation was heard.
"Peasants!" said Rybin aloud, in a peculiar full voice. "Believe these papers! I shall now, perhaps, get death on account of them. The authorities beat me, they tortured me, they wanted to find out from where I got them, and they're going to beat me more. For in these writings the truth is laid down. An honest world and the truth ought to be dearer to us than bread. That's what I say."
"Why is he doing this?" softly exclaimed one of the peasants near the steps. He of the blue eyes answered:
"Now it's all the same. He won't escape death, anyhow. And a man can't die twice."
The sergeant suddenly appeared on the steps of the town hall, roaring in a drunken voice:
"What is this crowd? Who's the fellow speaking?"
Suddenly precipitating himself down the steps, he seized Rybin by the hair, and pulled his head backward and forward. "Is it you speaking, you damned scoundrel? Is it you?"