"Drop it, peasants, that's a nasty job you've begun. You have already taken from me the things I've stolen, so that you have lost nothing. Anyway, you can always get new things, but where will you get such a fellow as I? Who will cheer you up when I'm gone?"
"All right," they said, "talk on."
They took him to the wood to hang him and he began to sing on the way. When they first started out, they walked fast, then they slowed up. When they came to the wood, though the rope was ready, they waited, until he should finish his last song. Then they said to one another:
"Let him sing another song. It will do for his Last Communion."
He sang another and then another, and then the sun rose. The men looked about them; a clear day was rising from the east. Migun stood smiling among them awaiting his death without fear. The peasants became abashed.
"Well, fellows, let him go to the devil," they said. "If we hang him, we might have all kinds of sins and troubles on our heads for it."
And they decided not to touch Migun.
"We bow to the ground before you for your talent," they said, "but for your thieving we ought to beat you up, all the same."
They gave him a light beating, and then they all went back in a body with him.
All this might have been made up, but it speaks well for human beings, and puts Savelko in a good light. And then think of this: if people can make up such good stories, it follows they are not so bad, and in this lies the whole point.