I saw a workingman standing apart. He leaned up against his wagon and gazed steadily at me, smiling tenderly. The policeman had taken hold of my collar, and I wanted to shake him off, but I saw that the people looked sideways at me, with half-closed eyes, as if they were asking: "Now, what are you going to say?"
I paled at their lack of faith. Conquering myself in time, I shook off the hand of the policeman and said to him:
"Do you want to know what I said?"
And again I began to speak about injustice in life. Again the market people gathered around me in great crowds, and the policeman was lost in them and effaced.
I recalled Kostia and the factory children, and I felt proud and happy. I became strong and as in a dream. The policeman whispered, many faces passed before me, many eyes burned; a warm cloud of people were around me, pushed me along, and I lay lightly among them. Some one took me by the shoulder and whispered in my ear: "Enough. Go."
They pushed and pushed me, and soon I found myself in a kind of court, and a black-bearded man was on one side of me and on the other a young boy with no cap on his head. The dark man said:
"Climb over the wall."
I climbed it, then went over another. It seemed to me queer, yet pleasant.
"Eh," I thought, "is that who you are?"
The black-bearded man hurried me along. "Lively, comrade, lively!"