“Tell me, Semenich, have you heard about my case before? And have you ever seen me before?”
“Why shouldn’t I have heard! News flies quickly. But it was such a long time ago that what I had heard I had forgotten,” said Makar Semenof.
“Perhaps you’ve heard who killed the merchant?” asked Aksenof.
Makar Semenof broke into a laugh and said:
“To be sure, he killed him in whose sack was found the knife. And if some one else did slip the knife in the sack! Not caught, not a thief! Besides, how could any one have slipped the knife into the sack, since it was at your very head? You surely would have heard.”
When Aksenof heard these words, the thought came to him that this very man had killed the merchant. He arose and went away. Aksenof could not sleep the entire night. A melancholy came upon him, and images began to rise up before him. First, he imagined he saw his wife the same as she looked when she saw him off to the fair for the last time. He saw her as in life; he saw her face and eyes, and heard how she spoke and laughed. Then he saw his children as they were then, little ones, one in a fur coat, another at the breast. And he recalled himself as he had been once—joyous, young; he recalled too how he looked as he sat in the hotel when they arrested him; how he played on the guitar, and how happy he had felt at that moment. And he recalled the place of execution, where he was knouted, and the man with the knout, and the throng all around, and the chains, and the convicts, and all the twenty-six years of his prison life; and his old age too he recalled. And such a melancholy came upon Aksenof, that death itself would have been welcome.
“And all on account of that scoundrel!” thought Aksenof.
Then came into his heart such a vindictiveness against Makar Semenof that he felt willing to die himself if only to revenge himself upon him. He read prayers the entire night, but could not calm himself. Next day he did not go near Makar Semenof and did not look at him.
So passed two weeks. Aksenof could not sleep nights, and such a melancholy would come upon him that he did not know what to do with himself.
Once at night, walking through the prison, he observed a stirring of soil under one of the sleeping-bunks. He stopped to look. Suddenly Makar Semenof leaped from under the bunk, and his frightened eyes looked at Aksenof. Aksenof wished to go on, so as not to notice him; but Makar caught him by the hand, and told him how he had dug a passage under the walls, and how every day he disposed of dirt by carrying it out with him in his boots and emptying it in the street, when sent out to work. He continued: