Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/314

302 "I shall give you a loaf of bread with something in it."

"What?" demanded Shilo.

"A revolver. When they take you there, use it. Perhaps you will escape. &hellip; To a condemned man the risk matters little. Or perhaps you will die fighting &hellip; and that is better than the gallows."

"Give it to me!" said Shilo masterfully.

As Ruzia cautiously drew the loaf from out his baggy coat and hurriedly stretched it forth toward Shilo, the latter suddenly withdrew his hand and stepped back from the fence, saying:

"I will not take it, Ruzia; I will not. Time's up for me. &hellip; Nothing matters now, for the end must come." These words sounded as the man's final and irrevocable condemnation.

A ball, thrown by one of the prisoners, fell on the ground right near Shilo. He quickly stooped to pick it up and threw it straight up into the air with all his might. As this plaything, made of leather thongs, reached the top of its high flight, Shilo cried out:

"Flee, flee for ever!"

But when the ball came down again in the pen, Shilo shuffled his chains over to it, picked it up and tossed it once more as high as he could, again crying after it:

"Flee! &hellip; I give thee freedom. Flee!"

As the ball fell a second time within the enclosure, Shilo scornfully kicked it with his chain-bound foot and turned away.

"Enough of this! I am tired of it all," and without a further word he dragged his chains to his cell.

The exercise hour was over, and the prison was silent except for the sound of the clanging irons and the quick, heavy step of the condemned man, which could be heard throughout the whole second storey. Shilo walked and