Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/46

30 He jumped up, tore from the celling a bundle of grass and threw it on the coals. &hellip; The dry stalks and leaves twisted, stretched like snakes and burst into flame. Next the old man threw into the stove horse-dung, and as the smoke rose up, he bent over the coals and said in a whisper:

"The horse &hellip; the horse. &hellip; A broad road &hellip; a highway &hellip; three cottages &hellip; a burnt fir-tree &hellip; a meadow with a blackened haystack. &hellip; A tall lean man leads a horse &hellip; a shaven head, a scar upon his forehead, and he limps,"

"I know him! I know him!" shouted the peasant "It's Kuzma! The gipsy from Neshetilov. He won't escape me this time!"

With these words he rushed out of the room, I went home, and a few days afterwards I learned that the peasant, with the assistance of his two sons and his son-in-law, surprised the gipsy, bound him to his own horse and dragged him back into the village.

Here the crowd set on him, beat him, bruised his legs and arms, tore his hair, ordering him to say at once where the horse was hidden. The poor fellow swore by all the saints that he had not seen the horse, that he knew nothing about it, but the crowd would not believe him. Like mad, they beat him again, trampled upon him, until one of the frenzied lynchers finally finished him with a pitchfork.

The body was buried in a waste field, and a pale planted on the grave by way of memorial.