Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/290

Tales from Tolstoi and the people all around, and the fetters, and the prisoners, and the twenty-six years of hard labour, and he remembered his old age. And such a weariness came over him that the weight of it well-nigh crushed him. And all because of that evil-doer! thought Aksenov.

And such a bitterness against Makar Semenov came upon him that he longed to be avenged upon him though it were to his own destruction. He recited prayers all night, but he found no rest for his soul. In the daytime he did not go near to Makar Semenov nor even looked at him.

Thus three weeks passed away. Aksenov could not sleep o' nights, and such a weaiy longing came over him that he knew not what to do with himself. Once at night he went about the prison and perceived that the earth had been scraped from behind one of the wooden bedsteads. He stopped to look. Suddenly Makar Semenov leaped out of the bedstead and looked up at Aksenov with a frightened face. Aksenov would have passed on and made as though he saw him not, but Makar seized him by the hand and told him that he was digging a passage beneath the walls, and how he took the earth out every day in the shafts of his big boots and scattered it along the road when they drove them out to work. He said,

"Only keep silence, old man! and I'll draw thee out too. But if thou dost tell and they flog me, I'll not let thee go either—I'll kill thee!"

When Aksenov saw his malefactor he trembled all over with rage, stretched out his hand and said, 240