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Upon this the young fellow raised his brows a little, and retorted in an undertone:

“Let me bide.”

“The rascal!” the crowd commented, while the old man, neatly folding and replacing his handkerchief, raised a hand as dry as a cock’s leg, and remarked with a sharp, knowing smile:

“Possibly it is not merely out of idle curiosity that folk are making this request.”

“Go and be damned to you!” the young fellow exclaimed with a grim snap. Whereupon the big peasant bellowed out in a blustering fashion:

“What? Then you will not tell us at least your destination?”

Whereafter the same speaker continued to hold forth on humanity, God, and the human conscience–staring wildly around him as he did so, waving his arms about, and growing ever more frantic, until really it was curious to watch him.

At length the crowd grew similarly excited, and took to encouraging the speaker with cries of “True! That is so!”

As for the young fellow, he listened awhile in silence, without moving. Then, straightening his back, he rose, thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers, and, swaying his body to and fro, began to glare at the crowd with greenish eyes which were manifestly lightening to a vicious gleam. At length, thrusting forth his chest, he cried hoarsely:

“So you ask me whither I am bound? I am bound for the brigands’ lair, for the brigands’ lair, where, unless you first take and put me in fetters, I intend to cut the throat of every man that I meet. Yes, a hundred murders will I commit, for all folk will be the same to me, and not a soul will I spare. Aye, the end of my tether is reached, so take and fetter me whilst you can.”

His breath was issuing with difficulty, and as he spoke his shoulders heaved, and his legs trembled beneath him. Also, his face had turned grey and become distorted with tremors.

Upon this, the crowd broke into a gruff, ugly, resentful roar, and edged away from the man. Yet, in doing so, many of its members looked curiously like the man himself in the way that they lowered their heads, caught at their breath, and let their eyes flash. Clearly the man was in imminent danger of being assaulted.

Suddenly he recovered his subdued demeanour–he, as it were, thawed in the sunlight: until, as suddenly, his legs gave way beneath him, and, narrowly escaping injury to his face from the corner of a bale, he fell forward upon his knees as though felled with an axe. Thereafter, clutching at his throat, he shouted in a strange voice, and crowding the words upon one another:

“Tell me what I am to do. Is all of it my fault? Long I lay in prison before I was tried and told to go free… yet–“

Tearing at his ears and cheeks, he rocked his head to and fro as though seeking to rend it from its socket. Then he continued:

“Yet I am NOT free. Nor is it in my power to say what will become of me. For me there remains neither life nor death.”

“Aha!” exclaimed the big peasant; and at the sound the crowd drew back as in consternation, while some hastened to depart altogether. As for the remainder (numbering a dozen or so), they herded sullenly, nervously, involuntarily into a mass as the young fellow continued in distracted tones and with a trembling head:

“Oh that I could sleep for the next ten years! For then could I prove myself, and decide whether I am guilty or not. Last night I struck a man with a faggot. As I was walking about I saw asleep a man who had angered me, and thereupon thought, ‘Come! I should like to deal him a blow, but can I actually do it?’ And strike him I did. Was it my fault? Always I keep asking myself, ‘Can I, or can I not, do a thing?’ Aye, lost, lost am I!”