of socialists and thinkers, every letter of which had seemed to him something beyond doubt, beyond attack—was all that too rubbish? Could it be? And that splendid simile of the swollen abscess, ready for the stroke of the lancet, was that too a mere phrase? 'No! no!' he murmured to himself, and over his bronzed cheeks flitted a faint tinge of brickdust colour; 'no; it's all true; all . . . it is, I am to blame, I didn't understand, I didn't say the right thing, I didn't go the right way to work! I ought simply to have given orders, and if any one had tried to hinder or resist, put a bullet through his head! what's the use of explanations here? Any one not with us has no right to live . . . spies are killed like dogs, worse than dogs!'
And all the details of his capture passed before Markelov's mind.. . . First the silence, the leers, the shouts at the back of the crowd. Then one fellow comes up sideways as if to salute him. Then that sudden rush! And how they had flung him down! . . . 'Lads . . . lads! . . . what are you about?' And they, 'Give us a belt here! Tie him!' . . . The shaking of his bones . . . and helpless wrath . . . and the stinking dust in his mouth, in his nostrils. . . . 'Toss him . . . toss him into the cart.' Some one guffawing thickly . . . ugh!
'I didn't go the right way—the right way to
213
