The Seven Who Were Hanged

heart grew larger, making the chest almost burst, beating in the throat, tossing about madly—shouting in horror with its blood-filled voice.

He had killed him in cold blood, but when he saw that dead, deceitful, now calm, and after all pitiful, human face, he suddenly ceased to respect himself and his work. Not that he was seized with a feeling of repentance, but he simply stopped appreciating himself. He became uninteresting to himself,

soldier-puppet, and there, at home, is a father-puppet, and this is the puppet of Vasily Kashirin."

It seemed to him that in another moment he would hear somewhere the creaking of the mechanism, the screeching of un-oiled wheels