house and galloped to their regiments. Soldiers rushed to
their horses. They brought to the prince the chestnut
steed which he usually rode on his expeditions. And soon
the regiments moved, and stretched out like a long and
many-colored gloaming serpent over the Philipovo road.

Near the gate a bloody sight struck the eyes of the
soldiers. On stakes of the hurdle-fence were to be seen
the severed heads of the five Cossacks, which gazed on the
army marching past with the dead whites of their open
eyes; and some distance beyond the gate, on a green mound
struggled and quivered the ataman Sukhaya Ruka, sitting
upright, empaled on a stake. The point had already passed
through half his body; but long hours of dying were
indicated yet for the unfortunate ataman, for he might
quiver there till night before death would put him to
rest. At that time he was not only living, but he turned
his terrible eyes on the regiments as each one of them
passed by, -- eyes which said: "May God punish you, and
your children, and your grandchildren to the tenth gen-
eration, for the blood, for the wounds, for the torments!
God grant that you perish, you and your race; that every
misfortune may strike you! God grant that you be con-
tinually dying, and that you may never be able either to
die or to live!" And although he was a simple Cossack, --
although he died not in purple nor cloth of gold but in
a common blue coat, and not in the chamber of a castle
but under the naked sky on a stake, -- still that torment
of his, that death circling above his head, clothed him
with dignity, and put such a power into his look, such an
ocean of hate into his eyes, that all understood well what
he wanted to say, and the regiments rode past in silence.
But he in the golden gleam of the midday towered
above them, shining on the freshly smoothed stake like a
torch.

The prince rode by, not turning an eye; the priest Mu-
khovetski made the sign of the cross on the unfortunate
man; and all had passed, when a youth from the hussar
regiment, without asking any one for permission, urged his
horse to the mound, and putting a pistol to the ear of the
victim, ended his torments with a shot. All trembled at
such daring infraction of military rules, and knowing the
rigor of the prince, they looked on the youth as lost; but
the prince said nothing. Whether he pretended not to hear
or was buried in thought, it is sufficient that he rode on in