“You can’t, you can’t; it’s forbidden.  You know that yourself.”

“But what difference will it make to anyone if I do go out?” asked Andrey Yefimitch, shrugging his shoulders.  “I don’t understand.  Nikita, I must go out!” he said in a trembling voice.  “I must.”

“Don’t be disorderly, it’s not right,” Nikita said peremptorily.

“This is beyond everything,” Ivan Dmitritch cried suddenly, and he jumped up.  “What right has he not to let you out?  How dare they keep us here?  I believe it is clearly laid down in the law that no one can be deprived of freedom without trial!  It’s an outrage!  It’s tyranny!”

“Of course it’s tyranny,” said Andrey Yefimitch, encouraged by Ivan Dmitritch’s outburst.  “I must go out, I want to.  He has no right!  Open, I tell you.”

“Do you hear, you dull-witted brute?” cried Ivan Dmitritch, and he banged on the door with his fist.  “Open the door, or I will break it open!  Torturer!”

“Open the door,” cried Andrey Yefimitch, trembling all over; “I insist!”

“Talk away!” Nikita answered through the door, “talk away. . . .”

“Anyhow, go and call Yevgeny Fyodoritch!  Say that I beg him to come for a minute!”

“His honour will come of himself to-morrow.”

“They will never let us out,” Ivan Dmitritch was going on meanwhile.  “They will leave us to rot here!  Oh, Lord, can there really be no hell in the next world, and will these wretches be forgiven?  Where is justice?  Open the door, you wretch!  I am choking!” he cried in a hoarse voice, and flung himself upon the door.  “I’ll dash out my brains, murderers!”

Nikita opened the door quickly, and roughly with both his hands and his knee shoved Andrey Yefimitch back, then swung his arm and punched him in the face with his fist.  It seemed to Andrey Yefimitch as though a huge salt wave enveloped him from his head downwards and dragged him to the bed; there really was a salt taste in his mouth:  most likely the blood was running from his teeth.  He waved his arms as though he were trying to swim out and clutched at a bedstead, and at the same moment felt Nikita hit him twice on the back.

Ivan Dmitritch gave a loud scream.  He must have been beaten too.

Then all was still, the faint moonlight came through the grating, and a shadow like a net lay on the floor.  It was terrible.  Andrey Yefimitch lay and held his breath:  he was expecting with horror to be struck again.  He felt as though someone had taken a sickle, thrust it into him, and turned it round several times in his breast and bowels.  He bit the pillow from pain and clenched his teeth, and all at once through the chaos in his brain there flashed the terrible unbearable thought that these people, who seemed now like black shadows in the moonlight, had to endure such pain day by day for years.  How could it have happened that for more than twenty years he had not known it and had refused to know