The horror of capital punishment is great when it falls to the lot of courageous and honest people whose only guilt is their excess of love and the sense of righteousness--in such instances, conscience revolts.

But the rope is still more horrible when it forms the noose around the necks of weak and ignorant people.
And however strange it may appear, I look with a lesser grief and suffering upon the execution of the revolutionists, such as Werner and Musya, than upon the strangling of ignorant murderers, miserable in mind and heart, like Yanson and Tsiganok.

Even the last mad horror of inevitably approaching execution Werner can offset by his enlightened mind and his iron will, and Musya, by her purity and her innocence.

*** But how are the weak and the sinful to face it if not in madness, with the most violent shock to the very foundation of their souls?
And these people, now that the Government has steadied its hands through its experience with the revolutionists, are being hanged throughout Russia--in some places one at a time, in others, ten at once.

Children at play come upon badly buried bodies, and the crowds which gather look with horror upon the peasants' boots that are sticking out of the ground; prosecutors who have witnessed these executions are becoming insane and are taken away to hospitals--while the people are being hanged--being hanged.
I am deeply grateful to you for the task you have undertaken in translating this sad story.