"He said that I should be hanged, but I don't want it." And perhaps for the first time in his life he laughed, a hoarse, absurd, yet gay and joyous laughter.

It sounded like the cackling of a goose, Ga-ga-ga! The warden looked at him in astonishment, then knit his brow sternly.

This strange gayety of a man who was to be executed was an offence to the prison, as well as to the very executioner; it made them appear absurd.

And suddenly, for the briefest instant, it appeared to the old warden, who had passed all his life in the prison, and who looked upon its laws as the laws of nature, that the prison and all the life within it was something like an insane asylum, in which he, the warden, was the chief lunatic.
"Pshaw! The devil take you!" and he spat aside.

"Why are you giggling here?
This is no dramshop!" "And I don't want to be hanged--gaga-ga!" laughed Yanson.
"Satan!" muttered the inspector, feeling the need of making the sign of the cross.
This little man, with his small, wizened face--he resembled least of all the devil--but there was that in his silly giggling which destroyed the sanctity and the strength of the prison.