If he laughed longer, it seemed to the warden as if the walls might fall asunder, the grating melt and drop out, as if the warden himself might lead the prisoners to the gates, bowing and saying: "Take a walk in the city, gentlemen; or perhaps some of you would like to go to the village ?" "Satan!" But Yanson had stopped laughing, and was now winking cunningly.
"You had better look out!" said the warden, with an indefinite threat, and he walked away, glancing back of him.
Yanson was calm and cheerful throughout the evening.

He repeated to himself, "I shall not be hanged," and it seemed to him so convincing, so wise, so irrefutable, that it was unnecessary to feel uneasy.

He had long forgotten about his crime, only sometimes he regretted that he had not been successful in attacking his master's wife.

But he soon forgot that, too.
Every morning Yanson asked when he was to be hanged, and every morning the warden answered him angrily: "Take your time, you devil! Wait!" and he would walk off quickly before Yanson could begin to laugh.
And from these monotonously repeated words, and from the fact that each day came, passed and ended as every ordinary day had passed, Yanson became convinced that there would be no execution.

He began to lose all memory of the trial, and would roll about all day long on his cot, vaguely and happily dreaming about the white melancholy fields, with their snow-mounds, about the refreshment bar at the railroad station, and about other things still more vague and bright.