Satan was disgraced, the sacredness of the prison and the execution was re-established, and the old man inquired condescendingly, even with a feeling of sincere pity: "Do you want to meet somebody or not ?" "What for ?" "Well, to say good-by! Have you no mother, for instance, or a brother ?" "I must not be hanged," said Yanson softly, and looked askance at the warden.

"I don't want to be hanged." The warden looked at him and waved his hand in silence.
Toward evening Yanson grew somewhat calmer.
The day had been so ordinary, the cloudy winter sky looked so ordinary, the footsteps of people and their conversation on matters of business sounded so ordinary, the smell of the sour soup of cabbage was so ordinary, customary and natural that he again ceased believing in the execution.

But the night became terrible to him.

Before this Yanson had felt the night simply as darkness, as an especially dark time, when it was necessary to go to sleep, but now he began to be aware of its mysterious and uncanny nature.

In order not to believe in death, it was necessary to hear and see and feel ordinary things about him, footsteps, voices, light, the soup of sour cabbage.