_ VI
Now it was not Chouev, but Stepan who used to read the gospel in the
common cell. Some of the prisoners were singing coarse songs, while others
listened to Stepan reading the gospel and talking about what he had read.
The most attentive among those who listened were two of the prisoners,
Vassily, and a convict called Mahorkin, a murderer who had become a hangman.
Twice during his stay in this prison he was called upon to do duty
as hangman, and both times in far-away places where nobody could be found
to execute the sentences.
Two of the peasants who had killed Peter Nikolaevich Sventizky,
had been sentenced to the gallows, and Mahorkin was ordered
to go to Pensa to hang them. On all previous occasions
he used to write a petition to the governor of the province--
he knew well how to read and to write--stating that he had been
ordered to fulfil his duty, and asking for money for his expenses.
But now, to the greatest astonishment of the prison authorities,
he said he did not intend to go, and added that he would not
be a hangman any more.
"And what about being flogged?" cried the governor of the prison.
"I will have to bear it, as the law commands us not to kill."
"Did you get that from Pelageushkine? A nice sort of a prison prophet!
You just wait and see what this will cost you!"
When Mahin was told of that incident, he was greatly impressed by the fact
of Stepan's influence on the hangman, who refused to do his duty,
running the risk of being hanged himself for insubordination. _