Chapter 114 Part Three - Ten

The sergeant escorting Nekhludoff, as they passed the cells of the single prisoners, told Nekhludoff that he would come to meet him before the roll call, and turned away.As soon as the sergeant had left, a male prisoner lifted the chains on his shackles, walked up to Nekhludoff with bare feet, and smelt heavily of sweat, and whispered to him: "My lord, please take care of it. That boy has been tricked. They got him drunk. Today, when the prisoner was handed over, he pretended to be Karmanov. You can take care of it, we can't Don't worry, or you'll be shot to death," said the male prisoner, looking around in a panic, and slipping away from Nekhludoff at once.

The thing is like this: a convict called Karmanov urged a lifelong exile who looked like him to exchange names with him, so that the convict could be exiled instead, and the exile had to serve hard labor instead of him . Nekhludoff already knew about this, because the prisoner had told him about the deception the previous week.Nekhludoff nodded in understanding, and would do his best, and went on without looking back. Nekhludoff had known the prisoner in Yekaterinburg, and he had asked Nekhludoff to intercede for him, allowing him to go to hard labor and take his wife with him.Nekhludoff was surprised by his request.This man was of medium build, with the most ordinary face of a farmer, about thirty years old, and was sentenced to hard labor for deliberately seeking wealth and killing his life.His name is Makar.The history of his crime is very strange.He told Nekhludoff that the crime was not committed by him, Makar, but by his devil.He said that a passer-by had approached his father and offered him two rubles to take him by sleigh to a village forty versts away.His father told Makar to send him there.Makar harnessed the sled, put on his clothes, and drank tea with the passer-by.The passer-by, drinking tea, told him that he was going home to be married, and that he had with him the five hundred rubles he had earned in Moscow.When Makar heard this, he went out into the yard, found an ax and hid it under the straw of the sleigh.

"Even I don't know why I take the ax," he said, "but a voice said to me, 'Bring the ax.' So I took the ax. We set out in the sledge. , nothing happened. I also forgot about the ax. Not far from the village, only six versts remained, our sledge left the village road, took the main road, and climbed up the hill. I went up and down, followed behind, and then he whispered to me again: "What are you still hesitating about? As soon as you reach the mountain, there are people on the road, and the village is ahead. He will leave with the money. Do it , I have to do it now, what are you waiting for?" I bent down, pretending to straighten the grass on the sled, and the ax seemed to jump into my hand automatically. He turned around and looked at me, saying: "You What are you going to do?' I swung the ax and tried to kill him all, but he was a very clever man, jumped out of the sled, grabbed my hand, and said, "What do you want, you bastard? . . . " He threw me Pushed me down on the snow, I didn't fight back, I was at his mercy. He tied my hands with a belt and threw me on the sled. He sent me to the district police station. I was jailed and later tried. We My village community spoke well of me, saying that I was a good person and had never done anything bad. My boss also spoke well of me. But we didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer, so I was sentenced to four years of hard labor.”

Now, it is such a person who wants to rescue his fellow countrymen.He knew very well that this was a life-threatening incident, but he still told Nekhludoff the secret among the prisoners, and if they found out that he had done it, they would strangle him to death.