It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party one autumn night evening. There had been many clever men there, and there had been interesting conversations.

Among other things they had talking of capital punishment. The majority of the guests, among whom, where many journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They considered that form of punishment out of data, immoral, and unsuitable. In the opinion of some of them, the death penalty ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life.

"I don't agree with you,"said their host the banker. "I have not tried either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may judge a priori, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than imprisonment for life.

Capital punishment kills a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years? "

"Both are equally immoral, " observed one of the guests, "for they both the same object - to talk away life. The State is not God.

It has not the right to talk away what it cannot restorewhen it wants to. "

Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five -and - twenty. When he was

 opinion, he said:

      "The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral but if I had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all. "

      A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more nervous in those days, was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck the table with his fist and shouted at the younger man;

"It's not true! I'II bet you two million you wouldn't stay in solitary confinement for five years. "

"If you mean that in earnest, " said the young man, "I'II take the bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen years. "The bet was set.

For the first years of his confinement, as far as one could judge from', his brief notes, the prisoner suffered severely from loneliness and depression. The sounds of the piano could be heard continually day and night from his lodge. He refused wine and tobacco. Wine, he wrote, excites the desires, and desires are the worst enemy of prisioner; and besides nothing could be more dreary than drinking good wine and seeing no one. And tobacco spoilt the air of his room. In the first year the books he sent for were principally of a light character; novels with a complicated love plot, sensational and fantastic stories, and so on.

In the second year the piano was silent in the lodge, and the prisoner asked only for the classics. In the fifth year music was audible again, and the prisoner asked for wine.

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Those who watched him through the window said that all that years he spent doing nothing but eating and drinking and lying on his bed, frequently yawning and angrily talking to himself. He did not read books. Sometimes at night he would sit down to write; he would spend hours writing, and in the morning tear up all that he had written. More than once he could be heard crying.

            In the second half of the sixth year the prisoner began zealously studying languages, philosophy, and history. He threw himself eagerly into these studies - so much so that the banker had enough to do to get him the books he ordered. In the course of four years, some six hundred volumes were procured at his request. It was during this period that the banker received the following letter from his prisoner;

          "My dear Jailer, I write you these lines in six languages. Show them to people who know the languages. Let them read them. If they find not one mistake I implore you to fire a shot in the garden. That short will show me that my efforts have not been thrown away. The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages, but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from being able to understand them! " The prisoner's desire was fulfilled. The banker ordered two shorts to be fired in the garden.

Then after the tenth year, the prisoner sat immovably at the table and read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed strange to the banker that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred learned volumes should waste nearly a year over one thin book easy of comprehension. Theology and histories of religion followed the Gospels.

In the last two years of his confinement, the prisoner read an immense quantity of books quite indiscriminately. At cue time he was busy with the natural sciences, then he would ask for Byron or Shakespeare. There were notes in which he demanded at the same time books on chemistry, and a medicine, and a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology. His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then at anothe

he old banker remember all these, and tthought.

"Tomorrow at twelve o'clock he will regain his freedom. By our agreement I ought to pay him two million. If I do pay him, it is all over with me; I shall be utterly ruined. "

It stuck three o'clock, the banker listened; everyone was asleep in the house and - nothing could be heard outside but the rustling of the chilled trees. Trying to make no noise, he took from a fireproof safe the key of the door which had not been opened for fifteen years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house.

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       It was dark and cold in the garden. Rain was falling. A damp cutting wind was racing about the garden, howling and giving the trees no rest. The banker strained his eyes, but could see neither the earth nor the white stood, he twice called the watchman. No answer followed. Evidently the watchman had sought shelter from the weather, and was now asleep somewhere either in the kitchen or in the green house.

      "If I had the pluck to carry out my intention, " though the old man, "Suspicion would fall first upon the watchman. "

   When the match went out the old man, trembling with emotion peeped through the little window. A candle was burning dimly in the prisoners room. He was sitting at the table. Nothing could be seen but his back, the hair on his head, and his hands. Open books were lying on the table, on the two easy-chairs, and on the carpet near the table.

   Five minutes passed and the prisoner did not once stir. Fifteen years' imprisonment had taught him to sit still. The banker tapped at the window with his fingers and the prisoner made no movement whatever in response. Then the banker cautiously broke the seals off the door and put the key, in the keyhole. The rusty lock gave a grating sound and the door creaked. The banker expected to hear at once footsteps and cry of astonishment, but three minutes passed and it was as quiet as ever in the room. He made up mine to go in.

     At the table a man unlike ordinary people was sitting motionless. He was a skeleton with the skin drawn over tight his bones, with long curls like a woman's and a shaggy beard.

His face was yellow with an earthy tint in it, his cheeks were hollow, his back long and narrow, and the hand on which his emaciated, aged-looking face no one would have believed that he was only forty. He was asleep... In front of his bowed head there lay on the table sheet of paper on which there was something written in fine handwriting.

"Poor creature! " Though the banker, "he is sleep and most likely dreaming of millions. And I have only to take this half-dead man, throw him on the bed, stifle him a little with the pillow, and the most intelligent expert would find no sign of a violent death. But let us first read what he has written here... "

The banker took the page from the table and read as follows:

" Tomorrow at twelve o'clock I regain my freedom and the right to associate with other men, but before I leave this room and see the sunshine, I think it necessary to say a few words to you With a clear conscience I tell you, as before God, who beholds me, that I despise freedom and life and health, and all that in your books is called good things of the world.