Page:Garshin - A Red Flower (1911).djvu/35

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A RED FLOWER.
33

VI.

The patient was bound. He lay in his bed, dressed in the straight-jacket, and tightly bound with wide strips of cloth to the iron cross-beams of the bed. The violence of his movements, however, did not cease, but had even increased. In the course of many hours he made several attempts to free himself. Finally, bursting forth with all his strength, he broke one of the bonds, freed his feet, and, slipping from under the others, began to walk around the room, his arms still tied, making wild and unintelligible cries.

"Confound you! . . ." exclaimed the watchman, entering the room. "Who the deuce helps you? Gritsko! Ivan! Come in here, quick. He has unbound himself."

The three threw themselves on the madman, and then began a long struggle, a wearying one for the attacking party, and a harassing one for the man on the defensive, spending the remainder of his well-nigh exhausted strength. Finally they threw him upon the bed and bound him still more fast than before.

"You do not know what you are doing,"