Chapter VII. Condemned

The two months preceding the trial were months of restless agony to the prisoner, Kalmar. Day and night he paced his cell like a tiger in a cage, taking little food and sleeping only when overcome with exhaustion. It was not the confinement that fretted him. The Winnipeg jail, with all its defects and limitations, was a palace to some that he had known. It was not the fear of the issue to his trial that drove sleep and hunger from him. Death, exile, imprisonment, had been too long at his heels to be strangers to him or to cause him fear. In his heart a fire burned. Rosenblatt still lived, and vengeance had halted in its pursuit.

But deep as was the passion in his heart for vengeance, that for his country and his cause burned deeper. He had been able to establish lines of communication between his fatherland and the new world by means of which the oppressed, the hunted, might reach freedom and safety. The final touches to his plans were still to be given. Furthermore, it was necessary that he should make his report in person, else much of his labour would be fruitless. It was this that brought him "white nights" and black days.

Every day Paulina called at the jail and waited long hours with uncomplaining patience in the winter cold, till she could be admitted. Her husband showed no sign of interest, much less of gratitude. One question alone, he asked day by day.

"The children are well?"

"They are well," Paulina would answer. "They ask to see you every day."

"They may not see me here," he would reply, after which she would turn away, her dull face full of patient suffering.

One item of news she brought him that gave him a moment's cheer.

"Kalman," she said, one day, "will speak nothing but Russian."

"Ha!" he exclaimed. "He is my son indeed. But," he added gloomily," of what use now?"

Others sought admission,--visitors from the Jail Mission, philanthropic ladies, a priest from St. Boniface, a Methodist minister,--but all were alike denied. Simon Ketzel he sent for, and with him held long converse, with the result that he was able to secure for his defence the services of O'Hara, the leading criminal lawyer of Western Canada. There appeared to be no lack of money, and all that money could do was done.

The case began to excite considerable interest, not only in the city, but throughout the whole country. Public opinion was strongly against the prisoner. Never in the history of the new country had a crime been committed of such horrible and bloodthirsty deliberation. It is true that this opinion was based largely upon Rosenblatt's deposition, taken by Sergeant Cameron and Dr. Wright when he was supposed to be in extremis, and upon various newspaper interviews with him that appeared from time to time. The Morning News in a trenchant leader