isposition, and
frequently beat his wife and his little children.

When quite a young girl Maria became a servant in the family of a
Russian army officer, and when still young she married a soldier named
Afanasi Botchkarev, who gave her her present name. He beat her so often
and treated her so brutally when he was drunk that she tried to drown
herself, but was saved because some workmen had seen her plight.
Shortly afterward she ran away from Botchkarev and worked her way to
the town of Irkutsk in Siberia.

There she underwent many adventures. Her great strength enabled her to
work as a man in a gang of laborers who were paving the courtyard of
Irkutsk prison with asphalt, and she continued this work for a year,
until she became ill and forced to go to a hospital.

War broke out between Russian and Germany. It was the beginning of the
great war that was to shake the entire world, and echoes and rumors of
terrible events were not long in reaching even so remote a town as
Irkutsk. Soldiers commenced to go away to the front and stories of
defeats and victories were in the air. And although Maria, unlike
Jeanne d'Arc, never heard the voices of the Saints, still a voice
within her called on her to go to war to save her country.

But how was a woman to go to war? If it had been difficult in the
remote past when Jeanne d'Arc was alive, how much more was success
beyond her grasp in a country controlled by modern law and the
regulations of a well organized national army. But Maria dressed
herself in man's clothes and made her way back to her home, beating her
way with difficulty on trains that were crowded with soldiers, and
taking over two months to accomplish the difficult journey from
Siberia.

When she arrived at her native village she found that her worthless
husband had been drafted into the army, taken to the front and was
listed as "missing." Nobody knew if he were alive or dead.

Her father and mother were glad to see Maria, but exclaimed in horror
and surprise when she told them that she intended to be a soldier.

"You are crazy," they shouted at her. "Women do not go to war! Stay at
home with us, for we are old and need your help." But in spite of their
entreaties she was obdurate, and going to a clerk in the 25th Reserve
Battalion which was quartered there, she declared to him her purpose of
enlisting and of fighting in the trenches.

Laughter greeted her on every side. A grinning adjutant took her to the
C