ixteen years old when she was married, and she made the attempt
immediately after her marriage. During the eight months that she was
out on bail, she not only became reconciled to her husband, but became
so fond of him that the court officers found them living in perfect
harmony. In spite of all the efforts of her husband, her
father-in-law, and especially her mother-in-law, who had grown very
fond of her, to obtain her discharge, she was sentenced to hard labor
in Siberia. The kind, cheerful and smiling Theodosia, whose cot was
next to Maslova's, not only took a liking to her, but considered it
her duty to help her in every possible way. Two other women were
sitting idly on their cots; one of about forty years, who seemed to
have been pretty in her youth, but was now pale and slim, was feeding
a child with her long, white breast. Her crime consisted in that, when
the people of the village she belonged to attempted to stop a
recruiting officer who had drafted, illegally, as they thought, her
nephew, she was the first to take hold of the bridle of his horse.
There was another little white-haired, wrinkled woman, good-natured
and hunch-backed, who sat near the oven and pretended to be catching a
four-year-old, short-haired and stout boy, who, in a short little
shirt, was running past her, laughing and repeating: "You tan't tatch
me!" This old woman, who, with her son, was charged with incendiarism,
bore her confinement good-naturedly, grieving only over her son, who
was also in jail, but above all, her heart was breaking for her old
man who, she feared, would be eaten up by lice, as her daughter-in-law
had returned to her parents, and there was no one to wash him.

Besides these seven women, there were four others who stood near the
open windows, their hands resting on the iron gratings, and conversing
by signs and shouts with the prisoners whom Maslova had met in the
passageway. One of these, who was serving a sentence for theft, was a
flabby, large, heavy, red-haired woman with white-yellow freckles over
her face, and a stout neck which was exposed by the open waist collar.
In a hoarse voice she shouted indecent words through the window.
Beside her stood a woman of the size of a ten-year-old girl, very
dark, with a long back and very short legs. Her face was red and
blotched; her black eyes wide open, and her short, thick lips failed
to hide her white, protruding teeth. She laughed in shrill tones at
the antics of the p