kál described to me as "hardly long enough to lie down in or high enough to stand up in." Her own dress and under-clothing were taken away from her, and in place of them she was given an old prison suit that had already been worn by a common convict and was full of vermin. She lived under strict "dungeon conditions," and for three months lay without bed-clothing on the bare floor. When, as a result of such hardships and privations, she became sick, and asked for straw to lay down on the planks where she slept, she was told by the chief of police, Mélnikof, that there was no straw for her. But for the food smuggled into her cell and the aid surreptitiously given to her by sympathetic common-criminal convicts in the same prison, she would undoubtedly have died before the meeting of the court appointed to investigate the case. After three months of this wretched existence she was tried by court-martial and sentenced to be hanged. Then, for another whole month, she lay under sentence of death, arguing with herself, through many long, sleepless nights, the question whether or not she should make known to the authorities her pregnant condition, which had not yet become apparent. She knew that an announcement of the fact that she was with child would, in accordance with the custom in such cases, secure a long reprieve if not a commutation of her sentence; but, on the other hand, life held no hope for her, and she believed that if she allowed herself to be hanged under such circumstances, the fact of her pregnancy, which would inevitably be discovered after her death, would intensify the feeling of horror that she hoped would be excited by the series of events which had led up to the catastrophe — would give to such events even greater publicity, and would inspire all lovers of humanity and justice with a deeper and bitterer hatred of the Government. The questions that tormented her most wore first, whether, if she allowed herself to be hanged without revealing her condition, she would not be the murderer of her unborn child, and secondly, whether that child
