AN INCIDENT OF THE MARCH.

This is what Mary Pavlovna and Katusha saw when they came up to the scene whence the noise proceeded. The officer, a sturdy fellow, with fair moustaches, stood uttering words of foul and coarse abuse, and rubbing with his left the palm of his right hand, which he had hurt in hitting a prisoner on the face. In front of him a thin, tall convict, with half his head shaved and dressed in a cloak too short for him and trousers much too short, stood wiping his bleeding face with one hand, and holding a little shrieking girl wrapped in a shawl with the other.

"I'll give it you" (foul abuse); "I'll teach you to reason" (more abuse); "you're to give her to the women!" shouted the officer. "Now, then, on with them."

The convict, who was exiled by the Commune, had been carrying his little daughter all the way from Tomsk, where his wife had died of typhus, and now the officer ordered him to be manacled. The exile's explanation that he could not carry the child if he was manacled irritated the officer, who happened to be in a bad temper, and he gave the troublesome prisoner a beating. [A fact described by Lineff in his "Transportation".] Before the injured convict stood a convoy soldier, and a black-bearded prisoner with manacles on one hand and a look of gloom on his face, which he turned now to the officer, now to the prisoner with the little girl.

The officer repeated his orders for the soldiers to take away the girl. The murmur among the prisoners grew louder.

"All the way from Tomsk they were not put on," came a hoarse voice from some one in the rear. "It's a child, and not a puppy."

"What's he to do with the lassie? That's not the law," said some one else.

"Who's that?" shouted the officer as if he had been stung, and rushed into the crowd.

"I'll teach you the law. Who spoke. You? You?"

"Everybody says so, because-" said a short, broad-faced prisoner.

Before he had finished speaking the officer hit him in the face.

"Mutiny, is it? I'll show you what mutiny means. I'll have you all shot like dogs, and the authorities will be only too thankful. Take the girl."

The crowd was silent. One convoy soldier pulled away the girl, who was screaming desperately, while another manacled the prisoner, who now submissively held out his hand.

"Take her to the wom............