was the one who had given Maslova the instructions when the latter left the cell.  She was a tall, strong woman, with a frowning, gloomy face, all wrinkled, a bag of skin hanging under her chin, a short braid of light hair, turning gray at the temples, and a hairy wart on her cheek.  This old woman was sentenced to penal servitude for killing her husband with an axe.  The killing was committed because he annoyed her daughter with improper advances.  She was the overseer of the cell, and also sold wine to the inmates.  She was sewing with eye-glasses, and held the needle, after the fashion of the peasants, with three fingers, the sharp point turned toward her breast.  Beside her, also sewing, sat a little woman, good-natured and talkative, dark, snub-nosed and with little black eyes.  She was the watch-woman at a flag-station, and was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for negligently causing an accident on the railroad.  The third of the women who were occupied with sewing was Theodosia—­called Fenichka by her fellow-prisoners—­of light complexion, and with rosy cheeks; young, lovely, with bright, childish blue eyes, and two long, flaxen braids rolled up on her small head.  She was imprisoned for attempting to poison her husband.  She was sixteen 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.