“Four,” said Maslova, and the flow of her tears was so copious that one of them fell on the cigarette.  She angrily crushed it, threw it away and took another.

The watch-woman, although she was no smoker, immediately picked up the cigarette-end and began to straighten it, talking at the same time.

“As I said to Matveievna, dear,” she said, “it is ill-luck.  They do what they please.  And we thought they would discharge you.  Matveievna said you would be discharged, and I said that you would not, I said.  ‘My heart tells me,’ I said, ‘that they will condemn her,’ and so it happened,” she went on, evidently listening to the sounds of her own voice with particular pleasure.

The prisoners had now passed through the court-yard, and the four women left the window and approached Maslova.  The larged-eyed illicit seller of spirits was the first to speak.

“Well, is the sentence very severe?” she asked, seating herself near Maslova and continuing to knit her stocking.

“It is severe because she has no money.  If she had money to hire a good lawyer, I am sure they would not have held her,” said Korableva.  “That lawyer—­what’s his name?—­that clumsy, big-nosed one can, my dear madam, lead one out of the water dry.  That’s the man you should take.”

“To hire him!” grinned Miss Dandy.  “Why, he would not look at you for less than a thousand rubles.”

“It seems to be your fate,” said the old woman who was charged with incendiarism.  “I should say he is severe!  He drove my boy’s wife from her; put him in jail, and me, too, in my old age,” for the hundredth time she began to repeat her story.  “Prison and poverty are our lot.  If it is not prison, it is poverty.”

“Yes, it is always the same with them,” said the woman-moonshiner, and, closely inspecting the girl’s head, she put her stocking aside, drew the girl over between her overhanging legs and with dexterous fingers began to search in her head.  “Why do you deal in wine?  But I have to feed my children,” she said, continuing her search.

These words reminded Maslova of wine.

“Oh, for a drop of wine,” she said to Korableva, wiping her tears with the sleeve of her shirt and sobbing from time to time.

“Some booze?  Why, of course!” said Korableva.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Maslova produced the money from one of the lunch-rolls and gave it to Korableva, who climbed up to the draught-hole of the oven for a flask of wine she had hidden there.  Seeing which, those women who were not her immediate neighbors went to their places.  Meantime Maslova shook the dust from her ’kerchief and coat, climbed up on her cot and began to eat a roll.

“I saved some tea for you, but I fear it is cold,” said Theodosia, bringing down from a shelf a pot, wrapped in a rag, and a tin cup.

The beverage was perfectly cold, and tasted more of tin than of tea, but Maslova poured out a cupful and began to drink.