These three always started early in the morning before the rest of the political prisoners, who followed later on in the carts.

They were ready to start in this way just outside a large town, where a new convoy officer had taken charge of the gang.

It was early on a dull September morning.  It kept raining and snowing alternately, and the cold wind blew in sudden gusts.  The whole gang of prisoners, consisting of four hundred men and fifty women, was already assembled in the court of the halting station.  Some of them were crowding round the chief of the convoy, who was giving to specially appointed prisoners money for two days’ keep to distribute among the rest, while others were purchasing food from women who had been let into the courtyard.  One could hear the voices of the prisoners counting their money and making their purchases, and the shrill voices of the women with the food.

Simonson, in his rubber jacket and rubber overshoes fastened with a string over his worsted stockings (he was a vegetarian and would not wear the skin of slaughtered animals), was also in the courtyard waiting for the gang to start.  He stood by the porch and jotted down in his notebook a thought that had occurred to him.  This was what he wrote:  “If a bacteria watched and examined a human nail it would pronounce it inorganic matter, and thus we, examining our globe and watching its crust, pronounce it to be inorganic.  This is incorrect.”

Katusha and Mary Pavlovna, both wearing top-boots and with shawls tied round their heads, came out of the building into the courtyard where the women sat sheltered from the wind by the northern wall of the court, and vied with one another, offering their goods, hot meat pie, fish, vermicelli, buckwheat porridge, liver, beef, eggs, milk.  One had even a roast pig to offer.

Having bought some eggs, bread, fish, and some rusks, Maslova was putting them into her bag, while Mary Pavlovna was paying the women, when a movement arose among the convicts.  All were silent and took their places.  The officer came out and began giving the last orders before starting.  Everything was done in the usual manner.  The prisoners were counted, the chains on their legs examined, and those who were to march in couples linked together with manacles.  But suddenly the angry, authoritative voice of the officer shouting something was heard, also the sound of a blow and the crying of a child.  All was silent for a moment and then came a hollow murmur from the crowd.  Maslova and Mary Pavlovna advanced towards the spot whence the noise proceeded.

CHAPTER II.

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.