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 women," shouted the officer, arranging his sword belt.
The little girl, whose face had grown quite red, was trying to disengage her arms from under the shawl, and screamed unceasingly.
Mary Pavlovna stepped out from among the crowd and came up to the officer.
"Will you allow me to carry the little girl?" she said.
"Who are you?" asked the officer.
"A political prisoner."
Mary Pavlovna's handsome face, with the beautiful prominent eyes (he had noticed her before when the prisoners were given into his charge), evidently produced an effect on the officer.
He looked at her in silence as if considering, then said:
"I don't care; carry her if you like.
It is easy for you to show pity; if he ran away who would have to answer?"
"How could he run away with the child in his arms?" said Mary Pavlovna.
"I have no time to talk with you.
Take her if you like."
"Shall I give her?" asked the soldier.
"Yes, give her."
"Come to me," said Mary Pavlovna, trying to coax the child to come to her.
But the child in the soldier's arms stretched herself towards her father and continued to scream, and would not go to Mary Pavlovna.
"Wait a bit, Mary Pavlovna," said Maslova, getting a rusk out of her bag; "she will come to me."
The little girl knew Maslova, and when she saw her face and the rusk she let her take her.
All was quiet.
The gates were opened, and the gang stepped out, the convoy counted the prisoners over again, the bags were packed and tied on to the carts, the weak seated on the top.
Maslova with the child in her arms took her place among the women next to Theodosia.
Simonson, who had all the time been watching what was going on, stepped with large, determined strides up to the officer, who, having given his orders, was just getting into a trap, and said,
"You have behaved badly."
"Get to your place; it is no business of yours."
"It is my business to tell you that you have behaved badly and I have said it," said Simonson, looking intently into the officer's face from under his bushy eyebrows.
"Ready?
March!" the officer called out, paying no heed to Simonson, and, taking hold of the driver's shoulder, he got into the trap.
The gang started and spread out as it stepped on to the muddy high road with ditches on each side, which passed through a dense forest.
CHAPTER III. MARY PAVLOVNA.
In spite of the hard conditions in which they were placed, life among the political prisoners seemed very good to Katusha after the depraved, luxurious and effeminate life she had led in town for the last six years, and after two months' imprisonment with criminal prisoners.
The fifteen to twenty miles they did per day, with one day's rest after two days' marching, strengthened her physically, and the fellowship with her new companions opened out to her a life full of interests such as she had never dreamed of.
People so wonderful (as she expressed it) as those whom she was now going with she had not only never met but could not even have imagined.
"There now, and I cried when I was sentenced," she said. "Why, I must thank God for it all the days of my life.
I have learned to know what I never should have found out else."
The motives she understood easily and without effort that guided these people, and, being of the people, fully sympathised with them.
She understood that these persons were for the people and against the upper classes, and though themselves belonging to the upper classes had sacrificed their privileges, their liberty and their lives for the people. This especially made her value and admire them.
She was charmed with all the new companions, but particularly with Mary Pavlovna, and she was not only charmed with her, but loved her with a peculiar, respectful and rapturous love.
She was struck by the fact that this beautiful girl, the daughter of a rich general, who could speak three languages, gave away all that her rich brother sent her, and lived like the simplest working girl, and dressed not only simply, but poorly, paying no heed to her appearance.
This trait and a complete absence of coquetry was particularly surprising and therefore attractive to Maslova.