This absolute severance of home ties bore especially hard upon one of the latest arrivals in the prison,—Madame Hope Sigida, “a sensitive young creature, gentle, affectionate and attracted by all that was good and beautiful. She was deeply attached to her family, who lived in Taganrock, a small town in South Russia.” She had been a school teacher, and was condemned to eight years’ hard labour because a printing press and some bombs had been discovered in the house where she resided with her husband who was an officer in Taganrock circuit court. The latter was condemned to death, but the sentence was commuted to deportation to Saghalien, and he died on his way to that island. Madame Sigida, in her bereavement, felt acutely the cessation of all relations with her distant home, and when her comrades, goaded to desperation, were upon the point of resuming the hunger strike, she determined to sacrifice herself for the common good. Hoping that relief might in that way come to the rest, she planned to attack Masyukov alone. She sought an interview with the commandant, and it was granted in due course. A most dramatic incident followed, as told by eye-witnesses. She was driven to the office in a carriage under escort, and was taken in to speak to Colonel Masyukov, who the next moment was seen to jump out of the window, evidently much excited and terrified, and take to his heels. Then Madame Sigida came to the door, and after caressing some warder’s children who stood there, in a quiet, unperturbed voice begged that a telegraphic message might be despatched to the proper authorities informing them that she had assaulted the commandant by striking him in the face. She justified her violence as the only means of shaming him into taking his departure. At least she succeeded in forcing him to show himself in his character of a mean, despicable coward. Madame Sigida was forthwith cast into a secret cell and subjected to “dungeon conditions,” while awaiting trial for her grave breach of discipline. Her self-sacrifice had not availed to avert the hunger strike. It began immediately afterward by all the women prisoners, and was persisted in for sixteen days with the same argument, that Colonel Masyukov, now ridiculed and disgraced, must go. Madame Sigida, still waiting judgment, refused food and remained fasting for twenty-two days, until medical intervention was decreed. Madame Kovalskaya struck the doctor in the face when she thought he was about to forcibly administer nourishment. But he was a humane man and disclaimed all such intention, and she begged his pardon.