The story of the third member of this little band was as follows. In the spring of 1879 the sum of 1,500,000 roubles was stolen from the offices of the Finance Department in Kherson, the depredators having broken in through the wall of the adjoining house. On the same day the police arrested a woman driving through the town in a country cart with some suspicious-looking sacks. The woman was identified as Elena Ròssikova, wife of a landed proprietor in the neighbourhood, and the sacks contained a million roubles. With her another lady was also arrested; and in consequence of the latter’s confession the rest of the money was found, with the exception of some 10,000 roubles. It turned out that this wild undertaking had been organised by Elena Ròssikova, who had planned to rob the imperial purse, with the intention of applying the money to revolutionary purposes. She and some other persons implicated were tried before a court-martial, and she, as the ringleader, was sentenced to penal servitude for life. She, too, waged unceasing war against the whole staff of the prison, and was daunted by nothing when a “protest” was in question. The fourth of these women “politicals” was Maria Kutitònskaya. She had been a pupil in a girls’ school in Odessa, and while still very young had joined the revolutionists. In 1879 she was arrested as a comrade of Lisogùb[70] and Tchubàrov, was condemned to four years’ penal servitude, and sent to Kara. At the expiration of her sentence she was interned in the town of Aksha in Transbaikalia; but she was soon back in prison. The authorities had ill-treated the male prisoners in Kara (as to which I shall speak later); and Kutitònskaya resolved to take vengeance on the chief offender in the matter, the governor of the province, Ilyashèvitch by name. She fired a pistol at him, but missed. The court-martial condemned her to death, but this was altered to lifelong penal servitude. Footnote 70: This revolutionist was very rich; but lived in extreme poverty, that he might devote all his fortune to the cause. He was condemned to death in 1879 solely for that reason, as he had carefully abstained—contrary to his own most ardent inclinations—from giving any active help in the movement for fear of compromising himself and thus forfeiting the wealth which was practically supporting the party. See Stepniak’s _Underground Russia_.—_Trans._