When it became evident that these women, who were already at death’s door, would never give in, the higher authorities consented to the following compromise: Masyukov could not be removed, lest it should be said that the prisoners had forced such a step on them, but the Governor should arrange that Sigida, Kalyùshnaya, Kovalèvskaya, and Smirnitskaya should no longer be under the commandant, but should be removed to the female criminals’ prison, and treated in future as ordinary convicts. Our comrades agreed to this, and ceased their hunger-strike. But the martyrdom of the unhappy women was not yet accomplished, worse sufferings still were in store for them. In the second half of October Masyukov, who had kept in the background since Sigida’s encounter with him, entered our prison one day surrounded (as had never before been the case) by a guard of armed soldiers. The man looked thoroughly shaken and upset; he sheltered himself behind the soldiers, and told us to come and listen to an order from the Governor-General. When we had all assembled in the corridor he read aloud with trembling voice a document saying that in consequence of the disturbances among the political prisoners in Kara the Governor-General warned us that on any repetition of such occurrences the most stringent measures would be taken against us, and that recourse would even be had to corporal punishment. Now the “politicals” had had much to bear, but had never been legally liable to personal chastisement; the mere threat was held by many as an insult only to be wiped out with blood, and this view was voiced by Sergius Bobohov. I have not hitherto mentioned this excellent man; for the part that he played, and that gives him a place in the annals of the Russian revolutionary movement, only began with this challenge from the Siberian satrap. Sergius Bobohov was born in the Volga district. He had studied in the Petersburg veterinary college, and had been expelled towards the end of the sixties for taking part in a riot of the students directed against Professor Zion, an affair that made a good deal of stir at the time. He was subsequently banished by “administrative methods” to the government of Archangel, and in 1878 attempted unsuccessfully to escape. When he was recaptured he fired a revolver-shot in the air, hoping that this would cause him to be brought to trial, and that so he might have an opportunity of denouncing the arbitrariness of the so-called “administrative methods.” For this shot he was sentenced to twenty years’ “katorga,” and brought to Kara in 1879.