At the moment that I emerged from my Saratoff experience Marie Spiradonova was the most talked-of person in Russia, and perhaps the most notable prisoner in the world. The grim white-washed walls of Tamboff prison held her securely, while newspapers in Russia that dared to set forth the facts of her deed and the treatment she afterward received were confiscated by the police, and a Spiradonova League in France rolled up a lengthy list of subscribers. Correspondents from Germany, from France, from England, were sent to Tamboff to penetrate those stern walls and gather from the girl’s own lips the tragic story that was then thrilling a nation and interesting a continent. But for once neither diplomacy nor influence were of avail. Marie’s isolation was absolute and no one save her mother was privileged to so much as see her. In the meantime alarming reports of her precarious condition were emanating from Tamboff and in many sections there was intense excitement concerning her. It seemed well-nigh hopeless for me to reach her, yet I greatly desired to interview this daring spirit and to verify the extraordinary details of her ill-treatment that had kindled such intense feeling throughout Russia. Through the merest chance I succeeded. No one else has seen her or talked with her even up to the present time (she is now at hard labor in the mines of Akatui in central Siberia). The story of Marie Spiradonova, which I set out to examine, was as follows: The lieutenant-governor of the province of Tamboff, one Luchenovsky, was one of the most tyrannical administrators in all Russia. His systematic cruelty and excessive severity spread terror throughout all the district where his power extended. He ordered the flogging of peasants and the burning of homes. It was said that he did not rebuke, if he did not actually and openly encourage, Cossack outrages; and all who knew of the inhumanities he practised and [Illustration: Governor Xanugievitch of Tamboff] encouraged declared that for so wicked a man this world had no place. One day Luchenovsky was in a village where some Cossacks captured a young peasant girl and kept her awhile for their sport. When they had done with her they threw her dishonored body into a near-by lake. Marie Spiradonova chanced to be in the village when this happened and she knew that Luchenovsky was aware of this incident and that he took no steps either to punish or to prevent further outrage. A few days later Luchenovsky stood on a railroad station-platform waiting for a coming train. With a Browning revolver in her hand, Marie Spiradonova from a longish range took careful aim and fired five shots, each shot taking effect, though Luchenovsky did not die till a month afterward. During the time of his lingering death Marie wrote from her prison-cell to her sister, “I gave him five bullets. I did not know he was so thick as to need a cannon.”