"Miss Violet Pike came forward then," said Natalya, "and said, 'Cannot
this sentence be mollified?'

"And he said it could not be mollified.

"They took us away in a patrol to the Tombs.

"We waited in the waiting-room there. The matron looked at us and said,
'You are not bad girls. I will not send you down to the cells. You can do
some sewing for me here.' But I could not sew. I felt so bad, because I
could not eat the food they gave us at noon for dinner in the long hall
with all the other prisoners. It was coffee with molasses in it, and
oatmeal and bread so bad that after one taste we could not swallow it
down. Then, for supper, we had the same, but soup, too, with some meat
bones in it. And even before you sat down at the table these bones
smelled so it made you very sick. But they forced you to sit down at the
table before it, whether you ate or drank anything or not. And the
prisoners walked by in a long line afterward and put their spoons in a
pail of hot water, just the same whether they had eaten anything with the
spoons or not.

"Then we walked to our cells. It was night, and it was dark--oh, so dark
in there it was dreadful! There were three other women in the cell--some
of them were horrid women that came off the street. The beds were one
over the other, like on the boats--iron beds, with a quilt and a blanket.
But it was so cold you had to put both over you; and the iron springs
underneath were bare, and they were dreadful to lie on. There was no air;
you could hardly breathe. The horrid women laughed and screamed and said
terrible words.