The Ordway new era., 1917-04-27

came torture to me. The sun shone
so brightly without the prison walls,
and here I was shut up. The church
bells which tolled so solemnly and joy
fully outside, here in the prison sound
ed like the ringing of bells at funer-
al."
She was seventeen years old when
she was sentenced to be eXiled to
eastern Siberia for life.
Down the dusty road to the railroad
station the political prisoners were
marched, fettered wrist to wrist with
murderers and robbers. In the for
warding PRISONS" where they stopped
| along the route, they slept on the filthy
floors with no covering save the gray
overcoats with Il yellow diamond
athwart the shoulders. which marks
| the Russian convict. After sixteen
days of travel they reached the ST.
! berinn city from which they were to
be distributed in exile. Marie Sukloff
| was to go alone to n tiny village.
1t was village of thirty huts. She
was to stay in the house of the church
watchman. and every day the village
constable should call to see that she
was still there. The women came out
and wept over her.
$50 young So young! How your
mother must have wept!"
Her white-haired host found out that
she could read. He brought out a let
ter from his son, soldier in the war
against Japan. to have her read it to
him. Soon the news spread through
the village-here was one who could
everything they had to read-she must
read aloud to them. They treated
her with great reverence
II was no longer in prison. l saw
| no more the prison walls, but did not
feel myself free. The purposeless life
in n remote Siberian village seemed
to me worse than n prison. The peas
ants, together with the priest, drank
for two or three days during the week.
They spent nll their money at the
government liquor shop, and when they
had no ready cash they pawned any
thing they could conveniently carry
out of the house. 1t seemed that only
the vodka gave them the possibility
of forgetting the miseries of the
wretched existence. In those drunken
days l hid myself in some corner that
no one might see me, and sat looking
Mt the heaps of snow which separated
me from the rest of the living. You
must escape, you must escape from
here an inner voice grew more and
more insistent."
! She did escape. A forged passport
was procured, and money from revo-
lutionists, exiles in Siberia. She set
out on foot through the snow to a
village % miles away. A peasant in
sleigh helped her on her way. In
and child with whom she had come
into exile. Marie Suklof took the
child with her, because no one would
be looking for woman with child.
They went by sleigh-on and on
through the endless snow and cold.
Everywhere the child proved protec-
ton; no heed was paid to the pair.
They reached Wilma; the child was de-
livered to its grandparents and Marie
Sukloff saw her parents once more.
Her father tried to press upon her
money he had borrowed, that she might
go abroad and live in safety, but she
would not.
"'Father, l cannot do that. The
thing which was done to me and thou
sands Of others cannot go unpublished.
I cannot let it gor replied" she says.
my father took my head In his
hands and looked with his soft eyes
straight at mine.
".Oh, God! What have they made
of YOU? You do not even cry. and
there is SO much hatred in your eyes,
even at the sight Of your old parents :"
She went to Geneva and became
terrorist. They sent her back to Rus
sia to slay. Nicholai. the painter.