Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/263

Rh and disappeared with it in the hole. When she returned immediately, I tossed her a second piece and in this way contributed six consecutive lumps to her larder, one for herself and one for each of her children. From that evening forth I acted thus as her commissary agent twice each day and derived quite unexpected results from my services. The young ones never came out at all, only the widow presenting herself each morning and evening for their rations. At other times I never saw her. If, when she came for supplies, I did not at once notice her, she would scramble upon my box, rise up on her hind-legs and say something to me in low, unobtrusive tones. Then, when I had doled out to her the regulation six pieces of bread, sugar or ham, she immediately carried them off piece by piece into her hole and disappeared for another twelve hours.

One evening the whole family came out again, with the widow leading them and gazing for a moment very knowingly at me, as though she seemed to be saying:

"You understand, don't you?"

The children followed her very quietly and in regular military order. The procession crossed the cell and disappeared into the corridor through a crack under the door. A little later they returned, paraded before me and disappeared in their dugout. From that day forth this review occurred each evening and led me to observe that they went down the corridor to the wash-room in search of water. Evidently the mother was no longer nursing the little ones, so that her offspring had to go for a drink.

Some weeks later the family disappeared without ever returning, and the hole was left empty. I took it for granted that, with the children growing up, the mother had to take them to a centre of more culture than the