Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/326

314 had been quite accidentally discovered that the crime for which Daria was being held in prison had been committed by another and that, consequently, the court ordered her release, inasmuch as the years already spent in prison covered the total of the sentences imposed upon her for her other offences. The next day Daria the Black was free.

With her departure there went out from our prison a very characteristic type of an adviser and counsellor with a great influence among women convicts. Practically every Russian prison, where there are women serving sentences, had its Black Daria, looked upon with a certain amount of respect and a great deal of awe by the other women inmates.

As starosta I often met Daria and was also frequently brought into contact with another type rather common in the prisons. The special representative in this case happened to be one Shutkoff, called "the Librarian."

His biography was short and sad. He was a half-educated man, who had once been an official in some institution and had been arrested for a slight offence, which brought upon him a short term of imprisonment. The unbearably hard life behind the bars and his shame and longing drove him to attempt escape. Recaptured, he was committed for three years, only to escape again and receive an additional penalty of three years more, with the result that Shutkoff, an ordinarily quiet and modest man, became a confirmed inmate of the prisons. In spite of the usual effects upon most men put behind the bars, Shutkoff remained quiet and modest-mannered and developed an almost insane mania for reading.

For whole days at a time he remained in the prison library, reading all sorts of books, magazines and old newspapers and at regular intervals rearranging the