But when Natalya and Anna reached the court, and had made their charge against the tall Italian, to their bewilderment not only he, but they, too, were conducted downstairs to the cells.  He had charged them with attacking the girls he was escorting into the factory.

“They made me go into a cell,” said Natalya, “and suddenly they locked us in.  Then I was frightened, and I said to the policeman there, ’Why do you do this?  I have done nothing at all.  The man struck my friend.  I must send for somebody.’

“He said, ‘You cannot send for any one at all.  You are a prisoner.’

“We cried then.  We were frightened.  We did not know what to do.

“After about an hour and a half he came and said some one was asking for us.  We looked out.  It was Miss Violet Pike.  A boy I knew had seen us go into the prison with the Italian, and not come out, and so he thought something was wrong and he had gone to the League and told them.

“So Miss Pike had come from the League; and she bailed us out; and she came back with us on the next day for our trial.”

On the next morning the case against the tall Italian was rapidly examined, and the Italian discharged.  He was then summoned back in rebuttal, and Natalya and Anna’s case was called.  Four witnesses, one of them being the proprietor of the factory, were produced against them, and stated that Natalya and Anna had struck one of the girls the Italian was escorting.  At the close of the case against Natalya and Anna, Judge Cornell said:[17] “I find the girls guilty.  It would be perfectly futile for me to fine them.  Some charitable women would pay their fines or they could get a bond.  I am going to commit them to the workhouse under the Cumulative Sentence Act, and there they will have an opportunity of thinking over what they have done.”

“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.