Book 3 Chapter 2 An Incident of the March

This is what Mary Pavlovna and Katusha saw when they came up to
the scene whence the noise proceeded. The officer, a sturdy
fellow, with fair moustaches, stood uttering words of foul and
coarse abuse, and rubbing with his left the palm of his right
hand, which he had hurt in hitting a prisoner on the face. In
front of him a thin, tall convict, with half his head shaved and
dressed in a cloak too short for him and trousers much too short,
stood wiping his bleeding face with one hand, and holding a
little shrieking girl wrapped in a shawl with the other.

"I'll give it you" (foul abuse); "I'll teach you to reason" (more
abuse); "you're to give her to the women!" shouted the officer.
"Now, then, on with them."

The convict, who was exiled by the Commune, had been carrying his
little daughter all the way from Tomsk, where his wife had died
of typhus, and now the officer ordered him to be manacled. The
exile's explanation that he could not carry the child if he was
manacled irritated the officer, who happened to be in a bad
temper, and he gave the troublesome prisoner a beating. [A fact
described by Lineff in his "Transportation".] Before the injured
convict stood a convoy soldier, and a black-bearded prisoner with
manacles on one hand and a look of gloom on his face, which he
turned now to the officer, now to the prisoner with the little
girl.

The officer repeated his orders for the soldiers to take away the
girl. The murmur among the prisoners grew louder.