She stopped and looked at the bushes, and I called to her again. “Who’s that?” she said. I jumped out to greet her, and she fairly gasped with surprise. I looked round – there was no one either behind us or ahead of us. “Will they catch up with us?” I asked her. “We’d better run, quickly!” But she just stood there as if she were frozen, and only her lips trembled. I took a look at her: her dress had been ripped to tatters, her arms were covered in scratches, right up to the elbows, and her forehead was also covered in scratches that looked as if they had been made by fingernails. “Let’s be off,” I said to her again. “Did they try to strangle you?” I asked her. “Yes, they did,” she said. “Let’s get out of here quickly.” And off we went. “How did you manage to shake them off?” I asked her. But she wouldn’t say anything more until we reached the village, where we met Mother Alyona.’

‘Well, and what did she say when you arrived?’ Nevstruyev asked. Like the others, he had preserved a deathly silence during the entirety of this narrative.

‘All she would say was that they’d gone chasing after her, but that she’d kept praying and had thrown sand in their eyes.’

‘And they didn’t take anything from her?’ someone asked.

‘Not a thing. She only lost one of her shoes, and the amulet from around her neck. She said they kept looking to see if she had any money concealed in her bosom.’

‘Oh yes, some brigands those were: all they cared about was getting at her bosom,’ Nevstruyev said, following this remark by telling a story about some higher-class brigands who had given him a nasty scare in the district of Oboyansk. ‘Now those,’ he said, ‘were real brigands.’

‘I was once walking back from the fair at Korennaya,’ he began. ‘I’d gone there to fulfil a vow in connection with a toothache. All the money I had with me was a couple of roubles and a travelling-bag containing my shirts. En route I fell in with two chaps who said they were … tradesmen. “Where are you headed for?” they asked me. “For So-and-So,” I said. “Oh,” they said. “We’re going to So-and-So, too. Let’s travel together.” “All right,” I said. And off we went. We arrived at a village; it was already getting dark. “Come on,” I said to them. “Let’s sleep the night here.” But they said: “This is a terrible place; let’s walk another few versts: there’s an inn further up the road, a big one, with all the conveniences.” “I don’t want your conveniences,” I told them. “Come on,” they said, “it’s not as if it was very far.” Well, on we went.