And now he felt somebody pull the skirt of his coat. "It is time," said the Tartar. They went across the church without any one paying attention to them, and came out on the square which was in front of it. The dawn had long ago spread its rosy tint over the sky; everything showed that the sun was about to rise. There was nobody in the square; in the middle of it remained some tables, which showed that, not longer than perhaps a week before, there had here been a market of victuals. As pavements were not used in those times, the ground was nothing but dried mud. The square was surrounded by small stone and clay houses, one story high, with walls, in which might be seen from top to bottom, the wooden piles and pillars, across which projected the wooden beams: houses such as used to be built then, may till now be seen in some towns of Lithuania and Poland. Almost all of them were covered by disproportionately high roofs, pierced all over with numbers of dormer windows. On one side, almost next to the church, rising above the other buildings, was an edifice quite distinct from the others, which seemed to be the town-hall of the city, or some other public establishment. It was two stories high, and above it rose a two-arched belvidere, where stood a sentry; a large sun-dial was fixed in the roof. The square seemed dead; but Andrew thought he heard a faint moaning. Looking on the other side, he saw a group of two or three men, who were lying quite motionless on the ground. He looked more attentively, to see if they were asleep or dead, and at the same time his foot stumbled against something which lay in his way. It was the corpse of a woman, who seemed to have been a Jewess. Her figure bespoke her to have been still young, though the macerated disfigured outlines of her face did not show it. Her head was covered with a red silk handkerchief; a double row of pearls or beads adorned the coverings of her ears;[29] two or three curling locks fell from under them on her shrivelled neck, on which the tightly drawn veins showed like sinews. Beside her lay a child, whose hand convulsively grasped her lank breast and twisted it with his fingers, in vain anger at finding there no milk. The child had ceased weeping and crying, and the slow heaving of its chest alone showed that it was not yet dead or, at least, that its last breath was yet to be drawn. Andrew and his companion turned into a street, and were suddenly stopped by a frantic man, who, seeing the precious burthen of Andrew, flew at him like a tiger and grasped him in his arms, shrieking aloud for bread; but his strength was not equal to his frenzy. Andrew shook off his grasp, and he fell on the ground. Moved by compassion, he threw him a loaf; the other darted like a mad dog upon it, gnawed and bit it, and, at the same moment and on the very spot, died in horrible convulsions from long disuse of taking food. Almost at every step they were shocked by the sight of hideous victims of hunger.