It seemed that many could not endure their sufferings in their houses, and had run out into the streets, as if in hope to find something strengthening in the open air. At the doorway of a house sat an old woman, and one could not tell whether she were dead, asleep, or swooning; at least, she neither heard nor saw anything, but, with her head bent down over her chest, sat motionless on the same spot. From the roof of another house there was hanging from a rope a stretched and dried corpse. The miserable man had not been able to endure to the last the sufferings of hunger, and had chosen rather to quicken his end by voluntary suicide. At seeing such horrifying evidences of the famine, Andrew could not refrain from asking the Tartar, "Had they, indeed, found nothing to lengthen their lives? When man comes to the last extremity, when nothing more remains, well, then he must feed upon what, till then, had appeared disgusting to him; he may even feed upon animals forbidden by the law--everything is then to be used for food." "All is eaten up," answered the Tartar; "thou wilt not find a horse, a dog--no, not even a mouse left in the town. We never kept any provisions in town; everything was brought from the country." "How, then, dying such fearful deaths, can they think of defending the town?" "May be the voevoda would have surrendered it; but yesterday the colonel who garrisons Boodjiang sent a hawk into the town with a note saying not to surrender, as he is coming with his regiment to relieve it, and is only waiting for another colonel that they may come together. Now, we are expecting them every minute--but here we have reached the house."