After a while--we saw Tanya returning. Her eyes--yes, _her_ eyes, actually sparkled with joy and happiness, and her lips--were smiling. And she was walking as if in a dream, rocking a little to and fro, with uncertain footsteps.... We could not endure this calmly. The whole lot of us suddenly burst through the door, rushed into the yard, and hissed and yelled at her with evil, bestial violence. On perceiving us she trembled--and stood as if rooted in the mud beneath her feet. We surrounded her and, maliciously, without any circumlocution, we reviled her to our hearts' content, and called her the most shameful things. We did not raise our voices, we took our time about it. We saw that she had nowhere to go, that she was in the midst of us, and we might vent our rage upon her as much as we liked. I don't know why, but we did not beat her. She stood in the midst of us, and kept turning her head now hither, now thither, as she listened to our insults. And we--bespattered her, more and more violently, with the mud and the venom of our words. The colour quitted her face, her blue eyes, a minute before so radiant with happiness, opened widely, her bosom heaved heavily, and her lips trembled. And we, surrounding her, revenged ourselves upon her, for she had robbed us. She had belonged to us, we had expended our best upon her, and although that best was but a beggar's crumb, yet we were six-and-twenty and she was but one, therefore we could not devise torments worthy of her fault. How we did abuse her! She was silent all along--all along she looked at us with the wild eyes of a hunted beast, she was all of a tremble. We ridiculed, we reviled, we baited her.... Other people came running up to us.... One of us plucked Tanya by the sleeve. Suddenly her eyes sparkled, she leisurely raised her hands to her head and, tidying her hair, looked straight into our faces, and cried loudly but calmly: "Ugh! you wretched prisoners!" And she walked straight up to us, walked as simply as if we were not standing there before her at all, as if we were not obstructing her way. And for that very reason not one of us was actually standing in her way when she came up to us. And proceeding out of our midst and, without so much as turning towards us, loudly, and with indescribable contempt, she kept on saying: "Ugh! you wretches! you vermin!" And--off she went. We remained standing in the yard, in the midst of the mud, beneath the pouring rain and the grey, sunless sky. Presently we returned in silence to our grey, stony dungeon. As before, the sun never once looked through our window, and--there was no Tanya now. III.--ONE AUTUMN NIGHT. Once in the autumn I happened to be in a very unpleasant and inconvenient position. In the town where I had just arrived and where I knew not a soul, I found myself without a farthing in my pocket and without a night's lodging.