“He aimed it at you, he meant it for you. You are Karamazov, Karamazov!” the boys shouted, laughing. “Come, all throw at him at once!” and six stones flew at the boy. One struck the boy on the head and he fell down, but at once leapt up and began ferociously returning their fire. Both sides threw stones incessantly. Many of the group had their pockets full too. “What are you about! Aren’t you ashamed? Six against one! Why, you’ll kill him,” cried Alyosha. He ran forward and met the flying stones to screen the solitary boy. Three or four ceased throwing for a minute. “He began first!” cried a boy in a red shirt in an angry childish voice. “He is a beast, he stabbed Krassotkin in class the other day with a penknife. It bled. Krassotkin wouldn’t tell tales, but he must be thrashed.” “But what for? I suppose you tease him.” “There, he sent a stone in your back again, he knows you,” cried the children. “It’s you he is throwing at now, not us. Come, all of you, at him again, don’t miss, Smurov!” and again a fire of stones, and a very vicious one, began. The boy the other side of the ditch was hit in the chest; he screamed, began to cry and ran away uphill towards Mihailovsky Street. They all shouted: “Aha, he is funking, he is running away. Wisp of tow!” “You don’t know what a beast he is, Karamazov, killing is too good for him,” said the boy in the jacket, with flashing eyes. He seemed to be the eldest. “What’s wrong with him?” asked Alyosha, “is he a tell-tale or what?” The boys looked at one another as though derisively. “Are you going that way, to Mihailovsky?” the same boy went on. “Catch him up.... You see he’s stopped again, he is waiting and looking at you.” “He is looking at you,” the other boys chimed in. “You ask him, does he like a disheveled wisp of tow. Do you hear, ask him that!” There was a general burst of laughter. Alyosha looked at them, and they at him. “Don’t go near him, he’ll hurt you,” cried Smurov in a warning voice. “I shan’t ask him about the wisp of tow, for I expect you tease him with that question somehow. But I’ll find out from him why you hate him so.” “Find out then, find out,” cried the boys, laughing. Alyosha crossed the bridge and walked uphill by the fence, straight towards the boy. “You’d better look out,” the boys called after him; “he won’t be afraid of you. He will stab you in a minute, on the sly, as he did Krassotkin.”