armed policemen conducted me to their chief. He was similarly armed with sword and pistol, and he was engaged in taking some measures with regard to a tattered, trembling old man, who was standing before him, and who could not answer the questions put to him, on account of his feebleness. Having finished his business with the old man, he turned to me. I inquired about the girl of the night before. At first he listened to me attentively, but afterwards he began to smile, at my ignorance of the regulations, in consequence of which she had been taken to the station-house; and particularly at my surprise at her youth.
"Why, there are plenty of them of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen years of age," he said cheerfully.
But in answer to my question about the girl whom I had seen on the preceding evening, he explained to me that she must have been sent to the committee (so it appeared). To my question where she had passed the night, he replied in an undecided manner. He did not recall the one to whom I referred. There were so many of them every day.
In No. 32 of the Rzhanoff house I found the sacristan already reading prayers over the dead woman. They had taken her to the bunk which she had formerly occupied; and the lodgers, all miserable beings, had collected money for the masses for her soul, a coffin and a shroud, and the old women had dressed her and laid her out. The sacristan was reading something in the gloom; a woman in a long wadded cloak was standing there with a wax candle; and a man (a gentleman, I must state) in a clean coat with a lamb's-skin collar, polished overshoes, and a starched shirt, was holding one like it. This was her brother. They had hunted him up.
