said,
'protect the orphans, for you knew my late husband, Semyon Zaharovitch,
and on the very day of his death the basest of scoundrels slandered his
only daughter.'... That policeman again! Protect me," she cried to the
official. "Why is that policeman edging up to me? We have only just run
away from one of them. What do you want, fool?"

"It's forbidden in the streets. You mustn't make a disturbance."

"It's you're making a disturbance. It's just the same as if I were
grinding an organ. What business is it of yours?"

"You have to get a licence for an organ, and you haven't got one, and in
that way you collect a crowd. Where do you lodge?"

"What, a license?" wailed Katerina Ivanovna. "I buried my husband
to-day. What need of a license?"

"Calm yourself, madam, calm yourself," began the official. "Come along;
I will escort you.... This is no place for you in the crowd. You are
ill."

"Honoured sir, honoured sir, you don't know," screamed Katerina
Ivanovna. "We are going to the Nevsky.... Sonia, Sonia! Where is she?
She is crying too! What's the matter with you all? Kolya, Lida, where
are you going?" she cried suddenly in alarm. "Oh, silly children! Kolya,
Lida, where are they off to?..."

Kolya and Lida, scared out of their wits by the crowd, and their
mother's mad pranks, suddenly seized each other by the hand, and ran off
at the sight of the policeman who wanted to take them away somewhere.
Weeping and wailing, poor Katerina Ivanovna ran after them. She was
a piteous and unseemly spectacle, as she ran, weeping and panting for
breath. Sonia and Polenka rushed after them.

"Bring them back, bring them back, Sonia! Oh stupid, ungrateful
children!... Polenka! catch them.... It's for your sakes I..."

She stumbled as she ran and fell down.

"She's cut herself, she's bleeding! Oh, dear!" cried Sonia, bending over
her.

All ran up and crowded around. Raskolnikov and Lebeziatnikov were the
first at her side, the official too hastened up, and behind him the
policeman who muttered, "Bother!" with a gesture of impatience, feeling
that the job was going to be a troublesome one.

"Pass on! Pass on!" he said to the crowd that pressed forward.

"She's dying," someone shouted.

"She's gone out of her mind," said another.

"Lord have mercy upon us," said a woman, crossing herself. "Have they
caught the little girl and the boy? They're being brought back, the
elder one's got them.... Ah, the naughty imps!"

When