ated features.
Upon her head was a red silk kerchief; two rows of pearls or pearl beads
adorned the beads of her head-dress, from beneath which two long curls
hung down upon her shrivelled neck, with its tightly drawn veins. Beside
her lay a child, grasping convulsively at her shrunken breast, and
squeezing it with involuntary ferocity at finding no milk there. He
neither wept nor screamed, and only his gently rising and falling body
would have led one to guess that he was not dead, or at least on
the point of breathing his last. They turned into a street, and were
suddenly stopped by a madman, who, catching sight of Andrii's precious
burden, sprang upon him like a tiger, and clutched him, yelling,
"Bread!" But his strength was not equal to his madness. Andrii repulsed
him and he fell to the ground. Moved with pity, the young Cossack flung
him a loaf, which he seized like a mad dog, gnawing and biting it; but
nevertheless he shortly expired in horrible suffering, there in the
street, from the effect of long abstinence. The ghastly victims of
hunger startled them at every step. Many, apparently unable to endure
their torments in their houses, seemed to run into the streets to see
whether some nourishing power might not possibly descend from the air.
At the gate of one house sat an old woman, and it was impossible to say
whether she was asleep or dead, or only unconscious; at all events, she
no longer saw or heard anything, and sat immovable in one spot, her head
drooping on her breast. From the roof of another house hung a worn
and wasted body in a rope noose. The poor fellow could not endure the
tortures of hunger to the last, and had preferred to hasten his end by a
voluntary death.

At the sight of such terrible proofs of famine, Andrii could not refrain
from saying to the Tatar, "Is there really nothing with which they can
prolong life? If a man is driven to extremities, he must feed on what he
has hitherto despised; he can sustain himself with creatures which are
forbidden by the law. Anything can be eaten under such circumstances."

"They have eaten everything," said the Tatar, "all the animals. Not a
horse, nor a dog, nor even a mouse is to be found in the whole city.
We never had any store of provisions in the town: they were all brought
from the villages."

"But how can you, while dying such a fearful death, still dream of
defending the city?"

"Possibly the Waiwode might have surrendered; but yesterday morn