ts, however.

In the first place, rods were brought on the scene with strange
rapidity; they had evidently been got ready beforehand in expectation
by the intelligent chief of the police. Not more than two, or at most
three, were actually flogged, however; that fact I wish to lay stress
on. It's an absolute fabrication to say that the whole crowd of rioters,
or at least half of them, were punished. It is a nonsensical story,
too, that a poor but respectable lady was caught as she passed by
and promptly thrashed; yet I read myself an account of this incident
afterwards among the provincial items of a Petersburg newspaper. Many
people in the town talked of an old woman called Avdotya Petrovna
Tarapygin who lived in the almshouse by the cemetery. She was said,
on her way home from visiting a friend, to have forced her way into the
crowd of spectators through natural curiosity. Seeing what was going on,
she cried out, "What a shame!" and spat on the ground. For this it was
said she had been seized and flogged too. This story not only appeared
in print, but in our excitement we positively got up a subscription for
her benefit. I subscribed twenty kopecks myself. And would you believe
it? It appears now that there was no old woman called Tarapygin living
in the almshouse at all! I went to inquire at the almshouse by the
cemetery myself; they had never heard of anyone called Tarapygin there,
and, what's more, they were quite offended when I told them the story
that was going round. I mention this fabulous Avdotya Petrovna because
what happened to her (if she really had existed) very nearly happened
to Stepan Trofimovitch. Possibly, indeed, his adventure may have been at
the bottom of the ridiculous tale about the old woman, that is, as the
gossip went on growing he was transformed into this old dame.

What I find most difficult to understand is how he came to slip away
from me as soon as he got into the square. As I had a misgiving of
something very unpleasant, I wanted to take him round the square
straight to the entrance to the governor's, but my own curiosity was
roused, and I stopped only for one minute to question the first person
I came across, and suddenly I looked round and found Stepan Trofimovitch
no longer at my side. Instinctively I darted off to look for him in the
most dangerous place; something made me feel that his sledge, too, was
flying downhill. And I did, as a fact, find him in the very centre of
things. I