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‘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.’
The boy waited for him without budging. Coming up to
him, Alyosha saw facing him a child of about nine years
old. He was an undersized weakly boy with a thin pale
face, with large dark eyes that gazed at him vindictively.
He was dressed in a rather shabby old overcoat, which he
had monstrously outgrown. His bare arms stuck out be-
yond his sleeves. There was a large patch on the right knee
of his trousers, and in his right boot just at the toe there
was a big hole in the leather, carefully blackened with ink.
Both the pockets of his greatcoat were weighed down with
stones. Alyosha stopped two steps in front of him, looking
inquiringly at him, The boy, seeing at once from Alyosha’s
eyes that he wouldn’t beat him, became less defiant, and ad-
dressed him first.
‘I am alone, and there are six of them. I’ll beat them all,
alone!’ he said suddenly, with flashing eyes.
‘I think one of the stones must have hurt you badly,’ ob-
served Alyosha.