Some carrots were falling out of a hole in the basket on the woman's left arm.
She was weeping and moaning as she staggered along, hugging the wall.
A well-dressed man rushed out of a doorway, crossed himself feverishly and shouted:
'Jesus Christ!
Volodya, Volodya!
Petlyura's coming!'
At the end of Lubochitskaya Street there were signs of more life as people scurried to and fro and disappeared indoors.
Crazed with fear, a man in a black overcoat hammered at a gateway, thrust his stick between the bars and broke it with a violent crack.
Meanwhile time was flying by and twilight had already come. As Nikolka turned off Lubochitskaya Street and down Volsky Hill the electric street lamp on the corner was turned on and began to burn with a very faint hiss.
The shutters clanged down on a shop-front, instantly hiding piles of gaily-colored cartons of soap powder.
Turning the corner, a cabman overturned his sleigh into a snowdrift and lashed furiously at his miserable horse.
Nikolka dashed past a four-storey apartment block with three walk-up entrances, in all three of which the doors were being constantly slammed as residents hustled inside. One of them, in a sealskin fur collar, ran out in front of Nikolka and yelled at the janitor:
'Ivan!
Have you gone crazy?
Shut the doors!
Shut the front doors, man!'
One of the huge doors slammed shut and a piercing woman's voice could be heard on the darkened staircase shrieking:
'Petlyura!
Petlyura's coming!'
The farther Nikolka ran towards the haven of Podol, as Nai-Turs had told him to, the greater became the bustle and confusion on the street, although there was less of a sense of fear and not everyone was going the same way as Nikolka. Some were even heading in the opposite direction.
At the very top of the hill leading down to Podol, there stepped out of the doorway of a gray stone building a solemn-looking young cadet wearing an army greatcoat and white shoulder-straps embroidered with a gold badge.
The cadet had a snub nose the size of a button.
Glancing boldly around him, he gripped the sling of a huge rifle slung across his back.
Passers-by scurried by glancing up in terror at this armed cadet, and hurried on.
As he stepped down on to the sidewalk the cadet stopped, cocked an ear to listen to the firing with the knowing look as of a trained military man, stuck his nose in the air and was about to stride off.
Nikolka swerved aside sharply, planted himself across the sidewalk, pressed close to the cadet and said in a whisper:
'Get rid of that rifle and hide at once.'
The little cadet shuddered with fright and took a step back, but then took a more threatening grip on his rifle.
With the ease born of experience Nikolka gently but firmly edged the boy backward, pushed him into a doorway and went on urgently:
'Hide, I tell you.
I'm a cadet-officer.
It's all up.
Petlyura's taken the City.'
'What d'you mean - how can he have taken the City?' asked the cadet. His mouth hung open, showing a gap where a tooth was missing on the left side of his lower jaw.
'That's how', Nikolka answered, with a sweep of his arm in the direction of the Upper City, adding: 'D'you hear?
Petlyura's cavalry are in the streets up there.
I only just got away.
Run home, hide that rifle and warn everybody.'
Dumbstruck, the cadet froze to the spot. There Nikolka left him, having no time to waste on people who were so dense.
In Podol there was less alarm, but considerable bustle and activity.
Passers-by quickened their pace, often turning their heads to listen, whilst cooks and servant girls were frequently to be seen running indoors, hastily wrapping themselves in shawls.
An unbroken drumming of machine-gun fire could now be heard coming from the Upper City, but on that twilit December 14th there was no more artillery fire to be heard from near or far.
Nikolka had a long way to go.
As he crossed through Podol the twilight deepened and enveloped the frostbound streets. Swirling in the pools of light from the street-lamps, a heavy fall of snow began to muffle the sound of anxious, hurrying footsteps.
Occasional lights twinkled through the fine network of snowflakes, a few shops and stores were still gaily lit, though many were closed and shuttered.
The snowfall grew thicker.
As Nikolka reached the bottom of his own street, the steep St Alexei's Hill, and started to climb up it, he noticed an incongruous scene outside the the doorway of No. 7: two little boys in gray knitted sweaters and woolen caps had just ridden down the hill on a sled.
One of them, short and round as a rubber ball, covered with snow, was sitting on the sled and laughing.
The other, who was older, thinner and serious-looking, was unravelling a knot in the rope.
A youth was standing in the doorway and picking his nose.