Page 849 - the-brothers-karamazov
P. 849

Mussyalovitch, and had offered him three thousand roubles
           to resign his claims, seven hundred roubles down, and the
           remaining two thousand three hundred ‘to be paid next day
           in the town.’ He had sworn at the time that he had not the
           whole sum with him at Mokroe, but that his money was in
           the town. Mitya observed hotly that he had not said that
           he would be sure to pay him the remainder next day in the
           town.  But  Pan  Vrublevsky  confirmed  the  statement,  and
           Mitya,  after  thinking  for  a  moment  admitted,  frowning,
           that it must have been as the Poles stated, that he had been
            excited at the time, and might indeed have said so.
              The prosecutor positively pounced on this piece of evi-
            dence. It seemed to establish for the prosecution (and they
            did, in fact, base this deduction on it) that half, or a part of,
           the three thousand that had come into Mitya’s hands might
           really have been left somewhere hidden in the town, or even,
           perhaps, somewhere here, in Mokroe. This would explain
           the circumstance, so baffling for the prosecution, that only
            eight hundred roubles were to be found in Mitya’s hands.
           This circumstance had been the one piece of evidence which,
           insignificant as it was, had hitherto told, to some extent, in
           Mitya’s favour. Now this one piece of evidence in his favour
           had  broken  down.  In  answer  to  the  prosecutor’s  inquiry,
           where he would have got the remaining two thousand three
           hundred roubles, since he himself had denied having more
           than fifteen hundred, Mitya confidently replied that he had
           meant to offer the ‘little chap,’ not money, but a formal deed
            of conveyance of his rights to the village of Tchermashnya,
           those rights which he had already offered to Samsonov and

                                           The Brothers Karamazov
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