Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 11 them presents of twenty-five roubles each, at least, he didn’t
give them less. And what a lot of money was simply stolen
from him! And if anyone did steal, he did not leave a re-
ceipt. How could one catch the thief when he was flinging
his money away all the time? Our peasants are robbers, you
know; they have no care for their souls. And the way he
went on with the girls, our village girls! They’re completely
set up since then, I tell you, they used to be poor.’ He re-
called, in fact, every item of expense and added it all up. So
the theory that only fifteen hundred had been spent and the
rest had been put aside in a little bag seemed inconceivable.
‘I saw three thousand as clear as a penny in his hands, I
saw it with my own eyes; I should think I ought to know
how to reckon money,’ cried Trifon Borissovitch, doing his
best to satisfy ‘his betters.’
When Fetyukovitch had to cross-examine him, he
scarcely tried to refute his evidence, but began asking him
about an incident at the first carousal at Mokroe, a month
before the arrest, when Timofey and another peasant called
Akim had picked up on the floor in the passage a hundred
roubles dropped by Mitya when he was drunk, and had giv-
en them to Trifon Borissovitch and received a rouble each
from him for doing so. ‘Well,’ asked the lawyer,’ did you
give that hundred roubles back to Mr. Karamazov?’ Tri-
fon Borissovitch shuffled in vain.... He was obliged, after
the peasants had been examined, to admit the finding of
the hundred roubles, only adding that he had religiously
returned it all to Dmitri Fyodorovitch ‘in perfect honesty,
and it’s only because his honour was in liquor at the time,