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rible hours of interrogation, so that he was utterly unable to
tear himself away from them and dismiss them, as things
that had nothing to do with his position. On Mitya’s left
side, in the place where Maximov had been sitting at the be-
ginning of the evening, the prosecutor was now seated, and
on Mitya’s right hand, where Grushenka had been, was a
rosy-cheeked young man in a sort of shabby hunting-jacket,
with ink and paper before him. This was the secretary of the
investigating lawyer, who had brought him with him. The
police captain was now standing by the window at the other
end of the room, beside Kalganov, who was sitting there.
‘Drink some water,’ said the investigating lawyer softly,
for the tenth time.
‘I have drunk it, gentlemen, I have... but come gentlemen,
crush me, punish me, decide my fate!’ cried Mitya, staring
with terribly fixed wide-open eyes at the investigating law-
yer.
‘So you positively declare that you are not guilty of the
death of your father, Fyodor Pavlovitch?’ asked the investi-
gating lawyer, softly but insistently.
‘I am not guilty. I am guilty of the blood of another old
man, but not of my father’s. And I weep for it! I killed, I
killed the old man and knocked him down.... But it’s hard
to have to answer for that murder with another, a terrible
murder of which I am not guilty....It’s a terrible accusation,
gentlemen, a knockdown blow. But who has killed my father,
who has killed him? Who can have killed him if I didn’t? It’s
marvellous, extraordinary, impossible.’
‘Yes, who can have killed him?’ the investigating law-