The Brothers KaramazovMussyalovitch, 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