"I dropped it there."
"Where was it, exactly?"
"In the market-place, in the market-place!
The devil knows whereabouts.
What do you want to know for?"
"That's extremely important, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. It would be material evidence in your favour. How is it you don't understand that?
Who helped you to sew it up a month ago?"
"No one helped me. I did it myself."
"Can you sew?"
"A soldier has to know how to sew. No knowledge was needed to do that."
"Where did you get the material, that is, the rag in which you sewed the money?"
"Are you laughing at me?"
"Not at all. And we are in no mood for laughing, Dmitri Fyodorovitch."
"I don't know where I got the rag from- somewhere, I suppose."
"I should have thought you couldn't have forgotten it?"
"Upon my word, I don't remember. I might have torn a bit off my linen."
"That's very interesting. We might find in your lodgings to-morrow the shirt or whatever it is from which you tore the rag.
What sort of rag was it, cloth or linen?"
"Goodness only knows what it was.
Wait a bit... I believe I didn't tear it off anything.
It was a bit of calico.... I believe I sewed it up in a cap of my landlady's."
"In your landlady's cap?"
"Yes. I took it from her."
"How did you get it?"
"You see, I remember once taking a cap for a rag, perhaps to wipe my pen on.
I took it without asking, because it was a worthless rag. I tore it up, and I took the notes and sewed them up in it. I believe it was in that very rag I sewed them.
An old piece of calico, washed a thousand times."
"And you remember that for certain now?"
"I don't know whether for certain.
I think it was in the cap.
But, hang it, what does it matter?"
"In that case your landlady will remember that the thing was lost?"
"No, she won't, she didn't miss it.
It was an old rag, I tell you, an old rag not worth a farthing."
"And where did you get the needle and thread?"
"I'll stop now. I won't say any more.
Enough of it!" said Mitya, losing his temper at last.
"It's strange that you should have so completely forgotten where you threw the pieces in the market-place."
"Give orders for the market-place to be swept to-morrow, and perhaps you'll find it," said Mitya sneering. "Enough, gentlemen, enough!" he decided, in an exhausted voice. "I see you don't believe me!
Not for a moment!
It's my fault, not yours. I ought not to have been so ready.
Why, why did I degrade myself by confessing my secret to you? it's a joke to you. I see that from your eyes.
You led me on to it, prosecutor!
Sing a hymn of triumph if you can.... Damn you, you torturers!"
He bent his head, and hid his face in his hands.
The lawyers were silent.
A minute later he raised his head and looked at them almost vacantly.
His face now expressed complete, hopeless despair, and he sat mute and passive as though hardly conscious of what was happening.
In the meantime they had to finish what they were about. They had immediately to begin examining the witnesses.
It was by now eight o'clock in the morning.