ood round him bargaining over the journey of twelve
versts to Tchermashnya. He told them to harness the horses. He went into
the station house, looked round, glanced at the overseer's wife, and
suddenly went back to the entrance.

"I won't go to Tchermashnya. Am I too late to reach the railway by seven,
brothers?"

"We shall just do it. Shall we get the carriage out?"

"At once. Will any one of you be going to the town to-morrow?"

"To be sure. Mitri here will."

"Can you do me a service, Mitri? Go to my father's, to Fyodor Pavlovitch
Karamazov, and tell him I haven't gone to Tchermashnya. Can you?"

"Of course I can. I've known Fyodor Pavlovitch a long time."

"And here's something for you, for I dare say he won't give you anything,"
said Ivan, laughing gayly.

"You may depend on it he won't." Mitya laughed too. "Thank you, sir. I'll
be sure to do it."

At seven o'clock Ivan got into the train and set off to Moscow "Away with
the past. I've done with the old world for ever, and may I have no news,
no echo, from it. To a new life, new places and no looking back!" But
instead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his heart
ached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life before. He was
thinking all the night. The train flew on, and only at daybreak, when he
was approaching Moscow, he suddenly roused himself from his meditation.

"I am a scoundrel," he whispered to himself.

Fyodor Pavlovitch remained well satisfied at having seen his son off. For
two hours afterwards he felt almost happy, and sat drinking brandy. But
suddenly something happened which was very annoying and unpleasant for
every one in the house, and completely upset Fyodor Pavlovitch's
equanimity at once. Smerdyakov went to the cellar for something and fell
down from the top of the steps. Fortunately, Marfa Ignatyevna was in the
yard and heard him in time. She did not see the fall, but heard his
scream--the strange, peculiar scream, long familiar to her--the scream of
the epileptic falling in a fit. They could not tell whether the fit had
come on him at the moment he was descending the steps, so that he must
have fallen unconscious, or whether it was the fall and the shock that had
caused the fit in Smerdyakov, who was known to be liable to them. They
found him at the bottom of the cellar steps, writhing in convulsions and
foaming at the mouth. It was thought at first that he must have broken
something--an arm or a leg--