must
be on the high road. He did not know where to take the train either; he
vaguely determined to take it at the second or third big station from
the town, and to make his way there on foot, if necessary. In that way,
instinctively and mechanically he busied himself in his packing with a
perfect whirl of ideas in his head--and suddenly stopped short, gave it
all up, and with a deep groan stretched himself on the sofa.

He felt clearly, and suddenly realised that he might escape, but that
he was by now utterly incapable of deciding whether he ought to make off
_before or after_ Shatov's death; that he was simply a lifeless body, a
crude inert mass; that he was being moved by an awful outside power; and
that, though he had a passport to go abroad, that though he could run
away from Shatov (otherwise what need was there of such haste?), yet he
would run away, not from Shatov, not before his murder, but _after_ it,
and that that was determined, signed, and sealed.

In insufferable distress, trembling every instant and wondering at
himself, alternately groaning aloud and numb with terror, he managed to
exist till eleven o'clock next morning locked in and lying on the sofa;
then came the shock he was awaiting, and it at once determined him. When
he unlocked his door and went out to his household at eleven o'clock
they told him that the runaway convict and brigand, Fedka, who was a
terror to every one, who had pillaged churches and only lately been
guilty of murder and arson, who was being pursued and could not be
captured by our police, had been found at daybreak murdered, five miles
from the town, at a turning off the high road, and that the whole town
was talking of it already. He rushed headlong out of the house at once
to find out further details, and learned, to begin with, that Fedka, who
had been found with his skull broken, had apparently been robbed and,
secondly, that the police already had strong suspicion and even good
grounds for believing that the murderer was one of the Shpigulin men
called Fomka, the very one who had been his accomplice in murdering the
Lebyadkins and setting fire to their house, and that there had been a
quarrel between them on the road about a large sum of money stolen from
Lebyadkin, which Fedka was supposed to have hidden. Liputin ran to Pyotr
Stepanovitch's lodgings and succeeded in learning at the back door, on
the sly, that though Pyotr Stepanovitch had not returned home till about
o