Tall, lean, cadaverous, dressed in a much-
worn day suit, his cap under his arm, Constantine stonily listened to
Vilyashev's terse account of their sister's last moments.
"She died peacefully," the young man told his brother, "and she was
quite calm to the end, for she believed in God. But she could not rid
herself of memories of the past. How could she when the present shows
such an awful contrast? Famine, scurvy, typhus, sorrow brood over the
countryside. Our old home is the hands of strangers: we ourselves are
outcasts living in a peasant's cabin. Imagine what this meant to a
delicately nurtured woman! Men are wild beasts, brother."
"There were three of us," Constantine said with quiet bitterness--
"you, Natalia, and myself. It is ended! I travelled here in a cattle-
truck, walking from the station on foot--and was too late for the
funeral."
"She was buried yesterday. She knew from the first she was dying, and
would not stir a step from here."
"Poor girl," sighed Constantine. "She had lived here all her life."
He left abruptly without a word of farewell, and they did not meet
again until the next evening: both had spent the day wandering about
the valleys.
At dawn the following morning Vilyashev ascended a steep hill; on the
flat summit of a tumulus that crowned it he observed an eagle tearing
a pigeon to pieces.
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