The fence had been quickly erected around the mound. It had been assembled from four iron pillars and openwork metal grid, tied onto them. Now Budulai could see in one glance everything that had been done by his young friend. And suddenly, for a moment, it seemed to Budulai that these iron horses with flowing manes, forged into bars on four sides, were about to take off and carry the fence with the grave across the autumn steppe, as they once carried the wagon with his Galya... While Vanya was sent home, Budulai himself stayed in the steppe alone with the memories of what was most precious in his past life. Now all of this was behind him, like his past semi-wild life itself, with its nomadic caravans across the steppe, with tents and burning bonfires, stinking with smoke. Perhaps the thing that could remind him of her the most today was the grey ribbon of road that, while bending around the rustling gold of a cornfield, went past a fenced-in mound of earth towards the misty line of the late afternoon horizon. He descended from the steppe to the khutor just before dusk. Three or four people made way for him and followed him with surprised glances, because he did not seem to recognize anyone and, what was unusual of him, did not want to greet anyone. The women were especially resentful, since they had already managed to convince their husbands by now that there was no other equally polite, cultured man in the entire village. Now these women had to look for explanations in response to their husbands’ sarcastic questions about what kind of wasp had bitten their beautiful gypsy man today. He neither recognized the people he knew, nor, apparently, could make out the road in front of him - what else could explain that he suddenly turned away sharply from the street along which he always returned home, and walked behind the khutor, straight through a remote, weedy wasteland between outlying houses and vineyards?