He was sullen, shy, tameless, timid, like a young animal from the pine woods. The old woman took her hands off his shoulders.
'I have delivered the jewel to the lord that owns it. I have done Sacha's will.'
Then she turned herself round and covered her face, and went towards her home.
The child stood, half-fierce, half-fearful, like a dog which an old master drives away, and which fears the new one.
'These jewels are as many as the sands of the sea, and as worthless,' said Paul Zabaroff with a slight smile.
Nevertheless, he resolved, since Maritza spoke truth, that the boy should be cared for and well taught, and have all that gold could get for him, and be sent away out from Russia; for in Russia he was a serf.
The boy's hair hung over his eyes, which were hungrily watching the dark lean figure of the woman as it went away through the tall corn to the white wood hut that stood alone in the fields. He dimly understood that his life was being changed for him, but how he knew not. He wanted to go home with Maritza to his nest of moss, where his bear-cubs slept with him by night and played with him at dawn.
'Farewell,' said Paul Zabaroff, and he touched his son's cheek with his hand.
'You are magnificently handsome, my poor child; indeed, who knows what you will be?—a jewel or only a toad's eye?' he said dreamily; then he sprang up behind his horses, and was borne away through the fast-falling shades of the evening, leaving behind him the boy Vassia and a little rough mound of nameless grass, which he had never seen, and which was Sacha's grave.
The four fiery horses that bore the telegue dashed away with it in the sunlight, scattering the sand in yellow clouds, and the village on the Volga plains beheld its lord never more in life. The boy stood still, and looked after it with a sombre anger on his beautiful fair Circassian face.