"It looked like a bound volume of magazines."
Sybil nodded her head.
"It was a volume of the 'Fortnightly.' He was reading an article written forty years ago by Andrew Linforth—" and she suddenly cried out, "Oh, how I wish he had never lived. He was an uncle of Harry's—my husband. He predicted it. He was in the old Company, then he became a servant of the Government, and he was the first to begin the road. You know his history?"
"No."
"It is a curious one. When it was his time to retire, he sent his money to England, he made all his arrangements to come home, and then one night he walked out of the hotel in Bombay, a couple of days before the ship sailed, and disappeared. He has never been heard of since."
"Had he no wife?" asked Dewes.
"No," replied Sybil. "Do you know what I think? I think he went back to the north, back to his Road. I think it called him. I think he could not keep away."
"But we should have come across him," cried Dewes, "or across news of him. Surely we should!"
Sybil shrugged her shoulders.
"In that article which Dick was reading, the road was first proposed.
Listen to this," and she began to recite: