“The Road?”

Dick, even in the presence of her pain, could not deny the implication of her words.

“We Linforths belong to the Road,” he answered gravely.  The words struck upon a chord of memory.  Sybil Linforth sat upright, turned to her sort and greatly surprised him.  He had expected an appeal, a prayer.  What he heard was something which raised her higher in his thoughts than ever she had been, high though he had always placed her.

“Dick,” she said, “I have never said a word to dissuade you, have I?  Never a word?  Never a single word?” and her tone besought him to assure her.

“Never a word, mother,” he replied.

But still she was not content.

“When you were a boy, when the Road began to take hold on you—­when we were much together, playing cricket out there in the garden,” and her voice broke upon the memory of those golden days, “when I might have been able, perhaps, to turn you to other thoughts, I never tried to, Dick?  Own to that!  I never tried to.  When I came upon you up on the top of the Down behind the house, lying on the grass, looking out—­always—­always towards the sea—­oh, I knew very well what it was that was drawing you; but I said nothing, Dick.  Not a word—­not a word!”

Dick nodded his head.

“That’s true, mother.  You never questioned me.  You never tried to dissuade me.”

Sybil’s face shone with a wan smile.  She unlocked a drawer in her writing-table, and took out an envelope.  From the envelope she drew a sheet of paper covered with a faded and yellow handwriting.

“This is the last letter your father ever wrote to me,” she said.  “Harry wrote on the night that he—­that he died.  Oh, Dick, my boy, I have known for a long time that I would have one day to show it to you, and I wanted you to feel when that time came that I had not been disloyal.”

She had kept her face steady, even her voice calm, by a great effort.  But now the tears filled her eyes and brimmed over, and her voice suddenly shook between a laugh and a sob.  “But oh, Dick,” she cried, “I have so often wanted to be disloyal.  I was so often near to it—­oh, very, very near.”

She handed him the faded letter, and, turning towards the window, stood with her back to him while he read.  It was that letter, with its constant refrain of “I am very tired,” which Linforth had written in his tent whilst his murderers crouched outside waiting for sleep to overcome him.

“I am sitting writing this by the light of a candle,” Dick read.  “The tent door is open.  In front of me I can see the great snow-mountains.  All the ugliness of the shale-slopes is hidden.  By such a moonlight, my dear, may you always look back upon my memory.  For it is all over, Sybil.”

Then followed the advice about himself and his school; and after that advice the message which was now for the first time delivered: 

“Whether he will come out here, it is too early to think about.  But the Road will not be finished—­and I wonder.  If he wants to, let him!  We Linforths belong to the Road.”