With difficulty, because he was weak, he tugged on his coat and boots and went down through the silent house and out into the garden. The bright beds of Canna lilies mocked the pallid streaks of dawn, but Ross refused to give such showy flowers his attention. The time for such things was past.

He walked away from the house, not minding the cool air on his face. He soon enough strode in among the overarching trees and then found himself on the white road he had admired upon his arrival. He had no idea where the road led, but he found himself moved by it once more. He imagined all the hours and weeks of labour which had gone into its making. It seemed to him almost like a living thing, coiling and twisting on and on, defying encroachment by roots and blown seeds, a man-made entity of beauty and purpose.

The sky was growing lighter all the time. To his left, Ross could now see a strange open space, where all the trees had been felled, where the ground was pocked with deep trenches and where peculiar makeshift machinery stood abandoned. He knew that such a troubling sight would normally have made him pause here, to understand the significance of this place, but he found that it held no interest for him. It was as if the road was calling him on and on and would not let him pause or rest. And he realised now where it led: it led to the river.

The sound of the bush was loud all about him and the dawn sky was flecked with the dark shadows of birds he did not recognise. Aside from these, he felt himself to be quite alone until he saw a strange sight coming towards him. An old woman, whose face was pigmented with white blotches, was pushing a barrow in the direction of the rajah’s house. Her load was clearly heavy and the barrow wobbled and swayed over the white stones and when they came nearer to him, Ross saw that reclining in the barrow, with his head on a yellow embroidered cushion was a Chinese man, so ancient and bent that he resembled the kind of skeleton to which flesh and sinew still obstinately clung, but whose eyes, in his emaciated face, were touchingly bright and lively.

Ross stopped for a moment, to nod a greeting to the elderly woman with her human load, and fancied he saw a thin smile crease her features. But she did not pause. And he had the sudden thought that this was a road upon which no one ever lingered, no matter in which direction, but only obeyed its onward call.

Ross knew that his walking should have made him warm by now. He remembered how his climbs up Beacon Hill towards Charlcombe had always brought bright blood to his cheeks and how his heart had seemed to beat more strongly the higher he went. But now, he did not feel it, that heat and euphoria that comes with exertion, and even though the sun was just beginning to rise above the trees, he was still cold.