iron bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay. He
tried to interest himself in the various initials and symbols
deeply carved in bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he
turned back to the summer-house, he for the first time noticed that
the ground rose behind it into a long undulation, on the crest of
which the same singular profusion of rose-leaves were scattered.
It struck him as being strangely like a gigantic grave, and that
the same idea had occurred to the fantastic dispenser of the
withered flowers. He was still looking at it, when a rustle in the
undergrowth made his heart beat expectantly. A slinking gray
shadow crossed the undulation and disappeared in the thicket. It
was a coyote. At any other time the extraordinary appearance of
this vivid impersonation of the wilderness, so near a centre of
human civilization and habitation, would have filled him with
wonder. But he had room for only a single thought now. Would SHE
come?

Five minutes passed. He no longer waited in the summer-house, but
paced impatiently before the entrance to the labyrinth. Another
five minutes. He was deceived, undoubtedly. She and her sisters
were probably waiting for him and laughing at him on the lawn. He
ground his heel into the clover, and threw his switch into the
thicket. Yet he would give her one--only one moment more.

"Captain Carroll!"

The voice had been and was to HIM the sweetest in the world; but
even a stranger could not have resisted the spell of its musical
inflection. He turned quickly. She was advancing towards him from
the summer-house.