“But they aren’t box, they are yew,” said Joan, stopping at once.

Harry Luttrell’s enthusiasm for yew hedges, however, was even greater and more engrossing than his enthusiasm for box ones.  A pagoda perched upon a bank overlooked the maze and a narrow steep path led down into it between the hedges.  Joan left it to her soldier to find the way.  There was a stone pedestal with a small lead figure perched upon the top of it in the small clear space in the middle.  But Harry Luttrell took a deal of time in reaching it.  If, however, their progress was slow, with many false turnings and sudden stops against solid walls of hedge, it was not so with their acquaintanceship; each turn in the path brought them on by a new stage.  They wandered in the dawn of the world.

“Suppose that I had never come to Rackham Park!” said Harry Luttrell, suddenly turning at the end of a blind alley.  “I almost didn’t come.  I might have altogether missed knowing you.”

The terrible thought smote them both.  What risks people ran to be sure.  They might never have met.  They might have never known what it was to meet.  They might have lived benighted, not knowing what lovely spirit had passed them by.  They looked at one another with despairing eyes.  Then a happy thought occurred to Joan.

“But, after all, you did come,” she exclaimed.

Harry Luttrell drew a breath.  He was relieved of a great oppression.

“Why, yes,” he answered in wonderment.  “So I did!”

They retraced their steps.  As the sun drew towards its late setting, by an innocent suggestion from Joan here, a little question there, Harry Luttrell was manoeuvred towards the centre of the maze.  Suddenly he stopped with a finger on the lips.  A voice reached to them from the innermost recess—­a voice which intoned, a voice which was oracular.

“What’s that?” he asked in a whisper.

Joan shook her head.

“I haven’t an idea.”

As yet they could hear no words.  Words were flung from wall to wall of the centre space and kept imprisoned there.  It seemed that the presiding genius of the maze was uttering his invocation as the sun went down.  Joan and Harry Luttrell crept stealthily nearer, Harry now openly guided by a light touch upon his arm as the paths twisted.  Words—­amazing words—­became distinctly audible; and a familiar voice.  They came to the last screen of hedge and peered through at a spot where the twigs were thin.  In the very middle of the clear space stood Sir Chichester Splay, one hand leaning upon the pedestal, the other hidden in his bosom, in the very attitude of the orator; and to the silent spaces of the maze thus he made his address: 

“Ladies and gentlemen!  When I entered the tent this afternoon and took my seat upon the platform, nothing was further from my thoughts than that I should hear myself proposing a vote of thanks to our indefatigable chairman!”