r turning that
would eventually bring him to the market place and his hotel, and yet
extend his experience of the town. He turned at right angles into a
narrow grass lane, which was, however, as neatly kept and apparently as
public as the highway. A few moments' walking convinced him that it was
not a thoroughfare and that it led to the open gates of a park. This had
something of a public look, which suggested that his intrusion might be
at least a pardonable trespass, and he relied, like most strangers, on
the exonerating quality of a stranger's ignorance. The park lay in the
direction he wished to go, and yet it struck him as singular that a park
of such extent should be still allowed to occupy such valuable urban
space. Indeed, its length seemed to be illimitable as he wandered on,
until he became conscious that he must have again lost his way, and he
diverged toward the only boundary, a high, thickset hedge to the right,
whose line he had been following.

As he neared it he heard the sound of voices on the other side, speaking
in German, with which he was unfamiliar. Having, as yet, met no one, and
being now impressed with the fact that for a public place the park was
singularly deserted, he was conscious that his position was getting
serious, and he determined to take this only chance of inquiring his
way. The hedge was thinner in some places than in others, and at times
he could see not only the light through it but even the moving figures
of the speakers, and the occasional white flash of a summer gown. At
last he determined to penetrate it, and with little difficulty emerged
on the other side. But here he paused motionless. He found himself
behind a somewhat formal and symmetrical group of figures with their
backs toward him, but all stiffened into attitudes as motionless as his
own, and all gazing with a monotonous intensity in the direction of a
handsome building, which had been invisible above the hedge but which
now seemed to arise suddenly before him. Some of the figures were in
uniform. Immediately before him, but so slightly separated from
the others that he was enabled to see the house between her and her
companions, he was confronted by the pretty back, shoulders, and blond
braids of a young girl of twenty. Convinced that he had unwittingly
intruded upon some august ceremonial, he instantly slipped back into
the hedge, but so silently that his momentary presence was evidently
undetected. When he regaine