The boy, having perhaps the spirit of restlessness upon him, backed his steed, and turned him round and round in the road like a horse in a mill. Miss Blake saw her opportunity and slipped in unseen. Gliding along the path, she concealed herself behind a huge tree-trunk near the hedge, until the servant should have come and gone again. Miss Blake soon caught sight of her skirts amid the trees of the maze. "Here's the book," said she to the boy. "Ask your master to make it up for the month, and I'll pay." And shutting and locking the gate, she retreated into the maze again and disappeared. When people do covert things in a hurry, they can't expect to have all their senses about them, and Miss Blake had probably forgotten that she should be locked in. However--here she was in the position, and must make the best of it. First of all, she went round the path, intending to see where it led to. It was fenced in by the garden wall, the high hedge and shrubs on one side, by the trees of the maze on the other. Suddenly she came to what looked like a low vaulted passage built in the maze, which probably communicated with the house: but she could not tell. Its door was fast, and Miss Blake could see nothing. Pursuing her way along the walk, it brought her round to the entrance gate again, and she remembered Tom Pepp's words about the path going round and round and leading to nowhere. Miss Blake was not one to be daunted. She had come in to look about her, and she meant to do it. She plunged into the maze. Again had she cause to recall Master Pepp's account,--"Once get into that there maze and you'd never get out again without the clue." Miss Blake began to fear there was only too much truth in it. For a full hour in reality, and it seemed to her like two hours, did she wander about and wander again. She was in the maze and could not get out of it. She stood against the back of a tree, her face turning hot and cold. It took a great deal to excite that young woman's pulses: but she did not like the position in which she had placed herself. She must try again. Forward thither, backward hither, round and about, in and out. No; no escape; no clue; no opening: nothing but the same interminable trees and the narrow paths so exactly like one another. "What will become of me?" gasped Miss Blake. At that moment a voice very near rose upon her ear--the voice of the servant she had seen. "Yes, ma'am, I'll do it after dinner." Unconsciously Miss Blake had wandered to the confines of the maze that were close on the house. A few steps further and she could peep out of her imprisonment.