A full minute passed.
“Guess it has gone to sleep,” he thought, at the same moment trying to suppress a distinct yawn.
Then he thought he saw something move. He stepped cautiously up to the trembling leaves. Like a shiver that swept through the silent darkness, the branches barely swayed.
“It’s creeping along,” he surmised. “Now, I have to move along with it.”
With his steps quite as noiseless as those within the hedge, Jack did move toward the roadway. There the hedge would end, and something had to happen.
“Queer race,” he was thinking, when all of a sudden, without any warning, the shadow sprang out of the branches, darted across the path not five feet from where Jack stood spellbound, and dashed on back to the hotel.
“Good-bye,” called Jack lightly, realizing now that the apparition was nothing more or less than a girl. “Think you might have let me take you, though.”
He knew now that further watching would be useless, as the broad piazzas of the hotel, with endless basement steps, afforded such seclusion that he would find it impossible to penetrate, so he, too, turned back, and crossed the other side of the hedge, as he had done in coming down. Something in the bushes caught his eye, even in the shadows. It was a bundle of some sort. He stooped and touched it. Then he rolled it over. It was very light, and a small package.
“Guess it won’t bite,” he thought. “I may as well take it along,” and with this he very cautiously picked up the package, and walked back to the hotel.