all dead, bleached and impenetrable, of what had once been hawthorn,
but now one jagged, fixed mass of awkward arms and cruel thorns; the
third, a beautiful, spacious pine-wood, climbing over cliffs to the
far verge of the cape where the lighthouse flashes. These were like
woods in a fairy tale, and may well have had each their own particular
elves and spirits. Each had a separate character: the first as of the
earth, homely, full of gentle russet colours from the juniper and the
wild fruit; the second, haggish, full of witches whose finger-nails
had never been clipped; the third, queenly, as if beloved of Diana.

Evening grew to night as I plodded past these woods or struggled
through them. The temptation was to go into the wood and walk on
firmer soil--but the thickets were many, and not a furlong did it
profit me. Then there were thorns, you must know, and abundant
long-clawed creepers that grasped the legs and kept them fixed
till they were tenderly extricated by the hand. When I came to the
pine-wood it was night, and the many stars shone over the sea. I
walked easily and gratefully over the soft pine needles, and I
constantly sought with my eyes for the monastery domes. The moonlight
through the pines looked like mist, and the forest climbed gradually
over rising cliffs. Far away on the dark cape I saw the flash of the
lighthouse....

No houses, no people, only a faint cart-track. That track bade me
hope. I would follow it in any case. At last, suddenly, I thought
I saw the cloud of white smoke of a bonfire. It was the far-away
monastery wall, high and white, with a little lamp in one window. I
bore up with the distance, forms grew distinct in the night; I entered
the monastery by a five-hundred-yard avenue of cedars.