He is
given his directions, and his guide tells him that the journey will be
easy enough until he reaches a small wood through which he must pass. This
wood will be dark and tangled and bewildering, but more sinister than
those obstacles will be the inhabitants of it who, evil, malign, foul and
bestial, devote their lives to the destruction of all travellers who
endeavour to reach the castle on the hill beyond. And the tale tells how
the young traveller, proud of his youth and strength, confident in the
security of his armour, nevertheless, when he crosses the dark border of
the wood, feels as though his whole world has changed, as though
everything in which he formerly trusted is of no value, as though the very
weapons that were his chief defence now made him most defenceless. He has
in the heart of that wood many perilous adventures, but worst of them all,
when he is almost at the end of his strength, is the sudden conviction
that he has himself changed, and is himself become one of the foul,
gibbering, half-visioned monsters by whom he is surrounded.
As Brandon left the Cathedral there was something of that strange sense
with him, a sense that had come to him first, perhaps, in its dimmest and
most distant form, on the day of the circus and the elephant, and that
now, in all its horrible vigour and confidence, was there close at his
elbow.
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