But Fiona had learnt her lesson, and she looked at her feather; and the feather pointed straight along the hillside. So she passed on without a look or a word; and as she passed came a noise as of the earth opening; and the pillars of the temple bowed themselves, and the middle of the building collapsed stone by stone, till only the outer columns remained among a mass of fallen blocks, and triglyph and metope and sculptured frieze lay in fragments about them. And among the ruins a red fox with two cubs sat and snarled, as she watched a company of toads crawling in the dust; and of that fair scene all that had not changed was the pallid asphodel, the asphodel whose home is in those other meadows where walk the pallid dead. And as Fiona passed on, the hillside itself dissolved in mist, and there before her lay the fairy grove. And the guardian of the grove, with white beard sweeping the ground, and old trembling hands, came out to meet her. And she showed him her feather, and from his belt he drew out and held up its fellow; and she knew that the path of danger was over. "No one has come through by the way you have come for more years than my old memory can follow," he said. "They always fail at the lemon orchard. How did you escape?" And Fiona told him how the feather had turned in her hand of itself. The old man bowed almost to the ground. "That was the direct grace of the King," he said. "You must be a person of the greatest consequence." And when Fiona said, "I am just an ordinary girl," he again bowed low and said: "Young lady, I take leave to doubt it." Then he gave Fiona her directions for finding the King, and warned her that she must not loiter in the fairy grove, for the fairies were already gathering for All Hallows E'en.