Holding on at a level pace he passed the woods and saw them rolling back like a green cataract towards the sea. Bare hills saluted him; the beacon height with its great wooden cross stood out against the sky; mile on mile of wooded land billowed out before him, clouded with a blue haze where the domes of the trees rose innumerably rank on rank. The Abbey of the Holy Mary lay low in meadows on his left, its fish pools shimmering in the sun, its orchards densely green about its walls. Two leagues or more of wood and wild, a climb over hills, a long descent, and Usk again shone out trailing distant in the hollows. A crumbling tower stood up above the trees. Pelleas passed close to it, giving antiquity due reverence as was his custom, looking up at its ivied walls, its crown of gillyflowers, its windows wistful as a blind man's eyes. Another mile and Usk ran at his feet. A hermitage stood by the ford. Pelleas gave the good man a piece of silver and besought his prayers before he rode down and splashed through the river to the further bank. Heathland and scrub rolled to the east, merging into the blue swell of a low line of hills. It was wild country enough, haunted by snipe and crested plover, an open solitude that swept into a purple streak against the northern sky. It was noon before Pelleas had made an end of its shadeless glare and taken to the hills that rose gently towards the east. His red harness moving over the green was lost to Gorlois, who had missed the trail long ago in the woods beyond St. Mary's. It was dusk when the Cornishman came guided to the ford, and learnt from the hermit there that the chase lay across Usk and eastward over the heath. Gorlois gave the man no piece of silver, only a savage curse to gag his alms-seeking. Night came and caught him in the open, and rather than wander astray in the dark he spent the night under a whin bush, calming his incontinent temper as best he might. An hour past noon Pelleas stood on the last hill slope and looked down upon the massed woodland at his feet. Here at last was Merlin's valley choked up with trees--a green lake of foliage that rippled from ridge to ridge. Pelleas, with the sun at his back, stood and looked down on it with a kind of quiet awe. So Godfrey and his knights looked down upon the holy city, so Dante saw Beatrice in his vision, and Cortez gazed at the Pacific in the west. Pelleas had taken his helmet from his head and hung it at his saddle-bow; there was a grand hunger on his face, a passionate calm, as he abode on the hill top with his tall spear a black streak against the sun.