Then without paying any heed to the words of those who would prevent him from rushing into such danger, the eager young man set out, his heart on fire with thoughts of love and glory. Nobody showed him the way, but he could see the towers of the castle rising above the distant wood, and when he entered the wood itself, and the towers were hidden, each path he took led him nearer to the place where he would be.
At last he came to an open glade, and there before him was a tangled hedge of thorn, stretching in either direction as far as the eye could see.
CHAPTER X
AND now, as the Prince drew nearer, he could see that the story he had heard about that terrible place was true, for held in the tangle of briar were the bones of many unhappy young men who had tried to force their way through to the castle. Rags and tatters of their finery hung upon the great thorns that pointed menacingly like sharp claws. Here and there upon the ground beneath lay pieces of rusty armour, a helmet surrounded by a coronet of gold that once had belonged to a King's son, a shield with a Prince's device, a sword with jewel-encrusted hilt worth a King's ransom. There they lay, all disregarded among the blanched bones upon the grass, and the ground-ivy spread out its leaves to cover them.