Green stains streaked the once white facade of the chapel in all directions.

Moss clustered thick in every crevice of the heavy scowling wall that surrounded the convent.
Long lank weeds grew out of the fissures of roof and parapet, and, drooping far downward, waved wearily in and out of the barred dormitory windows.

The very cross opposite the entrance-gate, with a shocking life-sized figure in wood nailed to it, was so beset at the base with crawling creatures, and looked so slimy, green, and rotten all the way up, that I absolutely shrank from it.
A bell-rope with a broken handle hung by the gate.

I approached it--hesitated, I hardly knew why--looked up at the convent again, and then walked round to the back of the building, partly to gain time to consider what I had better do next, partly from an unaccountable curiosity that urged me, strangely to myself, to see all I could of the outside of the place before I attempted to gain admission at the gate.
At the back of the convent I found an outhouse, built on to the wall--a clumsy, decayed building, with the greater part of the roof fallen in, and with a jagged hole in one of its sides, where in all probability a window had once been.

Behind the outhouse the trees grew thicker than ever.