The sun was now climbing, and the mists in the vale below had been drawn up. The last of them were floating away, just overhead, like wisps of white cloud borne on the stiffening breeze from the East, that was now flapping and tugging the flags and golden standards of the citadel. Away down in the valley, five leagues or so as the eye could gaze, the river could now be seen, grey and glittering, coming out of the north-west, and bending in a mighty sweep south and west again, till it was lost to view in a haze and shimmer, far beyond which led to the Great Farnfell about fifty leagues away south.
Nicholas, who rose from his slumber the earliest, when the sun was in full swing across the sky, could see all the valley of Lindakar laid out before him, dotted into the distance with farmsteads
