I slept in it last night, and when I woke, as in my travelling I was accustomed to do, at dawn, I saw from my bed through an open window--a small window, for it is in a fortress tower--the whole great expanse to the east.

Not far off, and springing from the summit of a great ruin, where long ago a seed had fallen, rose a great silver-birch, and the half-transparent, drooping branches and hanging clusters of leaf broke the outline of the grey hills beyond, for the hills were, for a wonder, grey instead of blue.

There was a mackerel sky, with the clouds dropping on the mountain-tops till you could hardly say which was which.

It was a mackerel sky of a very bold and extraordinary kind--not a dish of mackerel, but a world of mackerel! The mountains are certainly most lovely.

In this clear air they usually seem close at hand.