To be sure, they would hardly be worth the trouble!" It was a clear, sunny day.

Wilhelm was standing in his look-out, gazing over the green, watery plain, that lay out-spread below him, towards the south.

Behind him sat Andreas, the fencing-master's fatherless boy; writing notes, but his attention was not fixed on his work; for as soon as he had finished a line he too gazed towards the horizon, watching for the pigeon his teacher expected.

He did not look particularly emaciated, for many a grain of the doves' food had been secretly added to his scanty ration of meat.
Wilhelm showed that he felt both surprised and honored by Frau Van der Werff's visit, and even promised to grant her request, though it was evident that the "saying yes" was by no means easy for him.
The young wife went out on the balcony with him, and he showed her in the south, where usually nothing but a green plain met the eye, a wide expanse over which a light mist was hovering.

The noon sun seemed to steep the white vapor with light, and lure it upward by its ardent rays.
This was the water streaming through the broken dyke, and the black oblong specks moving along its edges were the Spanish troops and herds of cattle, that had retreated before the advancing flood from the outer fortifications, villages and hamlets.