'It is not for us to tell what you could not understand,' said the king. 'They who can gaze undazzled on the sun must see many things.'
Maia drew back a little.
'They frighten me rather,' she whispered to the others. 'They are so solemn and mysterious.'
'But that needn't frighten you,' said Silva. 'Rollo isn't frightened.'
'Rollo's a boy,' replied Maia, as if that settled the matter.
Waldo now pointed out some steps in the rock leading up still higher.
'The eagles want us to go up there,' he said. 'We shall see right over the forest and ever so far.'
And so they did, for the steps led up a long way till they ended on another rock-shelf right on the face of the cliff. From here the great fir-forests looked but like dark patches far below, while away, away in the distance stretched on one side the great plain across which the children had journeyed on their first coming to the white castle; and on the other the distant forms of mountain ranges, gray-blue, shading fainter and fainter till the clouds themselves looked more real.
It was cold, very cold, up here on the edge of the great bare rocks. The beauty of the sunrise had sobered down into the chilly freshness of an early summer morning; the world seemed still asleep, and the children shivered a little.
'I don't think I should like to live always as high up as this,' said Maia. 'It's very lonely and very cold.'