He went to bed, slept, and the next day woke up to a glory of sun and
sky, a brilliancy of coloring, a photographic sharpness and clearness of
form, a suggestion of beauty beyond that which was seen, which
transformed the place as if an angel had passed through it in the night.
As he tramped about the sordid hamlet he forgot the rude uncouthness of
men and place for a kind of ecstasy at the loveliness about him. Every
jutting rock of granite shone in the sun like polished jasper, and the
numberless little rills trickling down the fell-sides were as threads of
silver, now concealed in the gold of the gorse, and now whitening the
purple of the heather. The air was full of blithesome sounds. Overhead
the sky-larks sang in jocund rivalry, mounting higher and higher as if
they would have beaten their wings against the sun: the bees made the
heather and the thyme musical as they flew from flower to flower, and
the tinkling of the running rills was like the symphony to a changeful
theme. It was in real truth a transformation, and the new-comer into the
fitful, seductive, disappointing North felt all its beauty, all its
meaning, and gave himself up to his delight as if such a day as
yesterday had never been.
After he had done what he wished to do in the village, he went up the
fell-side road to Windy Brow, and, obeying his instructions, asked when
he got there "if Miss Leonora Darley was at home."
"Na, she bain't," said Jenny, eying poor innocent Alick as a colley
might eye a wolf sniffing about the fold.
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