before.

Carrie watched him go--followed his figure with her eyes along the
road.

'And I'm glad _we're_ off!'--she said to herself, her small feet
dancing--'we've been cumbering this ground, Miss Anna and I--a deal
too long!'

He was soon nearly a mile from home; rejoicing strangely in his
recovered power of movement, and in the freshness of the evening air.
He found himself on a hill above Elterwater, looking back on the
lake, and on a wide range of hills beyond, clothed, in all their lower
slopes, with the full leaf of June. Wood rose above wood, in every
gradation of tone and loveliness, creeping upwards through blue haze,
till they suddenly lost hold on the bare peaks, which rose, augustly
clear, into the upper sky. The lake with its deep or glowing
reflexions--its smiling shore--the smoke of its few houses--lay below
him; and between him and it, glistening sharply, in a sun-steeped
magic, upon the blue and purple background of the hills and woods--a
wild cherry, in its full mantle of bridal white.

What tranquillity!--what colour!--what infinite variety of beauty!
His heart swelled within him. Life of the body--and life of the
soul--seemed to be flowing back upon him, lifting him on its wave,
steeping him in its freshening strength. 'My God!' he thought,
remembering the sketch he had just made, and the mastery with which he
had worked--'if I am able to paint again!--if I am!'

An ecstasy of hope arose in him. What if really there had been
something wrong with his eyes!--something that rest might set right?
What if he had wanted rest for years?--and had gone on defying nature
and common sense?

And in a moment, as he sat there, looking out into the evening, the
old whirl of images invaded him--the old tumult of ideas--clamouring
for shape and form--flitting, phantom-like, along the woods and over
the bosom of the lake. He let himself be carried along, urging his
brain, his fancy, filled with indescribable happiness. It was years
since the experience had last befallen him! Did it mean the return
of youth?--conception?--creative power? What matter!--years, or
hardship?--if the mind could still imagine, the hand still shape?

He thought of his own series of the 'Months'--which he had planned
among these hills, and had carried out perfunctorily and vulgarly,
in the city, far from the freshness and infinity of Nature. All
the faults of his designs appeared to him, and the poverty of their
execution. But he w