elds to where I could see
the full front of my master's mansion, and, looking with a timorous joy,
saw--a blackened ruin.

Where, meantime, was the hapless owner?

I returned to the inn, where the host himself, a respectable middle-aged
man, brought my breakfast into the parlour. I scarcely knew how to begin
my questions.

"Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?"

"No, ma'am--oh, no! No one is living there. It was burnt down about
harvest time. The fire broke out at dead of night."

"Was it known how it originated?"

"They guessed, ma'am; they guessed. There was a lady--a--a lunatic kept
in the house. She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs. Poole, an
able woman but for one fault--she kept a private bottle of gin by her;
and the mad lady would take the keys out of her pocket, let herself out
of her chamber, and go roaming about the house doing any wild mischief
that came into her head. Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke
out, and he went up to the attics and got the servants out of their
beds, and then went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And then
they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was waving
her arms and shouting till they could hear her a mile off. She was a big
woman, and had long, black hair; and we could see it streaming against
the flames as she stood. We saw Mr. Rochester approach her and call
'Bertha!' And then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next
minute lay dead, smashed on the pavement."

"Were any other lives lost?"

"No. Perhaps it would have been better if there had. Poor Mr. Edward! He
is stone-blind."

I had dreaded he was mad.

"As he came down the great staircase it fell, and he was taken out of
the ruins with one eye knocked out and one hand so crushed that the
surgeon had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed, and he lost
the sight of that also."

"Where does he live now?"

"At Ferndean, a manor house on a farm he has--quite a desolate spot. Old
John and his wife are with him; he would have none else."

To Ferndean I came just ere dusk, walking the last mile. As I
approached, the narrow front door of the grange slowly opened, and a
figure came out into the twilight; a man without a hat. He stretched
forth his hand to feel whether it rained. It was my master, Edward
Fairfax Rochester.

He groped his way back to the house, and, re-entering it, closed the
door. I now drew near and knocked, and John's wi