of his decease he seemed unconscious of danger. In God's hands we
leave him: He sees not as man sees.

'Papa, I am thankful to say, has borne the event pretty well. His
distress was great at first--to lose an only son is no ordinary
trial, but his physical strength has not hitherto failed him, and he
has now in a great measure recovered his mental composure; my dear
sisters are pretty well also. Unfortunately, illness attacked me at
the crisis when strength was most needed. I bore up for a day or
two, hoping to be better, but got worse. Fever, sickness, total loss
of appetite, and internal pain were the symptoms. The doctor
pronounced it to be bilious fever, but I think it must have been in a
mitigated form; it yielded to medicine and care in a few days. I was
only confined to my bed a week, and am, I trust, nearly well now. I
felt it a grievous thing to be incapacitated from action and effort
at a time when action and effort were most called for. The past
month seems an overclouded period in my life.

'Give my best love to Mrs. Nussey and your sister, and--Believe me,
my dear Miss Nussey, yours sincerely,

'C. BRONTE.'

_My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in
literature_--_he was not aware that they had ever published a line_.

Who that reads these words addressed to Mr. Williams can for a moment
imagine that Charlotte is speaking other than the truth? And yet we have
Mr. Grundy writing:

_Patrick Bronte declared to me that he wrote a great portion of_
'_Wuthering Heights_' _himself_.

And Mr. George Searle Phillips, {142} with more vivid imagination,
describes Branwell holding forth to his friends in the parlour of the
Black Bull at Haworth, upon the genius of his sisters, and upon the
respective merits of _Jane Eyre_ and other works. Mr. Leyland is even so
foolish as to compare Branwell's poetry with Emily's, to the advantage of
the former--which makes further comment impossible. 'My unhappy brother
never knew what his sisters had done in literature'--these words of
Charlotte's may be taken as final for all who had any doubts concerning
the authorship of _Wuthering Heights_.

CHAPTER VI: EMILY JANE BRONTE

Emily Bronte is the sphinx of our modern literature. She came into being
in the family of an obscure clergyman, and she