ion!' It's
fair flaysome that ye let 'em go on this gait. Ech! th' owd man wad ha'
laced 'em properly--but he's goan!"

'Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of
us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the
back-kitchen; where, Joseph asseverated, "owd Nick" would fetch us as
sure as we were living: and, so comforted, we each sought a separate
nook to await his advent. I reached this book, and a pot of ink from a
shelf, and pushed the house-door ajar to give me light, and I have got
the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is
impatient, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairywoman's
cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter. A pleasant
suggestion--and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his
prophecy verified--we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we
are here.'

* * * * * *

I suppose Catherine fulfilled her project, for the next sentence took up
another subject: she waxed lachrymose.

'How little did I dream that Hindley would ever make me cry so!' she
wrote. 'My head aches, till I cannot keep it on the pillow; and still I
can't give over. Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and
won't let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more; and, he says, he and
I must not play together, and threatens to turn him out of the house if
we break his orders. He has been blaming our father (how dared he?) for
treating H. too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to his right
place--'

* * * * * *

I began to nod drowsily over the dim page: my eye wandered from
manuscript to print. I saw a red ornamented title--'Seventy Times Seven,
and the First of the Seventy-First.' A Pious Discourse delivered by the
Reverend Jabez Branderham, in the Chapel of Gimmerden Sough.' And while
I was, half-consciously, worrying my brain to guess what Jabez Branderham
would make of his subject, I sank back in bed, and fell asleep. Alas,
for the effects of bad tea and bad temper! What else could it be that
made me pass such a terrible night? I don't remember another that I can
at all compare with it since I was capable of suffering.

I began to dream, almost before I ceased to be sensible of my locality. I
thought it was morning; and I had set out on my way home, with Joseph for
a guide. The snow lay yards deep in our road; and, as we floundered on,
my companion wearied me with constant reproaches that