on my knee. It was a Testament, in lean type» and smelling dreadfully musty: a fly-leaf bore the inscription—Catherine Earnshaw, her book," and a date some quarter of a century back.
I shut it, and took up another and another, till I had examined all. Catherine's library was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to have been well used, though not altogether for a legitimate purpose; scarcely one chapter had escaped a pen-and-ink commentary, at least the appearance of one, covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left.
Some were detached sentences, other parts took the form of a regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. At the top of an extra page, quite a treasure probably when first lighted on, I was greatly amused to behold an excellent caricature of my friend Joseph, rudely yet powerfully sketched.
An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began forthwith to decipher her faded hieroglyphics.
"An awful Sunday!" commenced the paragraph beneath.
"I wish my father were back again. Hindley is a detestable substitute—his conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious—H. and I are going to rebel—we took our initiatory step this evening.
"All day had been flooding with rain; we could not go to church, so Joseph must needs get up a congregation in the garret; and, while Hindley and his wife basked down stairs before a comfortable fire, doing any thing bitf reading their Bibles, VU answer for it, Heathcliff, myself, and the unhappy plow-boy were commanded to take our prayer-books, and mount. We were ranged in a row on a sack of corn, groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would shiver too, so that he might give us a short homily for his own sake. A vain idea! The service lasted precisely three hours, and yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us descending,
"'What, done already!'"
"On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners!
"'You forget you have a master here,' says the tyrant. 'I'll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Oh, boy! was that you? Frances, darling, pull his hair as you go by: I heard him snap his fingers.'
