With that concluding word, the whole assembly, exalting their pilgrim's states, rushed round me in a body, and I, having no weapon to raise in self-defense commenced grappling with Joseph, my nearest and most ferocious assailant, for his. In the confluence of the multitude, several clubs crossed; blows aimed at me fell on other sconces. Presently the whole chapel resounded with rappings and counter-rappings. Every man's hand was against his neighbor; and Branderham, unwilling to remain idle, poured forth his seal in a shower of loud taps on the boards of the pulpit, which responded so smartly, that, at last, to my unspeakable relief, they woke me.
And what was it that had suggested the tremendous tumult? what had played Jabes' part in the row? Merely the branch of a fir-tree that touched my lattice, as the blast wailed by, and rattled its dry cones against the panes!
I listened doubtingly an instant; detected the disturber, then turned and dozed, and dreamed again; if possible, still more disagreeably than before.
This time I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard also the fir-bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause; but it annoyed me so much that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and I thought I rose and endeavored to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple, a circumstance observed by me, when awake, but forgotten.
"I must stop it, nevertheless!" I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch: instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!
The intense horror of nightmare came over me; I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed—
"Let me in—let me in!"
"Who are you?" I asked, struggling meanwhile to disengage myself.
"Catherine Linton," it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw, twenty times for Linton), "I'm come home, I'd lost my way on the moor!"
As it spoke I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window—Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on
