The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-08-23

usual and bestowed half dozen kisses on him. But then she suddenly held off and said: Why, how funny and grim you look! What are you sulky for? If you wash your face and brush your hair it will be all right. But you are so dirtyr
 With that she looked concernedly at the dusky fingers she had touched and then at her dress. Heathcliff at once snatched away his hand and dashed out of the room, crying angrily:
 You needn't have touched me. shall be as dirty as I like"
 Before Heathcliff could even begin to insult the two Linton children came for visit. Heathcliff was ordered to the garret to wait till dinner was over. Flu rious at the humiliation, 1t needed only a luckless remark of Edgar Linton to make the sullen lad snatch the first thing at hand, a tureen of hot applesauce, and dash it at the offender. Hindley Earn shaw at once seized him and dragged him to the garret, where he hogged him say- agely.
 That evening poor Catherine crept up- stairs while the guests were enjoying themselves below and coaxed HeathcilH to the kitchen, where she set things to eat before him. But he leaned his two el- bows on his knees and rested his chin on his hands, gazing into the fire. T am trying to settle how to pay Hnidley back" he muttered. T don't care how long I wait if I can only do it at last. I hope he won't die before l doi'
 Matters grew worse soon, when Mrs. Earnshaw died in giving birth to son. Hindley, who had made up in adoration of his young wife what he lacked in af- lection toward all the rest of creation, execrated God and man and fell into desperate state. He would hardly look at the boy Hareton. Before many weeks had passed he was giving himself up to heavy, senseless drinking
 He treated Heathcliff like a dog from that time on, as if he were trying delib- erately to make malignant fiend of him. Heathcliff daily became more sullen and ferocious and the only gleam of pleasure that ever passed over his scowling black face was when he beheld Kindly in an exceptionally degraded condition.
 Wuthering Heights became an internal house. The servants left, the only ones righteous Pharisee, who raked the Bible for promises to himself and curses on his neighbors, and Nelly Dean, the house. keeper, who stayed because she had been foster sister to Hindley and Catherine.
 Nobody decent came near the place. Even the curate stopped calling. The only exception was Edgar Linton, who came often to see Miss Catherine. That young woman had become queen of the country side. She had no peer in beauty-and no peer in haughtiness and headstrong tenn per either.
 She did not become disloyal to Heath cliff But at the Lintons she heard him referred to as a young ruffian and boor, and at home too much work was laid on him to permit him to keep on an equality with her in her studies. He acquired slouching gait and an ignoble look. He became more morose than ever and seemed to take a grim pleasure in ex- citing aversion. Catherine still tried to make him her companion, but he recoiled from her girlish caresses with angry sus- plcion.
 One day he discovered that Linton was to call, and demanded that she turn him away. She refused. Linton arrived while they were quarreling, and Heathcliff shuffled out with a curse. Catherine, in har ha grew livid. When Linton tried to in- terfere she boxed his ears till they rang.
 Then she threw herself down on the floor and began to sob heartbreakingly The handsome young fellow, crimson with indignation, had stepped toward the door to go, but at sight of the pretty, dis heveled, grieving creature his soft heart relented. He turned and stopped to her Once he bent down the quarrel broke the outworks of his youthful timidity. He arose as the accepted lover of Catherine Earnshaw.
 That evening Hindley Earnshaw came home raving drunk, cursing all about him and threatening to kill his child Harleton and send its soul to perdition. When he had reeled off to bed Catherine sought Nelly Dean in the kitchen and told her that she was going to marry Edgar Lin ton. "Oh, Nelly!' said she, i've seen none like Edgar. And yet, and yet, I've no business to marry him. If that wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of It. But it would degrade me to marry Heath cliff now. So we shall never know how 1 love him; and that not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself tiisn I am. Whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same, and Liutons IS as different from ours as a noonbeam from lightning or frost from fire"
 While she was speaking Heathcliff, who had been lying unseen on a seat near the fire, arcse noiseiessly and stole out Nelly Dean saw him and told Catherine that he had heard what she said. The girl jumped up at once and ran after him. She re- turned without having found him and vent out again just as a great storm gathered. Ir was midnight when she came back and threw herself on the settle. soaked through and shivering, while wild sobs shook her.
 She was still there when morning came and 1t was easy to see that she was not herself She talked wildly and by the time the doctor arrived she was in de- lirium, from which she did not recover for many weeks. Old Mrs. Linton paid several visits to the house while the girl lay in her fever and put things to rights.