The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-08-23
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utes during which he rained kisses on
 her face. She responded. Then her
 humor varied She leaned back and said:
 ''You have broken my heart, you and
 Edgar. How strong you are! How many years do you mean to live after I am
 gone? Why shouldn't you suffer? I do. Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth ?''
 Don't torture me till I'm as mad as yourself" cried he. You know you lie
 to say l have killed you. And, Catherine,
 you know that could as soon forget you
 as forget my existencel Is it not suffi-
 cient for your internal selhshness that
 while you are at peace I shall be in tor ment-''
 I q shall not be in peace," moaned she. 'Im not wishing you greater torment | than 1 have, Hathcliff. And should a | word of mine distress you hereafter think I feel the same distress underground and for my own sake forgive mel''
 He crushed her to him and said: q have not one word of comfort. Why did you ! despise me? Why did you betray your
 own heart. Cathy? You deserve this.
 You have killed youself. Yes, you may
 kiss me and cry, and wiring tears and
 kisses from me. They'll blight you they'll damn you!''
 The next day Catherine was dead-her
 brow smooth, her lids closed, her lips
 wearing the appearance of smile. No angel could have looked more peaceful.
 Up stairs was the thin vail of a new
 born infant-her daughter, come to earth in the dying moments of the mother when
 that unquiet heart was finding peace at
 last
 Heathcliff was still hiding under the
 trees of the park when she died. When
 Nelly Dean told him that her spirit had
 passed in a gentle dream, tranquilly and
 untroubled, he stamped his foot and cried:
 catherine Earnshaw, you said I killed
 you! Haunt me, thenl Be with me all
 ways-take any form-drive me madl Only
 do not leave me in this abyss where 1
 cannot find you! Oh, God, It is unbear-
 able I cannot live without my soul!"- Nelly Dean fled terrified as if from a
 madman. Indeed, he was mad There
 were bloody marks on her head where nc
 had dashed it against a tree in his black,
 hopeless despair. Raging, beyond all con- trol he turned to Wuthering Heights and fell foul of Hindley Earnshaw, who at- tackled him with a knife. Heathcliff,
 whose normal strength was increased by
 his mania, wrested it from him, cut him ferociously and kicked him into insensl-
 bility. Isabella escaped and after brief visit to her old home retreated to a quiet
 place near London. There son was born whom she named Linton.
 For time 1t seemed as if peace, albeit saddened one, had turned again to Thrushcross Grange. Edgar Linton spent life of entire seclusion within his own
 park limits, varied only by rambles on the
 moors and visits to his wife's grave. He
 recalled her memory with ardent love from which his loyal mind and heart had purged all other recollections. His little
 daughter became all in all to him. He never mentioned Heathcliff and shrank from any reminder of him. But the countryside was too full of the hap
 penings at Wuthering Heights to leave
 the Grange in ignorance. Everybody knew that Earnshaw. encouraged by Heathcliff to drink himself into madness and to gamble with him in that condition, had mortgaged his whole estate to his evil genius.
 Little Hareton had conceived strange. doglke affection for Heathcliff, mostly because the latter, for his own purposes, interposed between him and his drunken father. The little fellow, encouraged by Heathclif in idleness, was growing up 1 more ignorant than a plowboy He had been taught to swear at his father with the volubility of trooper; and Heath cliff watched with eager and malignant joy to see Hindley Earnshaw's son, the last of the Earnshaws, thrust into the same mental and moral darkness into which Hindley had thrust him.
 Hindley knew too well into what tolls | he had fallen but his knowledge came too
 late. Before Catherine had been buried six months he died in a darken fit and
 Heathcliff came forward with papers to \ show that every foot of the land had
 been mortgaged to him. Hareton was re-