here already! Promise to hold your tongue, and before that clock strikes--it wants three minutes of one-- you're a free woman!''
`He took the implements which I described to you in my letter from his breast, and would have turned down the candle. I snatched it away, however, and seized his arm.
` ``I'Il not hold my tongue!'' I said; ``you mustn't touch him. Let the door remain shut, and be quiet!''
` ``No! I've formed my resolution, and by God I'll execute it!'' cried the desperate being. ``I'Il do you a kindness in spite of yourself, and Hareton justice! And you needn't trouble your head to screen me; Catherine is gone. Nobody alive would regret me, or be ashamed, though I cut my throat this minute--and it's time to make an end!''
`I might as well have struggled with a bear, or reasoned with a lunatic. The only resource left me was to run to a lattice and warn his intended victim of the fate which awaited him.
`"You'd better seek shelter somewhere else tonight!'' I exclaimed in a rather triumphant tone. ``Mr Earnshaw has a mind to shoot you, if you persist in endeavouring to enter.''
``You'd better open the door, you--"he answered, addressing me by some elegant term that I don't care to repeat.
``I shall not meddle in the matter,'' I retorted again. ``Come in and get shot, if you please! I've done my duty.''
`With that I shut the window and returned to my place by the fire; having too small a stock of hypocrisy at my command to pretend any anxiety for the danger that menaced him. Earnshaw swore passionately at me: affirming that I loved the villain yet; and calling me all sorts of names for the base spirit I evinced. And I, in my secret heart (and conscience never reproached me), thought what a blessing it would be for him should Heathcliff put him out of misery; and what a blessing for me should he send Heathcliff to his right abode! As I sat nursing these reflections, the casement behind me was banged on to the floor by a blow from the latter individual, and his black countenance liked blightingly through. The stanchions stood too close to suffer his shoulders to follow, and I smiled, exulting in my fancied security. His hair and clothes were whitened with snow, and his sharp cannibal teeth, revealed by cold and wrath, gleamed through the dark.
`"Isabella, let me in, or I'll make you repent!'' he ``girned'', as Joseph calls it.
I cannot commit murder,'' I replied. ``Mr Hindley stands sentinel with a knife and loaded pistol.''
``Let me in by the kitchen door,'' he said.
``Hindley will be there before you,'' I answered: ``and that's a poor love of yours that cannot bear a shower of snow! We were left at peace on our beds as long as the summer moon shone, but the moment a blast of winter returns, you must run for shelter! Heathcliff, if I were you, I'd go stretch myself over her grave and die like a faithful dog. The world is surely not worth living in now, is it? You had distinctly impressed on me the idea that Catherine was the whole joy of your life: I can't imagine how you think of surviving her loss.''
``He's there, is he?'' exclaimed my companion, rushing to the gap. ``If I can get my arm out I can hit him!''
`I'm afraid, Ellen, you'll set me down as really wicked; but you don't know all, so don't judge. I wouldn't have aided or abetted an attempt on even his life for anything. Wish that he were dead, I must; and therefore I was fearfully disappointed, and unnerved by terror for the consequences of my taunting speech, when he flung himself on Earnshaw's weapon and wrenched it from his grasp.