the hawk, Hero, which, with the geese, was given away, and is doubtless
dead."

And Anne, as naïve as a little nun, writes in _her_ sealed paper: "Emily
is upstairs ironing. I am sitting in the dining-room in the
rocking-chair before the fire with my feet on the fender. Papa is in the
parlour. Tabby and Martha are, I think, in the kitchen. Keeper and
Flossy are, I do not know where. Little Dick is hopping in his cage."
And then, "Emily ... is writing some poetry.... I wonder what it is
about?"

That is the only clue to the secret that is given. These childlike
diaries are full of the "Gondal Chronicles",[A] an interminable fantasy
in which for years Emily collaborated with Anne. They flourished the
"Gondal Chronicles" in each other's faces, with positive bravado, trying
to see which could keep it up the longer. Under it all there was a
mystery; for, as Charlotte said of their old play, "Best plays were
secret plays," and the sisters kept their best hidden. And then suddenly
the "Gondal Chronicles" were dropped, the mystery broke down. All three
of them had been writing poems; they had been writing poems for years.
Some of Emily's dated from her first exile at Roe Head. Most of Anne's
sad songs were sung in her house of bondage. From Charlotte, in her
Brussels period, not a line.

[Footnote A: See _supra_, pp. 193 to 209.]

But at Haworth, in the years that followed her return and found her
free, she wrote nearly all her maturer poems (none of them were
excessively mature): she wrote _The Professor_, and close upon _The
Professor_, _Jane Eyre_. In the same term that found her also, poor