that he went from them penitent and tender, purified by the mystery and
miracle of death.

That was on Sunday, the twenty-fourth of September. From that day Emily
sickened. She caught cold at Branwell's funeral. On September the
thirtieth she was in church listening to his funeral sermon. After that,
she never crossed the threshold of the Parsonage till in December her
dead body was carried over it, to lie beside her brother under the
church floor.

In October, a week or two after Branwell's death, Charlotte wrote:
"Emily has a cold and cough at present." "Emily's cold and cough are
very obstinate. I fear she has pain in her chest, and I sometimes catch
a shortness in her breathing when she has moved at all quickly." In
November: "I told you Emily was ill, in my last letter. She has not
rallied yet. She is very ill.... I think Emily seems the nearest thing
to my heart in all the world." And in December: "Emily suffers no more
from pain or weakness now ... there is no Emily in time, or on earth
now.... We are very calm at present. Why should we be otherwise? The
anguish of seeing her suffer is over; the spectacle of the pains of
death is gone by: the funeral day is past. We feel she is at peace. No
need to tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind. Emily does not
feel them. She died in a time of promise.... But it is God's will, and
the place where she has gone is better than that which she has left."

It could have been hardly daylight on the moors the morning when
Charlotte went out to find that last solitary sprig of heather which she
laid on Emily's pillow for Emily to see when she awoke. Emily's eyes
were so drowsed with death that she could not see it. And yet it could
not have been many hours later when a fire was lit in her bedroom, and