them. After the usual carols had been sung, we set them to songs
and glees. Mrs. Earnshaw loved the music, and so they gave us
plenty.

Catherine loved it too: but she said it sounded sweetest at the
top of the steps, and she went up in the dark: I followed. They
shut the house door below, never noting our absence, it was so full
of people. She made no stay at the stairs'-head, but mounted
farther, to the garret where Heathcliff was confined, and called
him. He stubbornly declined answering for a while: she
persevered, and finally persuaded him to hold communion with her
through the boards. I let the poor things converse unmolested,
till I supposed the songs were going to cease, and the singers to
get some refreshment: then I clambered up the ladder to warn her.
Instead of finding her outside, I heard her voice within. The
little monkey had crept by the skylight of one garret, along the
roof, into the skylight of the other, and it was with the utmost
difficulty I could coax her out again. When she did come,
Heathcliff came with her, and she insisted that I should take him
into the kitchen, as my fellow-servant had gone to a neighbour's,
to be removed from the sound of our 'devil's psalmody,' as it
pleased him to call it. I told them I intended by no means to
encourage their tricks: but as the prisoner had never broken his
fast since yesterday's dinner, I would wink at his cheating Mr.
Hindley that once. He went down: I set him a stool by the fire,
and offered him a quantity of good things: but he was sick and
could eat little, and my attempts to entertain him were thrown
away. He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his
hands and remained rapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the
subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely - 'I'm trying to