Joseph was an old man, very old, though hale and sinewy.  “The Lord help us!” he soliloquised in an undertone as he relieved me of my horse.

Wuthering Heights, Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling, is a farmhouse on an exposed and stormy edge, its name being significant of atmospheric tumult.  Its owner is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman, with erect and handsome figure, but morose demeanour.  One step from the outside brought us into the family living-room, the recesses of which were haunted by a huge liver-coloured bitch pointer, with a swarm of squealing puppies, and other dogs.  As the bitch sneaked wolfishly to the back of my legs I attempted to caress her, an action that provoked a long, guttural growl.

“You’d better let the dog alone,” growled Mr. Heathcliff in unison, as he checked her with a punch of his foot.  “She’s not accustomed to be spoiled.”

As Joseph was mumbling indistinctly in the depths of the cellar, and gave no sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me vis-a-vis with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried off the attack with a poker and called aloud for assistance.

“What the devil is the matter?” asked Heathcliff, as he returned.

“What the devil, indeed!” I muttered.  “You might as well leave a stranger with a brood of tigers!”

“They won’t meddle with persons who touch nothing,” he remarked.  “The dogs are right to be vigilant.  Take a glass of wine.”

Before I went home I determined to volunteer another visit to my sulky landlord, though evidently he wished for no repetition of my intrusion.

* * * * *

Yesterday I again visited Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to Thrushcross Grange.  On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb.  As I knocked for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar-faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn, and shouted to me.

“What are ye for?  T’ maister’s down i’ t’ fowld.  There’s nobbut t’ missis.  I’ll hae no hend wi’t,” muttered the head, vanishing.

Then a young man, without coat and shouldering a pitchfork, hailed me to follow him, and showed me into the apartment where I had been formerly received with a gruff “Sit down; he’ll be in soon.”

In the room sat the “missis,” motionless and mute.  She was slender, scarcely past girlhood, with the most exquisite little face I have ever had the pleasure of beholding; and her eyes, had they been agreeable in expression, would have been irresistible.  But the only sentiment they evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of desperation.  As for the young man who had brought me in, he slung on his person a shabby jacket, and, erecting himself before the fire, gazed down on me from the corner of his eyes as if there was some mortal feud unavenged between us.  The entrance of Heathcliff relieved me from an uncomfortable state.