I found in the course of the tea which followed that the lady was the widow of Heathcliff’s son, and that the rustic youth who sat down to the meal with us was Hareton Earnshaw.  Now, before passing the threshold, I had noticed over the principal door, among a wilderness of crumbling griffins and shameless little boys, the name “Hareton Earnshaw” and the date “1500.”  Evidently the place had a history.

The snow had fallen so deeply since I entered the house that return across the moor in the dusk was impossible.

Spending that night at Wuthering Heights on an old-fashioned couch that filled a recess, or closet, in a disused chamber, I found, scratched on the paint many times, the names “Catherine Earnshaw,” “Catherine Heathcliff,” and again “Catherine Linton.”  There were many books in the room in a dilapidated state, and, being unable to sleep, I examined them.  Some of them bore the inscription “Catherine Earnshaw, her book”; and on the blank leaves and margins, scrawled in a childish hand, was a regular diary.  I read:  “Hindley is detestable.  Heathcliff and I are going to rebel....  How little did I dream Hindley would ever make me cry so!  Poor Heathcliff!  Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won’t let him sit or eat with us any more.”

When I slept I was harrowed by nightmare, and next morning I gladly left the house; and, piloted by my landlord across the billowy white ocean of the moor, I reached the Grange benumbed with cold and as feeble as a kitten from fatigue.

When my housekeeper, Mrs. Nelly Dean, brought in my supper that night I asked her why Heathcliff let the Grange and preferred living in a residence so much inferior.

“He’s rich enough to live in a finer house than this,” said Mrs. Dean; “but he’s very close-handed.  Young Mrs. Heathcliff is my late master’s daughter—­Catherine Linton was her maiden name, and I nursed her, poor thing.  Hareton Earnshaw is her cousin, and the last of an old family.”

“The master, Heathcliff, must have had some ups and downs to make him such a churl.  Do you know anything of his history?”

“It’s a cuckoo’s, sir.  I know all about it, except where he was born, and who were his parents, and how he got his money.  And Hareton Earnshaw has been cast out like an unfledged dunnock.”

I asked Mrs. Dean to bring her sewing, and continue the story.  This she did, evidently pleased to find me companionable.

II.—­The Story Runs Backward

Before I came to live here (began Mrs. Dean), I was almost always at Wuthering Heights, because my mother nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw, that was Hareton’s father, and I used to run errands and play with the children.  One day, old Mr. Earnshaw, Hareton’s grandfather, went to Liverpool, and promised Hindley and Cathy, his son and daughter, to bring each of them a present.  He was absent three days, and at the end of that time brought home, bundled up in his arms under his great-coat, a dirty, ragged, black-haired