“For the use of such ghosts as choose to inhabit it,” I observed.

“No, Mr. Lockwood,” said Nelly, shaking her head.  “I believe the dead are at peace, but it is not right to speak of them with levity.”

At that moment the garden gate swung to; the ramblers were returning.

“They are afraid of nothing,” I grumbled, watching their approach through the window.  “Together they would brave Satan and all his legions.”

As they stepped upon the door-stones, and halted to take a last look at the moon, or more correctly at each other, by her light, I felt irresistibly impelled to escape them again; and pressing a remembrance into the hands of Mrs. Dean, and disregarding her expostulations at my rudeness, I vanished through the kitchen, as they opened the house-door; and so should have confirmed Joseph in his opinion of his fellow-servant’s gay indiscretions, had he not fortunately recognized me for a respectable character by the sweet ring of a sovereign at his feet.

My walk home was lengthened by a diversion in the direction of the kirk.  When beneath its walls, I perceived decay had made progress even in seven months—­many a window showed black gaps deprived of glass; and slates jutted off, here and there, beyond the right line of the roof, to be gradually worked off in coming autumn storms.

I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor—­the middle one, gray, and half buried in the heath—­Edgar Linton’s only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot—­Heathcliff’s still bare.

I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

PHILLIPS BROOKS

(1835-1893)

Phillips Brooks was born in Boston, Massachusetts, December 13th, 1835, and died there January 23d, 1893.  He inherited the best traditions of New England history, being on the paternal side the direct descendant of John Cotton, and his mother’s name, Phillips, standing for high learning and distinction in the Congregational church.  Born at a time when the orthodox faith was fighting its bitterest battle with Unitarianism, his parents accepted the dogmas of the new theology, and had him baptized by a Unitarian clergyman.  But while refusing certain dogmas of the orthodox church, they were the more thrown back for spiritual support upon the internal evidences of evangelical Christianity.  “Holding still,” says the Rev. Arthur Brooks, “in a greater or less degree, and with more or less precision, to the old statements, they counted the great fact that these statements enshrined more precious truth than any other.”  Transition to the Episcopal church was easy; the mother became an Episcopalian, and Phillips Brooks received all his early training in that communion.  But heredity had its influence, and in after-life the great Bishop said that the Episcopal church could reap the fruits of the long and bitter controversy which divided the New England church, only as it discerned the spiritual worth of Puritanism, and the value of its contributions to the history of religious thought and character.