Wuthering Heights

countenance looked blightingly through. The stanchions stood too close to suffer his shoulders to follow; and I smiled, exulting in my fancied security. His hair and clothes were whitened with snow, and his sharp cannibal teeth, revealed by cold and wrath, gleamed through the dark.
    ›Isabella, let me in, or I'll make you repent!‹ he ›girned,‹ as Joseph calls it.
    ›I cannot commit murder;‹ I replied. ›Mr. Hindley stands sentinel with a knife, and loaded pistol.‹
    ›Let me in by the kitchen door!‹ he said.
    ›Hindley will be there before me,‹ I answered. ›And that's a poor love of yours, that cannot bear a shower of snow! We were left at peace in our beds, as long as the summer moon shone, but the moment a blast of winter returns, you must run for shelter! Heathcliff, if I were you, I'd go stretch myself over her grave, and die like a faithful dog ... The world is surely not worth living in now, is it? You had distinctly impressed on me, the idea that Catherine was the whole joy of your life – I can't imagine how you think of surviving her loss.‹
    ›He's there ... is he?‹ exclaimed my companion, rushing to the gap. ›If I can get my arm out I can hit him!‹
    I'm afraid, Ellen, you'll set me down, as really wicked – but you don't know all, so don't judge! I wouldn't have aided or abetted an attempt on even
his
life, for anything – Wish that he were dead, I must; and therefore, I was fearfully disappointed, and unnerved by terror for the consequences of my taunting speech when he flung himself on Earnshaw's weapon and wrenched it from his grasp.
    The charge exploded, and the knife, in springing back, closed into its owner's wrist. Heathcliff pulled it away by main force, slitting up the flesh as it passed on, and thrust it dripping into his pocket. He then took a stone, struck down the division between two windows and sprung in. His adversary had fallen senseless with excessive pain, and the flow of blood that gushed from an artery, or a large vein.
    The ruffian kicked and trampled on him, and dashed his head repeatedly against the flags; holding me with one hand, meantime, to prevent me summoning Joseph.
    He exerted preter-human self-denial in abstaining from finishing him, completely; but getting out of breath, he finally desisted, and dragged the apparently inanimate body onto the settle.
    There he tore off the sleeve of Earnshaw's coat, and bound up the wound with brutal roughness, spitting and cursing, during the operation, as energetically as he had kicked before.
    Being at liberty, I lost no time in seeking the old servant; who, having gathered by degrees the purport of my hasty tale, hurried below, gasping, as he descended the steps two at once.
    ›Whet is thur tuh do, nah? whet is thur tuh do, nah?‹
    ›There's this to do,‹ thundered Heathcliff, ›that your master's mad; and should he last another month, I'll have him to an asylum. And how the devil did you come to fasten me out, you toothless hound? Don't stand muttering and mumbling there. Come, I'm not going to nurse him. Wash that stuff away; and mind the sparks of your candle – it is more than half brandy!‹
    ›And soa, yah been murthering on him?‹ exclaimed Joseph, lifting his hands and eyes in horror. ›If iver Aw seed a seeght loike this! May the Lord –‹
    Heathcliff gave him a push onto his knees, in the middle of the blood; and flung a towel to him; but instead of proceeding to dry it up, he joined his hands, and began a prayer which excited my laughter from its odd phraseology. I was in the condition of mind to be shocked at nothing; in fact, I was as reckless as some malefactors show themselves at the foot of the gallows.
    ›Oh, I forgot you,‹ said the tyrant, ›you shall do that. Down with you. And you conspire with him against me, do you, viper? There, that is work fit for you!‹
    He shook me till my teeth rattled, and pitched me beside Joseph, who steadily concluded his supplications, and then rose, vowing he would set off for the Grange directly. Mr. Linton was a magistrate, and though he had fifty wives dead, he should inquire into this.
    He was so obstinate in his resolution that Heathcliff deemed it expedient to compel, from my lips, a recapitulation of what had taken place; standing over me, heaving with malevolence, as I reluctantly delivered the account in answer to his questions.
    It required a great deal of labour to satisfy the old man that he was not the aggressor; especially