girl, who had been on an early errand to Gimmerton, came panting upstairs, open-mouthed, and dashed into the chamber, crying: > “Oh, dear, dear! What mun we have next? Master, master, our young
“Hold your noise!” cried I hastily, enraged at her clamorous manner.
“Speak lower, Mary—What is the matter?” said Mr. Linton. “What ails your young lady?”
“She’s gone, she’s gone! Yon’ Heathcliff’s run off wi’ her!” gasped the girl.
“That is not true!” exclaimed Linton, rising in agitation. “It cannot be: how has the idea entered your head? Ellen Dean, go and seek her. It is incredible: it cannot be.”
As he spoke he took the servant to the door, and then repeated his demand to know her reasons for such an assertion.
“Why, I met on the road a lad that fetches milk here,” she stammered, “and he asked whether we weren’t in trouble at the Grange. I thought he meant for missis’s sickness, so I answered, yes. Then says he, ‘There’s somebody gone after ’em, I guess?’ I stared. He saw I knew nought about it, and he told how a gentleman and lady had stopped to have a horse’s shoe fastened at a blacksmith’s shop, two miles out of Gimmerton, not very long after midnight! and how the blacksmith’s lass had got up to spy who they were: she knew them both directly. And she noticed the man—Heathcliff it was, she felt certain: nob’dy could mistake him, besides—put a sovereign in her father’s hand for payment.