to be almost my sole companions all day through--that at night I
shall go to bed with them, that they will long keep me
sleepless--that next morning I shall wake to them
again,--sometimes, Nell, I have a heavy heart of it. But crushed
I am not, yet; nor robbed of elasticity, nor of hope, nor quite
of endeavour. I have some strength to fight the battle of life. I
am aware, and can acknowledge, I have many comforts, many
mercies. Still I can GET ON. But I do hope and pray, that never
may you, or any one I love, be placed as I am. To sit in a lonely
room--the clock ticking loud through a still house--and have open
before the mind's eye the record of the last year, with its
shocks, sufferings, losses--is a trial.

"I write to you freely, because I believe you will hear me with
moderation--that you will not take alarm or think me in any way
worse off than I am."



CHAPTER IV

The tale of "Shirley" had been begun soon after the publication
of "Jane Eyre." If the reader will refer to the account I have
given of Miss Bronte's schooldays at Roe Head, he will there see
how every place surrounding that house was connected with the
Luddite riots, and will learn how stories and anecdotes of that
time were rife among the inhabitants of the neighbouring
villages; how Miss Wooler herself, and the elder relations of
most of her schoolfellows, must have known the actors in those
grim disturbances. What Charlotte had heard there as a girl came