her secret. Her garden was
her nest and she was like a missel thrush. Oh, how she did like that
queer, common boy!

She hoped he would come back the very next day and she fell asleep
looking forward to the morning.

But you never know what the weather will do in Yorkshire, particularly
in the springtime. She was awakened in the night by the sound of rain
beating with heavy drops against her window. It was pouring down in
torrents and the wind was "wuthering" round the corners and in the
chimneys of the huge old house. Mary sat up in bed and felt miserable
and angry.

"The rain is as contrary as I ever was," she said. "It came because it
knew I did not want it."

She threw herself back on her pillow and buried her face. She did not
cry, but she lay and hated the sound of the heavily beating rain, she
hated the wind and its "wuthering." She could not go to sleep again. The
mournful sound kept her awake because she felt mournful herself. If she
had felt happy it would probably have lulled her to sleep. How it
"wuthered" and how the big rain-drops poured down and beat against the
pane!

"It sounds just like a person lost on the moor and wandering on and on
crying," she said.

* * * * *

She had been lying awake turning from side to side for about an hour,
when suddenly something made her sit up in bed and turn her head toward
the door listening. She listened and she listened.

"It isn't the wind now," she said in a loud whisper. "That isn't the
wind. It is different. It is that crying I heard before."

The door of her room was ajar and the sound came down the corridor, a
far-off faint sound of fretful crying. She listened for a few minutes
and each minute she became more and more sure. She felt as if she must
find out what it was. It seemed even stranger than the secret garden and
the buried key. Perhaps the fact that she was in a rebellious mood made
her bold. She put her foot out of bed and stood on the floor.

"I am going to find out what it is," she said. "Everybody is in bed and
I don't care about Mrs. Medlock--I don't care!"

There was a candle by her bedside and she took it up and went softly out
of the room. The corridor looked very long and dark, but she was too
excited to mind that. She thought she remembered the corners she must
turn to find the short corridor with the door covered with tapestry--the
one Mrs. Medlock had come through the day she lost herself. The sound