Page:Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey (1st edition), Volume 1 (Wuthering Heights, Volume 1).djvu/55

Rh For a moment I considered it absurd that I should need such a weapon to gain admittance into my own residence. Then, a new idea flashed across me. I was not going there; we were journeying to hear the famous Jabes Branderham preach from the text—"Seventy Times Seven;" and either Joseph, the preacher, or I had committed the "First of the Seventy First," and were to be publicly exposed and excommunicated.

We came to the chapel—I have passed it really in my walks, twice or thrice: it lies in a hollow, between two hills—an elevated hollow—near a swamp, whose peaty moisture is said to answer all the purposes of embalming on the few corpses deposited there. The roof has been kept whole hitherto, but, as the clergyman's stipend is only twenty pounds per annum, and a house with two rooms, threatening speedily to determine into one, no clergyman will undertake the duties of pastor, especially, as it is currently reported that his flock would rather