The days drew on towards Christmas; it was already the middle of December, and still Emily was about the house, able to wait upon herself, to sew for the others, to take an active share in the duties of the day. She always fed the dogs herself. One Monday evening, it must have been about the 14th of December, she rose as usual to give the creatures their supper. She got up, walking slowly, holding out in her thin hands an apronful of broken meat and bread. But when she reached the flagged passage the cold took her; she staggered on the uneven pavement and fell against the wall. Her sisters, who had been sadly following her, unseen, came forward much alarmed and begged her to desist; but, smiling wanly, she went on and gave Floss and Keeper their last supper from her hands. The next morning she was worse. Before her waking, her watching sisters heard the low, unconscious moaning that tells of suffering continued even in sleep; and they feared for what the coming year might hold in store. Of the nearness of the end they did not dream. Charlotte had been out to the moors, searching every glen and hollow for a sprig of heather, however pale and dry, to take to the moor-loving sister. But Emily looked on the flower laid on her pillow with indifferent eyes. She was already estranged and alienated from life. Nevertheless she persisted in rising, dressing herself alone, and doing everything for herself. A fire had been lit in the room, and Emily sat on the hearth to comb her hair. She was thinner than ever now--the tall, loose-jointed, “slinky” girl--her hair in its plenteous dark abundance was all of her that was not marked by the branding finger of death. She sat on the hearth combing her long brown hair. But soon the comb slipped from her feeble grasp into the cinders. She, the intrepid, active Emily, watched it burn and smoulder, too weak to lift it.... At last the servant came in: “Martha,” she said, “my comb’s down there; I was too weak to stoop and pick it up.” She finished her dressing, and came very slowly, with dizzy head and tottering steps, down stairs into the little, bare parlor where Anne was working and Charlotte writing a letter. Emily took up some work and tried to sew. Her catching breath, her drawn and altered face, were ominous of the end. But still a little hope flickered in those sisterly hearts. “She grows daily weaker,” wrote Charlotte, on that memorable Tuesday morning; seeing surely no portent that this--this! was to be the last of the days and the hours of her weakness.