"I hope no one is dead," I said. And the man replies that John Reed [Branwell Brontë] had got into great trouble and was dead. Branwell Brontë was not dead when Charlotte Brontë wrote those two versions, but it seems certain that an apparition of a child in some period of Charlotte's life preceded a further debasement of Branwell, the original of Hindley Earnshaw and John Reed. We may note Charlotte Brontë's Method II., in regard to Hindley. In Charlotte Brontë's _The Professor_ we find reference to her child-phantom wailing outside, and to the eerie, premonitory signal made against a lattice, as in her _Wuthering Heights_:-- _Wuthering Heights._ _The Professor._ Chapter III. Chapter XVI. Scene: An isolated homestead on Scene: An isolated homestead on a winter's night, snow-wind a winter's night, snow-wind blowing, storm threatening. blowing, storm threatening. -------- -------- While leading me upstairs she Take care, young man [Zillah, the stout housewife] [recommended "the herdsman's recommended that I should hide wife"], that you fasten the door the candle and not make a noise, well, ... whatever sound you ... they had so many queer hear stir not and look not out. goings-on. The night will soon fall, ... strange noises are often heard He sleeps and is awakened by-- ... you might chance to hear, as it were, a child cry, and on The branch of a fir that touched opening the door to give it my lattice.... I listened succour ... a shadowy goblin dog doubtingly, ... I heard the might rush over the threshold; gusty wind and the driving of or more awful still, if the snow;... I heard also the something flapped, as with firbough repeat its teasing wings, against the lattice, and sound.... I ... endeavoured to then a raven or a white dove unhasp the casement, ... flew in and settled on the knocking my knuckles through the hearth, such a visitor would be glass, and stretching an arm out a sure sign of misfortune. to seize the ... branch; instead of which my fingers closed on The stranger, left alone, the fingers of a little ice-cold listens awhile to the muffled hand.[28]... I tried to draw snow-wind. back my arm, but the hand clung to it and a melancholy voice sobbed--"Let me in--let me in!" ... As it spoke, I discerned obscurely a child's face looking through the window.... Still it wailed "Let me in!" and it maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear.