In the light of the foregoing evidence it is impossible to ignore the reference Montagu makes to "the sinks," where the water from Malham Tarn sinks underground for a considerable distance. Whether Charlotte Brontë thought this would produce a quag in the neighbourhood I cannot tell; but if she has used the word "sough" (pronounced _suff_) in its ordinary acceptance in Yorkshire, she originally meant "a subterranean passage or tunnel, draining water as from a sink," if I may quote a definition in Dr. Joseph Wright's _English Dialect Dictionary_. There is every sign in her writings of a loose, composite adaptation of Montagu's topography, etc., yet Charlotte Brontë was ever jealous of associations, and under a guise or not she frequently preserved carefully recognizable characteristics necessary to locality and to personality; and we see Montagu had associated a sough with Malham. We have mention of Gimmerton Sough in Chapter III. of _Wuthering Heights_, and in Chapter X.:--"... the valley of Gimmerton, with a long list of mist winding nearly to its top (for very soon after you pass the chapel ... the sough that runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen). Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour." And we have read what Montagu says about the mists of Malham. The influence of Montagu's descriptions of this wild locality is likewise observable in the scenery and the background of _Jane Eyre_,[37] as I mentioned in the article "The Key to _Jane Eyre_" I wrote in _The Saturday Review_. The yews and evergreens, mentioned by Montagu in connection with Malham, and introduced by Charlotte Brontë, with other trees of the fir-tribe, in descriptions of Morton in _Jane Eyre_, Chap. XXX., etc., and in _Wuthering Heights_, are not common to Haworth. CHAPTER VIII. THE RIVERS OR BRONTË FAMILY IN "JANE EYRE." Charlotte Brontë, while she often portrayed the main characters of her stories from people in her own life, was quite at home with them in whatsoever condition or surroundings she placed them.[38] She loved the memory of Tabitha Aykroyd--that faithful servant, companion, and friend; hated the vices of her brother Branwell Brontë, and was obsessed by thoughts of M. Héger, her Brussels friend. So she placed the good old housekeeper of the parsonage--under an ecclesiastical cognomen truly--as Mrs. Dean at Wuthering Heights; set up her brother Branwell on the same premises as Hindley Earnshaw, and put her Brussels friend in the position of master of that abode. In _Jane Eyre_ Tabitha Aykroyd is Bessie of Mrs. Reed's household, and Hannah of the Rivers family; Branwell is among better surroundings as John Reed, and M. Héger is portrayed more proportionately as the master of Thornfield; while in the same work Charlotte Brontë portrays her own sister Maria Brontë, and makes her say she is a native of Northumberland and describe the scenery round her birthplace there!