Early in September Julia spoke¹ in Bradford and Keighley, and on the following Sunday she slipped away and went to Haworth, not only to rest and read a number of letters forwarded by her solicitors², but to worship at the shrine³ of the Bront?s.

She took a fly at the station in the valley, but halfway⁴ up the steep road which leads to the village she descended⁵ precipitately⁶; the fly and the horse had executed a right angle. She walked the rest of the distance, the rough stones giving a foothold, and soon reached the long crooked⁷ street which begins with the Black Bull Inn and finishes at the moor⁸. Short streets ending nowhere radiated from this central thoroughfare at irregular intervals⁹. There was no business to speak of in Haworth. The men worked in Keighley or Bradford, the young women in the worsted mills of the valley. Julia, driving the day before, had watched the long procession of girls, shawls pinned about their heads, file out of the factories, and, two by two, cross the valley either to the road that led up to Haworth, or to another village higher above the moor. It was the proud boast of Haworth that every inhabitant had a bank book, and Julia felt it would be a relief to visit one village where there was no poverty. It looked trim and prosperous, picturesque¹⁰ though it was, and such men and women as were to be seen had none of that pinched hopeless look which had put fire into so many of her speeches.

After she had duly admired Branwell Bront?’s chair, which the

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