Bram Stoker

, what a wealth of sor­row in a few words! Poor Mrs. Westenra! poor Lucy!

But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things

What I saw was the Count’s head com­ing out from the win­dow. I did not

I was not alone. The room was the same, un­changed in any way since I came into it; I could see along the floor, in the bril­liant moon­light, my own foot­step

Some of the “New Wo­men” writers will some day start an idea that men and wo­men should be al­lowed to see each other asleep be­fore pro­pos­ing or ac­cept­ing. But I sup­pose the New Wo­man won’t con­des­cend in fu­ture to ac­cept; she will do the pro­pos­ing her­self. And a nice job she will make of it, too! There’s some con­sol­a­tion in that.

I have been more touched than I can say by your grief. That is a won­der­ful ma­chine, but it is cruelly true. It told me, in its very tones, the an­guish of your heart. It was like a soul cry­ing out to Almighty God. No one must hear them spoken ever again! See, I have tried to be use­ful. I have copied out the words on my type­writer, and none other need now hear your heart beat, as I did.”

Good night, every­body.

When we star­ted, the crowd round the inn door, which had by this time swelled to a con­sid­er­able size, all made the sign of the cross and poin­ted two fin­gers to­wards me. With some dif­fi­culty I got a fel­low-pas­sen­ger to tell me what they meant; he would not an­swer at first, but on learn­ing that I was Eng­lish, he ex­plained that it was a charm or guard against the evil eye. This was not very pleas­ant for me, just start­ing for an un­known place to meet an un­known man; but every­one seemed so kind­hearted, and so sor­row­ful, and so sym­path­etic that I could not but be touched.

The road was rugged, but still we seemed to fly over it with a fe­ver­ish haste. I could not un­der­stand then what the haste meant, but the driver was evid­ently bent on los­ing no time in reach­ing Borgo Prund. I was told that this road is in sum­mer­time ex­cel­lent, but that it had not yet been put in or­der after the winter snows. In this re­spect it is dif­fer­ent from the gen­eral run of roads in the Carpath­i­ans, for it is an old tra­di­tion that they are not to be kept in too good or­der. Of old the Hospadars would not re­pair them, lest the Turk should think that they were pre­par­ing to bring in for­eign troops, and so hasten the war which was al­ways really at load­ing point.

Then, amongst a chorus of screams from the peas­ants and a uni­ver­sal cross­ing of them­selves, a calèche, with four horses, drove up be­hind us, over­took us, and drew up be­side the coach. I could see from the flash of our lamps, as the rays fell on them, that the horses were coal-black and splen­did an­im­als. They were driven by a tall man, with a long brown beard and a great black hat, which seemed to hide his face from us. I could only see the gleam of a pair of very bright eyes, which seemed red in the lamp­light, as he turned to us. He said to the driver:―

“You are early to­night, my friend.” The man stammered in reply:―

“The Eng­lish Herr was in a hurry,” to which the stranger replied:―

“That is why, I sup­pose, you wished him to go on to Bukov­ina. You can­not de­ceive me, my friend; I know too much, and my horses are swift.” As he spoke he smiled, and the lamp­light fell on a hard-look­ing mouth, with very red lips and sharp-look­ing teeth, as white as ivory. One of my com­pan­ions whispered to an­other the line from Bur­ger’s “Lenore”:―

“Denn die Todten re­iten schnell”—
(“For the dead travel fast.”)