an instant his eyes closed-not with pain or sleep but voluntarily, as though he were bringing all his faculties to bear, when he opened them he said, hurriedly, and with more energy than he had yet displayed:"Quick, Doctor, quick. I am dying! I feel that I have but a few minutes; and then I must go back to death-or worse! Wet my lips with brandy again. I have something that I must say before I die; or before my poor crushed brain dies anyhow. Thank you! It was that night after you left me, when I implored you to let me go away. I couldn’t speak then, for I felt my tongue was tied; but I was as sane then, except in that way, as I am now. I was in an agony of despair for a long time after you left me; it seemed hours. Then there came a sudden peace to me. My brain seemed to become cool again, and I realised where I was. I heard the dogs bark behind our house, but not where He was!" As he spoke Van Helsing’s eyes never blinked, but his hand came out and met mine and gripped it hard. He did not, however, betray himself, he nodded slightly and said: "Go on," in a low voice. Renfield proceeded:"He came up to the window in the mist, as I had seen him often before; but he was solid then-not a ghost, and his eyes were fierce like a man’s when angry. He was laughing with his red mouth; the sharp white teeth glinted in the moonlight when he turned to look back over the belt of trees, to where the dogs were barking. I wouldn’t ask him to come in at first, though I knew he wanted to just as he had wanted all along. Then he began promising me things-not in words but by doing them." He was interrupted by a word from the Professor:-"How?"

"By making them happen; just as he used to send in the flies when the sun was shining. Great big fat ones with steel and sapphire on their wings; and big moths, in the night, with skull and crossbones on their backs." Van Helsing nodded to him as he whispered to me unconsciously:"The Acherontia Aiettropos of the Sphinges-what you call the ‘Death’s-head Moth?’" The patient went on without stopping.

"Then he began to whisper: ‘Rats, rats, rats! Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, and every one a life; and dogs to eat them, and cats too. All lives! all red blood, with years of life in it; and not merely buzzing flies!’ I laughed at him, for I wanted to see what he could do. Then the dogs howled, away beyond the dark trees in His house. He beckoned me to the window. I got up and looked out, and He raised his hands, and seemed to call out without using any words. A dark mass spread over the grass, coming on like the shape of a flame of fire; and then He moved the mist to the right