If it not be true, then proof will be reliefAt worst it will not harmIf it be true! Ah, there is the dreadYet every dread should help my cause, for in it is some need of beliefCome, I tell you what I proposeFirst, that we go off now and see that child in the hospitalVincent, of the North Hospital, where the papers say the child is, is a friend of mine, and I think of yours since you were in class at AmsterdamHe will let two scientists see his case, if he will not let two friendsWe shall tell him nothing, but only that we wish to learnAnd then?" "And then?" He took a key from his pocket and held it up"And then we spend the night, you and I, in the churchyard where Lucy liesThis is the key that lock the tombI had it from the coffin man to give to Arthur My heart sank within me, for I felt that there was some fearful ordeal before usI could do nothing, however, so I plucked up what heart I could and said that we had better hasten, as the afternoon was passing We found the child awakeIt had had a sleep and taken some food, and altogether was going on wellVincent took the bandage from its throat, and showed us the puncturesThere was no mistaking the similarity to those which had been on Lucy's throatThey were smaller, and the edges looked fresher, that was allWe asked Vincent to what he attributed them, and he replied that it must have been a bite of some animal, perhaps a rat, but for his own part, he was inclined to think it was one of the bats which are so numerous on the northern heights of London"Out of so many harmless ones," he said, "there may be some wild specimen from the South of a more malignant speciesSome sailor may have brought one home, and it managed to escape, or even from the Zoological Gardens a young one may have got loose, or one be bred there from a vampireThese things do occur, you, knowOnly ten days ago a wolf got out, and was, I believe, traced up in this directionFor a week after, the children were playing nothing but Red Riding Hood on the Heath and in every alley in the place until this 'bloofer lady' scare came along, since then it has been quite a gala time with themEven this poor little mite, when he woke up today, asked the nurse if he might go awayWhen she asked him why he wanted to go, he said he wanted to play with the 'bloofer lady' "I hope," said Van Helsing, "that when you are sending the child home you will caution its parents to keep strict watch over itThese fancies to stray are most dangerous, and if the child were to remain out another night, it would probably be fatalBut in any case I suppose you will not let it away for some days?" "Certainly not, not for a week at least, longer if the wound is not healed Our visit to the hospital took more time than we had reckoned on, and the sun had dipped before we came outWhen Van Helsing saw how dark it was, he said, "There is not hurryIt is more late than I thoughtCome, let us seek somewhere that we may eat, and then we shall go on our way We dined at 'Jack Straw's Castle' along with a little crowd of bicyclists and others who were genially noisyAbout ten o'clock we started from the innIt was then very dark, and the scattered lamps made the darkness greater when we were once outside their individual radiusThe Professor had evidently noted the road we were to go, for he went on unhesitatingly, but, as for me, I was in quite a mixup as to localityAs we went further, we met fewer and fewer people, till at last we were somewhat surprised when we met even the patrol of horse police going their usual suburban shop round

?He! he! he!? said another; ?you?ll know how good it is, Misse!? ?We?ll see her work!? ?Wonder if she?ll get a cutting up, at night, like the rest of us!? ?I?d be glad to see her down for a flogging, I?ll bound!? said another The woman took no notice of these taunts, but walked on, with the same expression of angry scorn, as if she heard nothingTom had always lived among refined, and cultivated people, and he felt intuitively, from her air and bearing, that she belonged to that class; but how or why she could be fallen to those degrading circumstances, he could not tellThe women neither looked at him nor spoke to him, though, all the way to the field, she kept close at his side Tom was soon busy at his work; but, as the woman was at no great distance from him, he often glanced an eye to her, at her workHe saw, at a glance, that a native adroitness and handiness made the task to her an easier one than it proved to manyShe picked very fast and very clean, and with an air of scorn, as if she despised both the work and the disgrace and humiliation of the circumstances in which she was placed In the course of the day, Tom was working near the mulatto woman who had been bought in the same lot with himselfShe was evidently in a condition of great suffering, and Tom often heard her praying, as she wavered and trembled, and seemed about to fall downTom silently as he came near to her, transferred several handfuls of cotton from his own sack to hers ?O, don?t, don?t!? said the woman, looking surprised; ?it?ll get you into trouble Just then Sambo came upHe seemed to have a special spite against this woman; and, flourishing his whip, said, in brutal, guttural tones, ?What dis yer, Luce,?foolin? a?? and, with the word, kicking the woman with his heavy cowhide shoe, he struck Tom across the face with his whip Tom silently resumed his task; but the woman, before at the last point of exhaustion, fainted ?I?ll bring her to!? said the driver, with a brutal grin?I?ll give her something better than camphire!? and, taking a pin from his coat-sleeve, he buried it to the head in her fleshThe woman groaned, and half rose?Get up, you beast, and work, will yer, or I?ll show yer a trick more!? The woman seemed stimulated, for a few moments, to an unnatural strength, and worked with desperate eagerness ?See that you keep to dat ar,? said the man, ?or yer?ll wish yer?s dead tonight, I reckin!? ?That I do now!? Tom heard her say; and again he heard her say, ?O, Lord, how long! O, Lord, why don?t you help us?? At the risk of all that he might suffer, Tom came forward again, and put all the cotton in his sack into the woman?s ?O, you mustn?t! you donno what they?ll do to ye!? said the woman ?I can bar it!? said Tom, ?better ?n you;? and he was at his place againIt passed in a moment Suddenly, the stranger woman whom we have described, and who had, in the course of her work, come near enough to hear Tom?s last words, raised her heavy black eyes, and fixed them, for a second, on him; then, taking a quantity of cotton from her basket, she placed it in his ?You know nothing about this place,? she said, ?or you wouldn?t have done thatWhen you?ve been here a month, you?ll be done helping anybody; you?ll find it hard enough to take care of your own skin!? ?The Lord forbid, Missis!? said Tom, using instinctively to his field companion the respectful form proper to the high bred with whom he had lived ?The Lord never visits these parts,? said the woman, bitterly, as she went nimbly forward with her work; and again the scornful smile curled her lips But the action of the woman had been seen by the driver, across the field; and, flourishing his whip, he came up to her ?What! what!? he said to the woman, with an air of triumph, ?You a foolin?? Go along! yer under me now,?mind yourself, or yer?ll cotch it!? A glance like sheet-lightning suddenly flashed from those black eyes; and, facing about, with quivering lip and dilated nostrils, she drew herself up, and fixed a glance, blazing with rage and scorn, on the driver ?Dog!? she said, ?touch me, if you dare! I?ve power enough, yet, to have you torn by the dogs, burnt alive, cut to inches! I?ve only to say the word!? ?What de devil you here for, den?? said the man, evidently cowed, and sullenly retreating a step or two?Didn?t mean no harm, Misse Cassy!? ?Keep your distance, then!? said the womanAnd, in truth, the man seemed greatly inclined to attend to something at the other end of the field, and started off in quick time The woman suddenly turned to her work, and labored with a despatch that was perfectly astonishing to TomShe seemed to work by magicBefore the day was through, her basket was filled, crowded down, and piled, and she had several times put largely into Tom?sLong after dusk, the whole weary train, with their baskets on their heads, defiled up to the building appropriated to the storing and weighing the cottonLegree was there, busily conversing with the two drivers ?Dat ar Tom?s gwine to make a powerful deal o? trouble; kept a puttin? into Lucy?s basketOne o? these yer dat will get all der niggers to feelin? bused, if Masir don?t watch him!? said Sambo ?Hey-dey! The black cuss!? said Legree?He?ll have to get a breakin? in, won?t he, boys?? Both negroes grinned a horrid grin, at this shop intimation

So I can finish this diary, and God only knows if I shall ever begin anotherIf I do, or if I even open this again, it will be to deal with different people and different themes, for here at the end, where the romance of my life is told, ere I go back to take up the thread of my life-work, I say sadly and without hope, "FINIS" THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, 25 SEPTEMBER A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines as "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the HeathIn all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morningIt is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion servedThis is the more natural as the favourite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wilesA correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the "bloofer lady" is supremely funnySome of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the pictureIt is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performancesOur correspondent naively says that even Ellen Terry could not be so winningly attractive as some of these grubby-faced little children pretend, and even imagine themselves, to be There is, however, possibly a serious side to the question, for some of the children, indeed all who have been missed at night, have been slightly torn or wounded in the throatThe wounds seem such as might be made by a rat or a small dog, and although of not much importance individually, would tend to show that whatever animal inflicts them has a system or method of its ownThe police of the division have been instructed to keep a sharp lookout for straying children, especially when very young, in and around Hampstead Heath, and for any stray dog which may be about THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, 25 SEPTEMBER EXTRA SPECIAL THE HAMPSTEAD HORROR ANOTHER CHILD INJURED THE "BLOOFER LADY" We have just received intelligence that another child, missed last night, was only discovered late in the morning under a furze bush at the Shooter's Hill side of Hampstead Heath, which is perhaps, less frequented than the other partsIt has the same tiny wound in the throat as has been noticed in other casesIt was terribly weak, and looked quite emaciatedIt too, when partially restored, had the common story to tell of being lured away by the "bloofer lady" CHAPTER 14 MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL 23 September-Jonathan is better after a bad nightI am so glad that he has plenty of work to do, for that keeps his mind off the terrible things, and oh, I am rejoiced that he is not now weighed down with the responsibility of his new positionI knew he would be true to himself, and now how proud I am to see my Jonathan rising to the height of his advancement and keeping pace in all ways with the duties that come upon himHe will be away all day till late, for he said he could not lunch at homeMy household work is done, so I shall take his foreign journal, and lock myself up in my room and read it-I hadn't the heart to write last night, that terrible record of Jonathan's upset me soPoor dear! How he must have suffered, whether it be true or only imaginationI wonder if there is any truth in it at allDid he get his brain fever, and then write all those terrible things, or had he some cause for it all? I suppose I shall never know, for I dare not open the subject to himAnd yet that man we saw yesterday! He seemed quite certain of him, poor fellow! I suppose it was the funeral upset him and sent his mind back on some train of thought He believes it all himselfI remember how on our wedding day he said "Unless some solemn duty come upon me to go back to the bitter hours, asleep or awake, mad or sane?" There seems to be through it all some thread of continuityThat fearful Count was coming to LondonIf it should be, and he came to London, with its teeming millions? There may be a solemn duty, and if it come we must not shrink from itI shall get my typewriter this very hour and begin transcribingThen we shall be ready for other eyes if requiredAnd if it be wanted, then, perhaps, if I am ready, poor Jonathan may not be upset, for I can speak for him and never let him be troubled or worried with it at allIf ever Jonathan quite gets over the nervousness he may want to tell me of it all, and I can ask him questions and find out things, and see how I may comfort him LETTER, VAN HELSING TO MRSHARKER 24 September (Confidence) "Dear Madam, "I pray you to pardon my writing, in that I am so far friend as that I sent to you sad news of Miss Lucy Westenra's shop death

The echo of the scream had not ceased to ring on the air when there came the reaction, and she sank on her knees on the floor in an agony of abasementPulling her beautiful hair over her face, as the leper of old his mantle, she wailed out "Unclean! Unclean! Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh! I must bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgement DayI had thrown myself beside her in an agony of helpless grief, and putting my arms around held her tightFor a few minutes our sorrowful hearts beat together, whilst the friends around us turned away their eyes that ran tears silentlyThen Van Helsing turned and said gravelySo gravely that I could not help feeling that he was in some way inspired, and was stating things outside himself "It may be that you may have to bear that mark till God himself see fit, as He most surely shall, on the Judgement Day, to redress all wrongs of the earth and of His children that He has placed thereonAnd oh, Madam Mina, my dear, my dear, may we who love you be there to see, when that red scar, the sign of God's knowledge of what has been, shall pass away, and leave your forehead as pure as the heart we knowFor so surely as we live, that scar shall pass away when God sees right to lift the burden that is hard upon usTill then we bear our Cross, as His Son did in obedience to His WillIt may be that we are chosen instruments of His good pleasure, and that we ascend to His bidding as that other through stripes and shameThrough tears and bloodThrough doubts and fear, and all that makes the difference between God and man There was hope in his words, and comfortAnd they made for resignationMina and I both felt so, and simultaneously we each took one of the old man's hands and bent over and kissed itThen without a word we all knelt down together, and all holding hands, swore to be true to each otherWe men pledged ourselves to raise the veil of sorrow from the head of her whom, each in his own way, we lovedAnd we prayed for help and guidance in the terrible task which lay before usIt was then time to startSo I said farewell to Mina, a parting which neither of us shall forget to our dying day, and we set out To one thing I have made up my mindIf we find out that Mina must be a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and terrible land aloneI suppose it is thus that in old times one vampire meant manyJust as their hideous bodies could only rest in sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for their ghastly ranks We entered Carfax without trouble and found all things the same as on the first occasionIt was hard to believe that amongst so prosaic surroundings of neglect and dust and decay there was any ground for such fear as already we knewHad not our minds been made up, and had there not been terrible memories to spur us on, we could hardly have proceeded with our taskWe found no papers, or any sign of use in the houseAnd in the old chapel the great boxes looked just as we had seen them lastVan Helsing said to us solemnly as we stood before him, "And now, my friends, we have a duty here to doWe must sterilize this earth, so sacred of holy memories, that he has brought from a far distant land for such fell useHe has chosen this earth because it has been holyThus we defeat him with his own weapon, for we make it more holy stillIt was sanctified to such use of man, now we sanctify it to God As he spoke he took from his bag a screwdriver and a wrench, and very soon the top of one of the cases was thrown openThe earth smelled musty and close, but we did not somehow seem to mind, for our attention was concentrated on the ProfessorTaking from his box a piece of the Sacred Wafer he laid it reverently on the earth, and then shutting down the lid began to screw it home, we aiding him as he worked One by one we treated in the same way each of the great boxes, and left them as we had found them to all shop appearance

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