his story upon the groundwork on which the fragment was to have been continued.  Byron’s story describes the arrival of two friends amid the ruins of Ephesus.  One of them, Darvell, who, like most of Byron’s heroes, is enshrouded in mystery, and is a prey to some cureless disquiet, falls ill and dies.  Before his death he demands that his companion shall on a certain day throw a ring into the salt springs that run into the bay of Eleusis.  If we may trust Polidori’s account, Byron intended that the survivor, on his return to England, should be startled to behold his companion moving in society, and making love to his sister.  On this foundation Polidori constructed The Vampyre.  The story opens with the description of a nobleman, Lord Ruthven, whose appearance and character excite great interest in London society.  His face is remarkable for its deadly pallor, and he has a “dead, grey eye, which, fixing upon the object’s face, did not seem to penetrate and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart, but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that laid (sic) upon the skin it could not pass.”  A young man named Aubrey, who arrives in London about the same time, becomes deeply interested in the study of Ruthven’s character.  When he joins him on a tour abroad he discovers that his companion takes a fiendish delight in ruining the innocent at the gaming-table; and, after receiving a warning of Ruthven’s reputation, decides to leave him, but to continue to watch him closely.  He succeeds in foiling his designs against a young Italian girl in Rome.  Aubrey next travels to Greece, where he falls in love with Ianthe.  One day, in spite of warnings that the place he purposes to visit is frequented by vampires, Aubrey sets off on an excursion.  Benighted in a lonely forest, he hears the terror-stricken cries of a woman in a hovel, and, on attempting to rescue her, finds himself in the grasp of a being of superhuman strength, who cries:  “Again baffled!” When light dawns, Aubrey makes the terrible discovery that Ianthe has become the prey of a vampire.  He carries away from the spot a blood-stained dagger.  In the delirious fever, which ensues on his discovery of Ianthe’s fate, Aubrey is nursed by Lord Ruthven.  While they are travelling in Greece, Ruthven is shot in the shoulder by a robber, and, before dying, exacts from Aubrey a solemn oath that he will not reveal for a year and a day what he knows of his crimes or death.  In accordance with a promise made to Ruthven, his body is conveyed to a mountain to be exposed to the rays of the moon.  The corpse disappears.  Among Ruthven’s possessions Aubrey finds a sheath, into which the dagger he has found in the hovel fits exactly.  On passing through Rome he learns that the girl he had once saved from Ruthven has vanished.  When he returns to London, Aubrey is horrified to behold the figure of Lord Ruthven almost on the very spot where he had first seen him.  He dare not break