strides, and eventually seemed to disappear over the wall into the churchyard.  Then he rejoined his brother by the sister’s bedside.  She was dreadfully hurt, and her wound was a very definite one; but she was of strong disposition, not either given to romance or superstition, and when she came to herself she said, ’What has happened is most extraordinary, and I am very much hurt.  It seems inexplicable, but of course there is an explanation, and we must wait for it.  It will turn out that a lunatic has escaped from some asylum and found his way here.’  The wound healed, and she appeared to get well, but the doctor who was sent for would not believe that she could bear so terrible a shock so easily, and insisted that she must have change, mental and physical; so her brothers took her to Switzerland.

“Being a sensible girl, when she went abroad she threw herself at once into the interests of the country she was in.  She dried plants, she made sketches, she went up mountains, and, as autumn came on, she was the person who urged that they should return to Croglin Grange.  ’We have taken it,’ she said, ’for seven years, and we have only been there one; and we shall always find it difficult to let a house which is only one story high, so we had better return there; lunatics do not escape every day.’  As she urged it, her brothers wished nothing better, and the family returned to Cumberland.  From there being no upstairs to the house it was impossible to make any great change in their arrangements.  The sister occupied the same room, but it is unnecessary to say she always closed her shutters, which, however, as in many old houses, always left one top pane of the window uncovered.  The brothers moved, and occupied a room together, exactly opposite that of their sister, and they always kept loaded pistols in their room.

“The winter passed most peacefully and happily.  In the following March the sister was suddenly awakened by a sound she remembered only too well—­scratch, scratch, scratch upon the window, and, looking up, she saw quite clearly in the topmost pane of the window the same hideous brown shrivelled face, with glaring eyes, looking in at her.  This time she screamed as loud as she could.  Her brothers rushed out of their room with pistols, and out of the front door.  The creature was already scudding away across the lawn.  One of the brothers fired and hit it in the leg, but still with the other leg it continued to make way, scrambled over the wall into the churchyard, and seemed to disappear into a vault which belonged to a family long extinct.

“The next day the brothers summoned all the tenants of Croglin Grange, and in their presence the vault was opened.  A horrible scene revealed itself.  The vault was full of coffins; they had been broken open, and their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, were scattered over the floor.  One coffin alone remained intact.  Of that the lid had been lifted, but still lay loose upon the coffin.  They raised it, and there, brown, withered, shrivelled, mummified, but quite entire, was the same hideous figure which had looked in at the windows of Croglin Grange, with the marks of a recent pistol-shot in the leg; and they did—­the only thing that can lay a vampire—­they burnt it.”