“Forgive me,” said I.

He went on, “My friend, it was because I wished to be gentle in the breaking to you, for I know you have loved that so sweet lady.  But even yet I do not expect you to believe.  It is so hard to accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the ‘no’ of it.  It is more hard still to accept so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as Miss Lucy.  Tonight I go to prove it.  Dare you come with me?”

This staggered me.  A man does not like to prove such a truth, Byron excepted from the category, jealousy.

    “And prove the very truth he most abhorred.”

He saw my hesitation, and spoke, “The logic is simple, no madman’s logic this time, jumping from tussock to tussock in a misty bog.  If it not be true, then proof will be relief.  At worst it will not harm.  If it be true!  Ah, there is the dread.  Yet every dread should help my cause, for in it is some need of belief.  Come, I tell you what I propose.  First, that we go off now and see that child in the hospital.  Dr. Vincent, 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 Amsterdam.  He will let two scientists see his case, if he will not let two friends.  We shall tell him nothing, but only that we wish to learn.  And 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 lies.  This is the key that lock the tomb.  I 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 us.  I 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 awake.  It had had a sleep and taken some food, and altogether was going on well.  Dr. Vincent took the bandage from its throat, and showed us the punctures.  There was no mistaking the similarity to those which had been on Lucy’s throat.  They were smaller, and the edges looked fresher, that was all.  We 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 species.  Some 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 vampire.  These things do occur, you, know.  Only ten days ago a wolf got out, and was, I believe, traced up in this direction.  For 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 them.  Even this poor little mite, when he woke up today, asked the nurse if he might go away.  When she asked him why he wanted to go, he said he wanted to play with the ’bloofer lady’.”