he hollow burning eyes and grief-written lines of his face. His
energy is still intact. In fact, he is like a living flame. This may
yet be his salvation, for if all go well, it will tide him over the
despairing period. He will then, in a kind of way, wake again to the
realities of life. Poor fellow, I thought my own trouble was bad
enough, but his . . . !

The Professor knows this well enough, and is doing his best to keep
his mind active. What he has been saying was, under the
circumstances, of absorbing interest. So well as I can remember, here
it is:

"I have studied, over and over again since they came into my hands,
all the papers relating to this monster, and the more I have studied,
the greater seems the necessity to utterly stamp him out. All through
there are signs of his advance. Not only of his power, but of his
knowledge of it. As I learned from the researches of my friend
Arminius of Buda-Pesth, he was in life a most wonderful man. Soldier,
statesman, and alchemist--which latter was the highest development of
the science knowledge of his time. He had a mighty brain, a learning
beyond compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse. He
dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of
knowledge of his time that he did not essay.

"Well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death. Though it
would seem that memory was not all complete. In some faculties of
mind he has been, and is, only a child. But he is growing, and some
things that were childish at the first are now of man's stature. He
is experimenting, and doing it well. And if it had not been that we
have crossed his path he would be yet, he may be yet if we fail, the
father or furtherer of a new order of beings, whose road must lead
through Death, not Life."

Harker groaned and said, "And this is all arrayed against my darling!
But how is he experimenting? The knowledge may help us to defeat
him!"

"He has all along, since his coming, been trying his power, slowly but
surely. That big child-brain of his is working. Well for us, it is
as yet a child-brain. For had he dared, at the first, to attempt
certain things he would long ago have been beyond our power. However,
he means to succeed, and a man who has centuries before him can afford
to wait and to go slow. Festina lente may well be his motto."

"I fail to understand," said Harker wearily. "Oh, do be more plain to
me! Perhaps grief and t