ully rotten, so rotten that I decided to return to
town that day; and yet I yielded to some strange fascination, and
determined, after all, to stay another night. At dinner I drank
sparingly; and, making the same excuse as on the previous nights, I
retired to bed at an early hour. I lay awake until midnight, waiting for
I know not what; and was just thinking what a mad fool I was, when
suddenly the door gently opened and again I saw Jack's wife. Slowly she
came towards me, gliding as stealthily and noiselessly as a snake. I
waited until she leaned over me, until I felt her breath on my cheek,
and then--then flung my arms round her. I had just time to see the mad
terror in her eyes as she realised I was awake, and the next instant,
like an eel, she had slipped from my grasp, and was gone. I never saw
her again. I left early the next morning, and I shall never forget dear
old Jack's face when I said good-bye to him. It is only a few days since
I heard of his death.'"

_Were-wolves_

Closely allied to the vampire is the were-wolf, which, however, instead
of devouring the intellect of human beings, feeds only on their flesh.
Like the vampire, the were-wolf belongs to the order of elementals; but,
unlike the vampire, it is confined to a very limited sphere--the wilds
of Norway, Sweden, and Russia, and only appears in two guises, that of a
human being in the daytime and a wolf at night. I have closely
questioned many people who have travelled in those regions, but very few
of them--one or two at the most--have actually come in contact with
those to whom the existence of the were-wolf is not a fable but a fact.
One of these travellers, a mere acquaintance whom I met in an hotel in
the Latin Quarter of Paris, assured me that the authenticity of a story
he would tell me, relating to the were-wolf, was, in the neighbourhood
through which he travelled, never for a single moment doubted.

My informant, a highly cultured Russian, spoke English, French, German,
and Italian with as great fluency as I spoke my native tongue, and I
believed him to be perfectly genuine. The incident he told me, to which
unanimous belief was accredited, happened to two young men (whom I will
call Hans and Carl), who were travelling to Nijni Novgorod, a city in
the province of Tobolsk. The route they took was off the beaten track,
and led them through a singularly wild and desolate tract of country.
One evening, when they were trotting mechanically alo