ture of Dracula climbing up the front of the castle in
Transylvania, or the scene in the tomb when a stake is driven
through the heart of the vampire who has taken possession of
Lucy's form. The ineffable horror of the "Un-Dead" would repel us
by its painfulness, if it were not made endurable by the love,
hope and faith of the living characters, particularly of the old
Dutch doctor, Van Helsing. The matter-of-fact style of the
narrative, which is compiled of letters, diaries and journals,
and the mention of such familiar places as Whitby and Hampstead,
help to enhance the illusion.

The motive of terror has often been mingled with other motives in
the novel as well as in the short tale. In unwinding the
complicated thread of the modern detective story, which follows
the design originated by Godwin and perfected by Poe, we are
frequently kept to our task by the force of terror as well as of
curiosity. In _The Sign of Four_ and in _The Hound of the
Baskervilles_, to choose two entirely different stories, Conan
Doyle realises that darkness and loneliness place us at the mercy
of terror, and he works artfully on our fears of the unknown.
Phillips Oppenheim and William Le Queux, in romances which have
sometimes a background of international politics, maintain our
interest by means of mystifications, which screw up our
imagination to the utmost pitch, and then let us down gently with
a natural but not too obvious explanation. A certain amount of
terror is almost essential to heighten the interest of a novel of
costume and adventure, like _The Prisoner of Zenda_ or _Rupert of
Hentzau_, or of the fantastic, exciting romances of Jules Verne.
Rider Haggard's African romances, _She_ and _King Solomon's
Mines_, belong to a large group of supernatural tales with a
foreign setting. They combine strangeness, wonder, mystery and
horror. The ancient theme of bartering souls is given a new twist
in Robert Hichens' novel, _The Flames_. E.F. Benson, in _The
Image in the Sand_, experiments with Oriental magic. The
investigations of the Society for Psychical Research gave a new
impulse to stories of the occult and the uncanny. Algernon
Blackwood is one of the most ingenious exponents of this type of
story. By means of psychical explanations, he succeeds in
revivifying many ancient superstitions. In _Dr. John Silence_,
even the werewolf, whom we believed extinct, manifests himself in
modern days among a party of cheerful campers on a lonel