daughter, who was stretched on her straw bed as if dead. The woman was shrieking, without pause, “A vampire! a vampire! may poor child is dead !”     With great difficulty we restored Khava to consciousness, she had, she said, seen the window opened and a man, pale as ashes, and wrapped in a winding sheet, had flung himself upon her, bitten her and strived to strangle. She was only able to shriek aloud when the spectre fled, and she swooned away, but she fancied that she had recognized in its features those of a villager named Wiecznany, dead about a fortnight. There was a small red spot on her throat, but I did not know whether it might not be a natural mark or the result of the bite of an insect during the girl’s nightmare. When, however, I hazarded the conjecture the father rejected it suddenly; the girl wept piteously, and wringing her hands and rocking to-and-fro, kept repeating: “Alas! To die so young and before one’s wedding day!” while the mother loaded me with reproaches, declaring that she had herself seen the vampire and known it to be Wietznany. I considered it, therefore, the part of prudence to be silent. All the amulets the village were soon hung around the sufferer’s neck and her father took an oath that next day he would disinter the corpse of Wiecznany and burn it. Thus the night passed in an excitement that nothing could allay.     At day break next morning the whole village was out, the men armed with muskets or hangers, the women bearing heated irons, and the children sticks and stones. With cries of rage against the dead man they all thronged to the

graveyard; it was with great difficulty that I could obtain and retain a position whence I could witness the ceremony of exhumation. It was slow, for us all strove to take part in it each interfered with the other, and not a few serious wounds would have been inflicted by pick or shovel had not the Elders ordered two men only to complete the work. At the moment, that the shroud was unrolled a horrible cry fairly raised my hair on end. It proceeded from a woman by my side. “It is a vampire!” she shrieked; “the worms have not eaten it!” and her words were taken up by a hundred mouths. Twenty musket-shots shattered the head of the corpse to fragments, while the father and relatives of Khava hacked the body savagely with their long knives, and use women dipped linen cloths in the red liquid that oozed from the wounds to apply to the sufferer’s throat. The body was dragged from the grave and firmly tied to the trunk of a small tree that had been cut down and prepared, then drawn to the house of Poglonovich, where a pile of faggots and straw had been erected. Fire was set to it, and the body tossed into the flames, while the people yelling madly danced around the pyre. The abominable stench from the burning flesh soon compelled me to take refuge in the house.     The house was crowded with visitors, the men all puffing at their pipes, the women all speaking at once and over-whelming with questions the sick girl, who sat pale and stupefied, the blood-soaked bandages round her neck forming a ghastly contrast with her white, half-naked shoulders. Little by little the crowd diminished till we were