Be careful of my guest--his safety is most precious to me. Should aught
happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure
his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often
dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you suspect
harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune.--_Dracula_.

As I held the telegram in my hand, the room seemed to whirl around me;
and, if the attentive maître d'hôtel had not caught me, I think I should
have fallen. There was something so strange in all this, something so
weird and impossible to imagine, that there grew on me a sense of my
being in some way the sport of opposite forces--the mere vague idea of
which seemed in a way to paralyse me. I was certainly under some form of
mysterious protection. From a distant country had come, in the very nick
of time, a message that took me out of the danger of the snow-sleep and
the jaws of the wolf.




The Judge's House


When the time for his examination drew near Malcolm Malcolmson made up
his mind to go somewhere to read by himself. He feared the attractions
of the seaside, and also he feared completely rural isolation, for of
old he knew it charms, and so he determined to find some unpretentious
little town where there would be nothing to distract him. He refrained
from asking suggestions from any of his friends, for he argued that each
would recommend some place of which he had knowledge, and where he had
already acquaintances. As Malcolmson wished to avoid friends he had no