This was his home village, not far from his ancestral manor, I quickly divined from 
scanning those around him-a little one-street place of sixteenth-century buildings, 
housing shops and an inn now dependent upon the fickleness of tourists, which David had 
restored from his own pocket, and visited more and more often to escape his London life.
  
  Positively eerie little spot!
  
  All David was doing, however, was guzzling his beloved single-malt Scotch and 
scribbling drawings of the Devil on napkins. Mephistopheles with his lute? The horned 
Satan dancing under the light of the moon? It must have been his dejection I had sensed 
over the miles, or more truly the concern of those watching him. It was their image of 
him which I had caught.
  
  I wanted so to talk to him. I didn't dare to do it. I would have created too much of a 
stir in the little tavern, where the concerned old proprietor and his two hulking and 
silent nephews remained awake and smoking their odoriferous pipes only on account of the 
august presence of the local lord-who was getting as drunk as a lord.
  
  For an hour, I had stood near, peering through the little window. Then I'd gone away.
  
  Now-many, many months later-as the snow fell over London, as it fell in big silent 
flakes over the high facade of the Motherhouse of the Talamasca, I searched for him, in a 
dull weary state, thinking that there was no one in all the world whom I must see but 
him. I scanned the minds of the members, sleeping and awake. I roused them. I heard them 
come to attention as clearly as if they had snapped on their lights on rising from bed.
  
  But I had what I wanted before they could shut me out.
  
  David was gone to the manor house in the Cotswolds, somewhere, no doubt, in the 
vicinity of that curious little village with its quaint tavern.
  
  Well, I could find it, couldn't I? I went to seek him there.
  
  The snow was failing ever more heavily as I traveled close to the earth, cold and 
angry, with all memory of the blood I'd drunk now wiped away.
  
  Other dreams came back to me, as they always do in bitter winter, of the harsh and 
miserable snows of my mortal boyhood, of the chill stone rooms of my father's castle, and 
of the little fire, and my great mastiffs snoring in the hay beside me, keeping me snug 
and warm.
  
  Those dogs had been slain on my last wolf hunt.
  
  I hated so to remember it, and yet it was always sweet to think I was there again-with 
the clean smell of the little fire and of those powerful dogs tumbled against me, and 
that I was alive, truly alive!-and the hunt had never taken place. I'd never gone to 
Paris, I'd never seduced the powerful and demented vampire Magnus. The little stone room 
was full of the good scent of the dogs, and I could sleep now beside them, and be safe.
  
  At last I drew near to a small Elizabethan manor house in the mountains, a very 
beautiful stone structure of deep-pitched roofs and narrow gables, of deep-set thick 
glass windows, far smaller than the Motherhouse, yet very grand on its own scale.
  
  Only one set of windows was lighted, and when I approached I saw that it was the 
library and David was there, seated by a great noisily burning fire.
  
  He had his familiar leatherbound diary in his hand, and he was writing with an ink pen, 
very rapidly. He had no sense at all that he was being watched. Now and then he consulted 
another leatherbound book, on the table at his side. I could easily see that this was a 
Christian Bible, with its double columns of small print and the gilt edges of its pages, 
and the ribbon that marked his place.
  
  With only a little effort I observed it was the Book of Genesis from which David was 
reading, and apparently making notes. There was his copy of Faust beside it. What on 
earth interested him in all this?
  
  The room itself was lined with books. A single lamp burned over David's shoulder. It 
was as many a library in northern climes-cozy and inviting, with a low beamed ceiling, 
and big comfortable old leather chairs.
  
  But what rendered it unusual were the relics of a life lived in another clime. There 
were his cherished mementos of those remembered years.
  
  The mounted head of a spotted leopard was perched above the glowing fireplace. And the 
great black head of a buffalo was fixed to the far right wall. There were many small 
Hindu statues of bronze here and there on shelves and on tables. Small jewel-like Indian 
rugs lay on the brown carpet, before hearth and doorway and windows.
  
  And the long flaming skin of his Bengal tiger lay sprawled in the very center of the 
room, its head carefully preserved, with glass eyes and those immense fangs which I had 
seen with such horrid vividness in my dream.
  
  It was to this last trophy that David gave his full attention suddenly, and then taking 
his eyes off it with difficulty, went back to writing again. I tried to scan him. 
Nothing. Why had I bothered? Not even a glimmer of the mangrove forests where such a 
beast might have been slain. But once again he looked at the tiger, and then, forgetting 
his pen, sank deep into his thoughts.
  
  Of course it comforted me merely to watch him, as it had always done. I glimpsed many 
framed photographs in the shadows-pictures of David when he'd been young, and many 
obviously taken of him in India before a lovely bungalow with deep porches and a high 
roof. Pictures of his mother and father.
  
  Pictures of him with the animals he'd killed. Did this explain my dream?
  
  I ignored the snow falling all around me, covering my hair and my shoulders and even my 
loosely folded arms. Finally I stirred. There was only an hour before dawn.
  
  I moved around the house, found a back door, commanded the latch to slide back, and