multiplying in thousands, and we moved out.
Lord Godalming lifted one of the dogs, and carrying him in, placed him
on the floor. The instant his feet touched the ground he seemed to
recover his courage, and rushed at his natural enemies. They fled before
him so fast that before he had shaken the life out of a score, the other
dogs, who had by now been lifted in the same manner, had but small prey
ere the whole mass had vanished.
With their going it seemed as if some evil presence had departed, for
the dogs frisked about and barked merrily as they made sudden darts at
their prostrate foes, and turned them over and over and tossed them in
the air with vicious shakes. We all seemed to find our spirits rise.
Whether it was the purifying of the deadly atmosphere by the opening of
the chapel door, or the relief which we experienced by finding ourselves
in the open I know not; but most certainly the shadow of dread seemed to
slip from us like a robe, and the occasion of our coming lost something
of its grim significance, though we did not slacken a whit in our
resolution. We closed the outer door and barred and locked it, and
bringing the dogs with us, began our search of the house. We found
nothing throughout except dust in extraordinary proportions, and all
untouched save for my own footsteps when I had made my first visit.
Never once did the dogs exhibit any symptom of uneasiness, and even when
we returned to the chapel they frisked about as though they had been
rabbit-hunting in a summer wood.
The morning was quickening in the east when we emerged from the front.
Dr. Van Helsing had taken the key of the hall-door from the bunch, and
locked the door in orthodox fashion, putting the key into his pocket
when he had done.
So far, he said, our night has been eminently successful. No harm has
come to us such as I feared might be and yet we have ascertained how
many boxes are missing. More than all do I rejoice that this, our
first--and perhaps our most difficult and dangerous--step has been
accomplished without the bringing thereinto our most sweet Madam Mina or
troubling her waking or sleeping thoughts with sights and sounds and
smells of horror which she might never forget. One lesson, too, we have
learned, if it be allowable to argue _a particulari_: that the brute
beasts which are to the Count s command are yet themselves not amenable
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