moon which touch the earth.” This is done, and the first act concludes with a tableau of the peaks of Snowdon, whilst from behind the clouds there sails high in the heaven a silver sickle that strikes the corpse with her argent shaft of mystic light. The vampire wakes, and leaps to his feet crying in exultant tones: “Fountain of my life: once more thy rays restore me. Death! I defy thee!”
It cannot escape notice that in this act there are many parallels with Le Vampire of Dumas. Raby Castle is the Castle of Tormenar; Lucy Peveryl is Juana; Roland Peveryl, Don Luis de Figuerroa; Lord Clavering, Gilbert de Tiffauges; and Davy the gracioso Lazare.
Two centuries have flown. Raby Castle is now inhabited in possession of Colonel Raby, whose daughter is betrothed to her cousin Edgar. It has been falsely reported that this latter fell in battle, but the scene opens with his return. When the sad news first arrived Ada Raby was stricken almost to death, and, as they believed, actually died; but she was recalled to life by a mysterious stranger, since which hour she seems to have fallen completely under his influence and in some extraordinary way only to respond to his power. This is none other than Gervase Rookwood, who now appears and informs Colonel Raby that he and none other is the lawful lord of Raby Castle. The Colonel’s claim lies in the fact that when years before the last of the old Raby family, Sir Alan Raby died, or rather was killed, and no will could be found, the estate reverted to a distant branch of the Rabys, now represented by the Colonel. However, a document is produced in the handwriting of Alan Raby, his will, wherein he bequeaths the estate to Gervase Rookwood and the Rookwood successors. It seemed as though such a title cannot be resisted, but Doctor Rees, a scholar of occultism, is filled with the gravest suspicions of the stranger. In a “Dictionary of Necromancy, a rare work by Dr. Dee,” he has read of vampires, and he divines the demoniac nature of the pretended Rookwood. In a trancelike state Ada Raby has rejected Edgar and is to be given to the stranger, when Dr. Rees examining the documents discovers that the will of Sir Alan Raby, which must be some two hundred years old, although the hand is doubtless that of Raby as the archives prove, is written upon paper which has a watermark of 1850, “scarcely five years old.” The vampire who
