Today's episode is brought to you by Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and justice produced with Fox Creative.

Their second season tells real stories from real people directly impacted by some of today's most pressing issues.

Their latest episode of Into the Mix takes listeners to the dairy barns of rural Vermont to tell the story of how grassroots activism for safe conditions, competitive wages, and humane working hours

led to an innovative worker-led program that let workers decide for themselves what dignified working conditions look like.

Hear their story on Into the Mix, out now.

Chapter 12.

Dr. Seward's Diary.

18 September.

I drove at once to Hillingham and arrived early.

Keeping my cap at the gate, I went up the avenue alone. I knocked gently, and rang as quietly as possible, for I feared to disturb Lucy or her mother, and hoped only bring a servant to the door.

After a while, finding no response, I knocked and rang again. Still no answer.

I cursed the laziness of the servants that they should buy a bed at such an hour, for it was now ten o'clock, and so rang and knocked again, but more impatiently.

But still without response.

Other two I had blamed only the servants, but now a terrible fear began to assail me.

It was a stasillation, but another link in the chain of doom which seemed drawing tight around us.

Was it indeed a house of death to which I had come too late?

I knew that minutes, even seconds of delay, might mean hours of danger to Lucy, if she had had, again, one of those frightful relapses.

And I went around the house to try if I could find by chance, and entry anywhere.

I could find no means of ingress. Every window and door was fastened and mocked, and I returned baffled to the porch.

As I did so, I heard the rapid pit-pat of a swiftly-driven horse's feet. They stopped at the gate, and a few seconds later I met Van Helsing running up the avenue.

When he saw me, he gasped out, then it was you, and just arrived. How is she? Are we too late? Did you not get my telegram?

I answered as quickly and coherently as I could, that I had only got his telegram early in the morning, and had not lost a minute in coming here, and that I could not make anyone in the house hear me.

...