Welcome back to Nighty Night, bedtime stories to keep you awake. I'm your host Rabi

and in this week's episode we visit a tale of undying love and of the

undead. For the blood is the life. dead.

For the blood is the life by F. Marion Croford. We had dined at sunset on the broad roof of the old tower because it was cooler there in the great heat of summer.

Besides, the little kitchen was built at one corner of the great square platform,

which made it more convenient than if the dishes had to be carried down the steep stone steps, broken in in places and everywhere worn with age.

The tower was one of those built all down the west coast of Calabria by the Emperor Charles

5th early in the 16th century, to keep off the Barbary pirates when the unbelievers were allied with Francis the 1st against the Emperor and the Church.

They have gone to ruin.

A few still stand intact, and mine is one of the largest.

How it came into my possession ten years ago, and why I spend a part of each year in it

are matters which do not concern this tale.

The tower stands in one of the loneliest spots in southern Italy, at the extremity of a curving

rocky promontory which forms a small but safe natural harbor at the southern extremity of the Gulf of Polykostro and just north of Cape Scalia, the birthplace of Judas Iscariot, according to the old local legend.

The tower stands alone on this hooked spur of the rock, and there is not a house to be seen

within three miles of it.

When I go there, I take a couple of sailors, one of whom is a fair cook, and when

I'm away it is in charge of a gnome-like little being who was once a miner and who attached

himself to me long ago.

My friend who sometimes visits me in my summer solitude is an artist by profession, a

Scandinavian by birth, and a cosmopolitan by force of circumstances.

We had dined at sunset, the sunset glow had reddened and faded again,

...