CLXXXI. THE NIGHT ALARM.—A SCENE OF CONFUSION.—MR. BLUE SUSPECTED…

CLXXXI. THE NIGHT ALARM.—A SCENE OF CONFUSION.—MR. BLUE SUSPECTED

It is midnight, and the landlord of the hotel suddenly springs out of bed on to the floor as if he had been galvanised, carrying with him all the bed-clothes and leaving his wife shivering.

“Good gracious! what was that?” he cried.

And well he might, for the repose of the whole house was broken in upon by two loud shrieks, such as had never before sounded within those walls, and then all was still as the grave.

“Murder! murder!” shouted the landlady, “somebody has stolen all the bed-clothes.”

“Bother the bed-clothes” cried the landlord, as he hurried on his apparel by the dim light of a night lamp that was burning on the dressing table. “There’s something wrong in the house, or else I have had one of the strangest dreams that ever anybody had, and one of the most likely reality too. Did you hear them?”

“Oh, those horrid screams!”

“It’s not a dream then, for two people don’t dream the same thing at the same moment of time that’s quite clear. Hark—hark! what’s that, what a banging of doors to be sure. Who’s there? Who’s there? Wait a bit.”

The landlord lifted the night bolt of his bed room, and then there dashed into the room in only one garment, which fluttered in the breeze, no other than the young man who had come with the ladies. He made but one spring into the landlord’s bed, crying,—

“Oh! take care of me. Oh, save me! There’s thieves or something and I shall be hurt. Oh, save me, save me, I can’t fight, I never did, spare my life, oh, spare my life.”

“Oh, the wretch!” shrieked the landlady, and the landlord, justly enough enraged at that intrusion, seized upon the intruder and shot him out of the room vi et armis, and that with such force too that he rolled all the way down the stairs, upsetting Sam who was rushing up with a lantern, it having been his turn to sit up all night, as one of the establishment always did, in case of fire or anything happening which might make it necessary to arouse the inmates of the house.

The landlord, however, had completed enough of his toilette to enable him to make a decent appearance; so out he sallied, having lit a candle, and the first person he met upon the landing was Mr. Blue, fully dressed and with a pistol in his hand.

“Good God, sir,” cried the landlord, “what is it all about, what has happened sir?”

“I cannot tell you, and am as anxious as you can be to know. This way, this way. It was the young lady who screamed. For God’s sake, lend me a light!”

The landlord resigned his light mechanically, and he saw to his surprise, that there was a black patch now over one of Mr. Blue’s eyes, and he thought his face was painted. At all events, he was so much disguised that it was only by his voice that the landlord knew him.

Before however, they either of them got across the corridor to the door of the young lady’s room, Mr. and Mrs. Lake half-dressed, made their appearance, both eagerly inquiring what was the matter.

“I don’t know,” said the landlord, “I only heard a scream.”

“Which came from the apartment of that young lady,” said Mr. Blue.

“What young lady?” said Mr. Lake sharply. “It’s rather odd that you, a stranger, should know so precisely which was the apartment of that young lady. Mrs. Lake go in and see if anything be the matter with Annetta; I hope to Heaven, nothing is amiss with her.”

Mr. Lake looked suspiciously at Mr. Blue, and so did the landlord, for when Mr. Blue had spoken in the presence of the Lakes, his voice was completely altered, so that the landlord no longer could have recognised him by it, and he was more puzzled than ever.

“Oh! come in, come in, Mr. Lake,” cried Mrs. Lake, appearing at the door of Annetta’s room, “she is dead.”

“Dead!” cried Mr. Blue with a shout, “Oh! no, no, no!”

He dashed past Mr. Lake, the landlord, and Mrs. Lake, and was in the room in a moment. They went after him as soon as they had recovered sufficiently from their surprise to do so, and they saw him with his hands clasped and bending over the form of the beautiful young girl as she lay in bed.

“No, no, no,” he said, “she is not dead. She has fainted. God knows what the cause may be, but she is not dead. Thank Heaven!”

He turned from the bedside, and without saying another word to the parties present, he walked away to his own room, and left them staring at each other in surprise. The young lady now opened her eyes, and looked wildly about her for a few moments, and then she spoke quickly,

“Oh, help! help! help! away, away. Oh, horror—horror—horror!”

“Annetta, my dear Annetta,” said Mrs. Lake, “what is this? Pray, sir, retire,” to the landlord. “My dear Annetta, what has alarmed you? My dear, go away, Mr. Lake. I will let you know all about it. It’s a mystery to me at present. Go away, I’ll be back soon.”

Mr. Lake left the room, and in the corridor he found the landlord, who was looking as bewildered as any mortal man could well look, for he could make neither head nor tail of the whole affair.

“Landlord,” said Mr. Lake, “who is that party who behaved so strangely just now?”

“His name is Blue, sir.”

“Blue—Blue. An odd name, and an odd man. Where can I have seen him before. Just as he cried out, and went into the room, I thought there was a something in his voice that came familiarly to my ears, and yet I don’t know him; I suspect landlord, that he has had more to do with this midnight disturbance than he would care to own.”

“Well, sir, I don’t know,” said the landlord, whose interest it was not to disoblige, or throw suspicion upon any of his guests. “It really ain’t very likely, sir. I should say the young lady has had a bad dream, sir, and that’s almost all that can be said about it.”

“It may be so.”

“You may depend that’s what it will turn out to be, sir.”

“I hope so, I hope so. These things are not at all pleasant, and if anything of the kind should happen again we should have to quit directly, you know, but I can say nothing now about it until I have heard from Mrs. Lake what account Annetta gives of the affair. That alone must guide us in the whole business. In the morning we will talk about it, sir.”

There was a great deal of austerity in the manner of Mr. Lake; indeed he might well enough be excused for not being over pleased at what had taken place, and as for Mr. Blue there certainly was sufficient in his behaviour to induce a large amount of suspicion, that he was in some way connected with the affair. Moreover the efforts he evidently made in the way of disguise were extremely suspicious in themselves. He evidently had a something to conceal, and when the landlord was now left alone in the corridor, he was strongly induced to make one of his first acts in the morning a notice to Mr. Blue, that he would much prefer his room to his company at the London Hotel.

And then it all of a sudden came into the landlord’s head, how poor Mr. Black must have been distressed at what had taken place; for Sam had told him what Mr. Black had said about wishing to sleep quietly, so that he felt quite a pang at the idea of so civil a gentleman having been so awfully disturbed, as he must have been, and he had no doubt but that in the morning he would go away.

“I wonder if he is awake?” thought the landlord; “if I could but make some sort of apology to him to-night, and soothe him, all might be well. I’ll first go and listen at his door; it may be that he really wants something, and if so perhaps it would look attentive to knock and see him; I think I will. It’s quite out of the question that he should have slept in the middle of all this riot.”

He approached Mr. Black’s door, and listened.

All was still as the very grave.

“What a horrid thing it would be if the shock, in his weak state, has been the death of him!” thought the landlord, and the very idea made him quake again.

After a few moments passed in this state of painful thought, he found that it would be quite out of the question for him to go to his own room again, without ascertaining how Mr. Black was, and accordingly he knocked at the door, first gently and then louder, and then louder still, but received no answer.

“Oh, this won’t do, I must get in somehow,” thought the landlord.

He tried the handle, and found in a moment that the door was not fast; a light was burning on the side of the table which was close to the bed, and there lay Mr. Black fast asleep, and looking so calm and serene, although he was an ugly man, that the landlord was truly astonished to see him.

“Well,” he said, “that’s what I call sound sleeping, at all events. It’s a mercy however. Oh lor! he’s going to awake.”

Mr. Black opened his eyes, and looked up.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the landlord, “I earnestly beg your pardon, but as there had been a little noise in the house I came to see, first, if you had been disturbed, an then if you wanted anything, sir.”

“No, no, thank you. Has there been a noise, do you say.”

“A—a little, sir.”

“Well, I was fast asleep and did not hear it. However, I do sleep so sound that I think a cannon going off at my ear would hardly awaken me. I am much obliged however for your attention, landlord.”

“Can’t I get you anything, sir?”

“Nothing until the morning, thank you.”

“Thank you sir, good night sir, good night.”—“Well,” said the landlord, as, finding all quiet, he took his way now back to his own room, “well, he is a gentleman, every inch of him, that he is. How very mild and polite.—He hasn’t been disturbed, well that’s a comfort.”

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Chapter CLXXXII

THE WAITER TELLS THE STORY OF THE LAKES’ DISTURBANCE TO GEORGE AND FRANCIS.

Nothing further occurred during the night to cause any alarm to the inmates of the London Hotel, but we may as well give Miss Annetta’s account of the night’s transaction; an account which she gave to Mrs. Lake at the time, and which soon spread all over the hotel, with, no doubt, many additions and embellishments as it was carried.

She said, that having retired to rest, she, being fatigued by her journey, soon dropped off asleep. That she, to the best of her belief, fastened her room door, although she certainly could not absolutely swear to having done so, she was so very weary. She did not know how long she had slept, but she had a frightful dream, in which she thought she was pursued by wolves who ran after her through a large tract of country until she took shelter in a wood, and then all the wolves left her and abandoned the pursuit, except one, and that one caught her and fastened his fangs in her throat just as she sunk down exhausted upon a great heap of dried leaves that came in her way in the forest.

She then went on to say that in the agony of her dream she actually awoke at that moment, and saw a human face close to her, and that a man had his mouth close to her neck, and was sucking her blood.

It was then that she uttered the two screams which had so alarmed the whole house; and then she stated that the vampire, for such she named the apparition, left her and she fainted away.

Now this story so far as it went, might all be very well accounted for by being called a dream, and the change from a wolf to a man might be but one of those fantastic changes that our sleeping visions so frequently undergo, but—and in this case this was a serious but—but she showed upon her neck the marks of two teeth, and there was a small wound on which even in the morning was a little portion of coagulated blood.

This staggered everybody, as well it might, and the whole hotel was in a state of confusion. Mr. Blue kept his room. Mr. Black got up and declared that he was much better than the day before, attributing his indisposition to bodily fatigue; and the Lakes were in a state of consternation difficult to describe.

The landlord, too, was nearly out of his senses at the idea of a vampire being in his house, and a grand consultation was held in the bar parlour between him, Mr. and Mrs. Lake, and Mr. Black, who was asked if he would step down and give his opinion, which compliment was paid to him on account of his being such a gentlemanly and quiet man.

They took it in turns to speak, and the landlord had the first say.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “and you madam, you can easily conceive how grieved I am about what has taken place, and I can only say that anything in the world that I can do to find out all about it, I will do with the greatest possible pleasure. Command me in any way, but—but if I have a suspicion of anybody in this house, it is of that Mr. Blue.”

“And I too,” said Mrs. Lake.

“I don’t know what to say further,” remarked Mr. Lake, “than that my suspicions of some foul play on the part of Mr. Blue, are so strong, that if he is not turned out of the Hotel, we will leave to-night.”

“That’s conclusive,” said the landlord. “But if you Mr. Black, would favour us with your opinion, I’m sure, sir, we should be all much obliged.”

“I am afraid,” said Mr. Black in his quiet, gentlemanly way, “that my opinion will be of very little importance, as I know nothing of the whole affair, but just what I have heard from one and another; I slept all the while it appears. But there is one circumstance that certainly to me is an unpleasant and a suspicious one, and that is that Mr. Blue, as he calls himself, was up and dressed, and that, with the exception of your night-watchman, he was the only person in the hotel who was so.”

“That’s a fact,” said the landlord, “I met him.”

“Then that settles the business,” said Mr. Lake, “send him away. God knows if there be such things as vampires or not, but at all events, the suspicion is horrid, so you had better get rid of him at once.”

“I will—I will.”

“Stop,” said Mr. Black. “Before you do so, is it not worth while to make some effort to come at the precise truth, and that in my opinion, would be very desirable indeed.”

“It would—it would,” said Mr. Lake, “you must understand, sir, that the young lady is especially under my care, and in fact I esteem her greatly—very greatly I may say, for a variety of reasons, and therefore anything that I can do, which may have the effect of securing her peace of mind and happiness will be to me a sacred purpose.”

“Then I should recommend,” said Mr. Black, “that this lady and your wife, landlord, keep watch in the young lady’s chamber to-night.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—I couldn’t,” said the landlady.

“Nor I,” replied Mrs. Lake, “nor I, I’m sure, I cannot think of such a thing, I could not do it, I should faint away from terror.

“And so should I,” cried the landlady. “I feel quite ill even now at the thought of the thing.”

“Then I can say no more, ladies. Of course, gentlemen cannot very well, unless they are very near relatives, undertake such a job. I tell you what we can do, though; suppose we watch in the corridor, you and I, Mr. Lake, and leaving the door of the young lady’s chamber just closed we shall hear if there be any alarm given from within and effectually secure her from intrusion without. What say you to this, as a plan of proceedings? There is your son too, might keep watch with us.”

“I’m afraid he is too nervous.”

“Yes,” said the landlord, “and he might pop into my bed again, as he did last night in his fright. Oh don’t have him gentlemen, I beg of you. I would go myself, but I am so sleepy always, that I never can keep my eyes open after twelve o’clock. Not that I am at all afraid of anything, but its downright sleepiness you see, gentlemen. I am on my feet all day, and—and so you see I’d rather not on the whole.”

“I am willing,” said Mr. Black.

“Sir,” said Mr. Lake, “I am quite ashamed of giving you so much trouble, but I can only say that I shall be very much obliged indeed, by your company, and I do hope that we shall have the pleasure of catching Mr. Blue if he be guilty.”

“Or acquitting him if innocent,” added Mr. Black. “Let us be just even in the midst of our suspicions. It would be a terrible thing to stigmatise this gentleman as a vampire, when perhaps he may have as great a horror of such gentry as we possibly can.”

At this moment young Lake made his appearance. He looked rather pale as he apologised to the landlord for his unintentional intrusion into his room over night.

“The fact is,” said he, “I am as constitutionally brave as a lion, and so whenever anything occurs I run away.”

“Indeed, sir, an odd way of showing courage,” said Mr. Black. “Why do you run away?”

“For fear, sir, of doing something rash.”

“Well, I certainly never heard a better excuse for an undignified retreat in one’s shirt, before in my life. But you will not be called upon to do anything to-night. You had better shut yourself up, and let you hear what you will, you need not come out of your room, you know.”

“Well, do you know, sir, I think that it would be the best way, for if I came out I might do something rash, such as kill somebody, which I should afterwards be sorry for, you know.”

“Certainly.”

“Then that’s understood, father, that let what will happen I won’t come out. I have been speaking to Annetta, but I can’t somehow or another get her to be pleasant.”

“Hush!” said old Lake, and he bent his brows upon his son reprovingly, as if he fancied that he was letting out more of the family secrets than he ought to have done. The young man was silent accordingly, for he seemed to be in great dread of his father, who certainly if not a better man, was a man of much more intellect and courage than the son, who was but a very few degrees removed from absolute silliness. He was fool enough to be wicked, and the father was cunning enough to be so. How strange that vice should usually belong to the two extremes of intellect, that folly and talent should lead to similar results, a disregard of the ordinary moral obligations; but it is so.

We may pass over the rest of the day, and we do so the more willingly, because we are anxious that the reader should be possessed of some particulars which George and Francis, the servants of Lord Lake communicated without any reserve at all to Slop, the waiter.

Indeed, far from having anything like a wish to conceal anything, they seemed to glory in saying as much as they could with respect to those matters that were uppermost in their mind.

This was just the frame of mind that Slop would have wished in his prayers, had he prayed at all upon the subject, to find them in; for although Slop was quite remarkable for neglecting his own affairs, he never neglected anybody else’s and curiosity had been the bane of his existence.

Upon arriving at the King’s Head, in Chiswell-street, he found that the servants of Lord Lake were there, according as they had said they should be, and glasses of something uncommonly hot and strong having been ordered, they and Slop soon grew quite happy and familiar together.

First, though, before they would commence a history of anything they had to tell of the Lake family, they resolved upon hearing from Slop all that had passed at the London Hotel, and you may be quite sure, that it lost nothing in the telling, but was duly made as much of as the circumstances would permit. No doubt the fumes of the something hot materially assisted Mr. Slop’s invention and general talents upon the interesting occasion.

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Chapter CLXXXIII

THE COMMUNICATION OF THE SERVANTS RESPECTING THE LAKE FAMILY.

The coachman and groom, evidently listened with great interest to what Slop had to relate. For a wonder, they were completely silent while he spoke; and when he had concluded, they looked at each other, and nodded, as much to say,—Ah! we can draw some conclusion from all that, that you Mr. Slop, really know nothing at all about.

“Is that all?” said George.

“Yes,” said the waiter, “and sufficient I think.”

“More, a good deal,” remarked Francis. “But howsomdever, as you seem a proper sort of fellow, we don’t mind telling you what we think of the matter.”

“No, no,” interposed George, “not exactly that.”

“And why not?”

“Because you see, Francis, we have never known yet, my boy, what to think about it.”

“Well there’s some truth in that at all events. But we will tell Mr. Slop what happened once before, that wasn’t much unlike what has taken place at the London Hotel.”

“Well, but tell him first who she is,” said George. “Then he’ll understand all the rest better, as well as taking more interest in it.”

“Very good. Then listen, Mr. Slop.”

“With all my ears,” said Slop.

At this moment a bell rung sharply, and Slop on the impulse of the moment, sprung up,—

“Coming—coming—coming.”

Both George and Francis burst into a great laugh, and Slop was quite disconcerted.

“Really, gentlemen,” he said, “I’m sorry, very sorry, but I’m so used to cry, coming, when a bell rings, that, for the moment, I forgot there was no sort of occasion to do so here. I begs you won’t think no more of it, but tell me all as you have got to tell.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Francis, and then after taking another draught of the something strong, and settling himself in his seat, commenced.

“Lord Lake, you know, is our master, and a very good sort of a man he is, only he’s a—a—a; what did the doctor call him George?”

“Oh, I know, a—a—a, what was it Frank?”

“Well, I asked you. It was a wallytoddyhairyhun, I think.”

“Something like it. Odd wasn’t it?”

“Wery.”

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” said a gentlemanly looking man who was seated in an obscure corner of the room, and who was desperately ugly—at least so much as could be seen of his face, for it was much muffled up. “I beg your pardon, but the word you mean I suppose is valetudinarian.”

“That’s it, that’s it! I knows it when I hears it. That’s it; well they say that in consequence of being that ere he was rather cross-grained a little when there wasn’t no sort of occasion for it, and barring that, which, poor man, I suppose he could not help, he was about as decent a master as ever stepped in shoe leather, wasn’t he, George?”

“I believe you, my boy.”

“Well, the Countess of Bhackbighte was his mother-in-law, you see, a wicious old woman as ever lived, and when Lady Lake died it was she as brought the news to Lord Lake that his wife was dead, and the wirtuous baby as she had just brought into the world was dead too, wasn’t that it, George?”

“I believe you my boy, rather.”

“Well, Lord Lake was inconsolotable as they says, for ever so long, and he made friends with his brother who would come next into the property; they all went abroad together.”

“All who?” said Slop.

“Wery good, I’ll tell you, Lord Lake, his brother, his brother’s wife and son. Them as is now at the London Hotel. Now you knows, don’t you?”

“Go on, I knows.”

“Well they hadn’t been there above a matter o’ fourteen years when the old Countess of Bhackbighte dies, and then there comes a letter to my lord as says that the precious baby as his wife had brought into the world just afore she went out of it herself, wasn’t dead at all, but had been smuggled away by the old Countess, nobody knows what for, and that she was alive and kicking then, and ready to come to her papa whenever he said the word, and so come she did, you see, and that’s our young lady Annetta, you see as is at the London Hotel.”

“Well, but I don’t understand,” said Slop.

“Of course you don’t.”

“Oh.”

“But you will if you goes on a listening; you can’t expect to understand all at once you know. Just attend to the remainder and you’ll soon know all about it; but George is the man to tell you, that he is.”

“Oh, no, no,” said George.

“Why, you heard it, and told it to me. Come, don’t be foolish, but tell it at once, old fellow.”

“Well, if I must, I must,” said George, “so here goes; though when I has to tell anything, I always feels as if I was being druv with a curb half-a-dozen links too tight. But here goes.”

“I am very much amused,” said Slop, “and should certainly like to hear it all. Pray go on?”

“Well, you must know we was at an old tumble down place in Italy, as they call’s Rome. Horridly out o’ repair, but that’s neither here nor there. In course we had stables and riding out; and there was a nice sort o’ terrace where Lord Lake used to walk sometimes, as well as his brother, while the carriage was being got out, so that I could hear what they said if I chose to do so.

“Well, one day the brother, Mr. Lake, or the Honourable Dick Lake as he was sometimes called, was walking there alone, and I seed as he was all of a tremble like, you understand! but I could not have any idea of what it was about. Once or twice I heard him say,—‘It will do—and it will do.’”

“Presently, then out comes Lord Lake, and he says, giving the other a letter, ‘Good God, read that!’ Give us a trifle more sugar?”

“What?”

“Why, what do you mean,” said Francis. “Is that the way to tell a story, to run into what people says what you happens to want yourself? Here’s the sugar, and now go on.”

“Well, the brother reads it, and then he says; ‘Gracious Providence,’ says he ‘this here says as the Lady Annetta, ain’t your daughter, but a himposter.’

“‘Yes,’ says Lord Lake, ‘oh, what will become of me now?’

“‘Calm yourself,’ says the brother, ‘and leave this affair to me. Let her go with me to England, and we will clear up the mystery. I love her as I would a child of my own; but still this here letter’ says he, ‘seems to contain such a statement’ says he——”

“Well? Well?”

“That’s all! After that, they walked off the terrace and I didn’t hear no more at all. After that, in a day or two Lord Lakes comes to me; and says, ‘George, my brother and his family, with Lady Annetta, are going to England. I wish you and Francis to accompany them and to attend upon them, just the same as you would on myself,’ says he, and in course I didn’t like to say anything; so we came, but as our idea of the brother is that he’s a humbug, we wouldn’t have no more to do with him, after we got to London, you see; and so off we went as you heard.”

“Well, but,” said Slop; “there was a something else you was to tell me;”

“So there was,” said Francis “and this was it. While we were staying at a place called Florence, and sleeping all of us in an old palace, there was an alarm in the middle of the night, and we found it came from the chamber of the Lady Annetta; who said that a man had got in by the window, and she just woke in time to see him; and when she screamed out away he went again, but nothing could be seen of him; the oddest thing was that the window was so high from the ground, that it seemed to be quite out of the question that he could have got at it without a ladder; yet the deuce of a ladder was there to be seen.”

“And who was it?”

“Nobody ever knew, but the night after it was said that a vampire had visited a cottage near at hand, and fastened on the throat of a little girl of about seven, and sucked half the blood out of her, so that she was lying at the point of death; and the description the child gave of him was so like what the Lady Annetta said of the man that had got in at the window of her bedroom, that my lord got very uneasy about it, and moved away from Florence as quick as he could, and no wonder, either, you will say.”

“It was odd.”

“It was, and what you have told me of last night, put me in mind of it, you see.”

“No doubt; Lord, I’m all of a twitter myself.”

“Why, what need you care? those who know about vampires say that there are two sorts, one sort always attacks its own relations as was, and nobody else, and the other always selects the most charming young girls, and nobody else, and if they can’t get either, they starve to death, waste away and die, for they take no food or drink of any sort, unless they are downright forced.”

“But who told you?”

“Oh, an old Italian priest, who spoke English.”

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CLXXXIV. THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.—THE NIGHT WATCH

At this moment, the stranger who had put the coachman and groom right about the word valetudinarian, rose from the seat he had occupied in the corner of the room, and uttering a deep, hollow groan, walked towards the door.

The party looked at him with awe and astonishment. He was of great height but frightfully thin, and the slight glance they could get of his face, showed how perfectly ugly he was. In another moment he had left the place, and there was a silence of several minutes duration after he had done so, but it was at length broken by the coachman, who said,—

“I say, Frank, my boy.”

“Here you is,” said Francis.

“Don’t you think if you never seed anybody as looked like a vampire before, you have seed one now.”

“The devil,” said Francis, “you don’t mean that?”

“Yes, I do though, and it strikes me wonderful as we have been a telling all we had to tell afore the very indiwidual, of all others, as we oughtn’t to a told it to, that’s a vampire. If a hoss is a hoss, that’s a vampire, Frank! I knows it—I feels it.”

Frank looked aghast.

“Why, why,” then he said, “we have just told him where to find the Lady Lake if he wants her. Lor—what—suppose it’s the same one as got in at the window at Florence! I’ll have him, he can’t have got far, I should say, by this time, and hang me if I don’t stop him and know what he is, afore he goes any further. I shan’t sleep if I don’t.”

Without waiting for any reply, although the coachman, and Mr. Slop both seemed to be upon the point of saying something, out rushed the valorous Francis into the street. But in about three minutes he came back, and sat down with a disappointed look.

“He’s off,” he said.

“In course,” said the coachman, “through the air like a sky rocket, you might a know’d that; but arter all, Frank, he mayden’t be a vampire. Do vampires come into public houses, eh? Answer me that will you; I rather think that’s a settler, Frank.”

“Do you?” said Frank. “It might be, old fellow, if you could prove it. It would be an odd thing for a vampire to come into a public house and drink, but I don’t see, if he has anything again by it, anything to prevent him coming and ordering and paying for something, and then leaving it. Look there!”

Frank pointed to the brimming glass of something which was on the table just where the mysterious man had sat, and this to the coachman and to Slop was such proof positive that they both looked at each other with the most rueful expression of their countenances.

“I think you are convinced now, you old ump,” added Frank.

“Rather, rather.”

“I’m all over of a cold inspiration,” said Slop.

“Well,” added Frank, “it’s not never of no use, you know, putting yourself out of the way about it, and that’s the fact, and all I’ve got to say is that I’ve got nothing to say.”

“Wery good, wery good.”

“But if you, Mr. Slop, will give us a call to-morrow and let us know if anything wrong has took place at the London Hotel, we shall be very much obliged to you; for it’s natural for us that we feel an interest in what’s going on there on account of our young lady, who we won’t and don’t think is anything else but our young lady, and if she was not, she ought to be; and I tell you what, just keep an eye on the spooney, young Lake.”

“I will.”

“He wants to be quite sweet with the Lady Annetta, but she can’t abide him. But you tell us if he tries to pitch it too strong, and we shall perhaps hit on some scheme of operations.”

All this Slop promised faithfully, and with his own nerves rather startled at the idea of having been in the same room for the better part of an hour with a vampire, he walked back to the hotel, and as he had not been enjoined to any secrecy he gave the landlord a full and particular account of all that had taken place.

This was listened to with no small degree of interest, but as mine host of the London Hotel could make nothing of it, he could do nothing with it.

“Slop,” he said, “I don’t like the state of things at all, I assure you, Slop, and I rather shake than otherwise about what’s to occur to-night. You know there’s to be a watch kept in the corridor by the young lady’s room, or else poor thing no doubt she wouldn’t get a wink of sleep, and I’m quite sure that I sha’n’t at all events, let what will happen or what won’t; I’m all in a twitter now as it is, I’ve broke nine wine glasses already; and all I can say is, I wish they would all go away.

The landlord did not like to give good guests notice to quit his house, but he had a consultation with Mr. Black, whom he considered to be quite his sheet-anchor in this affair, for if that gentleman had not offered to sit up and watch for the vampire, he, the landlord, certainly would, despite all profitable considerations, have requested guests who brought with them such questionable connexions to leave.

The night had now come on, and as hour after hour passed away, the anxiety of all concerned in the affairs that were taking place at the London hotel increased. But we need not occupy the time and attention of the reader with surmises and reflections while facts of an interesting and strange nature remain to be detailed.

Suffice it that at eleven o’clock the Lady Annetta retired to rest.

Two chairs, and a table on which burnt two candles, were placed in the corridor just outside the room in which the fair girl who had the previous night had such a visitor reposed, and there sat Mr. Black and Mr. Lake, both determined to do their utmost to discover the mystery of the vampire’s appearance, and to capture him should he again show himself.

During the first half hour’s watch, Mr. Lake related to his companion the particulars of the affair at Florence, which as it has already been told by Francis, we need not again recapitulate, suffice it to say that the narration was listened to by Mr. Black with great interest.

“And did you,” he said, “make no discovery of who this midnight visitor was?”

“None whatever.”

“’Tis awfully strange.”

“It is, and has given her abundance of uneasiness.”

“And well it may, sir, I shall be very happy if through my means any elucidation of these mysteries and truly terrific visitations should take place.”

“You are very good sir. What is that?”

“Twelve o’clock, I think, striking by some neighbouring church time-keeper. Hush! is it not so? Yes, twelve.”

“It is. How still the house is. I was told this was a very quiet hotel, and so indeed I find it, but yet, I suppose upon this occasion there is more stillness than usual.”

“Doubtless. Hush, hush! what was that? I thought I heard something like a window opening slowly and cautiously. Hark! There again. Do you not hear it. Hush, hush. Listen now.”

“On my life I can hear nothing.”

“Indeed your sense of hearing then is not so sharp as mine. Look there.”

He pointed as he spoke to the door of Mr. Blue’s chamber, which was opened a very short distance, not above a couple of inches, and then he added in a whisper, “What do you think of that?”

“By heaven! I suspected him before.”

“And I—and—be still, whatever you do. But yet perhaps it would be better. Go down stairs and bring up the hall porter, we may as well be in force you know. The door at the head of the stairs is open. You can depend upon my keeping a good watch while you are gone. Now, now, quick, or we may be pounced upon and murdered before we are aware.”

Thus urged Mr. Lake ran down stairs for the purpose of rousing up the night-porter, and he found that that individual did indeed require rousing up.

“Hilloa, my man,” he said, “get up!”

“Eh? eh? what? fire!”

“No, no, they want you up stairs, that’s all. You are a pretty fellow to consider yourself a night-watch here and to be fast asleep. Why, with the exception that you have your clothes on you, you are no more ready than anybody else in the house.”

“I beg your pardon sir, I always sleeps with one eye open.”

“Well well, come up stairs!”

A loud scream at this moment came upon their ears, and the night-porter staggered back again into his great leathern chair, from whence he had just risen, and looked aghast! while Mr. Lake turned pale and trembled fearfully.

“Good God!” he said, “what’s that?”

A bell was run furiously, and then ceased, with a sudden jar, as if the wire had broken, which was indeed the fact. Then Mr. Lake, mustering all the courage he possessed, ran up stairs again, leaving the night-porter to follow him, or not as he felt inclined; but when he reached the door at the top of the staircase, he found that it was fast, nor could he with all his strength force it open.

“Help! help! help!” he heard a voice cry.

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CLXXXV. THE VAMPIRE’S FEAST.—THE ALARM AND THE PURSUIT

A general ringing of bells now ensued in the hotel, from all the bedrooms that were occupied, and the din in the house was quite terrific.

Mr. Lake hammered away at the door leading to the corridor, and he was soon joined by the hall-porter, who having now recovered from the first shock which the scream had given him, showed more courage and determination than any one would have given him credit for. He was rather a bulky man, and without any more ado, he flung himself bodily against the door with such force that he dashed it open and rolled into the corridor.

All was darkness.

“Lights! lights! lights!” shouted Mr. Lake. “Lights!—Mr. Black, where are you? Mr. Black! Mr. Black!

A door, it was that of Mr. Blue, was now dashed open, and that gentleman appeared with a candle in his hand, and a pistol firmly grasped in the other. It was very strange but he wore an artificial masquerade nose of an enormous size, and had on a red wig.

“Who locked my door?” he cried, “who locked my room door on the outside and forced me to break it open—who did it?”

“Where is the vampire?” said Mr. Lake.

“Lights! lights! Lights!” shouted the night-watchman, and in another minute the landlord and several waiters, half-dressed but carrying lights, and each armed with the first weapon of offence he could lay his hands on at the moment, made their appearance on the scene of action.

“What is it? What is it?” cried the landlord. “Oh what is it?”

“God knows,” cried Mr. Lake, and he darted into the apartment of the young lady. In another moment he emerged, and tottered towards one of the seats.

“She is covered with blood,” he said.

Mr. Blue and the landlady of the Hotel both made a rush then into the room, and the former came out in a minute, and going to his own apartment shut the door. They thought that they then heard him fall at full length upon the floor. All was mystery.

“I’m bewildered,” said the landlord, “What is it all about?”

“And where is Mr. Black?” asked Mr. Lake.

“Here,” cried a waiter as he pointed to an insensible form lying so close to the table, that nobody had as yet noticed it. “Here he is. He looks as if he was dead.”

Poor Mr. Black was lifted up, his eyes were closed as well as his mouth, and he seemed to breathe with difficulty. He was placed in a chair, and then held, while water was dashed in his face to recover him, and after a time, just as one of the waiters who had been sent for the surgeon again who had before attended the young lady, made his appearance with that gentleman, he slowly opened his eyes.

“Oh! mercy, mercy! Where am I now?”

“What is all this about?” inquired the medical man.

“Nobody knows sir,” said the landlord, “that’s the beauty of it. But the young lady is very bad again; will you, wife, show the doctor into her room. Good God, I shall go out of my wits, and my hotel that has a character forming one of the quietest in all London—yes, the quietest I may say. I’m a ruined man.”

“Mr. Black,” said Mr. Lake, “I implore you if you can to tell the meaning of all this.”

“All—all I know,” said Mr. Black faintly. “All I know,—”

Everybody gathered round him to listen, and with looks of fright and apprehension, and a trembling voice, he said:—

“I—I was sitting here waiting for Mr. Lake to come back with the night porter, for we had some cause to wish for further help, when somebody came suddenly up to me, and struck me down. The blow was on the top of my head, and so severe, that I fell as if shot.”

“And then? and then?”

“Nothing. I don’t know anything else till you recovered me, and then, I seemed as if all the place was scouring round me; and then—”

“But, Mr. Black, cannot you tell us who struck you? What was he like? Could you identify him again?”

“I fear not. Indeed I hardly saw more of him than that he was tall.”

“Well,” cried Mr. Lake, “all I can say is that I have had my suspicions since last night, and now I am certain, that is to say circumstantially certain. What say you, landlord? Is there not one person in the house who may not fairly enough be suspected.”

He looked towards the door of Mr. Blue’s room, as he spoke, and indeed all eyes were turned in that direction, and the landlord mustering up courage advanced to the door and said, as he did so, “We will have him out. He shall not stay another hour on my premises. We will have him out, I say. This sort of thing won’t do, and it shall not do. We will have him out. I say gentlemen we will have him out.”

One thing was quite clear, and that was that the landlord wanted somebody to come forward, and assist him in having out Mr. Blue; but when he found that nobody stirred he turned round at the door, and looked rather foolish.

Under any other circumstances, perhaps, this conduct might have excited the risible faculties of all who were present; but the affair, take it all in all, was of too mysterious and serious a character to indulge in any laughter about.

“I,” said Mr. Lake, advancing, “will have him out, if nobody else will!”

It would appear as if Mr. Blue had been listening to what was going on; for on the instant, he flung open his door, and said,—

“Who will have me out, and what for?”

“Vampire, vampire,” cried a chorus of voices.

“Idiots!” said Mr. Blue.

“Detain him!” sad Mr. Lake; “detain him, we shall never be satisfied until this affair is thoroughly and judicially enquired into. Detain him I say.”

“Let him who sets no value on his life,” said Mr. Blue, “lay but a hand upon me, and he shall have to admire the consequences of his rashness. I am not one to be trifled with; it is my fancy to leave this hotel this moment let any one dare to stand in my way.”

“Your name is not Blue,” said the landlord, “you are not what you seem.”

“Granted.”

“Ah! you admit it,” said Lake. “Lay hold of him, I will give ten pounds for him dead or alive; I have often heard of vampires, and by Heaven, I now believe in them. Seize him, I say, seize him.”

He dashed forward himself, as he spoke, and was on the point of seizing hold of Mr. Blue, when one well-directed blow from that individual sent him sprawling. After this nobody showed any very marked disposition to attack him, but he was allowed to walk calmly and slowly down the staircase of the hotel; while Lake gathered himself up, looking rather confused at the tumble he had had. But his passion was not subdued, for he made a rush still after the supposed vampire, but he was too late. The hotel door was closed with a bang, that reverberated through the house, and Mr. Blue was gone, vampire, or no vampire.

“Landlord, I shall leave your house,” said Lake.

“I’m ruined,” said the landlord. “This affair will get into some Sunday paper. Mr. Black, what is to be done?”

“Really, the top of my head is so hurt,” replied Mr. Black, “that I can think of nothing else.”

“A plague upon the top of your head,” muttered the landlord.

The Lakes now, that is Mr. and Mrs. Lake found their way to the young lady’s chamber, when they found her in a state of great alarm. The story she told amounted to this:—

She was asleep, she said, having perfect confidence that no harm could come to her, while the door of her room was watched in the way it was. She had a light burning in her room, but it was one that gave a very faint light, as she had usually an objection to sleeping otherwise than in profound darkness; but she had no notion of how long she had been asleep, when she was awakened by a hand being placed over her mouth, which prevented her calling out, and nearly prevented her from breathing.

She struggled to free herself but it was in vain. The monster attacked her on the neck with his teeth, and all she remembered was getting sufficiently free to utter one scream, and then she fainted away.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Lake, “I must have some serious talk with you upon a subject which I have before urged. Go away, Lake.”

Lake left the room, and then, Mrs. Lake continued.

“This is a very dreadful affair, Annetta. You know that it is fancied you are not the child of Lord Lake, and that we have the care of you. Now we so much love and admire you,—”

“Stop madam, stop,” said the young lady, “I know what you are about to say, you are going to urge me again to marry your son, which I will never do, for I have the greatest aversion to him.”

“You will not? who will protect you from a vampire better than a husband.”

“Probably no one, but at least I reserve to myself the right to choose to whom I give that task, I am ill now and weak, I pray you not to weary me further upon a subject concerning which it is quite impossible we can ever agree. I only wish I were dead.”

“And that you may very well soon be if your blood is all sucked away by a vampire.”

“So be it. Heaven help me!”

“Pshaw! you may die as soon as you like.”

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CLXXXVI. THE MEETING IN ST. JAMES’S PARK

Another day passed over at the London Hotel, and as Mr. Blue had been kind enough to take his departure, and that departure seemed to be final, for he did not show himself again, Mr. Lake rescinded the resolution he had made to leave.

Probably it was much more convenient for him to stay, although he pretended that he did so out of consideration for the landlord, who ought not to be punished for innocently harbouring so suspicious a character as Mr. Blue, whether he were a vampire, or not.

But the day, as we say, has passed away, and it is about half-past eight o’clock in the evening, and quite dark, for the moon did not rise for an hour afterwards, when Mr. Lake might have been seen making his way towards Saint James’s Park.

He entered it by the narrow mode of ingress by Spring Gardens, and made his way towards the palace of Saint James, that is to say, the wall of its private gardens that look upon the park; and then, under some shady trees, he paused and looked inquiringly about him.

“He was to have been here a little before nine,” he muttered. “Hush!”

The Horse Guards clock chimed three-quarters past eight.

Mr. Lake drew back, as two men came at a slow pace towards where he stood, and then he muttered,—

“It is Miller, but confound him, who is that he has brought with him? Hang the fellow! I did not give him leave to make a confident in this ticklish piece of business.”

One of the men only now advanced, leaving the other about twelve paces from him.

“Mr. L—, I think,” he said.

“Yes, Miller, it is I; but who in the name of all that’s infernal have you brought with you? Are you mad to trust to anybody but yourself?”

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself about that, sir. The fact is, he has been with me for a number of years; he is my managing clerk, and as great a rogue as you would wish him to be. I cannot keep anything wholly from him, so the best way, I find, is to make a confident of him at once.”

“I don’t half like it.”

“You may thoroughly depend upon Lee, that is his name, and you never knew such a rogue as he is, sir; besides, somebody, you know, must have been trusted to personate the father, and he will do that, and then, you know likewise, sir, that——”

“Hush, hush! speak lower! will you? bring this accomplished rogue this way, since I must do business, it seems, with him! Call him here, Miller, and we will talk as we walk on, that is always safer than holding a conference in one spot, near which any one may hide; but it is a much more difficult thing for a spy to follow and overhear you at the same time.”

“You have a genius, Mr. Lake.”

“Bah! I don’t want any compliments from you, Miller; we want downright business.”

By this time, Mr. Miller had made a sign to his clerk, Lee, to come up, which that individual did, and at once saluted Mr. Lake, and made some trivial remark about the weather, in an off-hand way.

Mr. Lake made rather a distant reply and then he said,—

“I presume, sir, that Mr. Miller has made you acquainted with the affair in which, it seems, I am to purchase your kind co-operation?”

“Oh no,” said Miller, “I have certainly given him a brief outline, but I always prefer that the principal himself should give all the directions possible to every one, and tell his own story.”

“Well, sir, I think you might as well have told this Mr. a—a what’s his name?”

“Lee, sir.”

“Ay, Lee, you might as well have told him, and not given me the trouble. But, however, if I must, I must; so pray attend to me sir.”

“I will,” said Lee.

“My brother then, is Lord Lake. It’s a new title rather, as our father was the first who had it, and he left large estates to my brother, and to his son if he had one, or his daughter, if he had one. The title descending to heir males, I must have the title by outliving my brother, if I do, but hang it all, he has a daughter, and she will have the estates.”

“I comprehend.”

“The old countess of Bhackbighte smuggled the child away at its birth, and took care of it for a consideration that used up two-thirds of my income, but the old cat on her death confessed that the child was Lord Lake’s, but luckily, you see, without criminating me. Now Mr. Miller was her solicitor, and so between us we have forged a letter supposed to be found among the old countess’s papers, in which she states that she intends to palm off a child as the Lord Lake’s when she is dying, but that his child really did die, you see.”

“Oh yes.”

“Now this has had an effect upon Lord Lake, who to some extent had repudiated the girl, and what I want is to clinch the matter, by providing some one who will actually own her.”

“I understand,” said Lee, “but it will be an awkward affair if found out.”

“I want to provide against any consequences of a disagreeable nature, by getting her to marry my son, but I don’t think she will. Absolute distress to which I am determined to bring her, if I can, may move her to that step, and then all’s right. The secret is in my hands to play with, as I think proper.”

“A very good plan.”

“You see, there’s a lover of hers too, a young officer in the Guards, but he will be off as soon as he finds that she’s the daughter of a lawyer’s clerk instead of a lord—ha! ha! ha!”

“Likely enough. I’ll father her.”

“Thank you; and now about money matters. Miller gets a thousand pounds—what do you want? Be moderate.”

“I ought to have five hundred pounds to pay me.”

“The deuce! Well, I don’t want to stint you. But you will bear in mind that that is very good pay; and now we must get up a first rate story, so complete in all its parts that there shall be no sort of doubt about it, you see—a story that will stand the test of examination and criticism.”

“That can be better done in my chambers,” said the attorney; “I think now we understand each other perfectly well, and that we need hardly say any more just at present. Money matters are settled, and as Mr. Lee has once undertaken the business, I am quite satisfied, for one, that it will be well done.”

“I am glad to hear you say that, Miller, and I am quite reconciled, which I must own I was not at first, to Mr. Lee having a finger in the pie.”

“Thank you,” said Lee, “thank you; we shall manage it all right, no doubt. Indeed now that you have fully explained it to me, it seems quite an easy and straightforward affair.”

“You think so.”

“I certainly do think so.”

“Then you take off my mind a load of anxiety for thought it would be a difficult thing to arrange, and require no end of chicanery and trouble, but you quite reassure—you quite reassure me, Mr. Lee.”

“Oh, these things are done every day, my dear sir.”

They had walked to and fro as they spoke till now, by the time they had settled their affairs thus far, they stood by the centre of the principal mall. The park was very quiet, and had quite a deserted aspect. Indeed, it was near the time when there would be more difficulty in traversing it in consequence of the extra vigilance of the night sentinels.

The moon faded gradually away, or seemed to fade away as the light fleecy clouds swept over its face, and the parties who had held this interesting dialogue separated. Mr. Lake walked hurriedly towards his hotel, and the attorney and his accomplice stood for a few moments conversing in whispers. They then turned towards the Green Park, and as they did so, they were crossed by a tall, spectral-looking figure wrapped up in an immense cloak, but who did not seem to observe them, for his eyes were fixed upon the moon, which at that moment again began to emerge from the clouds.

He stretched forth his arms as if he would have held the beautiful satellite to his heart.

“An odd fish,” whispered the attorney.

“Very,” said his companion. “I should like now to know who he is.”

The attorney shrugged his shoulders, as he said, “Some harmless lunatic most likely. They say that such often wander all night about the parks.”

“That’s strange; only look at him now, he seems to be worshipping the moon, and now how he strides along; and see, there is another man meets him, and they both hold up their arms in that strange way to the moon. What on earth can be the meaning of it?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Some religious fanatics, perhaps.”

“Ah! that’s as likely as not. We have all sorts of them, jumpers and screamers and tearers, and why not a few who may call themselves Lunarians. For my part I would rather worship the moon than I would, as most church and chapel going women do, worship some canting evangelical thief of a parson, who has—oh dear! such elegant hands, and such whiskers, and speaks so soft and impressive. Of all the rogues on earth, I do detest those in surplices!”

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CLXXXVII. THE CHURCHYARD AT HAMPSTEAD.—THE RESUSCITATION OF A VAMPIRE

It wants half an hour to midnight. The sky is still cloudy, but glimpses of the moon can be got as occasionally the clouds slip on before her disc, and then what a glorious flood of silver light spread itself over the landscape.

And a landscape in every respect more calculated to look beautiful and romantic under the chaste moon’s ray, than that to which we would now invite attention, certainly could not have been found elsewhere, within many a mile of London. It is Hampstead Heath, that favoured spot where upon a small scale are collected some of the rarest landscape beauties that the most romantic mountainous counties of England can present to the gratified eye of the tourist.

Those who are familiar with London and its environs, of course, are well acquainted with every nook, glade, tree, and dell in that beautiful heath, where, at all and every time and season, there is much to recommend that semi-wild spot to notice. Indeed, if it were, as it ought to be, divested of its donkey-drivers and laundresses, a more delightful place of residence could scarcely be found than some one of those suburban villas, that are dotted round the margin of this picturesque waste.

But it is midnight, nearly. That time is forthcoming, at which popular superstition trembles—that time, at which the voice of ignorance and of cant lowers to whispers, and when the poor of heart and timid of spirit imagine worlds of unknown terrors. On this occasion, though, it will be seen that there would have been some excuse if even the most bold had shrunk back appalled at what was taking place.

But we will not anticipate for truly in this instance might we say sufficient for the time are the horrors thereof.

If any one had stood on that portion of the high road which leads right over the heath and so on to Hendon or to Highgate, according as the left hand or the right hand route is taken, and after reaching the Castle Tavern, had looked across the wide expanse of heath to the west, they would have seen nothing for a while but the clustering bushes of heath blossom, and the picturesque fir trees, that there are to be beheld in great luxuriance. But, after a time, something of a more noticeable character would have presented itself.

At a quarter to twelve there rose up from a tangled mass of brushwood, which had partially concealed a deep cavernous place where sand had been dug, a human form, and there it stood in the calm still hour of night so motionless that it scarcely seemed to possess life, but presently another rose at a short distance.

And then there was a third, so that these three strange-looking beings stood like landmarks against the sky, and when the moon shone out from some clouds which had for a short time obscured her rays, they looked strange and tall, and superhuman.

One spoke.

“’Tis time,” he said, in a deep, hollow voice, that sounded as if it came from the tomb.

“Yes, time,” said another.

“Time has come,” said the third.

Then they moved, and by the gestures they used, it seemed as if an animated discussion was taking place among them, after which they moved along in perfect silence, and in a most stately manner, towards the village of Hampstead.

Before reaching it, however, they turned down some narrow shaded walks among garden walls, and the backs of stables, until they emerged close to the old churchyard, which stands on high ground, and which was not then—at least, the western portion of it—overlooked by any buildings. Those villas which now skirt it, are of recent elevation.

A dense mass of clouds has now been brought up by a south wind, and had swept over the face of the moon, so that at this juncture, and as twelve o’clock might be expected every moment to strike, the night was darker than it had yet been since sunset. The circumstance was probably considered by the mysterious beings who sought the churchyard as favourable to them, and they got without difficulty within those sacred precincts devoted to the dead.

Scarcely had they found the way a dozen feet among the old tomb-stones, when from behind a large square monument, there appeared two more persons; and if the attorney, Mr. Miller, had been there, he would probably have thought they bore such a strong resemblance to those whom he had seen in the park, he would have had but little hesitation in declaring that they were the same.

These two persons joined the other three, who manifested no surprise at seeing them, and then the whole five stood close to the wall of the church, so that they were quite secure from observation, and one of them spoke.

“Brothers,” he said, “you who prey upon human nature by the law of your being, we have work to do to-night—that work which we never leave undone, and which we dare not neglect when we know that it is to do. One of our fraternity lies here.”

“Yes,” said the others, with the exception of one, and he spoke passionately.

“Why,” he said, “when there were enough, and more than enough, to do the work, summon me?”

“Not more than enough, there are but five.”

“And why should you not be summoned,” said another, “you are one of us. You ought to do your part with us in setting a brother free from the clay that presses on his breast.”

“I was engaged in my vocation. If the moon shine out in all her lustre again, you will see that I am wan and wasted, and have need of——”

“Blood,” said one.

“Blood, blood, blood,” repeated the others. And then the first speaker said, to him who complained,—

“You are one whom we are glad to have with us on a service of danger. You are strong and bold, your deeds are known, you have lived long, and are not yet crushed.”

“I do not know our brother’s name,” said one of the others with an air of curiosity.

“I go by many.”

“So do we all. But by what name may we know you best.”

“Slieghton, I was named in the reign of the third Edward. But many have known me as Varney, the Vampyre!”

There was a visible sensation among those wretched beings as these words were uttered, and one was about to say something, when Varney interrupted him.

“Come,” he said, “I have been summoned here, and I have come to assist in the exhumation of a brother. It is one of the conditions of our being that we do so. Let the work be proceeded with then, at once, I have no time to spare. Let it be done with. Where lies the vampyre? Who was he?”

“A man of good repute, Varney,” said the first speaker. “A smooth, fair-spoken man, a religious man, so far as cant went, a proud, cowardly, haughty, worldly follower of religion. Ha, ha, ha!”

“And what made him one of us?”

“He dipped his hands in blood. There was a poor boy, a brother’s only child, ’twas left an orphan. He slew the boy, and he is one of us.”

“With a weapon.”

“Yes, and a sharp one; the weapon of unkindness. The child was young and gentle, and harsh words, blows, and revilings placed him in his grave. He is in heaven, while the man will be a vampyre.

“’Tis well—dig him up.”

They each produced from under the dark cloaks they wore, a short double-edged, broad, flat-bladed weapon, not unlike the swords worn by the Romans, and he who assumed the office of guide, led the way to a newly-made grave, and diligently, and with amazing rapidity and power, they commenced removing the earth.

It was something amazing to see the systematic manner in which they worked, and in ten minutes one of them struck the blade of his weapon upon the lid of a coffin, and said,

“It is here.”

The lid was then partially raised in the direction of the moon, which, although now hidden, they could see would in a very short time show itself in some gaps of the clouds, that were rapidly approaching at great speed across the heavens.

They then desisted from their labour, and stood around the grave in silence for a time, until, as the moon was longer showing her fair face, they began to discourse in whispers.

“What shall become of him,” said one, pointing to the grave. “Shall we aid him?”

“No,” said Varney, “I have heard that of him which shall not induce me to lift hand or voice in his behalf. Let him fly, shrieking like a frightened ghost where he lists.”

“Did you not once know some people named Bannerworth.”

“I did. You came to see me, I think, at an inn. They are all dead.”

“Hush,” said another, “look, the moon will soon be free from the vapours that sail between it and the green earth. Behold, she shines out fresh once more; there will be life in the coffin soon, and our work will be done.”

It was so. The dark clouds passed over the face of the moon, and with a sudden burst of splendour, it shone out again as before.

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CLXXXVIII. THE VAMPYRE.—THE FLIGHT.—THE WATCHMAN IN THE VALE OF HEALTH

A death-like stillness now was over the whole scene, and those who had partially exhumed the body stood as still as statues, waiting the event which they looked forward to as certain to ensue.

The clear beauty and intensity of the moonbeams increased each moment, and the whole surrounding landscape was lit up with a perfect flood of soft, silvery light. The old church stood out in fine relief, and every tree, and every wild flower, and every blade of grass in the churchyard, could be seen in its finest and most delicate proportions and construction.

The lid of the coffin was wrenched up on one side to about six inches in height, and that side faced the moon, so that some rays, it was quite clearly to be seen, found their way into that sad receptacle for the dead. A quarter of an hour, however, passed away, and nothing happened.

“Are you certain he is one of us?” whispered Varney.

“Quite, I have known it years past. He had the mark upon him.”

“Enough. Behold.”

A deep and dreadful groan came from the grave, and yet it could hardly be called a groan; it was more like a howl, and the lid which was partially open, was visibly agitated.

“He comes,” whispered one.

“Hush,” said another, “hush; our duty will be done when he stands upon the level ground. Hush, let him hear nothing, let him know nothing, since we will not aid him. Behold, behold.”

They all looked down into the grave, but they betrayed no signs of emotion, and the sight they saw there was such as one would have supposed would have created emotion in the breast of any one at all capable of feeling. But then we must not reason upon these strange frightful existences as we reason upon human nature such as we usually know it.

The coffin lid was each moment more and more agitated. The deep frightful groans increased in number and sound, and then the corpse stretched out one ghastly hand from the open crevice and grasped despairingly and frantically at the damp earth that was around.

There was still towards one side of the coffin sufficient weight of mould that it would require some strength to turn it off, but as the dead man struggled within his narrow house it kept falling aside in lumps, so that his task of exhumation became each moment an easier one.

At length he uttered a strange wailing shriek, and by a great effort succeeded in throwing the coffin lid quite open, and then he sat up, looking so horrible and ghastly in the grave clothes, that even the vampyres that were around that grave recoiled a little.

“Is it done?” said Varney.

“Not yet,” said he who had summoned them to the fearful rite, and so assumed a sort of direction over them, “not yet; we will not assist him, but we may not leave him before telling him who and what he is.”

“Do so now.”

The corpse stood up in the coffin, and the moonlight fell full upon him.

“Vampyre arise,” said he who had just spoken to Varney. “Vampyre arise, and do your work in the world until your doom shall be accomplished. Vampyre arise—arise. Pursue your victims in the mansion and in the cottage. Be a terror and a desolation, go you where you may, and if the hand of death strike you down, the cold beams of the moon shall restore you to new life. Vampyre arise, arise!”

“I come, I come!” shrieked the corpse.

In another moment the five vampyres who had dug him from the grave were gone.

Moaning, shrieking, and groaning he made some further attempts to get out of the deep grave. He clutched at it in vain, the earth crumbled beneath him, and it was only at last by dint of reaching up and dragging in the displaced material that lay in a heap at the sides, so that in a few minutes it formed a mound for him to stand upon in the grave, and he was at length able to get out.

Then, although he sighed, and now and then uttered a wailing shriek as he went about his work, he with a strange kind of instinct, began to carefully fill up the grave from which he had but just emerged, nor did he cease from his occupation until he had finished it, and so carefully shaped the mound of mould and turf over it that no one would have thought it had been disturbed.

When this work was done a kind of madness seemed to seize him, and he walked to the gate of the grave yard, which opens upon Church-street, and placing his hands upon the sides of his mouth he produced such an appalling shriek that it must have awakened everybody in Hampstead.

Then, turning, he fled like a hunted hare in the other direction, and taking the first turning to the right ran up a lane called Frognal-lane, and which is parallel to the town, for a town Hampstead may be fairly called now, although it was not then.

By pursuing this lane, he got upon the outskirts of the heath, and then turning to the right again, for, with a strange pertinacity he always kept, as far as he could, his face towards the light of the moon, he rushed down a deep hollow, where there was a cluster of little cottages, enjoying such repose that one would have thought the flutter of an awakened bird upon the wing would have been heard.

It was quite clear that the new vampyre had as yet no notion of what he was about, or where he was going, and that he was with mere frantic haste speeding along, from the first impulse of his frightful nature.

The place into which he had now plunged, is called the Vale of Health: now a place of very favourite resort, but then a mere collection of white faced cottages, with a couple of places that might be called villas. A watchman went his nightly rounds in that place. And it so happened that the guardian of the Vale had just roused himself up at this juncture, and made up his mind to make his walk of observation, when he saw the terrific figure of a man attired in grave clothes coming along with dreadful speed towards him, as if to take the Vale of Health by storm.

The watchman was so paralysed by fear that he could not find strength enough to spring his rattle, although he made the attempt, and held it out at arm’s length, while his eyes glared with perfect ferocity, and his mouth was wide enough open to nourish the idea, that after all he had a hope of being able to swallow the spectre.

But, nothing heeding him, the vampyre came wildly on.

Fain now would the petrified watchman have got out of the way, but he could not, and in another moment he was dashed down to the earth, and trodden on by the horrible existence that knew not what it did.

A cloud came over the moon, and the vampyre sunk down, exhausted, by a garden-wall, and there lay as if dead, while the watchman, who had fairly fainted away, lay in a picturesque attitude on his back, not very far off.

Half an hour passed, and a slight mist-like rain began to fall.

The vampyre slowly rose to his feet, and commenced wringing his hands and moaning, but his former violence of demeanour had passed away. That was but the first flush of new life, and now he seemed to be more fully aware of who and what he was.

He shivered as he tottered slowly on, until he came to where the watchman lay, and then he divested that guardian of the Vale of his greatcoat, his hat, and some other portions of his apparel, all of which he put on himself, still slightly moaning as he did so, and ever and anon stopping to make a gesture of despair.

When this operation was completed, he slunk off into a narrow path which led on to the heath again, and there he seemed to waver a little, whether he would go towards London, or the country. At length it seemed that he decided upon the former course, and he walked on at a rapid pace right through Hampstead, and down the hill towards London, the lights of which would be seen gleaming in the distance.

When the watchman did recover himself, the first thing he did was, to be kind enough to rouse every body up from their sleep in the Vale of Health, by springing his rattle at a prodigious rate, and by the time he had roused up the whole neighbourhood, he felt almost ready to faint again at the bare recollection of the terrible apparition that had knocked him down.

The story in the morning was told all over the place, with many additions to it of course, and it was long afterwards before the inhabitants of the Vale could induce another watchman, for that one gave up the post, to run the risk of such a visitation.

And the oddest thing of all was, that the watchman declared that he caught a glance at the countenance, and that it was like that of a Mr. Brooks, who had only been buried the day previous, that if he had not known that gentleman to be dead and buried, he should have thought it was he himself gone mad.

But there was the grave of Mr. Brooks, with its circular mound of earth, all right enough; and then Mr. B. was known to have been such a respectable man. He went to the city every day, and used to do so just for the purpose of granting audiences to ladies and gentlemen who might be labouring under any little pecuniary difficulties, and accommodating them. Kind Mr. Brooks. He only took one hundred pounds per cent. Why should he be a Vampyre? Bless him! Too severe, really!

There were people who called him a blood-sucker while he lived, and now he was one practically, and yet he had his own pew at the church, and subscribed a whole guinea a year to a hospital—he did, although people did say it was in order that he might pack off any of his servants at once to it in case of illness. But then the world is so censorious.

To this day the watchman’s story of the apparition that visited the Vale of Health is talked of by the old women who make what they call tea for Sunday parties at nine pence a head. But it is time now that we go back to London, and see what is taking place at the hotel where the Lakes are staying, and how the villainy of the uncle thrives—that villainy of which he actually had the face to give such an exposition to Mr. Lee the clerk of the attorney.

Let us hope that the right will still overcome the injustice that is armed against it, and that Lord Lake and his beautiful child may not fall victims to the machinations that are brought into play against them, by those who ought to have been their best friends.

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CLXXXIX. MISS LAKE PASSES A FEARFUL NIGHT.—THE IMPOSTOR PUNISHED

The landlord of the London Hotel made every possible exertion to keep a profound secret the events of the night, but people will talk when even they have not anything particular to say, so that we cannot wonder at their doing so when they have.

In fact the story of the vampyre at the London Hotel got known pretty well half over London in the course of the day succeeding that second attempt upon the life blood of the young lady, who had become the object of attack from the monster.

Mr. Lake was in a strange frame of mind as regarded the whole affair. He did not yet know whether to really believe it or not—whether to ascribe it, after all, to a dream, or, as Mrs. Lake hinted, for she was a woman fond of scheming herself, so always ready to suggest its existence in others—a mere plan upon the part of the young girl to get rid of the projected alliance with young Master Lake, and possibly evoke the sympathy of all who heard her story.

This view of the matter however, although it did not make much impression upon Mr. Lake, suggested a something to him, that he thought would chime in well with his other plans and projects.

“If,” he said “I could but instil a little courage into my son he might now, at all events make a favourable impression upon his cousin.”

Full of this idea, he summoned the young gentleman to a conference with him, and having carefully closed the door, he said in a low confidential tone,—

“Of course you have heard all about this—this vampyre business?”

“Yes, governor, to be sure I have. Who could fail of hearing all about it? Why, nobody in the house will talk about anything else. I’m afraid to go to bed, I can tell you; that is to say, for fear I should do anything rash, you know, that’s all.”

“I understand you, and it’s no use blinking the fact to me, that you are a coward.”

“I am a coward, I—oh, you are very much mistaken. I’m a long way off that. I’m only always desirous of getting out of the way when anything happens, for fear of doing a rash act; it’s excess of courage you know—that’s what alarms me.”

“Well, there are cases in which there would be no harm resulting, were you ever so rash.”

“Ah! only show me one, and then you’ll see.”

“Very well, your cousin, you know—and you know she is your cousin—won’t have you. Now, unless you are married to her, all our nicely got up plans are liable to be blasted by any accident, or by any breath of treachery that may come across them. But if you were the husband of your cousin, policy, habit, and, indeed, everything would combine to induce Lord Lake and her to smother up the affair. You comprehend.”

“But what am I to do, if she won’t have me?”

“I will tell you. You must awaken her gratitude by rescuing her from all these foolish terrors about vampyres, and when once a woman feels and knows that a man has done a brave act in her behalf, the principal entrance to her heart is open to him.”

“Oh, but—I—I—the vampyre; that’s rather unpleasant.”

“Come, now, you are not such a fool, as really to believe that it’s, after all, anything but a mere dream. Don’t tell me. Vampyres, indeed! At all events you can vapour as much as you like upon that subject without any danger occurring.”

“Yes, yes—you may think so.”

“I know so. Listen to me.”

The son did listen, and the father added:

“You must volunteer to watch alone by your cousin’s door for this vampyre, and of course nothing will think of coming. It’s too ridiculous altogether, that it is; so, you see, you run no risk at all. You comprehend that?”

“Well, but if I run no risk, I don’t see what’s the use of doing it, you know; for if all is quiet, how can she be grateful to me for having rescued her from nothing at all?”

“Very well put, very well indeed. But as there will be nothing really to rescue her from, suppose we make something that will just suit our own purposes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, you know my great grey travelling cloak—what is to hinder you having that with you, and whenever you are quite certain that your cousin is fast asleep, you can put that on over your face partially, and go into the room, and pretend to be the vampyre, and when she is in a paroxysm of terror do you dash out the light, and then in your natural voice, cry out, ‘Ah, wretch, I have you, I have you. How dare you invade the sanctity of this chamber?’ and all that sort of thing, you know, and you can knock about the chairs as much as you like, so as to induce the belief that you are engaged in a deadly struggle, and then you call for lights, and you are there, and the vampyre gone.”

“Well, I rather like that, and if I were quite sure—”

“Of what?”

“That there was no real vampyre, you know, why I wouldn’t mind it.”

“Pshaw!”

“Well, well, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I tell you. I see all the importance of getting her for my wife. Ahem! and if I do,” he added to himself aside, “I’ll take deuced good care you don’t get hold of the money, for after we are married, I shall just tell Lord Lake all about it.”

During the day Mr. Lake had sought an opportunity of speaking to Mr. Black.

“My dear sir,” he said to him, “you don’t seem well at all, and I shall insist that you do not trouble yourself to watch to-night by the door of the young lady, who has had so disagreeable a visitor.”

“I am certainly not quite well,” said Mr. Black. “The fact is, my health will not bear anything like a shock; a family occurrence has so shattered my nerves.”

“My dear sir, say no more; you shall have no more trouble about us. My son who loves his cousin, and is quite jealous of anybody defending her but himself, will watch alone by her door. He has great courage when once his spirit is up, and it is now.”

“I’m glad to hear it; it takes some time to get it up!”

“Why, a—a—yes, sometimes.”

“I must be on the look out myself to-night, or the cowardly fellow will spoil all,” thought Mr. Lake; “any unusual noise in the house, I suppose, will be almost sufficient to induce him to faint away. Confound his cowardice, it mars all.”

Mr. Lake was not by any means so clear in his own mind as he pretended to be of the fact of the vampyre being only a delusion and a creation of the brain of his niece; so when the evening came, he did all that was in his power to keep the courage of his son to the mark.

He even took care that he should have a glass of something strong and hot, for he knew by personal experience that while they lasted, the fumes of hot alcohol did something for a weak heart.

But what pleased Mr. Lake most of all was the ease with which he had thus managed matters with Mr. Miller and his clerk, who he had no doubt, would fabricate such a story as would convince the single minded Annetta of his claims to be her father.

“Then,” thought the old Lake, “we can surely among us badger her into marrying my son. Oh, it will be all right. Let no plot henceforward hope to succeed if this one does not. It must, and it shall; it shall, and it must.”

It’s all very well of any one to say that a scheme shall succeed;

“But how light a breath of air will chase away, The darkly woven fancies of a thousand plots.”

Mr. Lake stood upon a precipice which he little saw, or the terrific height of it would have driven him distracted.

Miss Lake was in a great state of mental depression; if anything, more than another was calculated to thoroughly break down the spirits of a young and innocent girl, it certainly would be such circumstances as those which now surrounded her, and deprived too, as she was, of that aid and sympathy she would have received at the hands of a father or a mother, it was only a wonder that she did not sink under the affliction most completely.

She made no objection to young Lake watching by the outside of her door. Indeed, she was weeping and depressed, so that she could scarcely know what proposal was made to her.

“I shall not sleep,” she said. “God knows what will become of me.”

“Do not despair, all may be well; it was a very sad thing that my brother Lord Lake ever found out that you were not his daughter. I’m sure I would have given freely all I possessed to have averted any such news, for it has attacked both his happiness and yours.”

The young girl made no reply to this, but the look she gave him was quite sufficient to show him how much she doubted the sincerity of the professions of friendship and affection for her that fell from his lips. There was a something in his hollow, heartless character which, young and innocent and unknowing in the ways of the world even as that young girl was, she saw through, and he felt that she did so.

This was the most provoking thing of all that his heartlessness and selfishness should be transparent to one so young as she was.

But the night came at last, and with it the fidgetty fears of young Lake increased mightily. He was all of a shake, as Slop the waiter said, like a lot of jelly.

It was only by repeated doses of brandy-and-water that he kept himself from declaring off the adventure altogether, so that by eleven o’clock at night he was in a terrible state between fear and intoxication; and as any two impulses will each do its best to defeat the other, he was prevented from getting entirely drunk by his fears, and from getting entirely afraid by the liquor.

But at last he did actually take his place by the door of the chamber occupied by his cousin, and then with a table before him on which were lights, brandy-and-water, and cigars, he prepared to go through what to him was a terrible ordeal.

“You—you—really think,” he whispered to his father, who came to promise him that he would not undress himself, but remain in his own room within call, “you really think there is no vampyre?”

“Tut, tut.”

“Well, but really now, really—”

“Have I not told you before? Come, come, nonsense, there’s the old grey travelling cloak, put it under the table, and now I shall leave you; it’s about half-past eleven, and you have nothing in the world to do but just to enjoy yourself, you know. Good night.”

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CXC. THE VAMPYRE DISCOVERED.—THE ESCAPE ON THE THAMES

“Enjoy myself!” muttered the young Lake, “enjoy myself! That may be his idea of staying here vampyre-catching, but it ain’t mine. What a fool I was to consent to come here, to be sure, and all alone too. Eh, what was that? Oh! I’m all of a shake. I thought I heard somebody, but I suppose it was nothing. Oh dear, what a disagreeable affair this is; what an infernal fool I am, to be sure. Eh? eh?”

The hair on his head nearly stood up as he heard, or fancied he heard, a low groan. He shook so while he arose from his seat that he was glad to sit down again as quickly as he possibly could, for he found his strength evaporating along with the Dutch courage, or rather as it should be called, French courage, that had been instilled into him by the brandy.

“What shall I do,” he gasped, “what shall I do? Oh, what will become of me? I’m in for a row, I’m in for it to a certainty; I—I think I’ll call the old man.”

He did not, however, call his father, whom he designated the old man, more familiarly than respectfully, but as all continued now quiet, he thought he would wait until the next alarm, at all events, before he made a piece of work and thoroughly exhibited his own pusillanimity.

“It may be nothing” he said, “after all, perhaps only the wind coming through some chink in a door or window. Lord bless us, I’ve read of such things in romances till my blood had turned to curds and whey. There was the Bloody Spectre of the Tub of Blood, or the Smashed Gore. Eh? eh? I thought somebody spoke. No, no—oh, it’s all, what do they call it, imagination, that’s what it is, and the sooner I get the job over the better, so I’ll just pop on the cloak, and do the business.”

With trembling hands Mr. Lake junior drew the cloak from under the table and put it on, bringing the collar of it right up to the top of his head, so that but a small portion of his head was at all visible when he was thus equipped, and he certainly might look like a vampyre, for he did not look like anything human by any means.

“Now, I wonder if she’s asleep,” he muttered as he laid his hand gently on the lock of the door, “if she ain’t, it would be a pity; but still I can say, I only wanted to know how she was, so I’ll just make the trial at all events. Here goes.”

He opened the door of the bedroom a very short distance, and said,—

“Hist! hist! are you awake, eh? eh? What did you say?—nothing, oh, she’s asleep, and now here goes—upon my life when one comes to think of it, it ain’t by any means a bad plan. But just before I begin, I’ll have another drain.”

About two-thirds of a glass of brandy-and-water were in the tumbler on the table, and that he tossed down at once, and feeling very much fortified by laying in such a stratum of courage, he drew up the cloak to its proper vampyre-like position, as he considered it, and advanced two steps within the chamber of the sleeping girl.

She was sleeping, and slightly moaning in her sleep. It was a great satisfaction to young master Lake, to hear her so moaning, for it convinced him that such were the sounds which he previously heard, and which had gone near to terrifying him out of his project.

He had no compunction whatever regarding the amount of alarm which this dastardly project was likely to give to Miss Lake. No, all he looked to and thought of was himself. A light was burning in the chamber, and that according to the directions of his father he blew out, and then groping his ways towards the bed, he laid his hands upon the young girl’s face, and said,—

“The vampyre! the vampyre has come!—blood, blood, blood!—the vampyre!”

She awoke with a cry of terror as usual, and then master Lake moved off to the door, and said in his natural voice,

“I’ll protect you—I’m coming—I’ll soon clear the room of the vampyre. Come on, you wretch! Oh, I’ll do for him. Take that—and that—and that.”

Then he commenced kicking about the chairs, and nearly upset the washing stand, all by way of making the necessary disturbance, and convincing his cousin what a sanguinary conflict he was having with the vampyre. In the midst of this something laid hold of him by the ears and whiskers on each side of his head, and the door swinging open, his own light that was upon the table in the corridor shone upon a hideous countenance within half an inch of his own. The long fang-like teeth of which, with the lips retracted from them, were horrible to look upon, and a voice like the growl of an enraged hyena said,—

“What want you with the vampyre, rash fool? He is here.”

Master Lake was absolutely petrified with horror and astonishment. The hair bristled up upon his head. His eyes opened the width of saucers, and when in a low voice the vampyre said again,—“What want you, reptile, with the vampyre?” he let his feet slide from under him, and had he not been upheld by the horrible being who grasped him, he would have fallen.

Bang went a pistol out of the corridor, and the vampyre uttered a cry and let go his hold of Lake, who then fell, and being out of the way, showed his father standing on the threshold of his own door, with a pistol in his hand recently discharged, and another apparently ready.

In another moment the vampyre kicked the insensible form of young Lake out of the way, and shut himself in the girl’s bedroom. The father heard him lock the door, and although he instantly sent another pistol shot through the panelling, he heard no sound indicating its having done any execution.

“Help, help, help,” he cried, “help here. The vampyre, the vampyre, the vampyre!”

All this had not taken above two or three minutes, and the whole house was now alarmed by the sound of fire-arms, and as nobody had completely undressed themselves to go to bed since the first alarm of the vampyre, the landlord and several of the waiters, and the night watchman ran with all speed to the spot, looking full of consternation, and all asking questions together.

“Force the door, force the door,” cried Mr. Lake, “a hammer, a hatchet, anything, so that we may get the door forced; the vampyre is inside.”

“Oh lor!” cried one of the waiters who had gone close to the door, but who now made a precipitate retreat, treading upon the stomach of young Lake as he did so.

“If you’ll pay for the door, Sir,” said the landlord, “I’ll soon have it open.”

“Damn it, I’ll pay for twenty doors.”

The landlord took a short run at the door, probably he knew its weakness, and burst it open at once. There was the pause of about a moment, and then Mr. Lake, snatching up the candle, the light of which had first revealed the hideous features of the vampyre to his son, rushed into the room.

In these cases all that is wanted is a leader, so he was promptly enough followed. The state of affairs was evident at a glance. The young lady had fainted, and the window was wide open, indicating the mode of retreat of the vampire.

“I thought you told us,” said Mr. Lake “that this window was too far from the ground to anticipate any danger from—”

“Yes, so I did, sir. But don’t you see he could easy enough jump off the sill on to those leads there. Nobody could get in by the window, but anybody that wasn’t afraid could get out. But we have him, sir, we have him now as sure as a gun.”

“Have him. How?”

“Why don’t you see sir, there’s nothing but high walls. He must be among our stables, and he can’t get out, for I have the keys of the outer doors myself, we shall not lose him now sir, I’m not a little thankful for it. Come on, everybody, round to the stables, and nothing now can prevent us catching him if he is flesh and blood. Come on, come on.”

By this time Mrs. Lake had reached the scene of action, and although the first thing she did was to tumble, sprawling, over her hopeful son, who lay in the door-way of his cousin’s chamber, she gathered herself up again, and remained in charge of Annette and the chamber, while Mr. Lake accompanied the landlord and the waiters to the stables of the hotel, which were surrounded by high walls and only to be approached by a pair of large gates, which were quite satisfactorily fastened, and there was not a chink large enough for a cat to get through.

The landlord had the keys, and he opened a small wicket in one of the large gates.

“Now be careful,” he said, “for fear he bounces out.”

At this everybody but Mr. Lake, who to do him but justice, had certainly the quality of courage, looked as alarmed as possible, but he said,—

“I have re-loaded my pistols, and he shall not escape me.”

The wicket was opened, and in an instant out walked Mr. Black! He appeared at first somewhat agitated, but speedily recovered his self-possession, and looking at the group, he said,—

“Have you caught him? I have been upon the look out, notwithstanding my indisposition, and jumped out of the bedroom window after him; I cannot see him anywhere. Have you caught him.”

“Yes,” cried Mr. Lake, “I saw you in the room when I fired at you—you are the vampyre!”

He made a rush forward as he spoke, but Mr. Black got dextrously out of the way, and seizing the landlord by the hair of the head he cast him so fairly in Mr. Lake’s way that they both fell down together; with amazing rapidity the vampyre then fled from the spot.

“After him, after him,” cried Mr. Lake, as he scrambled to his feet, “don’t let him escape, after him, whatever you do; alarm the whole city, rather than let the monster elude you. This way—this way, I see him. Follow me, a vampyre, a vampyre; help—help, seize him, a vampyre!”

“Fire,” cried the landlord, and he too ran.

But all the running was in vain, the vampyre had fairly got the start of them, and he took good care to keep it, for with the most wonderful fleetness he ran on, until, to his great relief, he found his pursuers were distanced.

He made his way to the Strand, and diving down one of the narrow streets terminated by the river, and at the end of which was a landing place, he called aloud,—

“Boat, boat!”

An old waterman answered the hail.

“Where to, your honour?”

“Up the river, I will tell you where to land me, row quick, and row well, and you may name your own fare, without a chance of its being questioned.”

“That’s the customer for me,” said the waterman.

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Chapter CXCI

THE PLOT DISCOVERED.—THE LETTER LEFT AT THE HOTEL BY THE VAMPYRE.

The further pursuit of the vampyre was very soon given up by those who had commenced it with, as they had vainly imagined such an assurance of success.

Probably with the exception of Mr. Lake himself none were really very eager in it at all, and they were not sorry for a good excuse to drop it.

There sat upon the countenance of Mr. Lake an appearance of great anger, and when they got back to the hotel, he said to the landlord,

“This is a very disagreeable affair, and I cannot think of remaining here over to-morrow.”

“But sir, the vampyre has gone now!”

“Yes, and may come again, for all I know.”

“Oh, dear me, surely not now, sir. After what has happened, I should be inclined to say that you will find this the quietest hotel in London.”

Mr. Lake would not be moved from his determination, however, and briefly again announced that he would on the morrow remove.

“How very vexatious,” thought the landlord, but he could do nothing in the matter. His only hope, and that was a very slight one indeed, was, by the morning the exasperated feelings of Mr. Lake would be somewhat assuaged, and therefore, he thought it would be, at all events, a prudent thing to say no more to him just then, when he was in such a mood.

When Mr. Lake retired to his own apartment he was in anything but a pleasant frame of mind, for he found that things were not exactly turning out as he wished, and he much feared that all his schemes would turn out abortive, in which case they would recoil upon his own head in their consequences.

It was quite by accident, that happening to cast his eyes upon the dressing-table, he saw a sealed letter lying there, and upon looking at the superscription he was surprised to find that Annetta was the person for whom it was intended.

It was not, as the reader may suppose from what he knows of Mr. Lake, from any honourable scruples that he hesitated at once to open this letter addressed to his niece, but he was for a time considering whether he might not, by doing so, be getting himself into some scrape from which he might find it very difficult to extricate himself.

“Who the deuce can it come from?” he said.

He turned the epistle about in all directions, but such an inquiry did not assist him, and finally he made up his mind that come what might, he would break the seal and look at the contents.

He soon, after coming to the determination, carried it into effect, and to his surprise he found that the letter contained the following statement:

To the lady Annetta Lake.

Fear nothing, lady. He who disturbed your repose will disturb it no longer. Be happy, and do not let the dread of such another visitation ever disturb your pure imaginings. Your father will rescue you from your present unhappy circumstances, and you will, likewise, soon see one who ere this would have been with you, had he known of your being in London.

This comes from, +Varney the Vampyre+.

“If Mr. Lake, your bad uncle, upon whose dressing table this note is placed, delivers it not to you, woe be to him, for I will make his nights hideous with realities, and his days horrible with recollection and anticipation.”

Mr. Lake was superstitious. Are not the unprincipled always so?

He read the postscript to the note with a shudder; and he felt that he could no more muster courage enough to destroy the letter, than he could to lay violent hands upon himself. There he was with an epistle that he would fain have kept from Annetta, and yet he dared not do so.

“Confound my unlucky destiny,” he said, “for bringing me to this hotel. Perhaps if I had gone elsewhere, all this would not have happened. Oh, if I could but have suspected what this Mr. Black really was, I would have tried some means for his extermination.”

He paced his chamber in an agitated manner until Mrs. Lake made her appearance from the chamber of the lady Annetta, where she had been staying, and to her then he at once communicated the letter that gave him so much uneasiness.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said, “or what to think.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, indeed. Perhaps you can suggest something?”

“And can you allow yourself to be made a slave of such fears. There is but one course to pursue, and that is, to-morrow to put the affair altogether in a different shape, by overwhelming Annetta with the seeming evidence that she is the daughter of an attorney’s clerk, instead of her real father, Lord Lake. I know of no other way; and then when she finds such, as she will think, to be the case, it’s my opinion that she will no longer hesitate to marry our son.”

“You think so?”

“Indeed do I, The girl is not an absolute fool surely.”

“Well, of course, I should be very glad if that darling project could be, after all, brought about, but what is to be done with this letter?”

“Can you ask?”

“I do, when I consider the threat that is in it. That threat, recollect, is to me, and you can afford to think lightly of it.”

“I will take the consequences. It is hardly likely that you will be punished for what you can’t help. I will take good care that this letter never reaches Annetta, and as you have it not, why of course you cannot deliver it, and so cannot be blamed.”

“But I might have it.”

“No such thing,” said the lady snatching it up. “You know me rather too well, I should think, to hope that I would give it up to you, and as for your taking it by force, I should think you knew me too well likewise to make such a ridiculous attempt.”

“Well, then I wash my hands of it.”

“Ah! you may as well. I don’t know what has come over you of late, you are as mean spirited as you can be, and formerly you used to be able to cope with anything.”

“We never played for such a stake as we have now upon the board, and I confess that I am rather nervous for the consequences.”

“Pshaw! I see that I must guide you, or all will be lost. To-morrow let the whole affair be settled. Let this attorney Miller, as you call him, come here, and bring with him the person who is to claim Annetta as his own daughter. Let him have all the evidence that you tell me he has been so ingenious in getting up, ready, in order that he may be in a position to answer any questions.”

“Yes, yes.”

“And then, when all is settled, our son must come forward, and make a speech, saying, he don’t care a bit, who or what she is, that he loves her and will make her his wife, although she has not a penny piece in the world.”

“I see, I see.”

“I think, from what I know of her, that such a course of proceeding will have a great effect upon her.”

“Well, I hope so.”

“You hope so! How despondingly you talk.”

“Why the honest truth—”

“Good God! what do you mean by making use of such words, I never told the honest truth in all my life; you may depend that won’t do in this world, on any consideration. Never let me hear you say such a thing again, I beg of you.”

“I was merely going to remark that this vampyre’s business had really so completely unsettled my whole nervous system, that I could not act with all the tact and the determination that used to characterise my proceedings, and for which you were ever disposed to give me so much credit.”

“Really.”

“Yes. But I cannot regret such a state of things so much as I should otherwise do, because I see that you are unmoved and as energetic as ever.”

“Well, well, say no more.”

“I am done.”

“I will prepare our boy for the part he is to act to-morrow; and mind, I shall rely upon you to see your associates and get all the affair in train. Let it be all over by twelve in the morning, so that if you like you can send to Lord Lake where he is staying, at Florence still I presume, an account of the matter by post that same night; only let me see the letter before you send it.”

“I will, I will; you are my guardian angel.”

“Pho, pho; you are getting quite romantic and foolish; we have both made up our minds to get money, and we have likewise known so much the want of it, in abundance that is to say, that we have resolved to get it in any way we can.”

“Yes, that I rather think is our principle of action.”

“And has it not succeeded hitherto. Have we not lived well without troubling ourselves to earn the means by which we have done so. Earn, indeed! I leave that to a parcel of sleepy drones of people who have not the wit to live upon others as we have; so now go to bed and sleep off some of the unmanly fears that seem of late to be continually pressing upon you. It is well you have me to look after you as I do.”

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Chapter CXCII

THE MEETING IN THE MORNING AT THE HOTEL.—THE PREPARATIONS OF THE ATTORNEY.

It is no less than strange, the difference that takes place in people’s feelings with regard to precisely the same circumstances in the morning, from what they really felt and thought in the evening, and when the shadows of night were upon them.

This mental phenomenon was not wanting in the case of Mr. Lake.

He felt as he rose the next day, and the sun was shining in at the window of his bedroom, most thoroughly ashamed of his fears and his nervous tremors of the preceding night.

His wife saw with a smile the change in his feelings.

“You are no longer,” she said, “afraid of the vampyre.”

“Oh, say no more about it,” was his reply. “I shall go immediately after breakfast and see Mr. Miller, and with him make such arrangements as will bring the affair upon which we have set our hearts to a crisis, and while I am gone you can instruct our son in what he has to do.”

“I will.”

The breakfast passed over in rather a constrained manner. Mrs. Lake had made an attempt to persuade Annetta that she was really too unwell to get up for an hour or two, but that Annetta would not submit to, as she felt herself, notwithstanding all her sufferings and all her fright, really capable of rising.

The consequence was, that she appeared at the breakfast table, and stopped most effectually anything in the shape of a confidential discourse taking place among the Lakes.

The meal therefore passed off rather silently, and there were only a few remarks made, incidentally, about the preceding night’s alarm.

Annetta was evidently in a state of great nervousness, as well she might be, for the idea that she would be again subjected to the frightful visits of the vampyre, was ever present to her, and she was denied the consolation which the letter of Varney might, and most probably would have given her.

After the morning meal, Mr. Lake gave his wife a significant look to intimate that he was then going to Mr. Miller’s, and that in his absence she was to play her part.

She perfectly understood him, and nodded in return, and thus this worthy pair separated.

We will follow Mr. Lake.

The attorney did not live in one of the most respectable haunts of the profession, but he was a man of his word, and by the time Mr. Lake reached his chambers he was there, it being then not much above ten o’clock.

There was some delay in admitting Mr. Lake to the private room of the attorney, and he thought that the clerk who was in the outer office looked a little confused.

“Is anybody with Mr. Miller?” asked Lake.

“Yes—that is to say—I mean no.”

“A strange answer. Yes, and you mean no.”

“Why, Sir, I only meant that Mr. Miller was rather busy, and we are so much in the habit when that is the case, of saying that he has some one with him that it slipped out unawares, only as we would not deceive you, sir, for the world, you understand that that was why, you perceive, sir, that in a manner of speaking, I corrected myself.”

This explanation was rather more wordy than satisfactory to Mr. Lake, however, for want of a better, he was compelled to put up with it, and he said nothing, but waited with the most exemplary patience, until Mr. Miller’s bell rang.

The clerk answered it, and in a few moments returned to say that Mr. Miller had got through a legal document he had been engaged upon, and that he much regretted having kept Mr. Lake waiting, but was then quite at his disposal.

Now Lake could have sworn that he had heard the sound of a voice from the private room of the attorney, and he consequently did not feel quite easy.

When he went in he found Mr. Miller with a number of letters before him.

“Ah, my dear sir,” cried the lawyer, “sit down.”

“Thank you. I thought somebody was with you?”

“Oh, dear no, not at all. I was going through a lease, you see, and from long experience in such matters, I have found that I have a better and clearer understanding of the matter, if I read it aloud to myself, but perhaps that is only a peculiarity of mine.”

“Then it was your voice I heard just now?”

Mr. Lake’s suspicions were about half removed, certainly not more than half, but he could say no more about it, although he cast now and then suspicious glances round the room; yet if he had been asked what he was suspicious of, he would hardly have been able to give a clear and understandable answer to the question.

It is one of the curses of conscious guilt ever to live in an atmosphere of doubt and dread, and to the full did Mr. Lake feel that curse.

“Well, Mr. Miller,” he said, after a pause, “I have called upon you to say that I hope it will suit your convenience to settle a little affair to-day at twelve o’clock at the hotel.”

“Twelve—let me see—twelve. Not at the hotel my dear sir, I am compelled to be in chambers in case of a letter coming on very particular business, but if you will bring her here, I can manage it very nicely; if she don’t leave this place with a conviction that she has a father in London, I’ll eat my boots.”

“Well, I don’t see why we should not come here, as you give me great satisfaction Mr. Miller by avowing yourself to be so confident of the result.”

“I am as confident as that I sit on this three legged stool.”

“Good—then you may depend upon our coming here at twelve o’clock precisely. There will be myself. Mrs. Lake, my son and the young lady. Mind she is no fool, she must be perfectly overwhelmed with proofs of what we wish to make her believe.”

“Exactly, that she is not the daughter of Lord Lake, but a mere changeling imposed upon him as his own child—the said own child being dead.”

“Precisely.”

“Agreed, sir, agreed. With respect to my reward, I have been thinking that I should like, you know, to have some acknowledgement. You tell me you have no money now, but that this obstacle once removed you will come in for all the Lake estates, and that Lord Lake cannot live long.”

“That’s the state of the case.”

“Then sir, will you give me a note for £2000, payable on demand.”

“On demand?”

“Yes; of course it would be needless folly of me to present it until you have money you know.”

“True, true.”

We need not pursue the conversation further, but satisfy the reader by stating the result, which was, that the attorney got the note for £2000 from Lake, likewise a paper signed, which admitted the debt more fully still, and effectually barred Lake from objecting to any proceedings on account of want of consideration for the promissory note, or that it had not been fairly obtained of him, pleas which might have inconvenienced Mr. Miller if he chose to pursue Lake for the amount.

In the meantime Mrs. Lake had not been idle, but had spoken to her booby and cowardly son, making him aware of what he had to do in the business, namely, to shew his great disinterestedness in taking for his wife Annetta after she was supposed to be proved not the daughter of Lord Lake, but quite a different personage, and altogether destitute of pecuniary resources.

He managed pretty well always to understand any villainy, and so entered life and soul into the scheme of his mother.

“Ah! I like that a monstrous deal better than keeping watch for a vampyre, which is a sort of job that don’t at all suit such a constitution as mine, do you see?”

Mrs. Lake not being aware of the alteration of arrangements by which they were all to proceed to the lawyer’s chambers, instead of coming to the hotel, took no trouble with Annetta, conceiving that it would perhaps be better at twelve o’clock, when the parties were assembled, to take her by surprise, than to say anything to her beforehand, which might have the effect of preparing her for what was to come, and so getting up a spirit of resistance and of inquiry which it might be difficult to resist or satisfactorily to meet.

When Mr. Lake came home from Gray’s Inn, she was made aware of the alteration, and consultations ensued as to how Annetta was to be got there at all. At length after several modes of managing the matter had been discussed, Mrs. Lake said,

“You two can walk there, and then I can say to Annetta that I am going for a drive and to make a few purchases, so that she will have no objection to go with me for an airing, and I will take good care to be with you at the hour of twelve.”

“That will do prime,” said the son. “Leave mother alone for managing things.”

“Well,” said Mr. Lake, “it shall be so, I don’t see any objection to the scheme, nor can I suggest a better one, so we will look upon that as settled. All you have to do,” turning to his son, “is to play your part well.”

“Oh! never fear me, I like the girl and I like money.”

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Chapter CXCIII

THE VAMPYRE’S VISIT TO THE BARRACKS AT KINGSTON.—THE YOUNG OFFICER.

We do not wish altogether to lose sight of Varney in these proceedings, and it so happens that he is sufficiently mixed up in what further occurred to make it desirable that we should now again refer to him.

It was not the least singular fact in the character of that mysterious being, to notice how he always endeavoured to make some sort of amends or reparation to those whom he had so much terrified by his visitations.

We have seen in the case of the family of the Bannerworths how eventually he was most anxious to do them a service, as a recompense for the really serious injury he had inflicted upon them, and how it was really and eventually through him that they emerged from the circumstances of difficulty and danger in which they had been pecuniarily engaged.

We shall now see if Varney, who really in his way is a very respectable sort of a personage, is about good or evil.

We left him on the river, after promising in his usual liberal spirit, a handsome reward to the waterman whom he employed to row the boat in which he embarked.

After going some distance, the waterman, finding his fare was silent, thought it would be as well again to ask him where he was going.

Accordingly, with a preparatory hem, he began by saying,

“About as nice a tide, sir, as we could have for going up the stream.”

“Very likely,” was the brief reply.

“Do you land near hand, sir?”

“I want to go to Kingston; take me to some Quay on the river as near as you can, for the purpose of my walking there.”

“Kingston?” said the waterman, with a look rather of surprise. “It’s a long pull to Kingston, and if your honour could get a conveyance, your best way would be to get out at Putney.”

“Wherefore?”

“Why after that, the river takes such a plaguey lot of windings and turnings that you have to go treble the actual distance before you reach Teddington.”

“I said Kingston.”

“Well that’s close by Teddington; but I’ll row your honour if you like, only it will take us some hours to get there that’s all.”

“Go on.”

“Very good, pull away, pull a—way.”

Having now, as he knew, a long job before him, the waterman husbanded his strength, he did not row near so fast, but to a low kind of tune he muttered to himself he worked away at his sculls, slowly and surely, and got through the water at a moderate easy rate, while rather a quick jerking one would soon have exhausted him.

The boat went slowly onward, and many an interesting sight was passed upon the banks of the river, but none appeared in the least to attract the attention of the man who sat in the boat, apparently deeply absorbed in his own meditations.

The boatman began much to wonder who he had got as a fare, and to think that it would be but a dull and wearisome job to row all the way to Teddington without any amusing gossip by the way, so he made yet another attempt to break the stillness that reigned around.

“The river up this way, sir,” he said, “is quiet enough at night; it’s different below bridge though, for there there is always some bustle going on.”

“Ah!” said Varney.

“But here, somehow, it is dull to my mind.”

“Ah!”

“Though the gentry and those as is book-learned find a deal of pleasure in looking at the old places on the banks, where things have been done and said by folks many a long year since, whose heads don’t ache now, sir.”

“Ah!”

There was no getting on at this rate, so, after two or three more remarks and getting nothing by “Ah!” as a reply, the waterman gave it up as a bad job altogether, and pulled away, chaunting in a low tone his song again, without making another attempt to disturb the taciturnity of his fare, who sat as still as a statue in the boat, and looking as if he did not breathe, so rigid and strange were his attitude, and the lifeless-like appearance he had.

The waterman was really a little alarmed by the time they reached Teddington, for he thought that it might be possible his fare was dead, and the horrid idea that he had stiffened in that attitude as he sat, began to find a place in the boatman’s imagination.

When, however, he boat’s keel grated on the landing-place, he cried,—

“Here we are, your honour.”

The vampyre rose and stepped on shore. He held out his hand and dropped a guinea into the extended palm of the waterman, and then stalked off.

After he had walked some distance he spoke to a watchman whom he met, saying,—

“Are there not military barracks somewhere hereabout?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Thank you. Can you direct me?”

“Certainly. You have only to go on, and take the second turning to your left, and you will see the gate; it’s horse soldiers that’s there now—the 4th Light Dragoons.”

By keeping to the directions which the watchman had given, Varney soon reached the gate of the barracks, and then it was three o’clock in the morning. A sentinel was pacing to and fro at the gate. To him Varney at once went, and with a lofty kind of courtesy, that made the man at once respectful to him, he said,—

“Is Lieutenant Rankin in barracks?”

“Yes, sir,—on duty.”

“Indeed! Is he on guard to-night?”

“Yes, sir, to four o’clock. He will be relieved then.”

“That’s fortunate, I want to see him. It is on business of the very first importance, or of course I would not trouble him or myself. You must send to him somehow.”

The sentinel hesitated.

“I hardly know,” he said, “how the lieutenant will take it—he is on duty.”

“But I suppose he is human for all that, and is liable to all the accidents and alternations of human affairs, which may make it absolutely necessary he should be communicated with, even at such an hour as this. I will hold you harmless.”

This was so reasonable, and there was such an air of quiet gentlemanly authority about Varney, that the soldier began to think he should run less risk of offending somebody of importance if he consented to disturb the lieutenant than if he refused. Accordingly he stepped a pace or two within the gate and called out.

“Guard!”

A soldier from the guard-room answered the summons.

“Ay,” he said, “what is it?—a strange cat I suppose.”

“No, none of your nonsense. Here is a gentleman, I think a general officer, by Jove, wants to see Lieutenant Rankin. Go and tell him.”

“And give him this,” said Varney, as he handed the soldier a card, on which was written,—

“A friend to a friend of Lieutenant Ranking, whose initials are A. L.”

“I know that this young soldier loves the Lady Annetta,” muttered the vampyre to himself, “and he shall be given the opportunity of flying to her rescue from her villainous relations. So far, I will make reparation to her.”

In less than three minutes, Lieutenant Rankin came hurriedly to the gate.

“Where is the gentleman?” he said.

“Here sir,” said Varney, “step aside with me.”

The young officer did so, and then Varney said to him,—

“It matters not how I became acquainted with the fact, but I know that you love the Lady Annetta Lake, and that you are far from being indifferently regarded by her. She is in London at the London Hotel. A vile plot is formed to marry her to her cousin, the gist of which is to make her both her and her father believe that she is a changeling and not the daughter of Lord Lake. You love her, young man. Go and rescue her.”

“Annetta in London!”

“Yes, what I tell you you may rely upon, as if it were a voice from heaven that spoke to you. Go and snatch her whom you love from the base hands of those who, under the mask of pretended friendship, would betray her.”

“And you,” cried the young soldier; “who are you, and how can I repay you for bringing me this intelligence of her whom I—”

“Enough,” said the vampyre. “I have performed my mission. It is for you, young sir, to take a due advantage of that which I have told to you.”

In another moment he was gone.

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CXCIV. AN ECLAIRCISSEMENT.—THE INNOCENT TRIUMPHANT

It is eleven o’clock, Mr. and Mrs. Lake are standing by one of the windows at the hotel conversing in whispers, while the hopeful son is brushing his hat.

“It is time, you think?” said Mrs. Lake.

“Yes,” was the reply. “and I will be off now at once, and depend upon you following with Annetta to Mr. Miller’s.”

“That you may be sure of. She has had a refreshing night’s rest, and this morning she eagerly enough caught at the proposal to take a drive round the principal thoroughfares in the carriage we have hired so that that is no longer a difficulty.”

“What is to be done if she rejects?”

Mr. Lake gave a jerk with his head in the direction of his son, to signify that it was of him he talked.

“It can’t be helped if she does. Then I should say all we have to do, is to persevere in making her out no child of Lord Lake’s, and wait for his decease. We must be careful what we are about, though, or he may take it into his head to make some ample provision for her, to the decrease of his personal means, which I hope to see all ours.”

“The only way to stop that will be getting Miller and the pretended father to make it as a complete part of the plan that Annetta herself should seem latterly to have been a party to palming herself off upon him as his daughter when she knew the contrary quite well.”

“Ah, if that could be done.”

“It must and shall; Miller’s ingenuity in such matters is immense. He will accomplish anything in the world—aye seeming impossibilities—for money.”

“He is just the man for us, so now be off with you at once, and expect me in good time.”

In a few moments afterwards, Mr. Lake set off with this booby son to the lawyer’s, enjoining him all the way as they went, to be especially careful how he maintained the character of a disinterested suitor, which had been marked out for him in the programme of the family proceedings.

“Oh, never fear me, father.”

“Well, I hope that you will do and say the right things, and what is as important, I hope you will do and say them at the right time, otherwise you will spoil all.”

Thus armed at all points, as they thought, for conquest, old Lake and young Lake, than whom all London could not have produced two more unprincipled persons, arrived at Gray’s Inn, and were received in the outer room of Mr. Miller’s chambers with every demonstration of respect.

“Walk in, gentlemen, walk in to the clients’ private-room if you please,” said the clerk. “Mr. Miller left directions with me that when you came, you should be shown in at once.”

All this was very gratifying indeed, and the solicitor was there, seated in his easy chair, looking as full of serenity as possible, and as if the least affair in the world was on tapis.

Scarcely had the usual salutations passed, when the clerk announced Mrs. Lake and a young lady.

“My wife with Annetta!” exclaimed Lake; and in a moment his words were verified by the appearance of the parties he had named.

“Tell me at once,” said Annetta, “why I am brought here?”

“My dear young lady,” said Mr. Miller, “if you will condescend to take a seat, I will explain.”

“Be brief, sir.”

The party was seated, and then Mr. Miller, clearing his throat said,—

“Ahem! You are of course aware, miss, that great doubt arose in the mind of Lord Lake with regard to your proper identity, and he sent you over to this country from Italy with his brother and family, to have those doubts resolved—ahem! They are resolved, and you are found to be the daughter of a gentleman now in London.”

“The proofs, sir,” said Annetta, with a dignity and a calmness that surprised the whole party.

“Ah, ah—the proofs. Let me see, oh yes; there are the papers. No. 1, copy of a confession made by——”

“Stop, sir,” said young Lake, “stop. This is—it must be painful to the feelings of this young lady, and very, very painful is it to my feelings, for I have been long fervently attached to her, and let her be whose daughter she may, she is to me all perfection. I love her and would gladly make her my wife, let her be named whatever she may.”

“But she is destitute,—quite destitute,” said Miller.

“It don’t matter to me,” cried young Lake—he was playing his part famously—“it don’t matter to me; I love her, and will work for her—she shall never want while I have life-blood in my veins.”

“If this now were sincere,” said Annetta, “I should begin for the first time to respect you. But you will excuse me for doubting it very much. I likewise doubt much the pretended evidence that you bring forward regarding my birth.”

A tremendous knock at the outer door of the chambers now disturbed the party. An altercation was heard with the clerk—then a shout for police, and a heavy fall as if somebody had been knocked down, and in another moment the door of Mr. Miller’s private room was dashed open, and Lieutenant Rankin, in his undress military uniform, stood upon the threshold.

“Annetta!” he cried.

“Rankin—oh, George, George!” shrieked Annetta, and in another moment she was in his arms.

“Here’s a go,” cried young Lake; “I say, young fellow, this won’t do.”

“Oh, George, George!” said Annetta, “they will have it that I am not my own father’s child, that I am some nameless, houseless thing.”

“They lie, Annetta who say so,” replied the young soldier; “you shall be mine, and the proudest that ever stepped shall treat you with becoming respect, or shall rue the consequences.”

“Well, I think it’s time!” cried Mr. Miller in a marked manner, and throwing open the door of an inner room, he added, “my Lord Lake, come forth; no doubt you have heard all.” Lord Lake himself—the Mr. Blue of the London Hotel, the sham confidential clerk of Miller—made his appearance, to the utter confusion of the Lakes.

“My father,” said Annetta, “my dear father!”

“Hold,” said Lord Lake, gravely, “I suspected, Annetta, from the first that your birth was impugned by my brother from the most interested motives, and I followed you from Italy—Mr. Miller disclosed all to me, and the infamous plot is discovered.”

“Then I am your child?”

“Confusion,” muttered Lake, “death and the devil, what a contre temps.”

“Stop,” added Lord Lake, “the strangest thing of all has yet to be told. This plot to make out that you are not my child is but a plot, but it is not baseless as to the fact. You are not my daughter. I have by mere chance found out that lately, and I cannot provide for you, as the resources I have must go to him who will inherit my title. What say you, Master Lake, this girl with all her beauty is destitute, her name is Smith—will you have her?”

“Not I in faith, thank you for nothing.”

“Will you, young soldier, knowing what she is?”

“Ay, will I with all my heart! she is the highest, brightest treasure this world can offer me. Any name or no name—poor or rich—noble or commoner—she is still my own dear girl, and her resting place shall be my heart, the whole world shall not tear her from it.”

“God’s blessings on you,” cried Lord Lake, grasping his hands; “I did but this to give yon shrinking coward a chance of creeping into favour with me, because he boasted so of his disinterested affection a while ago. She is my child, the Lady Annetta Lake—I never doubted it, and she is yours—George Rankin, and you shall be the dear son of my adoption.”

“I say, father,” said young Lake, “I—I think we had better go.”

“Curse you all,” cried Lake, “and doubly curse you, lawyer Miller, you have betrayed me; but I’ll be revenged.”

“Through the bars of a prison,” said the lawyer. “An officer is down stairs to arrest you for two thousand pounds. Ha, ha, ha!”

• • • • •

Thus then was it that this episode in the life of Varney the Vampyre terminated. But still he lived, and still there existed all the strange and fearful mixture of good and evil that was in his disposition. There he was yet upon the earth’s surface, looking like one of the great world, and yet possessing so few feelings in common with its inhabitants.

Surely to him there must have been periods of acute suffering, of intense misery, such as would have sufficed to drive any ordinary mind to distraction, and yet he lived, although one cannot, upon reviewing his career, and considering what he was, consider that death would have been other than a grateful release to him from intense suffering.

Perhaps, of all the suffering that, in consequence of his most awful and singular existence, was inflicted upon human nature, he suffered the most, for that he was a man of good intellect no one who has followed us thus far can doubt, and one cannot help giving in almost at times to as strange and fanciful theory of his own, namely that this world was to him the place of perdition for crimes done in some other sphere.

“It must be so!” he would say, “but as the Almighty Master of all things is all merciful, as he is all powerful, the period of my redemption will surely come at last.”

This was the most consolat thought that Varney could have, and it showed that even yet there was a something akin to humanity lingering in his heart.

This showed that despite the dreadful power he had—a power, as well as an awful propensity—he had some yearnings after a better state.

What had he been? How did he become a vampyre? Did the voice of fond affection ever thrill in his ears? Had little children ever climbed the knee of that wretched man? Fearful questions, if he could have answered them the affirmative—if he bore about with him, deep in his memory, a remembrance of such joys gone by.

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CXCV. THE VAMPYRE HAS SERIOUS THOUGHTS.—THE DREAM.—THE RESOLUTION

The next day after the events that we have detailed, Varney found himself in a hotel in London. He did not even make the effort to inquire how the affair connected with the Lady Annetta, in which towards the last he had played a generous part, prospered.

He was too spirit-broken himself to do so.

For nearly the whole day he remained in a room by himself, and although to avoid uncomfortable and ungracious remarks being made by the people of the house, he ordered from time to time food and wine, he, in accordance with his horrible nature, which forbade him any nourishment but human blood, touched neither.

During that day he seemed to be suffering acutely, for now and then as the waiters of the hotel passed the door of the private room he occupied, they heard deep agonising groans, and when once or twice they went in, fancying that he must be very ill or dying, they found him seated at a table on which his head was resting.

He would start up on these occasions, and sternly question them for interrupting him, so at last they left him alone.

Let us look at him in his solitude.

It is getting towards the dim and dusky hours of late twilight, and he can only barely be descried as he sits bolt upright in a high-backed arm-chair, looking at vacancy, while his lips move, and he appears to be conversing with the spirits of another world, that in their dim intangibility are not visible to mortal eyes.

Now and then he would strike his breast, and utter a dull groan as if some sudden recollection of the dreadful past had come over him, with such a full tide of horror that it could not be resisted.

It was not until a considerable time had elapsed, and the darkness had greatly increased, that he at length spoke.

“And I was once happy,” he said mournfully, “once happy, because I was innocent. Oh! gracious Heaven, how long am I to suffer?”

A spasmodic kind of movement of his whole features ensued, that was quite dreadful to look upon, and would have terrified any one who could have seen them. Then he spoke again.

“I was happy one hundred and eighty years ago,” he said, “for that has been the awful duration my life as yet; yes, a hundred and eighty years have, with their sunshine of summer, and their winter storms, passed over my head; and I had a wife and children, who, with innocent and gladsome prattle, would climb my knee and nestle in my bosom. Oh! where are they all now?”

He wrung his hands, but he did not weep the fount of tears had dried up for a hundred years in his bosom.

“Yes, yes! the grave holds them—holds them? said I. No, no, long since have they crumbled into dust, and nothing of them remains as a faint indication even of who once was human. I, I it was who listened to the councils of a fiend, and destroyed her who had give up home, kindred, associations, all for me.”

He rose up from the chair, and seemed to think that he would find some relief in pacing the room to and fro, but he soon threw himself again into the seat.

“No, no,” he said, “no peace for me; and I cannot sleep, I have never slept what mortals call sleep, the sleep of rest and freedom from care, for many a long year. When I do seem to repose, then what dreadful images awake to my senses. Better, far better that my glaring eyeballs should crack with weariness, than that I should taste such repose.”

The sympathetic shudder with which he uttered these words was quite proof sufficient of his deep and earnest sincerity. He must indeed have suffered much before he could have give such a sentiment such an utterance. We pity thee, Varney!

“And when, oh, when will my weary pilgrimage be over,” he ejaculated; “Oh when will the crime of murder be cleansed from my soul. I killed her. Yes, I killed her who loved me. A fiend, I know it was a fiend, whispered suspicion in my ear, suspicion of her who was as pure as the first ray of sunlight that from heaven shows itself to chase away the night, but I listened and then created from my own fevered brain the circumstances that gave suspicion strength and horrible consistency—and I killed her.”

After the utterance of these words he was silent for a time, and then in heart-rending accents he again repeated them.

“I killed her—I killed her, and she was innocent. Then I became what I am. There was a period of madness, I think, but I became a vampyre; I have died many deaths, but recovered from them all; for ever, by some strange accident or combination of circumstances, the cold moonbeams have had access to my lifeless form, and I have recovered.”

By this time the landlord of the hotel in which Varney was staying, had got in a fearful fidget, for he began to think that he had a madman in his house, and that it would turn out that his guest had made his escape from some lunatic asylum.

“I wonder now,” he thought, “if a little soothing civility would do any good; I will try it. It can’t surely do any harm.”

With this intent the landlord went up stairs to the room in which Varney the Vampyre was, and he tapped gently at the door.

There was no reply, and after a few moments’ consideration, the landlord opened the door and peeped in, when he saw his customer sitting in an arm-chair, in the manner in which we have described him to sit.

“If you please, sir,” said the landlord, “would you not like——”

“Blood!” said Varney, rising.

The landlord did not wait for any more, but bustled down stairs again with all the promptitude in his power.

It was a bed-room and sitting-room that Varney occupied at the hotel, the one adjoining the other, and now although he groaned and sighed at the idea of repose, he flung himself upon the bed, full dressed, as he was, and there he lay as still as death itself.

One of those strange fitful kind of slumbers, such as he had himself described as being so full of dread, came over him.

For a time he was still, as we have said, but then as various images of agony began to chase each other through his brain, he tossed about his arms, and more than once the word “mercy” came from his lips in accents of the most soul-harrowing nature.

This state of things continued for some considerable time, and then in his sleep a great change came over him, and he fancied he was walking in a garden replete with all the varied beauties of a southern clime, and through the centre of which meandered a stream, the chrystal music of which was delightfully calming and soothing to his senses.

All around seemed to speak of the peace and loveliness of an Eden.

As he wandered on, he fancied that some form was walking by his side, and that he heard the gentle fall of its feet, and the flutter of garments.

“Varney,” it said, “you have suffered much.”

“I have. Oh, God knows I have.”

“You would die, Varney, if the moonbeams could be prevented from reaching you.”

“Yes, yes. But how—how?”

“The ocean. The deep, deep sea hides many a worse secret than the corpse of a vampyre.”

It might have been that, after all, his sleep was to some extent refreshing to him, or that the dream he had, had instilled a hope into him of a release from what, in his case, might truly be called the bondage of existence; but he certainly arose more calm, cool, and collected, than he had been for some time past.

“Yes,” he said, “the deep sea holds a secret well, and if I could but be washed into some of its caverns, I might lie there and rot until the great world itself had run its course.”

This idea took great possession of him. He thought over various modes of carrying it out. At one time he thought that if he bought a boat on the sea coast, and went out alone, sailing away as far from land as he could, he might be able to accomplish his object. But then he might not be able to get far enough.

At length he thought of a more feasible and a better plan than that, and it was to take his passage in some ship for any port, and watch his opportunity, some night when far from land, to steal up upon the deck and plunge in the waves.

The more he considered of this plan the better he liked it, and the more it wore an appearance of probability and an aspect of success, so at length the thought grew into a resolution.

“Yes, yes,” he muttered, “who knows but that some friendly spirit—for the mid air that floats ’twixt earth and heaven is peopled with such, may have whispered such counsel in my ears. It shall be done; I will no longer hesitate, but make this attempt to shake off the dreadful weight which mere existence is to me.”

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CXCVI. THE SCOTCH PACKET SHIP.—THE SUICIDE

It was in pursuance of this resolution, so strangely and suddenly formed, that the unhappy Varney rose on the following morning and went to that region of pitch, slop clothing, red herrings, and dirt—the docks.

But yet, somehow, although the docks may not be the cleanest or the most refined part of the vast city of London, the coarseness and the litter there—for after all it is more litter than dirt—are by no means so repulsive as those bad addenda to other localities.

There is a kind of rough freshness induced by the proximity of the water which has a physical and moral effect, we are inclined to think, upon the place and the people, and which takes off much of what would otherwise wear the aspect of what is called low life.

But this is all by the way, and we will at once proceed to follow the fortunes of Varney, in carrying out his plan of self annihilation.

The hour was an early one, and many a curious glance was cast at him, for although he had humanised and modernised his apparel to a great extent, he could not get rid of the strange, unworld-like (if we may use the phrase) look of his face. He was very pale too, and jaded looking, for the thoughts that had recently occupied him were not such as to do good to the looks of any one.

He cared little in what vessel he embarked. He had but one object in embarking at all, and that was to get out to sea, so that the ultimate destination of the ship that should receive so very odd and equivocal a passenger was a matter of no moment.

Stopping a personage who had about him a sea faring look, Varney, pointing to a bustling place of embarkation, said,

“Does any vessel start from there to-day?”

“Yes, there’s one going now, or as soon as the tide serves her, She is for Leith?”

“On the coast of Scotland, I think?”

“Yes, to be sure.”

Varney walked on until he came to a kind of counting-house, where sat a man with books before him, and, not to take up more valuable space, he secured what was called a berth on board the “Ocean”, a dirty, small, ill-convenient ship bound for the port near the Scotch metropolis of Edinburgh.

Not wishing to be himself much noticed, and having no desire to notice anybody, Varney went down below, and seated himself in a dark corner of the generally dingy cabin, and there, amid all the noise, bawling, abuse, and bustle contingent upon getting the ill-conditioned bark under weigh, he never moved or uttered a word to any one, although the cabin was frequently visited.

But Varney had no idea of the amount of annoyance to which he was likely, in the course of the evening, to be subjected.

The vessel was got under weigh, and as both wind and tide happened to be favourable, she dropped down the river rapidly, and soon was clear of the Nore-light, and holding on her course northward.

The cabin now began to fill with the passengers, and extraordinary as the fact may appear, there were many Scotchmen actually going back again. They were, however, only going to pay visits, for it is one of the popular delusions that Scotchmen try to keep up in this country, that they have left something dear and delightful behind them in Scotland, and that, take it altogether, it is one of the most desirable spots in the whole world. It becomes, therefore, quite necessary for them to go back now and then, in order to keep up that delusion.

Personal vanity, too, is one of the great characteristics of the nation; and many a Scotchman goes back to Edinburgh, for example, to make an appearance among his old friends and family connexions, totally incompatible with his real position in London.

By about nine o’clock at night, when the shore to the west could only be discovered as a dim, grey line on the horizon, the cabin of the “Ocean” packet was crammed.

Whisky was produced, and a drink that the Scotch call “bottled yell,” meaning ale; and as these two heady liquids began to take effect “Auld Lang Syne” was chaunted in the vernacular by the whole party. At length a feeling of annoyance began to grow up from the fact of the isolated aspect of Varney, and the quiet, unobtrusive manner in which he looked on at the proceedings, appearing not in the smallest degree enthusiastic, even when the most uproarious Scotch songs, in the most unintelligible of all jargons, were sung, for strange to say, the authors of that nation take a pride in slaughtering the English language.

At length a Scotchman approached Varney and said,—

“Ye’ll take a glass to auld Reekie mon?”

[Edinburgh is called Reekie in consequence of the absence of drainage, giving it a horrible fœtid smell, a reeky atmosphere, in a manner of speaking; which may be illustrated by the Scotchman, who was returning to that place from England, on the top of a stage coach, when within about fifty miles he began sniffing and working his nose in an extraordinary manner.—“What are you doing that for?” said an Englishman. “Eh! mon, I can smell the gude auld toon.”]

“I do not understand your language,” said Varney, and he walked from the cabin to the deck of the vessel. He recoiled an instant, for the moon was rising.

“Ever thus, even thus,” he said, “how strange it is that I never dream of ridding myself of the suffering of living, but the moon is shining brightly. Can its rays penetrate the ocean?”

The deck was very still and silent indeed. The man at the helm, and one other pacing to and fro, were all that occupied it, save Varney himself, and he stood by the side gazing in the direction, where he had last seen the dim grey speck of land.

“A pleasant run, sir, we shall have of it,” said the man who had been pacing the deck, “if this kindly wind continues.”

“It blows from the west.”

“Yes, nearly due-west; but that suits us. We keep her head a few points in shore, and do well with such a wind, although a south-west by south is our choice.”

“How far are we from land?”

“It’s the coast of Suffolk that is to our left, but we are I hope a good thirty miles or more from it.”

“You hope?”

“Yes, sir. Perhaps you are not sufficient of a sailor to know that we never hug the shore if we can possibly help it.”

“I understand. And there?”

“Oh, there lies the German Ocean.”

“How deep now should you say the sea was here?”

“Can’t say, sir, but it’s blue water.”

This was not much information to Varney, but he bowed his head and walked forward, as much as to say that he had had enough of the information and conversation of the man, who was the mate of the vessel, and quite disposed to be communicative. Perhaps in the very dim light he did not see exactly what a strange-looking personage he was talking to.

“Thirty miles from land,” thought Varney, “surely that is far enough, and I need have no dread of floating to the shore through such a mass of water as that thirty miles. The distance is very great; I can to-night in another hour make the attempt.”

To his great joy some heavy clouds climbed up the sky along with the moon, and congregating around the beautiful satellite, effectually obscured the greater number of its beams. There was in fact, no absolute moonlight, but a soft reflected kind of twilight coming through the clouds, and dispersed far and wide.

“This will do,” muttered Varney. “All I have to fear are the direct moonbeams. It is they that have the effect of revivifying such as I am.”

The man who had been pacing the deck finally sat down, and appeared to drop off to sleep, so that all was still, and as Varney kept to the head of the vessel, the man at the wheel could see nothing of him, there being many intervening obstacles. He was perfectly alone.

Now and then, with a loud roaring about, he heard some boisterous drinking chorus come from the cabin, and then a rattle of glasses as fists were thumped upon the tables in token of boisterous approbation, and then all would be still again.

Varney looked up to the sky and his lips moved, but he uttered no sound. He went closer to the vessel’s side and gazed upon the water as it lazily rippled past. How calm and peaceful, he thought, he ought to be, far beneath that tide.

A sudden plunge into the sea would have made a splash that would have been heard, and that he wished of all things to avoid. He clambered slowly over the side, and only held on by his hands for a moment. The cool night air tossed about his long elfin locks, and in another moment he was gone.

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CXCVII. THE OLD MANOR HOUSE.—THE RESCUE.—VARNEY’S DESPAIR

At about ten o’clock on that same night on which Varney the Vampyre plunged into the sea with hopes of getting rid of the world of troubles that oppressed him, a small fishing boat might have been seen a distance of about twenty-five miles from the Suffolk coast, trying to make for land, and baffled continually by the wind that blew off shore.

In this boat were two young men, and from their appearance they evidently belonged to the wealthier class of society. They were brothers.

From their conversation we shall gather the circumstances that threw them into such situation, not by any means divested of peril as it was.

“Well, Edwin,” said one, “here we have been beating about for five hours, trying to get in shore, and all our little bark permits us to do is I think not materially to increase our distance from home.”

“That is about the truth, Charles,” said the other, “and it was my fault.”

“Come, Edwin, don’t talk in that way. There is no fault in the matter; how could you know that the wind would stiffen into such a breeze as it has, so that we cannot fight out against it; or if there be fault, of course it’s as much mine as yours, for am not I here, and do I not know full well what an amount of consternation there will be at the Grange?”

“There will indeed!”

“Well, their joy when we get back will be all the greater.”

“Shall we get back?”

“Can you ask? Look at our little boat, is she not sea-worthy? Does she not dance on the waves merrily? It is only the wind after all that baffles us, if it would drop a little, we could, I think make head against it with the oars.

The brothers were silent now for a few moments, for they were each looking at the weather. At length Edwin spoke, saying,—

“We shall have the moon up, and that may make a change.”

“Very likely—very likely. There is not, I think, quite so much sea as there was; suppose we try the oars again?”

The other assented, and the two young men exerted themselves very much to decrease their distance from the Suffolk coast by pulling away right manfully, but it was quite evident to them that they did no good, and that they had just as well dropped westward as they had been doing, by keeping the sail set, and steering as near as possible to the wind.

“Why, if this goes on, Charles, where shall we get to by the morning?”

“To Northumberland, perhaps.”

“Or further.”

“Well, if we go far enough, what say you to attempting the vexata questio of the north-west passage?”

“Nay, I cannot jest—it’s a sad thing this—more sad a good deal for those who are at home, than for us. To-morrow is Clara’s wedding day, and what a damper it will be upon all to suppose that we have perished at sea.”

“They will never suppose that we would do anything so ridiculous. Why, at the worst, you know, we could go before the wind and run on to Holland.”

“Yes, if no storm arises or such a gale as might founder our boat. There, there is the moon.”

“Yes, and she will soon be overtaken by yon bank of clouds that seem to be scudding after her in the blue heavens. Ha! a sail, by Jove!”

“Where? where?”

“Not I think above four miles there to the east, by our little compass which it is a thousand mercies we have with us. Look, you may see her sails against that light cloud—there.”

“I see her. Think you she will see us?”

“There is every chance, for her swell of canvass will be all the other way. Fire your fowling-piece and the sound may reach her, the wind is good for carrying it.”

Charles took a fowling-piece from the bottom of the boat. The brothers had merely gone out at sunset or a little before it, to shoot gulls, and he tried to discharge the piece, but several seas that they had shipped, while they were thinking of other things than keeping the gun dry, had, for the time being, most effectively prevented it from being discharged.

“Ah!” said Edwin as he heard the click of the lock, “that hope is lost.”

“It is indeed, and to my thinking the ship is distancing us rapidly. You see our mast and sail, will, at even this distance, lie so low in the horizon that they will hardly see us unless they are sweeping the sky with a night glass.”

“And that is not likely.”

“Certainly not, so we have nothing for it but to hold on our way. I am getting hungry if you are not.”

“I certainly am not getting hungry, for I have felt half famished these last two hours; but I suppose we may hold out against the fiend hunger some hours yet. What are you looking at so earnestly, eh?”

“I hardly know.”

“You hardly know? Let me see—why—why what is it?”

“There seems to me to be something now and that much darker than the waves, tiding on their tops; there, do you not see it? There it is again. There!”

“Yes, yes.”

“What on earth can it be?”

“A dead body.”

“Indeed! ah! it drifts towards us. There is some current hereabouts, for you see it comes to us against the wind.”

“Don’t deceive yourself, brother. It is we who are going with the wind towards it, and now you can see there is no doubt about what it is. Some poor fellow, who has been drowned. Get out the boat-hook, get it out.”

“Why, you would not take in such a cargo, Edwin.”

“God forbid! but I feel some curiosity to see who and what sort of a personage it is. Here we have him. What a length he is to be sure.”

The body was nearly alongside the boat, and one of the brothers detained it with a boat-hook, while they both looked earnestly at it.

It was the body of a man, remarkably well dressed, and had no appearance of having been under the water long. The features, as far as they could see them, were calm and composed. The hands were clenched, and some costly looking rings glittered on the fingers through the salt spray that foamed and curled around the insensible form.

“Charles,” said Edwin; “what we shall do?”

Edwin shook his head.

“I—I don’t like.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t like to cast it adrift again, and not take it ashore, where it can rest in an honest man’s grown if he be one. Fancy it being one of us, would it not be a consolation to those who love us to know that we rested in peace among our ancestors, in preference to rotting in the sea, tossed and mangled by every storm that blows. I do not like to cast the body adrift again.”

“It’s a ghastly passenger.”

“It is, but that ghastliness is only an idea, and we should remember that we ourselves——”

“Stop, brother, stop. Do not fancy that I oppose your wish to convey this body to the shore, and place it in some sanctified spot. What I expressed concerning it was merely the natural feeling that must arise on such an occasion, nothing more.”

“Then you are willing?”

“I am.”

The two brothers now, without further doubts or remarks upon the subject, got the body into the boat, and laid it carefully down. Then Edwin folded and tied a handkerchief over the face, for as he truly enough said,—

“There is no occasion to have to encounter that dead face each moment that one turns one’s eyes in that direction; it is sufficient that we have, by taking the body in at all done, all that humanity can dictate to us.”

To this Charles agreed, and it was remarked by them both as a strange thing that from the moment of their taking in the dead body to the boat, the wind dropped, and finally there was almost a calm, after which there came soft gentle air from the south-east, which enabled them with scarcely any exertion on their own parts to make great progress towards their own home, from which they found they had not by any means been driven so far northward as they had at first thought.

The brothers looked at each other, and it was Edwin who broke the silence, and put into words what both thought, by saying,—

“Charles, there is something more in this whole affair than what lies just upon its surface.”

“Yes, it seems as if we were driven out to sea by some special providence to do this piece of work, and that having done it, the winds and the waves obeyed the hand of their mighty Master, and allowed of our return.”

“It does seem so,” said the other.

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CXCVIII. A FAMILY SCENE.—THE SISTERS.—THE HORRIBLE ALARM

In the course of two hours more, the young men were so close in shore that they could see the lights flashing along the coast, and they even fancied they could catch a glimpse of human forms moving along with torches; and if such were the case, they doubted not but that these people were sent to serve as a guide to them should they with their little bark be hovering near the coast.

“Look, Edwin,” said Charles, “we are expected, are we not?”

“Yes, yes.”

“I am certain that those lights are meant as guides for us.”

“They may spare themselves the trouble, for do you not see that the clouds are wearing away, and that in a few minutes more we shall have the undimmed lustre of a full moon looking down upon us.”

“It will be so.”

The boat had now got so far within a large natural inlet of the ocean that but very little wind caught its gently flapping sail, so that the brothers bent manfully to their oars, and got the boat through the water at a rapid rate.

Oh, how very different their sensations were now to what they had been when they were beating about at the mercy of the winds and waves, but a few short hours since, and when it certainly was but an even chance with death whether they would ever see their home again.

If a gale had sprung up, accompanied by anything in the shape of a very heavy sea, they must have been lost.

Soon they saw that their boat was descried, and at a particular portion of the coast there stood a complete cluster of men with torches, inviting them there to land, and they knew that such landing place was upon their father’s property, and that in a few minutes they would be safe on shore.

Neither of them spoke, but reflection was busy in the hearts of both.

There was a loud and thoroughly English shout, as the boat grated upon the sandy beach, and Edwin and Charles jumped on shore. They were in another moment pressed in their father’s arms.

“Why, why, boys,” he said, “what a fright you have given us all; there’s Clara and Emma have been forced—I say forced, for nothing but force would do it—to go home, and the whole country has been in an uproar. You were blown out to sea, I suppose?”

“Yes, father, but we have not been in any danger.”

“Not in any danger with such a cockle-shell of a boat fairly out into the German Ocean. But we will say no more about it, lads. Not another word, come home at once, and make all hearts glad at the old Grange-house.”

“There’s something in the boat,” cried one of the men who held a light.

“Good God, yes!” exclaimed Charles.

“We had forgotten,” said Edwin, “we met with a little adventure at sea, and picked up a dead body.”

“A dead body?”

“Yes, father, we could not find it in our hearts to let it be, so we brought it on shore that it might have the rites of Christian burial in the village church-yard. Somebody who loved the man may yet thank us for it, and feel a consolation to know that such had been done.”

“You are right boys, you are right,” said the father, “you have done in that matter just as I would wish you; I will give orders for the body to be taken to the dead house by Will Stephens, and to-morrow it shall be decently interred.”

This being settled, the father, accompanied by his two sons, who were not a little pleased to be safe upon terra firma again, walked together up a sloping pathway, which led to the Grange-house, as it was called.

The joy that the return of the brothers caused in the family, our readers may well imagine. The sisters Clara and Emma wept abundantly, and the mother, who had let her fears go further than any one else, was deeply affected.

But it is time that we should inform the reader who these people were, whom we have introduced upon the scene of our eventful history.

Sir George Crofton, for such was the name of the father of Edwin and Charles, was a wealthy warm-hearted country gentleman, and constantly resided upon his own estate all the year round, being a good landlord to his tenantry, and a good father to his four children, who have already been to some extent presented to the reader.

The mother was a kind-hearted, but rather weak woman, with an evangelical bias that at times was rather annoying to the family.

This, however, was perhaps the good lady’s only fault, for with that one exception, she was fond of her children to excess, notwithstanding, as Sir George sometimes jestingly said he verily believed, she in her heart considered they were all on the high road to a nameless abode.

The night was so far advanced when the young men got home that, of course, not much was said or done, and among other things that were put off until the following morning, was the story of the finding of the body.

“There is no occasion,” whispered Sir George, “to say anything to your mother about it.”

“Certainly not, father.”

“At least not till to-morrow, for if you do, I shall not get a wink of sleep for her reflections on the subject.”

The two young men knew very well that this was no exaggeration, and that their mother would, like any divine, eagerly seize the opportunity of what is called “improving the occasion” by indulging in a long discourse upon the most dismal of all subjects that the mind of any human being can conceive, namely, the probability of everybody going to eternal perdition unless they believe in a particular set of doctrines that to her seem orthodox.

The consequence of this was that the dead body was quietly taken out of the boat by men who did not possess the most refined feelings in the world, and carried to the bone house.

“He seems a decent sort of chap,” said one, as he looked at the very respectable habiliments of the corpse.

“Ah! look at the gould rings.”

“Yes, you may, look, Abel, but eyes on, hands off.”

“Why?”

“Why, you gowk, do you think as young Master Charles and Edwin don’t know of ’em, and more besides, who would touch dead man’s gold off of his fingers?”

“Is it unlucky?”

“Horrid!”

“Then I’ll have nought to do with un.”

The body was placed on the ground, for there was no coffin of any sort to put it in, and the door was shut upon it in the dead house, and then the party who had brought it there thought it a part of their duty to wake up Will Stephens the sexton, to tell him that there was such a thing as a dead body placed in his custody, as it were, by being put into the dead house, which was not above a hundred yards from the cottage occupied by Will.

They hammered away rather furiously at his door, and no wonder that he felt a little, or perhaps not a little, alarmed upon the occasion.

In a few moments a casement was opened and out popped a head.

“Hilloa! you ragamuffins, what do you mean by hammering away at an honest man’s door at this rate, eh? Am I to have any sleep?”

“Ragamuffin yourself,” cried one; “there’s a dead body of a drowned man in the bone-house. All you have got to do is to look after it, and there’s a lot of gold rings on its fingers with diamonds in them, for all we know, worth God knows how much. You may make the most of it now that you know it.”

“A dead man! Who is he?”

“Ah, that’s more than we can tell. Good night, or rather good morning, old crusty.”

“Stop! stop!—tell me——”

The men only laughed, for they had no desire to protract a conversation with the sexton, and he called in vain after them to give him some further information upon the subject of this rather mysterious information.

“A drowned man,” he pondered to himself, “a drowned man, and with fingers loaded with gems, and brought to the bone-house! Oh, pho! pho! It’s a hoax, that’s what it is, and I won’t believe it. It’s done to get me up in the cold, that’s all, and then there will be some trick played off upon me safe, and I shall be only laughed at for my pains.”

Full of this idea, the sexton turned into his bed again, and hoped that by speedily going to sleep, he should get the laugh of his tormentors, instead of they getting it of him, as well as lose the shivering that had come on him through standing at the open window, exposed to the night air so very indifferently clad.

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CXCIX. THE SEXTON’S AVARICE.—THE DEAD AND THE LIVING.—THE RING

It was all very well for the sexton to wish, and to try to got to sleep, but actually to succeed in procuring

“Nature’s sweet oblivion”

was quite another matter.

In vain he tossed and turned about, there was no rest for him of any kind or description, dreamless or dreamful, and still he kept repeating to himself,—

“A dead body, with gold and diamond rings in the bone-house.”

These were the magic words which, like a spell that he was compelled by some malign influence continually to repeat, kept Will Stephens awake, until at last he seemed to lose entirely his first perception of the fact that he might be only hoaxed, and all his imagination became concentrated on the idea of how came the dead body in the bone-house, and how was it that gold and diamond rings were left on its fingers in such a place?

These were mental ruminations, the result of which was transparent from the first, for that result in the natural order of things was sure to be that the passion of curiosity would get the better of all other considerations, and he, Will Stephens, would rise to ascertain if such were really the state of things.

“It ain’t far off morning, now,” he reasoned with himself, “so I may as well get up at once as lie here tossing and tumbling about, and certainly unable to get another wink of sleep, and besides after all I may be wrong in thinking this a hoax. There may really be such a dead body as those fellows mentioned in the bone-house and if there be, I ought certainly to go and look after it.”

We easily reason ourselves into what is our pleasure, and so while these cogitatory remarks were uttered by the sexton, he rose.

He found that if he drew back the blind from before his window, the moon which was now sailing through a nearly cloudless sky, would give him amply sufficient light to enable him to go through the process of dressing, so he at once began that operation.

“Yes,” he said, “I ought to go, it’s my positive duty to do so, after getting the information I have, and if that information be untrue, let it recoil on the heads of those who invented the falsehood. I shall go, that’s settled. What a sweet moonlight.”

It was a sweet moonlight indeed. The floods of soft silvery light fell with an uncommon radiance upon all objects, and the minutest thing could have been seen upon the ground, with the same clearness and distinctness as at mid-day.

The only difference was that a soft preternatural looking atmosphere seemed to be around everything, and a kind of marble like look was imparted to all objects far and near on which those soft silvery rays rested in beauty and sublimity.

The sexton was full dressed, and although the moonlight guided him well, he thought that he might in the bone-house require another mode of illumination, and he lighted and took with him a small lantern which had a darkening shade to it.

Thus prepared, he walked at a rapid pace from his own house towards the small shed-like building which served as a receptacle for the unowned dead, and for such human remains as were from time to time cast ashore by the waves, or flung up from new graves by the spade and the mattock.

Familiar as he was and had been for many a year with that bone-house, and often in contact with the dead, he yet on this occasion felt as if a strange fear was creeping over him, and then a flutter of his heart and the fiery feel that was in his brain were circumstances quite novel to him.

“Well, this is odd,” he said, “and I suppose it is what they call being nervous I can’t make it out to be anything else, I’m sure.”

Thus reasoning with himself upon his own unwonted timidity, he reached the bone-house.

The door of the dilapidated building which was known by that name, was only secured by a latch, for it was not considered that the contents of the place were sufficiently interesting for any one’s cupidity to be excited by it.

The sexton paused a moment before he lifted the latch, and glanced around him. Even then he half expected to hear a loud laugh expressive of the triumph of those who had combined to play him the trick, if it were one, of getting him out of his bed on a bootless errand. But all was still around him—still as the very grave itself, and muttering then in a hurried tone, “it is true, there is no trick,” he hastily opened the door, and went into the bone-house.

All was darkness save one broad beam of moonlight that came in at the door-way, but the sexton closed the entrance, and applied to his lantern for a light.

He slid the darkening piece of metal from before the magnifying glass, and then a rather sickly ray of light fell for a moment upon the corpse that lay then upon its back—a ray only sufficiently strong and sufficiently enduring to enable the sexton to make quite sure that there was a body before him, and then his lantern went out.

“Confound the lantern!” he said, “I ought to have looked to it before I started, instead of lighting it on the mere hazard of its going on comfortably. What’s to be done? Ah, I have it, I remember.”

What the sexton remembered was that on the same wall in which the door was situated, there was a large square aperture only covered by a kind of shutter of wood, the withdrawal of a bolt from which would cause it to fall in a moment on its hinges.

The sexton knew the place well, and drawing back the somewhat rusty bolt, down went the shutter, and a broad flood of moonlight fell at once upon the corpse.

“Ah,” said Will Stephens, “there it is sure enough. What a long odd-looking fellow to be sure, and what a face—how thin and careworn looking. I do very much wonder now who he really is?”

As he continued to gaze upon the dead body, his eyes wandered to the hands, and then sure enough he saw the bright and glittering gems the men had spoken of, and which the salt water had not been able to tarnish into dimness. Perceiving that the setting was gold and the stones real,—

“Ahem!” said Stephens, softly; “they will not bury the corpse with those rings on his fingers. Why, he must have half a dozen on at least; they will be somebody’s perquisite of course, and that somebody won’t be me. The idea of leaving such property unprotected in a bone-house!”

Will Stephens remained now silent for a short time, moving his head about in different directions, so that he caught the bright colours of the jewels that adorned the dead man’s hands, and then he spoke again.

“What’s more easy,” said he, “than for some of the very fellows who brought him here, to slip back quietly, and take away every one of those rings?”

After this much, he went to the door of the bone-house and listened, but all was perfectly still; and then his cogitations assumed another shape.

“Who saw me come from my house?” he said.—“Nobody. Who will see me go back to it?—Nobody. Then what is to hinder me from taking the rings, and—and letting the blame lie on some one else’s shoulders, I should like to know? Nothing will be easier than for me to say in the morning that owing to the strange and insolent manner in which the information was given me of the arrival of the dead body in the bone-house, I did not believe it and therefore did not rise, and so—so I think I may as well eh?”

He thought he heard something like a faint sigh, and the teeth chattered in his head, and he shook in every limb as he bent all his energies to the task of listening if there were really any one in or at hand, playing the spy upon him.

All was as before profoundly still, and with a long breath of relief, he cast off his terror.

“What a fool I am to be sure,” he said; “it was but the wind after all, no doubt, making its way through some one of the numerous chinks and crevices in this shed; it did sound like a sigh from some human lips, but it wasn’t.”

The propriety of making short work of the affair, if he wished to do it at all, now came forcibly to the mind of the sexton, and arming himself with all the courage he could just then summon to his aid, he advanced close to the corpse.

Kneeling on one knee he took up one of the hands from which he wished to take the rings, and when he saw them closer, he felt convinced that they did not belie their appearance, but were in reality what they seemed to be—jewels of rarity and price.

The hand was cold and clammy and damp to the touch, and the knuckles were swollen, so that there was great difficulty in getting the rings over them, and the sexton was full five minutes getting one of them off.

When he had done so, he wiped the perspiration of fear and excitement from his brow, as he muttered,—

“That’s always the case with your drowned folks, they are so swelled when first they come out of the water, and so I shall have quite a job, I suppose.”

The sexton’s cupidity was, however, now sufficiently awakened, to make him persevere, despite any such obstacles, in what he was about, and accordingly, kneeling on both knees he clasped the wrist of the dead man in one hand, and with the other strove to coax off, by twisting the hoop of gold round and round, a ring that had one diamond, apparently of great value, set in it, and which the robber of the dead thought was a prize worth some trouble in the obtaining.

In an instant, the dead hand clasped him tight.

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CC. THE RECOVERY.—THE SEXTON’S FRIGHT.—THE COMPACT

What pen shall describe the abject fright of Master Will Stephens, the sexton, as the cold clammy fingers of the supposed corpse closed upon his hand.

The blood seemed to curdle at his very heart—a film spread itself before his eyes—he tried to scream, but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could utter no sound.

In good truth he was within an ace of fainting, and it was rather a wonder that he did not go clean off.

Power to withdraw his hand from the horrible grasp he had not, and there he knelt, shivering and shaking, and with his mouth wide open, and the hair literally bristling upon his head.

How long he and the dead man remained in this way together in silence, he knew not, but he was aroused from the state of almost frenzy in which he was, by a deep sepulchral voice—the voice of the apparently dead.

“What has happened?” it said, “what has happened? Is this the world which was to come?”

“M-m-mer-cy—help,” stammered the sexton. “I—I—I—am a poor man—I—I don’t want your rings, good Mr.—Mr. Ghost. Oh—oh—oh—have mercy upon me I—I—implore you.”

The only reply was a frightful groan.

The perspiration rolled down the sexton’s face.

“Oh, don’t—oh, pray don’t—hold—hold me so—so tight.”

“Now,” said the dead man, “I know all. The die is cast; my fate has again spoken. Steel shall not slay me, the bullet shall kill me not, fire shall not burn me, and water will not drown while yon bright satellite sails on ’twixt earth and heaven.”

“Yes—yes, sir.”

“The fiat has gone forth, and I am wretched, oh, Heaven so unutterably wretched!”

“Perhaps, good Mr. Ghost, you—you will let me go now. Here’s your ring, I don’t want to keep it. Here’s the only one I took off your worshipful fingers, good Mr. Ghost.”

A very thin filmy sort of cloud had been going over the moon’s disc, but now had passed completely away, and such a flood of unchecked untempered brilliancy poured in at the open window, if it might be so called of the dead-house that it became quite radiant with the silvery beams.

The drowned man rose with a wild howling cry of rage, and springing at the throat of the sexton, bore him down to the earth in an instant, and placed his knee upon his chest.

“Villain,” he groaned out between his clenched teeth, “you shall die, although you have made me live. There shall be one victim to the fell destroyer.”

The sexton thought his hour was come.

“Wretch!” pursued the revived corpse, “wretch, what devil prompted you to do this most damnable deed? Speak—speak, I say, who are you?”

“What—what deed?” gasped the sexton.

“The deed of restoring me to life—of dragging me from the ocean, and forcing me to live again.”

“I—I—oh dear.”

“Speak. Go on.”

“I didn’t do anything of the sort. The truth is, I only came to—to—to——”

“To what?”

“To borrow a ring of you, that’s all, and the greatest calamity that ever happened to me is your coming to life.”

“How came I here?”

“That I can’t tell your worship. I am the sexton of this place, it’s called Culburn, and is in Suffolk, and they picked your worship up at sea, and brought you here. That’s all I know about it, as I hope for mercy. It can’t do you any good to kill a poor fellow like me. I don’t think you are a ghost now, but some ugly—no I mean handsome fellow—supposed only to be drowned.”

“Do you tell me truth?”

“As I live, and hope your worship will let me live I do. And here’s the ring, I came to borrow of you, sir, as a proof.”

“Of what?”

“Of—of—of—I hardly know what to say to you, sir.”

“If you are not the great enemy to me that I thought you—you are a mere thief. You came to steal the jewels I had upon my fingers. Is not that the truth?”

“I—I rather think it is, sir.”

“You may save your wretched life if you like. If you promise me that you will keep all that has happened a secret, except so much of it as I shall empower you to reveal, I will spare you; but if after having so promised, you break faith with me, and let your tongue wag further than I wish it, you will not live twenty-four hours afterwards, be assured, for I will find you out, and twist your head from your shoulders.”

“Anything, sir, I will promise anything, I will swear if you like.”

“I heed no oaths. Consideration for your own safety will keep you silent. Rise.”

He took his knee off the chest of the sexton and his hand off his throat, and then Will Stephens tremblingly rose to his feet. The idea did cross him for a moment of measuring his strength with the resuscitated man, but when he beheld the tall, bony, gaunt figure before him, he saw he had not the shadow of a chance in a personal struggle.

Moreover he had a lively remembrance of a most vice-like pressure upon his throat, which seemed to say that the ugly stranger was by no means in an exhausted state.

Upon the whole, then, the sexton was glad to have escaped so well.

“You have only to say, sir, what you would have me do,” he said.

“Answer me first. Have you always lived here? Is this your native place?”

“Oh, no, sir, I came from London; but then it’s years ago.”

“Very well. You must say that you remember me in London, as a gentleman of good repute, and you must add that you came to the bone-house here, and found me reviving, and that you took measures to complete my recovery.”

“Yes, sir. And here is your ring.”

“Keep it as a memento of this affair.”

“Many thanks, sir. Will it please you to tell me your name and condition?”

“John Smith, a foreign merchant; and now tell me, minutely, how I was rescued from the ocean, or did the waves themselves give up their dead?”

The sexton who was now assured in his own mind that it was no ghost he was speaking to, entered as far as he knew into the story of the finding the body, and bringing it to the bone-house, but as that information was not great, he volunteered, if Mr. Smith would go with him to his cottage, to get him all the particulars.

To this the other consented, and they both left the bone-house together.

On the short bit of road, the sexton began to think that his companion must be some madman, for ever and anon when the moon was brightest, he saw him lift up both his arms to it, as if he were worshipping it, and at those times too, he heard him mutter some words in a language that he did not comprehend. At length the singular being spoke in English.

“Henceforth,” he cried, as if quite forgetful of the presence of another, “henceforth, begone remorse, begone despair. The great sea has rejected me, and not again will I seek destruction; I will live, and I will live to be the bane and curse of the beautiful.”

“Sir,” said the sexton, “here is my house, sir; if you will step in, I will soon dish you up a little something in the way of refreshment. You see, sir, I live alone, that is to say, an old woman who keeps my cottage in order and waits upon me goes away at night, and comes again in the morning, but as it is not her time yet, I will get you anything you like to eat or to drink.”

“I never eat nor drink.”

“Not eat!—nor—drink! Never, sir?”

“Never. I shall cost you nothing to entertain me. I want some rest, and while I am taking it, do you go and get me such information as you can regarding me. Make no concealment that I am alive, but go at once, and return with what expedition you may, and remember that your fate is in my hands.”

“I will, sir.”

The sexton was quite terrified enough to do what he was bidden, and perhaps, the consciousness that the strange and mysterious man whom he had for a guest might accuse him of the projected robbery of the jewellery he had about his person influenced him more than the rather obscure threat of personal vengeance by the promised screwing his head off.

But the matter, take it for all in all, was anything but an agreeable one for Master Will Stephens, and most heartily did he wish he had remained in his bed and left the stranger to recover, if was to recover, by himself. Will did not attribute that recovery to the moonlight he had himself let in.

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CCI. THE NIGHT ALARM.—THE VAMPYRE’S ATTACK UPON THE BRIDE

The particulars concerning the bringing in of the body that had been picked up at sea by the brothers Edwin and Charles Crofton, were to be learnt from many mouths so soon as the sexton evinced a disposition to know them, and in a very short time, and as the daylight was making the fainter and more spiritual light of the moon fade away, he again reached his own abode, where he had left a guest of whom the reader knows much, but of whom Will Stephens knew but little.

He found the self-christened Mr. Smith waiting for him rather impatiently.

“Well,” he cried, “your news? your news?”

“May be told, sir, in a few words,” replied the sexton, and then he made his new friend acquainted with the whole story, just as he had heard it of the fishermen on the coast.

Mr. Smith, or as we may as well call him at once the vampyre, hesitated for a few moments as if he had not exactly and accurately made up his mind what to do, and then he said,—

“You will go to the Grange-house and tell the story that I have before informed you I would have told. Be sure that you expatiate upon my gentility and respectability, for I want to be upon good terms with the Crofton family.”

“Well, but sir, I’m a tenant of Sir George Crofton’s and so you see—”

“What,” said the vampyre, his eyes flashing with indignation as he spoke “dare you dispute my positive commands?”

“No, sir, I—I only——”

“Peace caitiff, and know that I hold thy life in my hands for your attempted robbery of me.”

The sexton trembled. That was indeed the weak point now of all his defences against whatever commands might be put upon him by his master, as we may now call the vampyre, although after all it was but the usual dominion of a strong mind over a weak one, for there was not so much in reality for the sexton to be afraid of as his own guilty conscience dictated to him.

It were easy enough for the vampyre to charge him with robbery, but not at all so easy for him to prove such a charge, and at the same time to substantiate, as by some inquisitive counsel he might be called upon to do, his own position in society.

But it is most true

“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”

And feeling that his intention regarding the rings of the supposed drowned man had been of a dishonest character, he could not summon courage sufficient to defy him now.

“I will go,” he said, “I am going.”

“’Tis well.”

In far from the pleasantest train of thought the sexton went to the Grange, and asked to see Mr. Charles Crofton, and to him he related the version of the resuscitating of the supposed drowned man. It was heard with, as might be expected, the most profound astonishment, and the sexton soon found himself confronted with the whole assembled family, and force to repeat the wonderful facts over again.

It seemed, as indeed it might well do, a something quite beyond belief.

“Why, Edwin,” said Charles, “he must have been in the water far beyond the length of time that it mostly takes to drown any one, before we saw him.”

“I think so too.”

“It must be so, for this reason, that he was a considerable distance from land, and there was no vessel near enough for him to have come from.”

“Hold!” said Sir George Crofton, “my dear boys, you are forgetting the most important fact of all.”

“Are we, father?”

“Yes, and that is that the gentleman is alive. You cannot get over that, you know, and as I have often heard that whatever is is natural, why there’s no use in disputing any more about it; and besides how do we know but that he was in some boat which was swamped a few minutes before you saw him.”

“That is a most rational supposition,” said Edwin.

“And that we can say nothing against,” added Charles; “what is to be done father?”

“Why, do not let us do good by inches, we know that this is the only decent house within a considerable distance for a gentleman to remain in, if he have the habits of comfort about him. So Master Stephens, if you will go and give our compliments to the stranger, and ask him to come here, I shall be much obliged to you.”

“I will, Sir George.”

“And you can tell him that we are plain folks, but assure him of a hearty welcome.”

Will Stephens made his bow and exit.

“Well,” said Edwin, “it’s very odd, although of course, it must be all right, and I am the last person who would wish to make anything out of a common-place event, but to all appearances dead he was when we took him into the boat, and I never before heard of a spontaneous recovery like this from such a state.”

“Then you have added to your stock of experience,” said his father, laughing, “and I must own, for my own part, that I am rather curious to see this person, who was a curiosity in appearance, according to your accounts when he was dead or supposed to be dead.”

“He was so,” remarked Charles, “for I am certain you might travel the world over without meeting a more singular looking man than he was; in the first place, he looked particularly tall, but that might have arisen from the fact that we only saw him in a horizontal position, and then there was a something about the expression of his face which was perfectly indescribable, and yet at the same time filled you with feelings of curiosity and dread.”

The sisters heard this account of the mysterious stranger with feelings of great interest.

“Why,” said Emma, “we have all of us often complained of being dull here, but such an animal as this will be quite an acquisition.”

“And just as Clara is going, too, what a pity,” laughed Edwin.

“I shall endeavour to survive the horrid disappointment,” said Clara, for she was to be married on that day, to one who had been the chosen companion of her heart for many a day, and was to leave the home of her childhood to proceed far away to his house in Wales, where she was to be the light of joy to another admiring and loving circle.

“Ah, well, I pity you,” said Emma.

“Then you had better at once,” remarked Clara, “forbid the occasional visits here of a certain young officer who, I’m afraid, has some audacious intentions.”

The ready colour flushed to the cheek of the younger sister, who had scarcely expected such a retort, although she had fairly provoked it.

“Come, girls,” said the father, “we will have no more lance breaking between you about your lovers.”

“Certainly not, father,” said Clara, “but then, you know, unless Emma is made to see that she is vulnerable, she will go on tormenting me.”

“In other words, Emma,” said Edwin, “you see that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones—a most useful maxim.”

“I don’t care for any of you,” said Emma, half crying, as she ran out of the room.

Clara followed her, for there was really the very best understanding and the kindest feeling between the two young girls, although occasionally a smart repartee would be uttered upon some such occasion as the present, but all that was soon forgotten.

The sexton who was getting each moment more and more uneasy about the share he had in the affair of the resuscitated man of the bone-house, went back to the cottage, and there informed the self-named Mr. Smith of the success of his mission to the Grange-house.

“You think they will welcome me,” said the vampyre.

“I am sure of it, sir. They are the frankest, freest family I ever knew, and they would not have asked you to go to the Grange if they did not mean to use you well.”

“And there are two daughters?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And young and fair, you tell me.”

“They are two as handsome girls as you will find in this part of the country, sir. They have always been much admired. One of them, as I before mentioned, is going to be married and taken away, but the other stays at home.”

“’Tis well, now you will not fail to remember the awkward situation in which you are. Keep the ring which you took from my finger, and with it keep your own counsel, for any babbling upon your part will most assuredly lead to your destruction.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“And although that destruction might not be immediate, you would lead a life of trembling terror until your doom was accomplished, and that doom should be a dreadful one in its manner. Now farewell! farewell! and remember me.”

“I shall never forget you the longest day I have got to live,” said the sexton, with a shudder, as he saw the tall, angular, gaunt-looking form of his most mysterious new acquaintance leave his cottage, and make his way towards the Grange.

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CCII. THE DEFILE IN THE ROCKS.—THE HORSEMAN AND THE ACCIDENT

The Grange-house was visible from the cottage of the sexton, and so the vampyre had declined the offer of Will Stephens to be his guide.

As it happened, though, it would have been better as regarded his reaching the Grange quickly that he should have taken the sexton with him, for the cliffs that were close at hand concealed to the eye many deep gullies and frightful precipices that had to be coasted round, before any one could reach the Grange-house by that route.

If he could have gone directly onward, about half a mile’s walking would have sufficed to enable him to reach the place, but before he had proceeded a quarter of that distance, he came upon a deep ravine or splitting in the cliff, too wide to jump across, and with all the appearance of extending inland a considerable distance without narrowing.

“I had indeed better have brought a guide with me,” muttered Varney.

He then paused for a few moments, as if he was debating with himself whether or not he should return back and get the sexton. But the mental hesitation did not last long, and accustomed as he was to trust to his own sagacity and his own resources more than to other people, he walked along by the side of the fissure in the cliff, muttering to himself,—

“Were all the guides in the country here, they could but do as I am doing, namely, walk on until the ravine closes.”

With this idea he pursued it, but to his mortification he found that it widened instead of presenting the least symptoms of closing, and suddenly it opened to his eyes to a width of about fifty feet, and he paused again irresolute.

“How am I to proceed?” he said; “this is a perplexity.”

He advanced close to the brink, and looked down. The depth was very considerable, and at the bottom there was evidently a road made of sand and chalk, which wound down somewhere from the interior of the country to the sea-beach.

As he looked, he heard the rapid sound of a horse’s feet.

In another moment there dashed down the road towards the sea, a horse bearing on his back a man, who was exerting himself in every possible way to stop the maddened, headlong career of the animal, but it would not be checked.

With starting eyes and dilated nostrils, and with its flanks covered with foam, the frighted steed, which had evidently come some distance in that state, rushed on, but the broken nature of the ground made it almost impossible that it should make such great speed then as it had been making, at least with any degree of safety.

This was what occurred to the thoughts of Varney, and it was sufficiently proved to be a correct idea, by the horse stumbling the next moment, and throwing his rider heavily upon the sand and broken rock that was strewn around.

The steed, now disencumbered of its load, recovered itself in a moment, and with a snort of rage and probably of pain likewise, dashed and disappeared from the sight, round the abrupt corner of the ravine to the left hand on the beach.

“So be it,” said the vampyre, calmly; “another being is snatched away from the muster roll of the living, one who perhaps would gladly have preserved his existence, while I—I remain and cannot, let me do what I will to accomplish such a purpose, shake off the cumbrous load of life that will cling to me.”

Suddenly quite a whirlwind of passion seemed to come on him, and, standing on the brink of the ravine with his arms extended, he cried,—

“Since death is denied to me, I will henceforward shake off all human sympathies. Since I am compelled to be that which I am, I will not be that and likewise suffer all the pangs of doing deeds at which a better nature that was within me revolted. No, I will from this time be the bane of all that is good and great and beautiful. If I am forced to wander upon the earth, a thing to be abhorred and accursed among men, I will perform my mission to the very letter as well as the spirit, and henceforth adieu all regrets, adieu all feeling—all memory of goodness—of charity to human nature, for I will be a dread and a desolation! Since blood is to be my only sustenance, and since death is denied to me, I will have abundance of it—I will revel in it, and no spark of human pity shall find a home in this once racked and tortured bosom. Fate, I thee defy!”

He continued for some few moments after uttering this speech in the same attitude in which he had spoken the words. Then suffering his hands slowly to fall, again he looked cold, and passionless, as he had been before.

But his determination was made.

By looking carefully about him, he saw that there was a kind of footpath down the side of the ravine, which an active person might descend by, although, probably, not altogether without some risk, for the least false step might precipitate him to the bottom.

The vampire, however, had no such fears. He seemed to feel that he possessed a kind of charmed life, and that he might adventure to do what others might well shrink from.

This feeling begot a confidence which was almost certain to be his protection, even if it had been only founded upon imagination, for it fortified his nerves, and when he began the descent down the side of the ravine, it was without the smallest terror.

He found, however, that when he was fairly on the path, it was a better and a wider one than he had a first supposed it to be, and in the course of five minutes he had got completely down to the narrow road, on which, apparently dead, lay the wounded man, for he was only grievously hurt by his fall, although he was quite insensible.

The vampyre strode up to him.

“Ah,” he said, “young, and what the world would call handsome. Ha! ha! Heaven takes but little care sometimes of its handiwork.”

After a few moments’ contemplation of the still form that lay at his feet, he knelt on one knee by its side, and placed his hand upon the region of the heart, after roughly tearing open the vest of the stranger.

“He lives—he lives. Well, shall I crush the fluttering spirit that now is hovering ’twixt life and death, or shall I let it linger while it may within its earthly prison? Let it stay. The worst turn that any one can do another in this world, is surely to preserve existence after once the pang of what would be all the agony of death is past.”

The vampyre rose, and was moving away up the ravine, when a sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he turned back again.

“Gold,” he said, “is always useful to me, and I think with my new thoughts and feelings it will now be more so than ever. This insensible man may have some about him.”

Again he knelt by the side of the young man, and soon possessed himself of a tolerably well-stocked purse that he found upon him. Round his neck, too, by a thin chain of gold, hung a small portrait of a young and beautiful girl, upon which Varney gazed intently.

“She is fair,” he said, “very fair—she would make a fit victim for me. I will take this portrait; it might stand me in some stead should I encounter the original.”

He placed the portrait in his pocket, and was in the act of rising, when he heard the sound of a footstep.

“Ah, some one comes; it will be no part of my plan to have been seen by the body.”

He darted forth down the narrow gorge or ravine, and was soon sufficiently hidden from the sight of those who were advancing. They proved to be some fishermen going to spread their nets upon the beach, which just below the spot where the seemingly fatal accident had taken place, was as level as a carpet, screened from the wind, and composed of the finest sand.

Of course, it was impossible to avoid seeing the body that lay in their path, and Varney had no need to be fearful that he would be seen, when an object of so much greater and more absorbing interest lay in their direct and unavoidable path.

He heard from the sudden exclamations that fell from them, that they had seen the body, and upon advancing a step or two, he found that they were collected round it in a dense throng, for there were about a dozen men in all.

“’Tis well,” said Varney, “it matters not to me if he be living or dead. I can doubtless now find my way to the Grange-house by this path along the shore. I will pursue it at all events, and see whither it will lead me.”

He did so, and after going about half a mile, he found another ravine, which, upon entering and ascending for a time, led him quite close to one of the entrances of the Grange-house, as it was called, and which he was so anxious to reach.

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