"--"Ah!" said the stranger, "that voice--why--you are Dr.
Chillingworth?"

"I am; but I don't know you," said the doctor, as he emerged now from
the summer-house, and confronted the stranger who was within a few paces
of the entrance to it. Then he started, as he added,--

"Yes, I do know you, though. How, in the name of Heaven, came you here,
and what purpose have you in so coming?"

"What purpose have you? Since we met at Varney's, I have been making
some inquiries about this neighbourhood, and learn strange
things."--"That you may very easily do here; and, what is more
extraordinary, the strange things are, for the most part, I can assure
you, quite true."

The reader will, from what has been said, now readily recognise this man
as Sir Francis Varney's mysterious visitor, to whom he gave, from some
hidden cause or another, so large a sum of money, and between whom and
Dr. Chillingworth a mutual recognition had taken place, on the occasion
when Sir Francis Varney had, with such cool assurance, invited the
admiral to breakfast with him at his new abode.

"You, however," said the man, "I have no doubt, are fully qualified to
tell me of more than I have been able to learn from other people; and,
first of all, let me ask you why you are here?"--"Before I answer you
that question, or any other," said the doctor, "let me beg of you to
tell me truly, is Sir Francis Varney--"

The doctor whispered in the ear of the stranger some name, as if he
feared, even there, in the silence of that garden, where everything
conspired to convince him that he could not be overheard, to pronounce
it in an audible tone.

"He is," said the other.--"You have no manner of doubt of it?"

"Doubt?--certainly not. What doubt can I have? I know it for a positive
certainty, and he knows, of course, that I do know it, and has purchased
my silence pretty handsomely, although I must confess that nothing but
my positive necessities would have induced me to make the large demands
upon him that I have, and I hope soon to be able to release him
altogether from them."

The doctor shook his head repeatedly, as he said,--

"I suspected it; I suspected it, do you know, from the first moment that
I saw you there in his house. His face haunted me ever since--awfully
haunted me; and yet, although I felt certain that I had once seen it
under strange circumstances, I could not identify it with--but no
matter, no matter. I am waiting here for him."

"Inde