nables those who have taken part in it to talk of their
exploits, and of their dangers, which is pleasant to do, and to hear in
the ale-house, and by the inglenook in the winter.

However, when a few had gone some distance, others followed, when they
saw them enter the place in safety: and at length the whole ruins were
covered with living men, and not a few women, who seemed necessary to
make up the elements of mischief in this case.

There were some shouting and hallooing from one to the other as they
hurried about the ruins.

At length they had explored the ruins nearly all over, when one man, who
had stood a few minutes upon a spot, gazing intently upon something,
suddenly exclaimed,--

"Hilloa! hurrah! here we are, altogether,--come on,--I've found
him,--I've found--recollect it's me, and nobody else has
found,--hurrah!"

Then, with a wild kind of frenzy, he threw his hat up into the air, as
if to attract attention, and call others round him, to see what it was
he had found.

"What's the matter, Bill?" exclaimed one who came up to him, and who had
been close at hand.

"The matter? why, I've found him; that's the matter, old man," replied
the first.

"What, a whale?

"No, a wampyre; the blessed wampyre! there he is,--don't you see him
under them ere bricks?"

"Oh, that's not him; he got away."

"I don't care," replied the other, "who got away, or who didn't; I know
this much, that he's a wampyre,--he wouldn't be there if he warn't."

This was an unanswerable argument, and nobody could deny it;
consequently, there was a cessation of talk, and the people then came
up, as the two first were looking at the body.

"Whose is it?" inquired a dozen voices.

[Illustration]

"Not Sir Francis Varney's!" said the second speaker; the clothes are not
his--"

"No, no; not Sir Francis's"

"But I tell you what, mates," said the first speaker; "that if it isn't
Sir Francis Varney's, it is somebody else's as bad. I dare say, now,
he's a wictim."

"A what!"

"A wictim to the wampyre; and, if he sees the blessed moonlight, he will
be a wampyre hisself, and so shall we be, too, if he puts his teeth into
us."

"So we shall,--so we shall," said the mob, and their flesh begin to run
cold, and there was a feeling of horror creeping over the whole body of
persons within hearing.

"I tell you what it is; our only plan will be to get him out of the
ruins, then, remarked another.

"What!" said one; "who's going t