ampyre. But so it was.
His imagination had yielded to a succession of events which very few
persons indeed could have held out against.

"I have heard and read," he said, as he continued his agitated and
uneasy walk, "of how these dreadful beings are to be in their graves. I
have heard of stakes being driven through the body so as to pin it to
the earth until the gradual progress of decay has rendered its
revivification a thing of utter and total impossibility. Then, again,"
he added, after a slight pause, "I have heard of their being burned, and
the ashes gathered to the winds of Heaven to prevent them from ever
again uniting or assuming human form."

[Illustration]

These were disagreeable and strange fancies, and he shuddered while he
indulged in them. He felt a kind of trembling horror come over him even
at the thought of engaging in conflict with a being, who perhaps, had
lived more than a hundred years.

"That portrait," he thought, "on the panel, is the portrait of a man in
the prime of life. If it be the portrait of Sir Francis Varney, by the
date which the family ascribe to it he must be nearly one hundred and
fifty years of age now."

This was a supposition which carried the imagination to a vast amount of
strange conjectures.

"What changes he must have witnessed about him in that time," thought
Charles. "How he must have seen kingdoms totter and fall, and how many
changes of habits, of manners, and of customs must he have become a
spectator of. Renewing too, ever and anon, his fearful existence by such
fearful means."

This was a wide field of conjecture for a fertile imagination, and now
that he was on the eve of engaging with such a being in mortal combat,
on behalf of her he loved, the thoughts it gave rise to came more
strongly and thickly upon him than ever they had done before.

"But I will fight him," he suddenly said, "for Flora's sake, were he a
hundred times more hideous a being than so many evidences tend to prove
him. I will fight with him, and it may be my fate to rid the world of
such a monster in human form."

Charles worked himself up to a kind of enthusiasm by which he almost
succeeded in convincing himself that, in attempting the destruction of
Sir Francis Varney, he was the champion of human nature.

It would be aside from the object of these pages, which is to record
facts as they occurred, to enter into the metaphysical course of
reasoning which came across Charles's mind; s