at
magician-like power over my kind, which the possession of ample means
alone can give, may yet be mine."

Wrapping his cloak more closely around him, he strode forward with that
long, noiseless step which was peculiar to him. Mechanically he appeared
to avoid those obstacles of hedge and ditch which impeded his pathway.
Surely be had come that road often, or he would not so easily have
pursued his way. And now he stood by the edge of a plantation which in
some measure protected from trespassers the more private gardens of the
Hall, and there he paused, as if a feeling of irresolution had come over
him, or it might be, as indeed it seemed from his subsequent conduct,
that he had come without any fixed intention, or if with a fixed
intention, without any regular plan of carrying it into effect.

Did he again dream of intruding into any of the chambers of that
mansion, with the ghastly aspect of that terrible creation with which,
in the minds of its inhabitants, he seemed to be but too closely
identified? He was pale, attenuated, and trembled. Could it be that so
soon it had become necessary to renew the life-blood in his veins in the
awful manner which it is supposed the vampyre brood are compelled to
protract their miserable existence?

It might be so, and that he was even now reflecting upon how once more
he could kindle the fire of madness in the brain of that beautiful girl,
who he had already made so irretrievably wretched.

He leant against an aged tree, and his strange, lustrous-looking eyes
seemed to collect every wandering scintillation of light that was
around, and to shine with preternatural intensity.

"I must, I will," he said, "be master of Bannerworth Hall. It must come
to that. I have set an existence upon its possession, and I will have
it; and then, if with my own hands I displace it brick by brick and
stone by stone, I will discover that hidden secret which no one but
myself now dreams of. It shall be done by force or fraud, by love or by
despair, I care not which; the end shall sanctify all means. Ay, even if
I wade through blood to my desire, I say it shall be done."

There was a holy and a still calmness about the night much at variance
with the storm of angry passion that appeared to be momentarily
gathering power in the breast of that fearful man. Not the least sound
came from Bannerworth Hall, and it was only occasionally that from afar
off on the night air there came the bark of some watc