cret, and pointed to her the danger of making Varney the vampyre
a theme for gossip; but he might as well have whispered to a hurricane
to be so good as not to go on blowing so, as request Mrs. Chillingworth
to keep a secret.

Of course she burst into the usual fervent declarations of "Who was she
to tell? Was she a person who went about telling things? When did she
see anybody? Not she, once in a blue moon;" and then, when Mr.
Chillingworth went out, like the King of Otaheite, she invited the
neighbours round about to come to take some tea.

Under solemn promises of secrecy, sixteen ladies that evening were made
acquainted with the full and interesting particulars of the attack of
the vampyre on Flora Bannerworth, and all the evidence inculpating Sir
Francis Varney as the blood-thirsty individual.

When the mind comes to consider that these sixteen ladies multiplied
their information by about four-and-twenty each, we become quite lost in
a sea of arithmetic, and feel compelled to sum up the whole by a candid
assumption that in four-and-twenty hours not an individual in the whole
town was ignorant of the circumstances.

On the morning before the projected duel, there was an unusual commotion
in the streets. People were conversing together in little knots, and
using rather violent gesticulations. Poor Mr. Chillingworth! he alone
was ignorant of the causes of the popular commotion, and so he went to
bed wondering that an unusual bustle pervaded the little market town,
but not at all guessing its origin.

Somehow or another, however, the populace, who had determined to make a
demonstration on the following morning against the vampyre, thought it
highly necessary first to pay some sort of compliment to Mr.
Chillingworth, and, accordingly, at an early hour, a great mob assembled
outside his house, and gave three terrific applauding shouts, which
roused him most unpleasantly from his sleep; and induced the greatest
astonishment at the cause of such a tumult.

Oh, that artful Mrs. Chillingworth! too well she knew what was the
matter; yet she pretended to be so oblivious upon the subject.

"Good God!" cried Mr. Chillingworth, as he started up in bed, "what's
all that?"

"All what?" said his wife.

"All what! Do you mean to say you heard nothing?"

"Well, I think I did hear a little sort of something."

"A little sort of something? It shook the house."

"Well, well; never mind. Go to sleep again; it's no business o