Mr. Marchdale.

"Yes, we does," said a man; "but we comes out to catch a vampyre, for
all that."

"Oh, to be sure," said the humane woman; "nobody's feelings is nothing
to us. Are we to be woke up in the night with vampyres sucking our
bloods while we've got a stake in the country?"

"Hurrah!" shouted everybody. "Down with the vampyre! where is he?"

"You are wrong. I assure you, you are all wrong," said Mr.
Chillingworth, imploringly; "there is no vampyre here, you see. Sir
Francis Varney has not only escaped, but he will take the law of all of
you."

This was an argument which appeared to stagger a few, but the bolder
spirits pushed them on, and a suggestion to search the wood having been
made by some one who was more cunning than his neighbours, that measure
was at once proceeded with, and executed in a systematic manner, which
made those who knew it to be the hiding-place of Sir Francis Varney
tremble for his safety.

It was with a strange mixture of feeling that Henry Bannerworth waited
the result of the search for the man who but a few minutes before had
been opposed to him in a contest of life or death.

The destruction of Sir Francis Varney would certainly have been an
effectual means of preventing him from continuing to be the incubus he
then was upon the Bannerworth family; and yet the generous nature of
Henry shrank with horror from seeing even such a creature as Varney
sacrificed at the shrine of popular resentment, and murdered by an
infuriated populace.

He felt as great an interest in the escape of the vampyre as if some
great advantage to himself bad been contingent upon such an event; and,
although he spoke not a word, while the echoes of the little wood were
all awakened by the clamorous manner in which the mob searched for their
victim, his feelings could be well read upon his countenance.

The admiral, too, without possessing probably the fine feelings of Henry
Bannerworth, took an unusually sympathetic interest in the fate of the
vampyre; and, after placing himself in various attitudes of intense
excitement, he exclaimed,--

"D--n it, Jack, I do hope, after all, the vampyre will get the better of
them. It's like a whole flotilla attacking one vessel--a lubberly
proceeding at the best, and I'll be hanged if I like it. I should like
to pour in a broadside into those fellows, just to let them see it
wasn't a proper English mode of fighting. Shouldn't you, Jack?"

"Ay, ay, sir, I should."