een several mysterious and sudden deaths in the town
lately; people have wasted away and died nobody knew how or wherefore."

"Yes--yes," said everybody.

"There was Miles, the butcher; you know how fat he was, and then how fat
he wasn't."

A general assent was given to the proposition; and then, elevating one
arm in an oratorical manner, the clever fellow continued,--

"I have not a doubt that Miles, the butcher, and every one else who has
died suddenly lately, have been victims of the vampyre; and what's more,
they'll all be vampyres, and come and suck other people's blood, till at
last the whole town will be a town of vampyres."

"But what's to be done?" cried one, who trembled so excessively that he
could scarcely stand under his apprehension.

"There is but one plan--Sir Francis Varney must be found, and put out of
the world in such a manner that he can't come back to it again; and all
those who are dead that we have any suspicion of, should be taken up out
of their graves and looked at, to see if they're rotting or not; if they
are it's all right; but, if they look fresh and much, as usual, you may
depend they're vampyres, and no mistake."

This was a terrific suggestion thrown amongst a mob. To have caught Sir
Francis Varney and immolated him at the shrine of popular fury, they
would not have shrunk from; but a desecration of the graves of those
whom they had known in life was a matter which, however much it had to
recommend it, even the boldest stood aghast at, and felt some qualms of
irresolution.

There are many ideas, however, which, like the first plunge into a cold
bath, are rather uncomfortable for the moment; but which, in a little
time, we become so familiarized with, that they become stripped of their
disagreeable concomitants, and appear quite pleasing and natural.

So it was with this notion of exhuming the dead bodies of those
townspeople who had recently died from what was called a decay of
nature, and such other failures of vitality as bore not the tangible
name of any understood disease.

From mouth to mouth the awful suggestion spread like wildfire, until at
last it grew into such a shape that it almost seemed to become a duty,
at all events, to have up Miles the butcher, and see how he looked.

There is, too, about human nature a natural craving curiosity concerning
everything connected with the dead. There is not a man of education or
of intellectual endowment who would not travel m