ern in his pocket, and looks in the mouth of the
blessed corpse to see if there's a blessed tooth worth pulling out."

"Hold your tongue," said one; "we want none of your nonsense. Do you see
any difference now in the face of the corpse to what it was some days
since?"

"Well, I don't know; somehow, it don't look so rum."

"Does it look fresher?"

"Well, somehow or another, now you mention it, it's very odd, but it
does."

"Enough," cried the man who had questioned him, with considerable
excitement of manner. "Neighbours, are we to have our wives and our
children scared to death by vampyres?"

"No--no!" cried everybody.

"Is not this, then, one of that dreadful order of beings?"

"Yes--yes; what's to be done?"

"Drive a stake through the body, and so prevent the possibility of
anything in the shape of a restoration."

This was a terrific proposition; and even those who felt most strongly
upon the subject, and had their fears most awakened, shrank from
carrying it into effect. Others, again, applauded it, although they
determined, in their own minds, to keep far enough off from the
execution of the job, which they hoped would devolve upon others, so
that they might have all the security of feeling that such a process had
been gone through with the supposed vampyre, without being in any way
committed by the dreadful act.

Nothing was easier than to procure a stake from the garden in the rear
of the premises; but it was one thing to have the means at hand of
carrying into effect so dreadful a proposition, and another actually to
do it.

For the credit of human nature, we regret that even then, when
civilisation and popular education had by no means made such rapid
strides as in our times they have, such a proposition should be
entertained for a moment: but so it was; and just as an alarm was given
that a party of the soldiers had reached the inn and had taken
possession of the doorway with a determination to arrest the rioters, a
strong hedge-stake had been procured, and everything was in readiness
for the perpetration of the horrible deed.

Even then those in the room, for they were tolerably sober, would have
revolted, probably, from the execution of so fearful an act; but the
entrance of a party of the military into the lower portion of the
tavern, induced those who had been making free with the strong liquors
below, to make a rush up-stairs to their companions with the hope of
escaping detection of th