hobbled out of the crowd towards
the sergeant. "I will go and see the officer, and tell him what I know,
and that is very little, and can prejudice no one."

"Hurrah!" said the crowd, when they heard this latter assertion; for, at
first, they began to be in some alarm lest there should be something
wrong about this, and some of them get identified as being active in the
fray.

The sergeant led the man back to the spot, where the officer stood a
little way in advance of his men.

"Well, Scott," he said, "what have we here?"

"A man who has volunteered a statement, sir."

"Oh! Well, my man, can you say anything concerning all this disturbance
that we have here?"

"No, sir."

"Then what did you come here for?"

"I understood the sergeant to want some one who could speak of Sir
Francis Varney."

"Well?"

"I saw him."

"Where?"

"In the house."

"Exactly; but have you not seen him out of it?"

"Not since; nor any one else, I believe."

"Where was he?"

"Upstairs, where he suddenly disappeared, and nobody can tell where he
may have gone to. But he has not been seen out of the house since, and
they say he could not have gone bodily out if they had not seen him."

"He must have been burnt," said the officer, musingly; "he could not
escape, one would imagine, without being seen by some one out of such a
mob."

"Oh, dear no, for I am told they placed a watch at every hole, window,
or door however high, and they saw nothing of him--not even fly out!"

"Fly out! I'm speaking of a man!"

"And I of a vampire!" said the man carelessly.

"A vampyre! Pooh, pooh!"

"Oh no! Sir Francis Varney is a vampyre! There can be no sort of doubt
about it. You have only to look at him, and you will soon be satisfied
of that. See his great sharp teeth in front, and ask yourself what they
are for, and you will soon find the answer. They are to make holes with
in the bodies of his victims, through which he can suck their blood!"

The officer looked at the man in astonishment for a few moments, as if
he doubted his own ears, and then he said,--

"Are you serious?"

"I am ready to swear to it."

"Well, I have heard a great deal about popular superstition, and thought
I had seen something of it; but this is decidedly the worst case that
ever I saw or heard of. You had better go home, my man, than, by your
presence, countenance such a gross absurdity."

"For all that," said the man, "Sir Francis Varney is a vampyre--a