been attracted by the fire at Sir Francis Varney's, and to see which
they had left their work, and the pitch was left on a smouldering peat
fire, so that when Mr. Jones, the grocer, accidentally put his hand into
it he found it just warm.

When he made this discovery he dabbed his hand again into the pitch-pot,
exclaiming,--

"In for a penny, in for a pound."

And he endeavoured to secure as large a handful of the slippery and
sticky stuff as he could, and this done he set off to come up with the
big countryman who had done him so much indignity and made his stomach
uncomfortable.

He soon came up with him, for the man had stopped rather behind, and was
larking, as it is called, with some men, to whom he was a companion.

He had slipped down a bank, and was partially sitting down on the soft
mud. In his bustle, the little grocer came down with a slide, close to
the big countryman.

"Ah--ah! my little grocer," said the countryman, holding out his hand to
catch him, and drawing him towards himself. "You will come and sit down
by the side of your old friend."

As he spoke, he endeavoured to pull Mr. Jones down, too; but that
individual only replied by fetching the countryman a swinging smack
across the face with the handful of pitch.

"There, take that; and now we are quits; we shall be old friends after
this, eh? Are you satisfied? You'll remember me, I'll warrant."

As the grocer spoke, he rubbed his hands over the face of the fallen
man, and then rushed from the spot with all the haste he could make.

The countryman sat a moment or two confounded, cursing, and swearing,
and spluttering, vowing vengeance, believing that it was mud only that
had been plastered over his face; but when he put his hands up, and
found out what it was, he roared and bellowed like a town-bull.

He cried out to his companions that his eyes were pitched: but they only
laughed at him, thinking he was having some foolish lark with them.

It was next day before he got home, for he wandered about all night: and
it took him a week to wash the pitch off by means of grease; and ever
afterwards he recollected the pitching of his face; nor did he ever
forget the grocer.

Thus it was the whole party returned a long while after dark across the
fields, with all the various accidents that were likely to befal such an
assemblage of people.

The vampyre hunting cost many of them dear, for clothes were injured on
all sides: hats lost, and shoes