--apparently
onward--first and foremost among the rioters, he was really doing all in
his power to quell that tumult which superstition and dread had raised.

Human nature truly delights in the marvellous, and in proportion as a
knowledge of the natural phenomena of nature is restricted, and
unbridled imagination allowed to give the rein to fathomless conjecture,
we shall find an eagerness likewise to believe the marvellous to be the
truth.

That dim and uncertain condition concerning vampyres, originating
probably as it had done in Germany, had spread itself slowly, but
insidiously, throughout the whole of the civilized world.

In no country and in no clime is there not something which bears a kind
of family relationship to the veritable vampyre of which Sir Francis
Varney appeared to be so choice a specimen.

The _ghoul_ of eastern nations is but the same being, altered to suit
habits and localities; and the _sema_ of the Scandinavians is but the
vampyre of a more primitive race, and a personification of that morbid
imagination which has once fancied the probability of the dead walking
again among the living, with all the frightful insignia of corruption
and the grave about them.

Although not popular in England, still there had been tales told of such
midnight visitants, so that Mrs. Chillingworth, when she had imparted
the information which she had obtained, had already some rough material
to work upon in the minds of her auditors, and therefore there was no
great difficulty in very soon establishing the fact.

Under such circumstances, ignorant people always do what they have heard
has been done by some one else before them and in an incredibly short
space of time the propriety of catching Sir Francis Varney, depriving
him of his vampyre-like existence, and driving a stake through his body,
became not at all a questionable proposition.

Alas, poor Mr. Chillingworth! as well might he have attempted King
Canute's task of stemming the waves of the ocean as that of attempting
to stop the crowd from proceeding to Sir Francis Varney's house.

His very presence was a sort of confirmation of the whole affair. In
vain he gesticulated, in vain he begged and prayed that they would go
back, and in vain he declared that full and ample justice should be done
upon the vampyre, provided popular clamour spared him, and he was left
to more deliberate judgment.

Those who were foremost in the throng paid no attention to the