“Yes, you said so.”

“Well, what are you staring at?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Do you doubt my word?”

“Not at all, uncle; only I thought there was a degree of irony in the manner in which you spoke.”

“None at all, my boy.  I never was more serious in all my life.”

“Very good.  Then you will remember that I leave my honour in this affair completely in your hands.”

“Depend upon me, my boy.”

“I will, and do.”

“I’ll be off and see the fellow at once.”

The admiral bustled out of the room, and in a few moments Charles heard him calling loudly,—­

“Jack—­Jack Pringle, you lubber, where are you?—­Jack Pringle, I say.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” said Jack, emerging from the kitchen, where he had been making himself generally useful in assisting Mrs. Bannerworth, there being no servant in the house, to cook some dinner for the family.

“Come on, you rascal, we are going for a walk.”

“The rations will be served out soon,” growled Jack.

“We shall be back in time, you cormorant, never fear.  You are always thinking of eating and drinking, you are, Jack; and I’ll be hanged if I think you ever think of anything else.  Come on, will you; I’m going on rather a particular cruise just now, so mind what you are about.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said the tar, and these two originals, who so perfectly understood each other, walked away, conversing as they went, and their different voices coming upon the ear of Charles, until distance obliterated all impression of the sound.

Charles paced to and fro in the room where he had held this brief and conclusive conversation with his uncle.  He was thoughtful, as any one might well be who knew not but that the next four-and-twenty hours would be the limit of his sojourn in this world.

“Oh, Flora—­Flora!” he at length said, “how happy we might to have been together—­how happy we might have been! but all is past now, and there seems nothing left us but to endure.  There it but one chance, and that is in my killing this fearful man who is invested with so dreadful an existence.  And if I do kill him in fair and in open fight, I will take care that his mortal frame has no power again to revisit the glimpses of the moon.”

It was strange to imagine that such was the force of many concurrent circumstances, that a young man like Charles Holland, of first-rate abilities and education, should find it necessary to give in so far to a belief which was repugnant to all his best feelings and habits of thought, as to be reasoning with himself upon the best means of preventing the resuscitation of the corpse of a vampyre.  But so it was.  His imagination had yielded to a succession of events which very few persons indeed could have held out against.

“I have heard and read,” he said, as he continued his agitated and uneasy walk, “of how these dreadful beings are to be in their graves.  I have heard of stakes being driven through the body so as to pin it to the earth until the gradual progress of decay has rendered its revivification a thing of utter and total impossibility.  Then, again,” he added, after a slight pause, “I have heard of their being burned, and the ashes gathered to the winds of Heaven to prevent them from ever again uniting or assuming human form.”