Under solemn promises of secrecy, sixteen ladies that evening were made acquainted with the full and interesting particulars of the attack of the vampyre on Flora Bannerworth, and all the evidence inculpating Sir Francis Varney as the blood-thirsty individual.

When the mind comes to consider that these sixteen ladies multiplied their information by about four-and-twenty each, we become quite lost in a sea of arithmetic, and feel compelled to sum up the whole by a candid assumption that in four-and-twenty hours not an individual in the whole town was ignorant of the circumstances.

On the morning before the projected duel, there was an unusual commotion in the streets.  People were conversing together in little knots, and using rather violent gesticulations.  Poor Mr. Chillingworth! he alone was ignorant of the causes of the popular commotion, and so he went to bed wondering that an unusual bustle pervaded the little market town, but not at all guessing its origin.

Somehow or another, however, the populace, who had determined to make a demonstration on the following morning against the vampyre, thought it highly necessary first to pay some sort of compliment to Mr. Chillingworth, and, accordingly, at an early hour, a great mob assembled outside his house, and gave three terrific applauding shouts, which roused him most unpleasantly from his sleep; and induced the greatest astonishment at the cause of such a tumult.

Oh, that artful Mrs. Chillingworth! too well she knew what was the matter; yet she pretended to be so oblivious upon the subject.

“Good God!” cried Mr. Chillingworth, as he started up in bed, “what’s all that?”

“All what?” said his wife.

“All what!  Do you mean to say you heard nothing?”

“Well, I think I did hear a little sort of something.”

“A little sort of something?  It shook the house.”

“Well, well; never mind.  Go to sleep again; it’s no business of ours.”

“Yes; but it may be, though.  It’s all very well to say ‘go to sleep.’  That happens to be a thing I can’t do.  There’s something amiss.”

“Well, what’s that to you?”

“Perhaps nothing; but, perhaps, everything.”

Mr. Chillingworth sprang from his bed, and began dressing, a process which he executed with considerable rapidity, and in which he was much accelerated by two or three supplementary shouts from the people below.

Then, in a temporary lull, a loud voice shouted,—­

“Down with the vampyre—­down with the vampyre!”

The truth in an instant burst over the mind of Mr. Chillingworth; and, turning to his wife, he exclaimed,—­

“I understand it now.  You’ve been gossipping about Sir Francis Varney, and have caused all this tumult.”

“I gossip!  Well, I never!  Lay it on me; it’s sure to be my fault.  I might have known that beforehand.  I always am.”

“But you must have spoken of it.”