These tales flew from mouth to mouth, and all listened to them with such an eager interest, that none thought it worth while to challenge their inconsistencies, or to express a doubt of their truth, because they had not been mentioned before.

The only individual, and he was a remarkably clever man, who made the slightest remark upon the subject of a practical character, hazarded a suggestion that made confusion worse confounded.

He knew something of vampyres.  He had travelled abroad, and had heard of them in Germany, as well as in the east, and, to a crowd of wondering and aghast listeners, he said,—­

“You may depend upon it, my friends, this has been going on for some time; there have been several mysterious and sudden deaths in the town lately; people have wasted away and died nobody knew how or wherefore.”

“Yes—­yes,” said everybody.

“There was Miles, the butcher; you know how fat he was, and then how fat he wasn’t.”

A general assent was given to the proposition; and then, elevating one arm in an oratorical manner, the clever fellow continued,—­

“I have not a doubt that Miles, the butcher, and every one else who has died suddenly lately, have been victims of the vampyre; and what’s more, they’ll all be vampyres, and come and suck other people’s blood, till at last the whole town will be a town of vampyres.”

“But what’s to be done?” cried one, who trembled so excessively that he could scarcely stand under his apprehension.

“There is but one plan—­Sir Francis Varney must be found, and put out of the world in such a manner that he can’t come back to it again; and all those who are dead that we have any suspicion of, should be taken up out of their graves and looked at, to see if they’re rotting or not; if they are it’s all right; but, if they look fresh and much, as usual, you may depend they’re vampyres, and no mistake.”

This was a terrific suggestion thrown amongst a mob.  To have caught Sir Francis Varney and immolated him at the shrine of popular fury, they would not have shrunk from; but a desecration of the graves of those whom they had known in life was a matter which, however much it had to recommend it, even the boldest stood aghast at, and felt some qualms of irresolution.

There are many ideas, however, which, like the first plunge into a cold bath, are rather uncomfortable for the moment; but which, in a little time, we become so familiarized with, that they become stripped of their disagreeable concomitants, and appear quite pleasing and natural.

So it was with this notion of exhuming the dead bodies of those townspeople who had recently died from what was called a decay of nature, and such other failures of vitality as bore not the tangible name of any understood disease.

From mouth to mouth the awful suggestion spread like wildfire, until at last it grew into such a shape that it almost seemed to become a duty, at all events, to have up Miles the butcher, and see how he looked.