“What a moment!”

“Yes, I can tell you it was a moment.  Such a moment as I don’t wish to go through again.  I held the door as close as I could, and did not speak.  I tried to cry out help and murder, but I could not; my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my strength was fast failing me.”

“Horrid, horrid!”

“Take a drop of ale.”

“Thank you.  Well, I don’t think this went on above two or three minutes, and all the while some one tried might and main to push open the door.  My strength left me all at once; I had only time to stagger back a step or two, and then, as the door opened, I fainted away.”

“Well, well!”

“Ah, you wouldn’t have said well, if you had been there, I can tell you.”

“No; but what become of you.  What happened next?  How did it end?  What was it?”

“Why, what exactly happened next after I fainted I cannot tell you; but the first thing I saw when I recovered was a candle.”

“Yes, yes.”

“And then a crowd of people.”

“Ah, ah!”

“And then Dr. Web.”

“Gracious!”

“And.  Mrs. Bulk, my housekeeper.  I was in my own bed, and when I opened my eyes I heard Dr. Webb say,—­

“’He will be better soon.  Can no one form any idea of what it is all about.  Some sudden fright surely could alone have produced such an effect.’”

“‘The Lord have mercy upon me!’ said I.

“Upon this everybody who had been called in got round the bed, and wanted to know what had happened; but I said not a word of it; but turning to Mrs. Bulk, I asked her how it was she found out I had fainted.

“‘Why, sir,’ says she, ’I was coming up to bed as softly as I could, because I knew you had gone to rest some time before.  The clock was striking twelve, and as I went past it some of my clothes, I suppose, caught the large weight, but it was knocked off, and down the stairs it rolled, going with such a lump from one to the other, and I couldn’t catch it because it rolled so fast, that I made sure you would be awakened; so I came down to tell you what it was, and it was some time before I could get your room door open, and when I did I found you out of bed and insensible.’”

There was a general look of disappointment when this explanation was given, and one said,—­

“Then it was not the vampire?”

“Certainly not.”

“And, after all, only a clock weight.”

“That’s about it.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that at first?”

“Because that would have spoilt the story.”

There was a general murmur of discontent, and, after a few moments one man said, with some vivacity,—­

“Well, although our friend’s vampyre has turned out, after all, to be nothing but a confounded clock-weight, there’s no disputing the fact about Sir Francis Varney being a vampyre, and not a clock-weight.”