“And, my friend, whoever you are,” responded the doctor, “you were very spiteful to fire a pistol bullet at me in consequence.”—­

“Not at all.”

“But I say yes; for, probably, I can prove a right to be here, which you cannot.”—­“Ah!” said the stranger, “that voice—­why—­you are Dr. Chillingworth?”

“I am; but I don’t know you,” said the doctor, as he emerged now from the summer-house, and confronted the stranger who was within a few paces of the entrance to it.  Then he started, as he added,—­

“Yes, I do know you, though.  How, in the name of Heaven, came you here, and what purpose have you in so coming?”

“What purpose have you?  Since we met at Varney’s, I have been making some inquiries about this neighbourhood, and learn strange things.”—­“That you may very easily do here; and, what is more extraordinary, the strange things are, for the most part, I can assure you, quite true.”

The reader will, from what has been said, now readily recognise this man as Sir Francis Varney’s mysterious visitor, to whom he gave, from some hidden cause or another, so large a sum of money, and between whom and Dr. Chillingworth a mutual recognition had taken place, on the occasion when Sir Francis Varney had, with such cool assurance, invited the admiral to breakfast with him at his new abode.

“You, however,” said the man, “I have no doubt, are fully qualified to tell me of more than I have been able to learn from other people; and, first of all, let me ask you why you are here?”—­“Before I answer you that question, or any other,” said the doctor, “let me beg of you to tell me truly, is Sir Francis Varney—­”

The doctor whispered in the ear of the stranger some name, as if he feared, even there, in the silence of that garden, where everything conspired to convince him that he could not be overheard, to pronounce it in an audible tone.

“He is,” said the other.—­“You have no manner of doubt of it?”

“Doubt?—­certainly not.  What doubt can I have?  I know it for a positive certainty, and he knows, of course, that I do know it, and has purchased my silence pretty handsomely, although I must confess that nothing but my positive necessities would have induced me to make the large demands upon him that I have, and I hope soon to be able to release him altogether from them.”

The doctor shook his head repeatedly, as he said,—­

“I suspected it; I suspected it, do you know, from the first moment that I saw you there in his house.  His face haunted me ever since—­awfully haunted me; and yet, although I felt certain that I had once seen it under strange circumstances, I could not identify it with—­but no matter, no matter.  I am waiting here for him.”

“Indeed!”—­“Ay, that I am; and I flung a stone at you, not knowing you, with hope that you would be, by such means, perhaps, scared away, and so leave the coast clear for him.”