“Hush!” said Henry, “listen to them.  This would all have been unintelligible to us, if you had not related to us what you have.”

“I have just told you in time,” said Chillingworth, “it seems.”

“Will you, then,” said the hangman, “listen to proposals?”

“Yes,” said Varney.

“Come along, then, and I will show you what I have been about; and I rather think you have already a shrewd guess as to my motive.  This way—­this way.”

They moved off to some other part of the mansion, and the sound of their voices gradually died away, so that after all, the friends had not got the least idea of what that motive was, which still induced the vampyre and the hangman, rather than leave the other on the premises, to make an agreement to stay with each other.

“What’s to be done now?” said Henry.

“Wait,” said Dr. Chillingworth, “wait, and watch still.  I see nothing else that can be done with any degree of safety.”

“But what are we to wait for?” said the admiral.

“By waiting, we shall, perhaps, find out,” was the doctor’s reply; “but you may depend that we never shall by interfering.”

“Well, well, be it so.  It seems that we have no other resource.  And when either or both of those fellows make their appearance, and seem about to leave, what is to be done with them?”

“They must be seized then, and in order that that may be done without any bloodshed, we ought to have plenty of force here.  Henry, could you get your brother, and Charles, if he be sufficiently recovered, to come?”

“Certainly, and Jack Pringle.”

“No,” said the admiral, “no Jack Pringle for me; I have done with him completely, and I have made up my mind to strike him off the ship’s books, and have nothing more to do with him.”

“Well, well,” added the doctor, “we will not have him, then; and it is just as well, for, in all likelihood, he would come drunk, and we shall be—­let me see—­five strong without him, which ought to be enough to take prisoners two men.”

“Yes,” said Henry, “although one of them may be a vampyre.”

“That makes no difference,” said the admiral.  “I’d as soon take a ship manned with vampyres as with Frenchmen.”

Henry started off upon his errand, certainly leaving the admiral and the doctor in rather a critical situation while he was gone; for had Varney the vampyre and the hangman chosen, they could certainly easily have overcome so inefficient a force.

The admiral would, of course, have fought, and so might the doctor, as far as his hands would permit him; but if the others had really been intent upon mischief, they could, from their downright superior physical power, have taken the lives of the two that were opposed to them.

But somehow the doctor appeared to have a great confidence in the affair.  Whether that confidence arose from what the vampyre had said with regard to him, or from any hidden conviction of his own that they would not yet emerge from the Hall, we cannot say; but certain it is, he waited the course of events with great coolness.