Now, however, there was a longer silence than before, only broken occasionally by low moans; but suddenly, as Charles was thinking of again speaking, he uttered some more disjointed sentences.

“No harm,” he said, “no harm,—­Marchdale is a villain!—­Not a hair of his head injured—­no, no.  Set him free—­yes, I will set him free.  Beware! beware, Marchdale! and you Mortimer.  The scaffold! ay, the scaffold! but where is the bright gold?  The memory of the deed of blood will not cling to it.  Where is it hidden?  The gold! the gold! the gold!  It is not in the grave—­it cannot be there—­no, no, no!—­not there, not there!  Load the pistols.  There, there!  Down, villain, down!—­down, down!”

Despairing, now, of obtaining anything like tangible information from these ravings, which, even if they did, by accident, so connect themselves together as to seem to mean something, Charles again cried aloud,—­

“Varney, awake, awake!”

But, as before, the sleeping man was sufficiently deaf to the cry to remain, with his eyes closed, still in a disturbed slumber, but yet a slumber which might last for a considerable time.

“I have heard,” said Charles, “that there are many persons whom no noise will awaken, while the slightest touch rouses them in an instant.  I will try that upon this slumbering being.”

As he spoke, he advanced close to Sir Francis Varney, and touched him slightly with the toe of his boot.

The effect was as startling as it was instantaneous.  The vampyre sprang to his feet, as he had been suddenly impelled up by some powerful machinery; and, casting his cloak away from his arms, so as to have them at liberty, he sprang upon Charles Holland, and hurled him to the ground, where he held him with a giant’s gripe, as he cried,—­

“Rash fool! be you whom you may.  Why have you troubled me to rid the world of your intrusive existence?”

The attack was so sudden and so terrific, that resistance to it, even if Charles had had the power, was out of the question.  All he could say, was,—­

“Varney, Varney! do you not know me?  I am Charles Holland.  Will you now, in your mad rage, take the life you might more easily have taken when I lay in the dungeon from which you released me?”

The sound of his voice at once convinced Sir Francis Varney of his identity; and it was with a voice that had some tones of regret in it, that he replied,—­

“And wherefore have you thought proper, when you were once free and unscathed, to cast yourself into such a position of danger as to follow me to my haunt?”

“I contemplated no danger,” said Charles, “because I contemplated no evil.  I do not know why you should kill me.”

“You came here, and yet you say you do not know why I should kill you.  Young man, have you a dozen lives that you can afford to tamper with them thus?  I have, at much chance of imminence to myself, already once saved you, when another, with a sterner feeling, would have gladly taken your life; but now, as if you were determined to goad me to an act which I have shunned committing, you will not let me close my eyes in peace.”