He then related to him the interview he had had with the Hungarian nobleman at the inn, how he had promised a number of half-crowns, but a very small instalment of which he had received.

All this Master Philpots cared very little for, but the information that the dreaded Varney, the vampyre, was concealed so close to the town was a matter of great and abounding interest, and at that part of the story he suddenly pricked up his ears amazingly.

“Why, you don’t mean to say that?” he exclaimed.  “Are you sure it was he?”

“Yes, I am quite certain.  I have seen I him more than once.  It was Sir Francis Varney, without any mistake.”

“Why, then you may depend he’s only waiting until it’s very dark, and then he will walk into somebody, and suck his blood.  Here’s a horrid discovery!  I thought we had had enough of Master Varney, and that he would hardly show himself here again, and now you tell me he is not ten minutes’ walk off.”

“It’s a fact,” said the boy.  “I saw him go in, and he looks thinner and more horrid than ever.  I am sure he wants a dollop of blood from somebody.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Now there is Mrs. Philpots, you know, sir; she’s rather big, and seems most ready to burst always; I shouldn’t wonder if the vampyre came to her to-night.”

“Wouldn’t you?” said Mrs. Philpots, who had walked into the shop, and overheard the whole conversation; “wouldn’t you, really?  I’ll vampyre you, and teach you to make these remarks about respectable married women.  You young wretch, take that, will you!”

She gave the boy such a box on the ears, that the place seemed to spin round with him.  As soon as he recovered sufficiently to be enabled to walk, he made his way from the shop with abundance of precipitation, much regretting that he had troubled himself to make a confidant of Master Philpots.

But, however, he could not but tell himself that if his object was to make a general disturbance through the whole place, he had certainly succeeded in doing so.

He slunk home perhaps with a feeling that he might be called upon to take part in something that might ensue, and at all events be compelled to become a guide to the place of Sir Francis Varney’s retreat, in which case, for all he knew, the vampyre might, by some more than mortal means, discover what a hand he had had in the matter, and punish him accordingly.

The moment he hid left the saddler’s Mrs. Philpots, after using some bitter reproaches to her husband for not at once sacrificing the boy upon the spot for the disrespectful manner in which he had spoken of her, hastily put on her bonnet and shawl, and the saddler, although it was a full hour before the usual time, began putting up the shutters of his shop.

“Why, my dear,” he said to Mrs. Philpots, when she came down stairs equipped for the streets, “why, my dear, where are you going?”