“I would, because I do not believe in miracles.  I should endeavour to find some rational and some scientific means of accounting for the phenomenon, and that’s the very reason why we have no miracles now-a-days, between you and I, and no prophets and saints, and all that sort of thing.”

“I would rather avoid such observations in such a place as this,” said Marchdale.

“Nay, do not be the moral coward,” cried Mr. Chillingworth, “to make your opinions, or the expression of them, dependent upon any certain locality.”

“I know not what to think,” said Henry; “I am bewildered quite.  Let us now come away.”

Mr. Marchdale replaced the lid of the coffin, and then the little party moved towards the staircase.  Henry turned before he ascended, and glanced back into the vault.

“Oh,” he said, “if I could but think there had been some mistake, some error of judgment, on which the mind could rest for hope.”

“I deeply regret,” said Marchdale, “that I so strenuously advised this expedition.  I did hope that from it would have resulted much good.”

“And you had every reason so to hope,” said Chillingworth.  “I advised it likewise, and I tell you that its result perfectly astonishes me, although I will not allow myself to embrace at once all the conclusions to which it would seem to lead me.”

“I am satisfied,” said Henry; “I know you both advised me for the best.  The curse of Heaven seems now to have fallen upon me and my house.”

“Oh, nonsense!” said Chillingworth.  “What for?”

“Alas!  I know not.”

“Then you may depend that Heaven would never act so oddly.  In the first place, Heaven don’t curse anybody; and, in the second, it is too just to inflict pain where pain is not amply deserved.”

They ascended the gloomy staircase of the vault.  The countenances of both George and Henry were very much saddened, and it was quite evident that their thoughts were by far too busy to enable them to enter into any conversation.  They did not, and particularly George, seem to hear all that was said to them.  Their intellects seemed almost stunned by the unexpected circumstance of the disappearance of the body of their ancestor.

All along they had, although almost unknown to themselves, felt a sort of conviction that they must find some remains of Marmaduke Bannerworth, which would render the supposition, even in the most superstitious minds, that he was the vampyre, a thing totally and physically impossible.

But now the whole question assumed a far more bewildering shape.  The body was not in its coffin—­it had not there quietly slept the long sleep of death common to humanity.  Where was it then?  What had become of it?  Where, how, and under what circumstances had it been removed?  Had it itself burst the bands that held it, and hideously stalked forth into the world again to make one of its seeming inhabitants, and kept up for a hundred years a dreadful existence by such adventures as it had consummated at the hall, where, in the course of ordinary human life, it had once lived?