details. Of course such an opportunity for tale-bearing and gossiping
was not likely to be lost; and while Henry was thinking over how he had
better act in the matter, the news that Flora Bannerworth had been
visited in the night by a vampyre--for the servants named the visitation
such at once--was spreading all over the county.

As he rode along, Henry met a gentleman on horseback who belonged to the
county, and who, reining in his steed, said to him,

"Good morning, Mr. Bannerworth."

"Good morning," responded Henry, and he would have ridden on, but the
gentleman added,--

"Excuse me for interrupting you, sir; but what is the strange story that
is in everybody's mouth about a vampyre?"

Henry nearly fell off his horse, he was so much astonished, and,
wheeling the animal around, he said,--

"In everybody's mouth!"

"Yes; I have heard it from at least a dozen persons."

"You surprise me."

"It is untrue? Of course I am not so absurd as really to believe about
the vampyre; but is there no foundation at all for it? We generally find
that at the bottom of these common reports there is a something around
which, as a nucleus, the whole has formed."