Both the admiral and Henry gave starts of surprise as, with one accord,
they exclaimed,--

"Did you say coffin?" "Yes: I tell you, on my word of honour, that the first time in my life I
saw ever Sir Francis Varney, was in his coffin." "Then he is a vampyre, and there can be no mistake," said the admiral. "Go on, I pray you, doctor, go on," said Henry, anxiously. "I will. The reason why he became the inhabitant of a coffin was simply
this:--he had been hanged,--executed at the Old Bailey, in London,
before ever I set eyes upon that strange countenance of his. You know
that I was practising surgery at the London schools some years ago, and
that, consequently, as I commenced the profession rather late in life, I
was extremely anxious to do the most I could in a very short space of
time." "Yes--yes." "Arrived, then, with plenty of resources, which I did not, as the young
men who affected to be studying in the same classes as myself, spend in
the pursuit of what they considered life in London, I was
indefatigable in my professional labours, and there was nothing
connected with them which I did not try to accomplish. "At that period, the difficulty of getting a subject for anatomization
was very great, and all sorts of schemes had to be put into requisition
to accomplish so desirable, and, indeed, absolutely necessary a purpose. "I became acquainted with the man who, I have told you, is in the Hall,
at present, and who then filled the unenviable post of public
executioner. It so happened, too, that I had read a learned treatise, by
a Frenchman, who had made a vast number of experiments with galvanic and
other apparatus, upon persons who had come to death in different ways,
and, in one case, he asserted that he had actually recovered a man who
had been hanged, and he had lived five weeks afterwards. "Young as I then was, in comparison to what I am now, in my profession,
this inflamed my imagination, and nothing seemed to me so desirable as
getting hold of some one who had only recently been put to death, for
the purpose of trying what I could do in the way of attempting a
resuscitation of the subject. It was precisely for this reason that I
sought out the public executioner, and made his acquaintance, whom every
one else shunned, because I thought he might assist me by handing over
to me the body of some condemned and executed man, upon whom I could try
my skill. "I broached the subject to him, and found him not averse. He said, that
if I would come forward and claim, as next of kin and allow the body to
be removed to his house, the body of the criminal who was to be executed
the first time, from that period, that he could give me a hint that I
should have no real next of kin opponents, he would throw every facility
in my way. "This was just what I wanted; and, I believe, I waited with impatience
for some poor wretch to be hurried to his last account by the hands of
my friend, the public executioner. "At length a circumstance occurred which favoured my designs most
effectually,--A man was apprehended for a highway robbery of a most
aggravated character. He was tried, and the evidence against him was so
conclusive, that the defence which was attempted by his counsel, became
a mere matter of form. "He was convicted, and sentenced. The judge told him not to flatter
himself with the least notion that mercy would be extended to him. The
crime of which he had been found guilty was on the increase it was
highly necessary to make some great public example, to show evil doers
that they could not, with impunity, thus trample upon the liberty of the
subject, and had suddenly, just as it were, in the very nick of time,
committed the very crime, attended with all the aggravated circumstances
which made it easy and desirable to hang him out of hand. "He heard his sentence, they tell me unmoved. I did not see him, but he
was represented to me as a man of a strong, and well-knit frame, with
rather a strange, but what some would have considered a handsome
expression of countenance, inasmuch as that there was an expression of
much haughty resolution depicted on it. "I flew to my friend the executioner. "'Can you,' I said, 'get me that man's body, who is to be hanged for the
highway robbery, on Monday?' "'Yes,' he said; 'I see nothing to prevent it. Not one soul has offered
to claim even common companionship with him,--far less kindred. I think
if you put in your claim as a cousin, who will bear the expense of his
decent burial, you will have every chance of getting possession of the
body.' "I did not hesitate, but, on the morning before the execution, I called
upon one of the sheriffs. "I told him that the condemned man, I regretted to say, was related to
me; but as I knew nothing could be done to save him on the trial, I had
abstained from coming forward; but that as I did not like the idea of
his being rudely interred by the authorities, I had come forward to ask
for the body, after the execution should have taken place, in order that
I might, at all events, bestow upon it, in some sequestered spot, a
decent burial, with all the rites of the church. "The sheriff was a man not overburthened with penetration. He applauded
my pious feelings, and actually gave me, without any inquiry, a written
order to receive the body from the hands of the hangman, after it had
hung the hour prescribed by the law. "I did not, as you may well suppose, wish to appear more in the business
than was absolutely necessary; but I gave the executioner the sheriff's
order for the body, and he promised that he would get a shell ready to
place it in, and four stout men to carry it at once to his house, when
he should cut it down. "'Good!' I said; 'and now as I am not a little anxious for the success
of my experiment, do you not think that you can manage so that the fall
of the criminal shall not be so sudden as to break his neck?' "'I have thought of that,' he said, 'and I believe that I can manage to
let him down gently, so that he shall die of suffocation, instead of
having his neck put out of joint. I will do my best." "'If you can but succeed in that,' said I, for I was quite in a state of
mania upon the subject, 'I shall be much indebted to you, and will
double the amount of money which I have already promised.' "This was, as I believed it would be, a powerful stimulus to him to do
all in his power to meet my wishes, and he took, no doubt, active
measures to accomplish all that I desired. "You can imagine with what intense impatience I waited the result. He
resided in an old ruinous looking house, a short distance on the Surrey
side of the river, and there I had arranged all my apparatus for making
experiments upon the dead man, in an apartment the windows of which
commanded a view of the entrance."