Some, too, went so far as to declare that they had been awakened out of
their sleep by noises incidental to an effort made to enter their
chambers; and others had seen dusky forms of gigantic proportions
outside their windows, tampering with their fastenings, and only
disappearing when the light of day mocked all attempts at concealment. These tales flew from mouth to mouth, and all listened to them with such
an eager interest, that none thought it worth while to challenge their
inconsistencies, or to express a doubt of their truth, because they had
not been mentioned before. The only individual, and he was a remarkably clever man, who made the
slightest remark upon the subject of a practical character, hazarded a
suggestion that made confusion worse confounded. He knew something of vampyres. He had travelled abroad, and had heard of
them in Germany, as well as in the east, and, to a crowd of wondering
and aghast listeners, he said,--

"You may depend upon it, my friends, this has been going on for some
time; there have been several mysterious and sudden deaths in the town
lately; people have wasted away and died nobody knew how or wherefore." "Yes--yes," said everybody. "There was Miles, the butcher; you know how fat he was, and then how fat
he wasn't." A general assent was given to the proposition; and then, elevating one
arm in an oratorical manner, the clever fellow continued,--

"I have not a doubt that Miles, the butcher, and every one else who has
died suddenly lately, have been victims of the vampyre; and what's more,
they'll all be vampyres, and come and suck other people's blood, till at
last the whole town will be a town of vampyres." "But what's to be done?" cried one, who trembled so excessively that he
could scarcely stand under his apprehension. "There is but one plan--Sir Francis Varney must be found, and put out of
the world in such a manner that he can't come back to it again; and all
those who are dead that we have any suspicion of, should be taken up out
of their graves and looked at, to see if they're rotting or not; if they
are it's all right; but, if they look fresh and much, as usual, you may
depend they're vampyres, and no mistake." This was a terrific suggestion thrown amongst a mob. To have caught Sir
Francis Varney and immolated him at the shrine of popular fury, they
would not have shrunk from; but a desecration of the graves of those
whom they had known in life was a matter which, however much it had to
recommend it, even the boldest stood aghast at, and felt some qualms of
irresolution. There are many ideas, however, which, like the first plunge into a cold
bath, are rather uncomfortable for the moment; but which, in a little
time, we become so familiarized with, that they become stripped of their
disagreeable concomitants, and appear quite pleasing and natural. So it was with this notion of exhuming the dead bodies of those
townspeople who had recently died from what was called a decay of
nature, and such other failures of vitality as bore not the tangible
name of any understood disease. From mouth to mouth the awful suggestion spread like wildfire, until at
last it grew into such a shape that it almost seemed to become a duty,
at all events, to have up Miles the butcher, and see how he looked. There is, too, about human nature a natural craving curiosity concerning
everything connected with the dead. There is not a man of education or
of intellectual endowment who would not travel many miles to look upon
the exhumation of the remains of some one famous in his time, whether
for his vices, his virtues, his knowledge, his talents, or his heroism;
and, if this feeling exist in the minds of the educated and refined in a
sublimated shape, which lends to it grace and dignity, we may look for
it among the vulgar and the ignorant, taking only a grosser and meaner
form, in accordance with their habits of thought. The rude materials, of
which the highest and noblest feelings of educated minds are formed,
will be found amongst the most grovelling and base; and so this vulgar
curiosity, which, combined with other feelings, prompted an ignorant and
illiterate mob to exhume Miles, the once fat butcher, in a different
form tempted the philosophic Hamlet to moralise upon the skull of
Yorick. And it was wonderful to see how, when these people had made up their
minds to carry out the singularly interesting, but, at the same,
fearful, suggestion, they assumed to themselves a great virtue in so
doing--told each other what an absolute necessity there was, for the
public good, that it should be done; and then, with loud shouts and
cries concerning the vampyre, they proceeded in a body to the village
churchyard, where had been lain, with a hope of reposing in peace, the
bones of their ancestors. A species of savage ferocity now appeared to have seized upon the crowd,
and the people, in making up their minds to do something which was
strikingly at variance with all their preconceived notions of right and
wrong, appeared to feel that it was necessary, in order that they might
be consistent, to cast off many of the decencies of life, and to become
riotous and reckless. As they proceeded towards the graveyard, they amused themselves by
breaking the windows of the tax-gatherers, and doing what passing
mischief they could to the habitations of all who held any official
situation or authority. This was something like a proclamation of war against those who might
think it their duty to interfere with the lawless proceedings of an
ignorant multitude. A public-house or two, likewise, _en route_, was
sacked of some of its inebriating contents, so that, what with the
madness of intoxication, and the general excitement consequent upon the
very nature of the business which took them to the churchyard, a more
wild and infuriated multitude than that which paused at two iron gates
which led into the sanctuary of that church could not be imagined. Those who have never seen a mob placed in such a situation as to have
cast off all moral restraint whatever, at the same time that it feels
there is no physical power to cope with it, can form no notion of the
mass of terrible passions which lie slumbering under what, in ordinary
cases, have appeared harmless bosoms, but which now run riot, and
overcame every principle of restraint. It is a melancholy fact, but,
nevertheless, a fact, despite its melancholy, that, even in a civilised
country like this, with a generally well-educated population, nothing
but a well-organised physical force keeps down, from the commission of
the most outrageous offences, hundreds and thousands of persons. We have said that the mob paused at the iron gates of the churchyard,
but it was more a pause of surprise than one of vacillation, because
they saw that those iron gates were closed, which had not been the case
within the memory of the oldest among them.