The scene was an impressive one; the beautiful house and grounds looked
desolate and drear; many of the trees were stripped and broken down, and
many scorched and burned, while the gardens and flower beds, the delight
of the Bannerworth family, were rudely trodden under foot by the rabble,
and all those little beauties so much admired and tended by the
inhabitants, were now utterly destroyed, and in such a state that their
site could not even be detected by the former owners. It was a sad sight to see such a sacrilege committed,--such violence
done to private feelings, as to have all these places thrown open to the
scrutiny of the brutal and vulgar, who are incapable of appreciating or
understanding the pleasures of a refined taste. The ruins presented a remarkable contrast to what the place had been but
a very short time before; and now the scene of desolation was complete,
there was no one spot in which the most wretched could find shelter. To be sure, under the lee of some broken and crumbling wall, that
tottered, rather than stood, a huddled wretch might have found shelter
from the wind, but it would have been at the risk of his life, and not
there complete. The mob became quiet for some moments, but was not so long; indeed, a
mob of people,--which is, in fact, always composed of the most
disorderly characters to be found in a place, is not exactly the
assembly that is most calculated for quietness; somebody gave a shout,
and then somebody else shouted, and the one wide throat of the whole
concourse was opened, and sent forth a mighty yell. After this exhibition of power, they began to run about like
mad,--traverse the grounds from one end to the other, and then the ruins
were in progress of being explored. This was a tender affair, and had to be done with some care and caution
by those who were so engaged; and they walked over crumbling and decayed
masses. In one or two places, they saw what appeared to be large holes, into
which the building materials had been sunk, by their own weight, through
the flooring, that seemed as roofs to some cellars or dungeons. Seeing this, they knew not how soon some other part might sink in, and
carry their precious bodies down with the mass of rubbish; this gave an
interest to the scene,--a little danger is a sort of salt to an
adventure, and enables those who have taken part in it to talk of their
exploits, and of their dangers, which is pleasant to do, and to hear in
the ale-house, and by the inglenook in the winter. However, when a few had gone some distance, others followed, when they
saw them enter the place in safety: and at length the whole ruins were
covered with living men, and not a few women, who seemed necessary to
make up the elements of mischief in this case. There were some shouting and hallooing from one to the other as they
hurried about the ruins. At length they had explored the ruins nearly all over, when one man, who
had stood a few minutes upon a spot, gazing intently upon something,
suddenly exclaimed,--

"Hilloa! hurrah! here we are, altogether,--come on,--I've found
him,--I've found--recollect it's me, and nobody else has
found,--hurrah!" Then, with a wild kind of frenzy, he threw his hat up into the air, as
if to attract attention, and call others round him, to see what it was
he had found. "What's the matter, Bill?" exclaimed one who came up to him, and who had
been close at hand. "The matter? why, I've found him; that's the matter, old man," replied
the first. "What, a whale? "No, a wampyre; the blessed wampyre! there he is,--don't you see him
under them ere bricks?" "Oh, that's not him; he got away." "I don't care," replied the other, "who got away, or who didn't; I know
this much, that he's a wampyre,--he wouldn't be there if he warn't." This was an unanswerable argument, and nobody could deny it;
consequently, there was a cessation of talk, and the people then came
up, as the two first were looking at the body. "Whose is it?" inquired a dozen voices. [Illustration]

"Not Sir Francis Varney's!" said the second speaker; "the clothes are not
his--"

"No, no; not Sir Francis's"

"But I tell you what, mates," said the first speaker; "that if it isn't
Sir Francis Varney's, it is somebody else's as bad. I dare say, now,
he's a wictim." "A what!" "A wictim to the wampyre; and, if he sees the blessed moonlight, he will
be a wampyre hisself, and so shall we be, too, if he puts his teeth into
us." "So we shall,--so we shall," said the mob, and their flesh begin to run
cold, and there was a feeling of horror creeping over the whole body of
persons within hearing. "I tell you what it is; our only plan will be to get him out of the
ruins, then, remarked another. "What!" said one; "who's going to handle such cattle? if you've a sore
about you, and his blood touches you, who's to say you won't be a
vampyre, too!" "No, no you won't," said an old woman. "I won't try," was the happy rejoinder; "I ain't a-going to carry a
wampyre on my two legs home to my wife and small family of seven
children, and another a-coming." There was a pause for a few moments, and then one man more adventurous
than the rest, exclaimed,--

"Well, vampyre, or no vampyre, his dead body can harm no one; so here
goes to get it out, help me who will; once have it out, and then we can
prevent any evil, by burning it, and thus destroying the whole body. "Hurrah!" shouted three or four more, as they jumped down into the hole
formed by the falling in of the materials which had crushed Marchdale to
death, for it was his body they had discovered. They immediately set to work to displace such of the materials as lay on
the body, and then, having cleared it of all superincumbent rubbish,
they proceeded to lift it up, but found that it had got entangled, as
they called it, with some chains: with some trouble they got them off,
and the body was lifted out to a higher spot. "Now, what's to be done?" inquired one. "Burn it," said another. "Hurrah!" shouted a female voice; "we've got the wampyre! run a stake
through his body, and then place him upon some dry wood,--there's plenty
to be had about here, I am sure,--and then burn him to a cinder." "That's right, old woman,--that's right," said a man; "nothing better:
the devil must be in him if he come to life after that, I should say." There might be something in that, and the mob shouted its approbation,
as it was sure to do as anything stupid or senseless, and the proposal
might be said to have been carried by acclamation, and it required only
the execution. This was soon done. There were plenty of laths and rafters, and the
adjoining wood furnished an abundant supply of dry sticks, so there was
no want of fuel.