LITMIR.BIZ

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      "Mr. Chillingworth, can you take upon yourself to say that no corpse has undergone the process of decomposition in this coffin?"

      "To answer your question exactly, as probably in your hurry you have worded it," said Mr. Chillingworth, "I cannot take upon myself to say any such thing; but this I can say, namely, that in this coffin there are no animal remains, and that it is quite impossible that any corpse enclosed here could, in any lapse of time, have so utterly and entirely disappeared."

      "I am answered," said Henry.

      "Good God!" exclaimed George, "and has this but added another damning proof, to those we have already on our minds, of one of the must dreadful superstitions that ever the mind of man conceived?"

      "It would seem so," said Marchdale, sadly.

      "Oh, that I were dead! This is terrible. God of heaven, why are these things? Oh, if I were but dead, and so spared the torture of supposing such things possible."

      "Think again, Mr. Chillingworth; I pray you think again," cried Marchdale.

      "If I were to think for the remainder of my existence," he replied, "I could come to no other conclusion. It is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of fact."

      "You are positive, then," said Henry, "that the dead body of Marmaduke Bannerworth is not rested here?"

      "I am positive. Look for yourselves. The lead is but slightly discoloured; it looks tolerably clean and fresh; there is not a vestige of putrefaction—no bones, no dust even."

      They did all look for themselves, and the most casual glance was sufficient to satisfy the most sceptical.

      "All is over," said Henry; "let us now leave this place; and all I can now ask of you, my friends, is to lock this dreadful secret deep in your own hearts."

      "It shall never pass my lips," said Marchdale.

      "Nor mine, you may depend," said the doctor. "I was much in hopes that this night's work would have had the effect of dissipating, instead of adding to, the gloomy fancies that now possess you."

      "Good heavens!" cried George, "can you call them fancies, Mr. Chillingworth?"

      "I do, indeed."

      "Have you yet a doubt?"

      "My young friend, I told you from the first, that I would not believe in your vampyre; and I tell you now, that if one was to come and lay hold of me by the throat, as long as I could at all gasp for breath I would tell him he was a d——d impostor."

      "This is carrying incredulity to the verge of obstinacy."

      "Far beyond it, if you please."

      "You will not be convinced?" said Marchdale.

      "I most decidedly, on this point, will not."

      "Then you are one who would doubt a miracle, if you saw it with your own eyes."

      "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?

      All these were questions which irresistibly pressed themselves upon the consideration of Henry and his brother. They were awful questions.

      And yet, take any sober, sane, thinking, educated man, and show him all that they had seen, subject him to all to which they had been subjected, and say if human reason, and all the arguments that the subtlest brain could back it with, would be able to hold out against such a vast accumulation of horrible evidences, and say—"I don't believe it."

      Mr. Chillingworth's was the only plan. He would not argue the question. He said at once—

      "I will not believe this thing—upon this point I will yield to no evidence whatever."

      That was the only way of disposing of such a question; but there are not many who could so dispose of it, and not one so much interested in it as were the brothers Bannerworth, who could at all hope to get into such a state of mind.

      The boards were laid carefully down again, and the screws replaced. Henry found himself unequal to the task, so it was done by Marchdale, who took pains to replace everything in the same state in which they had found it, even to the laying even the matting at the bottom of the pew.

      Then they extinguished the light, and, with heavy hearts, they all walked towards the window, to leave the sacred edifice by the same means they had entered it.

      "Shall we replace the pane of glass?" said Marchdale.

      "Oh, it matters not—it matters not," said Henry, listlessly; "nothing matters now. I care not what becomes of me—I am getting weary of a life which now must be one of misery and dread."

      "You must not allow yourself to fall into such a state of mind as this," said the doctor, "or you will become a patient of mine very quickly."

      "I cannot help it."

      "Well, but be a man. If there are serious evils affecting you, fight out against them the best way you can."

      "I cannot."

      "Come,

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