"Well, they have made a lodgment in him, that's quite clear. Let's go up and finish him at once."—"He seems finished."
"I beg your pardon there. When the moonbeams fall upon him he'll get up and walk away as if nothing was the matter."—"Will he?" cried Tom, with animation—"will he?"
"Certainly he will."—"Thank God for that. Now, hark you, Mr. Marchdale: I should not have fired if you had not at the moment urged me to do so. Now, I shall stay and see if the effect which you talk of will ensue; and although it may convince me that he is a vampyre, and that there are such things, he may go off, scot free, for me."
"Go off?"—"Yes; I don't want to have even a vampyre's blood upon my hands."
"You are exceedingly delicate."—"Perhaps I am; it's my way, though. I have shot him—not you, mind; so, in a manner of speaking, he belongs to me. Now, mark, me: I won't have him touched any more to-night, unless you think there's a chance of making a prisoner of him without violence."
"There he lies; you can go and make a prisoner of him at once, dead as he is; and if you take him out of the moonlight—"
"I understand; he won't recover."—"Certainly not."
"But, as I want him to recover, that don't suit me."—"Well, I cannot but honour your scruples, although I do not actually share in them; but I promise you that, since such is your wish, I will take no steps against the vampyre; but let us come up to him and see if he be really dead, or only badly wounded."
Tom Eccles hang back a little from this proposal; but, upon being urged again by Marchdale, and told that he need not go closer than he chose, he consented, and the two of them approached the prostrate form of Sir Francis Varney, which lay upon its face in the faint moonlight, which each moment was gathering strength and power.
"He lies upon his face," said Marchdale. "Will you go and turn him over?"—"Who—I? God forbid I should touch him."