“According to this eccentric view of the case, the admiral had the kindness to offer to fight me first, when, should he not have the good fortune to put me out of the world, you were to try your skill, doubtless. “I need scarcely say that I object to these family arrangements. You have challenged me, and, fancying the offence sufficient, you defy me to mortal combat. If, therefore, I fight with any one at all, it must be with you. “You will clearly understand me, sir, that I do not accuse you of being at all privy to this freak of intellect of your uncle’s. He, no doubt, alone conceived it, with a laudable desire on his part of serving you. If, however, to meet me, do so to-night, in the middle of the park surrounding your own friends estate. “There is a pollard oak growing close to a small pool; you, no doubt, have noticed the spot often. Meet me there, if you please, and any satisfaction you like I will give you, at twelve o’clock this night. “Come alone, or you will not see me. It shall be at your own option entirely, to convert the meeting into a hostile one or not. You need send me no answer to this. If you are at the place I mention at the time I have named, well and good. If you an not, I can only, if I please, imagine that you shrink from a meeting with “+Francis Varney+.” Charles Holland read this letter twice over carefully, and then folding it up, and placing it in his pocket, he said,— “Yes, I will meet him; he may be assured that I will meet him. He shall find that I do not shrink from Francis Varney. In the name of honour, love, virtue, and Heaven, I will meet this man, and it shall go hard with me but I will this night wring from him the secret of what he really is. For the sake of her who is so dear to me—for her sake, I will meet this man, or monster, be he what he may.” It would have been far more prudent had Charles informed Henry Bannerworth or George of his determination to meet the vampyre that evening, but he did not do so. Somehow he fancied it would be some reproach against his courage if he did not go, and go alone, too, for he could not help suspecting that, from the conduct of his uncle, Sir Francis Varney might have got up an opinion inimical to his courage. With all the eager excitement of youth, there was nothing that arrayed itself to his mind in such melancholy and uncomfortable colours as an imputation upon his courage. “I will show this vampyre, if he be such,” he said, “that I am not afraid to meet him, and alone, too, at his own hour—at midnight, even when, if his preternatural powers be of more avail to him than at any other time, he can attempt, if he dare, to use them.”