But always, in such a case, there are to be found one or two bold spirits, or one or two so heedless of what is passing around them that they rush into danger unawares.  Such there were at Berwick-on-Tweed, and to them the hunted soul spoke as he fled past, the hell-hounds slavering at his heels.  “Until my body is burnt,” he cried, “you folk of Berwick shall have no peace!” And as they rushed for sanctuary into the nearest dwelling they fancied they could still hear the tormented wretch’s shriek, shrill above the baying of the dogs—­“Burn! burn!  Peace! peace!”

So the people of the town took counsel together, and having solemnly concluded that “were a remedy further delayed, the atmosphere, infected and corrupted by the constant whirlings through it of the pestiferous corpse, would engender disease and death to a great extent,” they resolved to follow the vampire’s own suggestion.  Ten young men, “renowned for boldness,” were appointed to lay the Horror.  They went to the grave, dug up the corpse, cut it limb from limb, then burned it until a little heap of white ash was all that remained of the man of evil life, whose shade had brought dread to all the citizens of Berwick.  But their wise action must, unfortunately, have been taken too late.  Very soon afterwards a great pestilence arose, and decimated the town’s population.  “Never did it so furiously rage elsewhere,” says William, Canon of Newburgh, the learned churchman, who has chronicled for us the tale, “though it was at that time general throughout all the borders of England.”  According to him, the vampire had done his evil work.  And as man, woman, and child were carried by night to the graves prepared for the plague-stricken, there were those who vowed they could still hear the distant sound of baying hounds, and above them the shrill scream of the man who in life had seemingly walked so godly a walk, and who had given example to the rough mariners down at the quay as he daily went to pray.

Such is the story of the vampire at Berwick, and of the way in which valiant men laid him.  But the old Canon of the Austin Friars has yet another tale to tell of a vampire on the Border.  Destruction by fire was not the only means of laying the unholy spirit that “walked” to the hurt of its fellow-creatures.  When a suicide was buried, or when one who was a reputed witch, warlock, or were-wolf, or who had been cursed by his parents or by the church, was laid in the grave, it was always well to take the precaution of driving a stake through the body.  Such a stake (in Russia an aspen) driven at one blow bereft the evil thing of all its power.  Only in the reign of George IV was the custom in the case of suicides abolished.  If the precaution had not been taken at burial, in all probability when the vampire had already done some harm, the corpse was exhumed and the ghastly ceremony gone through.  And always, so it was declared, the body of the vampire was found with fresh cheeks and open, staring eyes, well nourished by the blood of his victims.  In such condition was found the vampire of Melrose, whose tale is also told by William of Newburgh.