[Illustration:  “Its head was bald and burnished”]

Never having seen a ghost before, he naturally was terribly frightened, and, after a second hasty glance at the awful phantom, he fled back to his room, tripping up in his long winding-sheet as he sped down the corridor, and finally dropping the rusty dagger into the Minister’s jack-boots, where it was found in the morning by the butler.  Once in the privacy of his own apartment, he flung himself down on a small pallet-bed, and hid his face under the clothes.  After a time, however, the brave old Canterville spirit asserted itself, and he determined to go and speak to the other ghost as soon as it was daylight.  Accordingly, just as the dawn was touching the hills with silver, he returned towards the spot where he had first laid eyes on the grisly phantom, feeling that, after all, two ghosts were better than one, and that, by the aid of his new friend, he might safely grapple with the twins.  On reaching the spot, however, a terrible sight met his gaze.  Something had evidently happened to the spectre, for the light had entirely faded from its hollow eyes, the gleaming falchion had fallen from its hand, and it was leaning up against the wall in a strained and uncomfortable attitude.  He rushed forward and seized it in his arms, when, to his horror, the head slipped off and rolled on the floor, the body assumed a recumbent posture, and he found himself clasping a white dimity bed-curtain, with a sweeping-brush, a kitchen cleaver, and a hollow turnip lying at his feet!  Unable to understand this curious transformation, he clutched the placard with feverish haste, and there, in the grey morning light, he read these fearful words:—­

+------------------------------------+
|         Ye Otis GHOSTE             |
| Ye Onlie True and Originale Spook, |
|    Beware of Ye Imitationes.       |
|   All others are counterfeite.     |
+------------------------------------+

The whole thing flashed across him.  He had been tricked, foiled, and out-witted!  The old Canterville look came into his eyes; he ground his toothless gums together; and, raising his withered hands high above his head, swore according to the picturesque phraseology of the antique school, that, when Chanticleer had sounded twice his merry horn, deeds of blood would be wrought, and murder walk abroad with silent feet.

Hardly had he finished this awful oath when, from the red-tiled roof of a distant homestead, a cock crew.  He laughed a long, low, bitter laugh, and waited.  Hour after hour he waited, but the cock, for some strange reason, did not crow again.  Finally, at half-past seven, the arrival of the housemaids made him give up his fearful vigil, and he stalked back to his room, thinking of his vain oath and baffled purpose.  There he consulted several books of ancient chivalry, of which he was exceedingly fond, and found that, on every occasion on which this oath had been used, Chanticleer had always crowed a second time.  “Perdition seize the naughty fowl,” he muttered, “I have seen the day when, with my stout spear, I would have run him through the gorge, and made him crow for me an ’twere in death!” He then retired to a comfortable lead coffin, and stayed there till evening.