features into an eternal grin. From the eyes streamed rays of scarlet
light, the mouth was a wide well of fire, and a hideous garment, like
to his own, swathed with its silent snows the Titan form. On its breast
was a placard with strange writing in antique characters, some scroll of
shame it seemed, some record of wild sins, some awful calendar of crime,
and, with its right hand, it bore aloft a falchion of gleaming steel.

[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