oiling his chains. I am bound to acknowledge that it was with a good
deal of difficulty that he brought himself to adopt this last mode of
protection. However, one night, while the family were at dinner, he
slipped into Mr. Otis's bedroom and carried off the bottle. He felt a
little humiliated at first, but afterwards was sensible enough to see
that there was a great deal to be said for the invention, and, to a
certain degree, it served his purpose. Still in spite of everything he
was not left unmolested. Strings were continually being stretched across
the corridor, over which he tripped in the dark, and on one occasion,
while dressed for the part of "Black Isaac, or the Huntsman of Hogley
Woods," he met with a severe fall, through treading on a butter-slide,
which the twins had constructed from the entrance of the Tapestry
Chamber to the top of the oak staircase. This last insult so enraged
him, that he resolved to make one final effort to assert his dignity and
social position, and determined to visit the insolent young Etonians the
next night in his celebrated character of "Reckless Rupert, or the
Headless Earl."

[Illustration: "A HEAVY JUG OF WATER FELL RIGHT DOWN ON HIM."]

He had not appeared in this disguise for more than seventy years; in
fact, not since he had so frightened pretty Lady Barbara Modish by means
of it, that she suddenly broke off her engagement with the present Lord
Canterville's grandfather, and ran away to Gretna Green with handsome
Jack Castletown, declaring that nothing in the world would induce her to
marry into a family that allowed such a horrible phantom to walk up and
down the terrace at twilight. Poor Jack was afterwards shot in a duel by
Lord Canterville on Wandsworth Common, and Lady Barbara died of a broken
heart at Tunbridge Wells before the year was out, so, in every way, it
had been a great success. It was, however an extremely difficult