[Illustration: “He met with
A severe fall”]
The next day the ghost was very weak and tired.
The terrible excitement of the last four weeks was
beginning to have its effect. His nerves were
completely shattered, and he started at the slightest
noise. For five days he kept his room, and at
last made up his mind to give up the point of the
blood-stain on the library floor. If the Otis
family did not want it, they clearly did not deserve
it. They were evidently people on a low, material
plane of existence, and quite incapable of appreciating
the symbolic value of sensuous phenomena. The
question of phantasmic apparitions, and the development
of astral bodies, was of course quite a different
matter, and really not under his control. It was
his solemn duty to appear in the corridor once a week,
and to gibber from the large oriel window on the first
and third Wednesdays in every month, and he did not
see how he could honourably escape from his obligations.
It is quite true that his life had been very evil,
but, upon the other hand, he was most conscientious
in all things connected with the supernatural.
For the next three Saturdays, accordingly, he traversed
the corridor as usual between midnight and three o’clock,
taking every possible precaution against being either
heard or seen. He removed his boots, trod as
lightly as possible on the old worm-eaten boards, wore
a large black velvet cloak, and was careful to use
the Rising Sun Lubricator for 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.”]
