For the next three weeks the Canterville ghost fulfilled his ghostly obligations as quietly as possible.
He wore a thick black cloak, tiptoed lightly in his bare feet, and applied the Rising Sun Lubricator to his chains every night.
Despite all his precautions, he still didn't escape treachery.
He had to be always on the lookout for strings stretched across his path in the dark or buckets cleverly balanced to spill as he passed.
One night, as he was passing through the library door, he thought he saw someone sitting in one of the chairs.
"Now's my chance," he whispered to himself. "I'll frighten whoever it is so badly that the whole house will wake with his screams."
And he carefully crept up behind the chair.
He hovered there for a moment, chuckling to himself, and then leapt out with an evil smile and turned to face his victim.
The Canterville ghost let out a wail and fell back in terror.
Right in front of him, seated motionless, was a horrible sight.
Monstrous hollow eyes peered from a hideous white face.
It wore a loose cloak shredded with age, and in its hand was a gleaming sword.
Never having seen a ghost before, he was naturally very frightened.
He fled all the way back to his room where he hid his face under a sheet.
After a time, when morning was beginning to lighten the sky, the brave Canterville spirit asserted himself, and he decided to go and speak to the other ghost.
"After all, two ghosts are better than one," he reasoned.
When he returned to the spot, it didn't look as if the other ghost had moved. He cleared his throat loudly, but the other didn't stir.
Quietly he reached out to tap his new ally on the shoulder.
The head slipped off and rolled onto the floor, and the bones fell in a heap.
There at his feet was a carved turnip, and on the chair was a pair of broomsticks collapsed under a moth-eaten curtain.
The sword was nothing but an everyday kitchen knife. He had been tricked!
Feverish with rage, the ghost raised his withered hands above his head, and using the words of an ancient oath, he swore that when the rooster had crowed three times, deeds of bloodshed and murder would descend on the castle.
No one would be spared! Nervously he listened for the rooster's cry.
Morning had arrived, and the family would soon be coming down the stairs.
He waited, but the rooster never crowed.
The ghost was puzzled; this curse had never failed him before.
At last, worried that he might be discovered, he gave up his vigil and retreated to his room.
There he lay down on his low cot feeling more dejected than he ever had before in three hundred years.
After this, the ghost was not seen again on any nocturnal expedition.
At dinner that night, as the Otis family devoured the roast rooster that Mrs. Umney had prepared, they decided the ghost must have left.
"I think I'll write a letter to Lord Canterville," said Mr. Otis, "and tell him the good news."
"Perhaps he'd like to come round for a dinner party," said Mrs. Otis with a smile.
The twins were a little disappointed, but before long, everyone had found something new to absorb their interest.
Washington devoted himself to his studies, the twins explored the grounds playing cowboys and Indians, and Mrs. Otis invited the best families from around the neighborhood for elaborate parties.
Virginia's attention was drawn to the young Duke of Cheshire, who paid her the most extravagant compliments when he visited every weekend.
"Your eyes sparkle like sunlight dancing on the summer sea," he told her as they rode home from Brockley meadows late in the summer.
Virginia ignored his elaborate flattery and changed the subject. "You know, I think I miss the ghost, now that he's gone."
"Oh, I'm sure that you don't mean that. My great uncle met the ghost at the castle once.
He was found shivering on the floor the next morning mumbling 'chill of death' over and over.
He never said a sane word after that."
Virginia didn't know how to reply.
She thought these stories involving the Canterville ghost were greatly exaggerated, but she also knew that the young duke had an honest heart and wasn't in the habit of making up stories.
They passed an encampment of Gypsies, who Mr. Otis had kindly let stay on the castle grounds, and Virginia suggested a shortcut.
As their horses slipped through a gap in the hedges, her skirt caught on a branch and tore.
"Oh my," said Virginia blushing, "please excuse me."
She quickly rode ahead and went up to her room by the back staircase.
As she was running past the tapestry chamber, she fancied she saw someone inside.
Thinking it was Mrs. Umney, she looked in to ask her to mend her skirt.
To her immense surprise, it was the Canterville ghost!
He was sitting by the window watching the yellow leaves fly through the air like strips of autumn gold.
His head was leaning on his hand, and his whole attitude suggested extreme depression.
Virginia's first instinct was to run away, but the ghost looked so melancholy that she was overcome with pity.
"I'm so sorry for you," she said, "but my brothers are going back to school next week, and then, if you behave yourself, no one will annoy you."
"It is absurd asking me to behave myself," he answered, turning around in astonishment.
"I have to rattle my chains and groan through keyholes; it's my only reason for existing."
"It's no reason for existing at all, and you know you have been very wicked.
It was you who stole my paints in order to keep up that ridiculous stain in the library.
First you took all my reds and purples, and after you took the emerald green, I could paint nothing but boring pictures in black and white.
Besides, Mrs. Umney told us that you killed your wife!"
"Well, I admit it," said the ghost.
"However, my wife is long dead now, and I don't think it was very nice of her brothers to starve me to death!"
"Starve you to death!" exclaimed Virginia.
"Oh, Mr. GhostㅡI mean, Sir Simonㅡare you hungry? I have a sandwich in my room. Would you like it?"
"No, thank you, I never eat anything now. I am so lonely and so unhappy.
I haven't slept for three hundred years," he said, and a solitary tear fell from his gray cheek.
Trembling a little, Virginia knelt beside him and looked up into his old, withered face.
"Poor ghost, is there no place where you can sleep?"
He answered in a low, dreamy voice:
"Far away beyond the pinewoods there is a little garden where the hemlock flowers grow.
The nightingale sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down over the peaceful sleepers."
"You mean the Garden of Death," she whispered solemnly.
"Yes, death. How I long for it!
To lie in the brown earth with no yesterday and no tomorrow.
To forget time and to sleep at peace." He paused.
"You can help me, Virginia."
As the ghost said her name, a cold shudder ran through Virginia, and she looked around the room.
She thought she saw the animals and huntsmen pictured in the tapestries hanging on the walls come to life.
"Beware, little Virginia," they called to her. "Beware!"