He smiled, and said they would never come again, any of them.
I said,
"Why; isn't it true, then, that they meet you here every Christmas Eve for a row?"
He replied that it WAS true.
Every Christmas Eve, for twenty-five years, had he and they fought in that room; but they would never trouble him nor anybody else again.
One by one, had he laid them out, spoilt, and utterly useless for all haunting purposes.
He had finished off the last German-band ghost that very evening, just before I came upstairs, and had thrown what was left of it out through the slit between the window-sashes. He said it would never be worth calling a ghost again.
"I suppose you will still come yourself, as usual?" I said.
"They would be sorry to miss you, I know."
"Oh, I don't know," he replied; "there's nothing much to come for now.
Unless," he added kindly, "YOU are going to be here.
I'll come if you will sleep here next Christmas Eve."
"I have taken a liking to you," he continued; "you don't fly off, screeching, when you see a party, and your hair doesn't stand on end.
You've no idea," he said, "how sick I am of seeing people's hair standing on end."
He said it irritated him.
Just then a slight noise reached us from the yard below, and he started and turned deathly black.
"You are ill," I cried, springing towards him; "tell me the best thing to do for you.
Shall I drink some brandy, and give you the ghost of it?"
He remained silent, listening intently for a moment, and then he gave a sigh of relief, and the shade came back to his cheek.
"It's all right," he murmured;
"I was afraid it was the cock."
"Oh, it's too early for that," I said. "Why, it's only the middle of the night."
"Oh, that doesn't make any difference to those cursed chickens," he replied bitterly.
"They would just as soon crow in the middle of the night as at any other time—sooner, if they thought it would spoil a chap's evening out.
I believe they do it on purpose."
He said a friend of his, the ghost of a man who had killed a water- rate collector, used to haunt a house in Long Acre, where they kept fowls in the cellar, and every time a policeman went by and flashed his bull's-eye down the grating, the old cock there would fancy it was the sun, and start crowing like mad; when, of course, the poor ghost had to dissolve, and it would, in consequence, get back home sometimes as early as one o'clock in the morning, swearing fearfully because it had only been out for an hour.
I agreed that it seemed very unfair.
"Oh, it's an absurd arrangement altogether," he continued, quite angrily.
"I can't imagine what our old man could have been thinking of when he made it.
As I have said to him, over and over again, 'Have a fixed time, and let everybody stick to it—say four o'clock in summer, and six in winter.
Then one would know what one was about.'"
"How do you manage when there isn't any cock handy?" I inquired.
He was on the point of replying, when again he started and listened.
This time I distinctly heard Mr. Bowles's cock, next door, crow twice.
"There you are," he said, rising and reaching for his hat; "that's the sort of thing we have to put up with.
What IS the time?"
I looked at my watch, and found it was half-past three.
"I thought as much," he muttered.
"I'll wring that blessed bird's neck if I get hold of it."
And he prepared to go.
"If you can wait half a minute," I said, getting out of bed,
"I'll go a bit of the way with you." "It's very good of you," he rejoined, pausing, "but it seems unkind to drag you out."
"Not at all," I replied; "I shall like a walk."
And I partially dressed myself, and took my umbrella; and he put his arm through mine, and we went out together.
Just by the gate we met Jones, one of the local constables.
"Good-night, Jones," I said (I always feel affable at Christmas- time).
"Good-night, sir," answered the man a little gruffly, I thought.
"May I ask what you're a-doing of?"
"Oh, it's all right," I responded, with a wave of my umbrella; "I'm just seeing my friend part of the way home."
He said,