"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.
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