Christmas Carol 16 recto

16

air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrow¬ful and self-accusatory. The spectre after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost;

some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe at¬tached to his ancle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom he saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they, and their spirit-voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.

Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had en¬tered. It was double-locked as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say “Humbug!” but stopped at the first syllable. And being—from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the late¬ness of the hour—much in need of repose, went straight to bed, without un¬dressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.