ts pattern strange to _you_?"

Scrooge trembled more and more.

"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the
strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this,
seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it since. It is a
ponderous chain!"

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding
himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable; but he
could see nothing.

"Jacob," he said imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak
comfort to me, Jacob!"

"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes from other regions,
Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of
men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all
permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.
My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house--mark me!--in life my
spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole;
and weary journeys lie before me!"

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his
hands in his breeches' pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he
did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.

"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed, in a
business-like manner, though with humility and deference.

"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.

"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And traveling all the time?"

"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. Incessant torture
of remorse."

"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.

"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.

"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,"
said Scrooge.

The Ghost, on hearing this set up another cry, and clanked its chain
hideously.

"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the Phantom, "not to know
that ages of incessant labor, by immortal creatures, for this earth must
pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all
developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its
little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short
for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret
can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such was I!
Oh! such was I!"

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge,
who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wrin