ley'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 attached to its ankle,
who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an
infant, whom it 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
entered. 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 lateness of the hour, much in need of
repose, went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon
the instant.

STAVE TWO.

THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS.

When Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that, looking out of bed, he could
scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his
chamber. He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes,
when the chimes of a neighboring church clock struck twelve.

"Why it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept through a
whole day and far into another night!"

Scrooge lay and thought and thought it over and over, and could make
nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was, and the
more he endeavored not to think, the more he thought. Marley's ghost
bothered him exceedingly. "Was it a dream or not?"

Scrooge lay in this state until he remembered, on a sudden, that the
Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled One. He
resolved to lie awake until the hour was passed; and considering that he
could not go to sleep, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his
power.

He was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze
unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his
listening ear.

"The hour itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly, "nothing else!"

He spoke before the hour bel