t industry. You _are_ changed. When it was made,
you were another man."

"I was a boy," he said impatiently.

"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are," she
returned. "I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in
heart, is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how
keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I
_have_ thought of it, and can release you."

"Have I ever sought release?"

"In words. No. Never."

"In what, then?"

"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of
life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of
any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,"
said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; "can even
I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl: or, choosing her, do I
not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and
I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were."

He was about to speak; but she left him and they parted.

"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you
delight to torture me?"

"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the
Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"

"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed. "I cannot bear it!"

He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a
face, in which some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it
had shown him, wrestled with it.

"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"

In the struggle--if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost,
with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any effort
of its adversary--Scrooge was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome
by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own
bed-room. He had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy
sleep.

STAVE THREE.

THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS.

Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in
bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told
that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was
restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial
purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger despatched to
him through Jacob Marley's intervention. But, finding that he turned
uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his cur