r face spoke truth; but she
was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped
hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry: but the
first was the emotion of her heart.

"What the half-drunken woman, whom I told you of last night, said to
me, when I tried to see him and obtain a week's delay: and what I
thought was a mere excuse to avoid me, turns out to have been quite
true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then."

"To whom will our debt be transferred?"

"I don't know. But before that time we shall be ready with the money;
and even though we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to find so
merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep to-night with light
hearts, Caroline!"

Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children's
faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little
understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man's
death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the
event, was one of pleasure.

"Let me see some tenderness connected with the death," said Scrooge; "or
that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be for ever
present to me."

The Ghost conducted him through several streets to poor Bob Cratchit's
house; the dwelling he had visited before: and found the mother and the
children seated round the fire.

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues
in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before him.
The mother and her daughters were sewing. But surely they were very
quiet!

"'And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them.'"

Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy
must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why
did he not go on?

The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her
face.

"The color hurts my eyes," she said.

The color? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!

"They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife. "It makes them weak by
candle-light; and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father when he comes
home, for the world. It must be near his time."

"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book. "But I think he
has walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings,
mother."

They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful
voice, that only faltered once:

"I have known him walk with--I have known h