. The fog and
frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed
as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the
threshold. Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular
about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also
a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole
residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is
called fancy about him as any man in the City of London, even
including--which is a bold word--the corporation, aldermen, and livery.
Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought
on Marley, since his last mention of his seven-years' dead partner that
afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it
happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in
the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change,
not a knocker, but Marley's face.

Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in
the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a
dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as
Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly
forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air;
and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless.
That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to
be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of
its own expression.

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of
a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would
be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned
it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.

He _did_ pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door;
and he _did_ look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to
be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the
hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws
and nuts that held the knocker on; so he said "Pooh, pooh!" and closed
it with a bang.

The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above,
and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared to have a
separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be
frigh