were only for a
second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.

"I do," replied the Ghost.

"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.

"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."

"Well!" returned Scrooge. "I have but to swallow this, and be for the
rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own
creation. Humbug, I tell you--humbug!"

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such
a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair,
to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his
horror, when, the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if
it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its
breast!

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.

"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"

"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or
not?"

"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and
why do they come to me?"

"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit
within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and
wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do
so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world--oh, woe is
me!--and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth,
and turned to happiness!"

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain, and wrung its
shadowy hands.

"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link
by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my
own free will I bore it. Is its 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 laboured 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. No