lamp-lighter that
he had any company but Christmas!

And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a
bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast
about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread
itself wheresoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the frost
that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse,
rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery
red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye,
and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of
darkest night.

"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.

"A place where miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,"
returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"

A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced
towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a
cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and
woman, with their children and their children's children, and another
generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind
upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song; it had been a
very old song when he was a boy; and from time to time they all joined
in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got
quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank
again.

The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and
passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To
Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful
range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the
thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the
dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some leagues or so from shore,
on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there
stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base,
and storm-birds--born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the
water--rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.

But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that
through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of
brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough
table a