h the clock pointed to his
usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among
the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him little
surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of
life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out
in this.

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched
hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from
the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that
the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder and feel
very cold.

They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town,
where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognized its
situation, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops
and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly.
Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of
smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole
quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling
shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and
greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor within, were piled up heaps of
rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse
iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred
and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and
sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a
charcoal-stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly
seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the cold air
without, by a frowsy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a
line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a
woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely
entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was
closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by
the sight of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each
other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man
with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh.

"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who had entered
first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second; and l