y at
blindman's-buff.

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and
having read all the news-papers, and beguiled the rest of the evening
with his banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which
had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of
rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so
little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must
have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek
with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old
enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the
other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that
even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his
hands. 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

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 8.]

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 upon 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