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 wore 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. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all permitted
to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit
never walked beyond our counting-house--mark me!--in life my spirit never
roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary
journeys lie before me!"

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful,

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 13.]

to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost
had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting
off his knees.

"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed, in a
business-like manner, though with humility and deference.

"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.

"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling all the time?"

"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. Incessant
torture of remorse."

"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.

"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.

"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,"
said Scrooge.

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain
so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would
have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.

"Oh, captive, bound, and double-ironed,"