e wouldn't take it from me, but may he have it,
nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!'

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that
he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked
them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the
whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his
nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but
always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they
were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by
struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty,
and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and gaol, in misery's every
refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast
the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing and taught
Scrooge his precepts.

It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts
of this, because the Christmas holidays appeared to be condensed into
the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that, while
Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older,
clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it
until they left a children's Twelfth-Night party, when, looking at the
Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair
was grey.

'Are spirits' lives so short?' asked Scrooge.

'My life upon this globe is very brief,' replied the Ghost. 'It ends
to-night.'

'To-night!' cried Scrooge.

'To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.'

The chimes were ringing the three-quarters past eleven at that moment.

'Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,' said Scrooge, looking
intently at the Spirit's robe, 'but I see something strange, and not
belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a
claw?'

'It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,' was the Spirit's
sorrowful reply. 'Look here!'

From the foldings of its robe it brought two children, wretched, abject,
frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung
upon the outside of its garment.

'O Man! look here! Look, look down here!' exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but
prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have
filled their features