hardly bear the voices of her children in their play.

At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door,
and met her husband; a man whose face was careworn and depressed, though
he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now, a kind of
serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to
repress.

He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the fire,
and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a
long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.

'Is it good,' she said, 'or bad?' to help him.

'Bad,' he answered.

'We are quite ruined?'

'No. There is hope yet, Caroline.'

'If _he_ relents,' she said, amazed, 'there is! Nothing is past hope, if
such a miracle has happened.'

'He is past relenting,' said her husband. 'He is dead.'

She was a mild and patient creature, if her face spoke truth; but she
was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so with clasped hands.
She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was
the emotion of her heart.

'What the half-drunken woman, whom I told you of last night, said to me
when I tried to see him and obtain a week's delay--and what I thought
was a mere excuse to avoid me--turns out to have been quite true. He was
not only very ill, but dying, then.'

'To whom will our debt be transferred?'

'I don't know. But, before that time, we shall be ready with the money;
and even though we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to find so
merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep to-night with light
hearts, Caroline!'

Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children's
faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little
understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man's
death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the
event, was one of pleasure.

'Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,' said Scrooge; 'or
that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be for ever
present to me.'

The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet;
and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself,
but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit's house;
the dwelling he had visited before; and found the mother and the
children seated round the fire.

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues