It came on through the heavy door, and a spectre passed into the room before his eyes.  And upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, “I know him!  Marley’s ghost!”

The same face, the very same.  Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots.  His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now.  Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him,—­though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, and noticed the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin,—­he was still incredulous.

“How now!” said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever.  “What do you want with me?”

“Much!”—­Marley’s voice, no doubt about it.

“Who are you?”

“Ask me who I was.”

“Who were you, then?”

“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.”

“Can you—­can you sit down?”

“I can.”

“Do it, then.”

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that, in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation.  But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.

“You don’t believe in me.”

“I don’t.”

“What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

“Because a little thing affects them.  A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats.  You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.  There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means waggish then.  The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his horror.

But how much greater was his horror when, the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

“Mercy!  Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?  Why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?”

“It is required of every man, that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.  I cannot tell you all I would.  A very little more is 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!”