They left this busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, to a low shop where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal were bought.  A gray-haired rascal, of great age, sat smoking his pipe.

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop.  But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely followed by a man in faded black.  After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh.

“Let the charwoman alone to be the first!” cried she who had entered first.  “Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the undertaker’s man alone to be the third.  Look here, old Joe, here’s a chance!  If we haven’t all three met here without meaning it!”

“You couldn’t have met in better place.  You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other two ain’t strangers.  What have you got to sell?  What have you got to sell?”

“Half a minute’s patience, Joe, and you shall see.”

“What odds then!  What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said the woman.  “Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did!  Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these?  Not a dead man, I suppose.”

Mrs. Dilber, whose manner was remarkable for general propitiation, said, “No, indeed, ma’am.”

“If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, a wicked old screw, why wasn’t he natural in his lifetime?  If he had been, he’d have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.”

“It’s the truest word that ever was spoke; it’s a judgment on him.”

“I wish it was a little heavier judgment, and it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else.  Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it.  Speak out plain.  I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it.”

Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening the bundle, and dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.

“What do you call this?  Bed-curtains!”

“Ah!  Bed-curtains!  Don’t drop that oil upon the blankets, now.”

“His blankets?”

“Whose else’s, do you think?  He isn’t likely to take cold without ’em, I dare say.  Ah!  You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place.  It is the best he had, and a fine one too.  They’d have wasted it by dressing him up in it, if it hadn’t been for me.”

Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror.

“Spirit!  I see, I see.  The case of this unhappy man might be my own.  My life tends that way now.  Merciful Heaven, what is this?”

The scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bare, uncurtained bed.  A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon this bed; and on it, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this plundered unknown man.