which was not his custom. Thus secured
against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and
slippers, and his night-cap; and sat down before the fire to take his
gruel.

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was
obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract
the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The
fire-place was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and
paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the
Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels; Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of
Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like
feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in
butter-boats, hundreds of figures, to attract his thoughts; and yet
that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's
rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank
at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the
disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of
old Marley's head on every one.

"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the room.

After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in
the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell,
that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten
with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great
astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he
looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the
outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and
so did every bell in the house.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an
hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were
succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were
dragging

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 10.]

a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge
then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were
described as dragging chains.

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the
noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs;
then coming straight towards his door.

"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."

His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through
the heavy door, and passed into the roo