"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.
"Oh, 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 out, and
touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled
hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and
pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No
change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any
grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has
monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to
him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but
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