Page:A Christmas Carol (1916, Rackham).djvu/65

Rh moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.

Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For, as its belt sparkled and glittered, now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness; being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And, in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.

‘Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?’ asked Scrooge.

‘I am!’

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if, instead of being so close behind him, it were at a distance.

‘Who and what are you?’ Scrooge demanded.

‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.’

‘Long Past?’ inquired Scrooge, observant of its dwarfish stature.

‘No. Your past.’

Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him; but he had a special