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Rh dignity. He wasn't as ghostly looking as the others, but he was quite as ghastly.

Suddenly eleven spirits entered at once.

"Who are they? " I whispered to Marley's Ghost.

"Those are the various ghosts," he replied, "which appeared to King Richard III. when he was in his tent in Bosworth Field. Of course you recognize the Tower Princes."

"Yes," said I, looking at the misty shapes of two beautiful children, who were like and yet unlike the familiar picture of them.

Queen Anne, too, I knew, and King Henry VI., but Buckingham, Clarence, and the others were to me simply picturesque phantoms, and I did not know which was which.

Marley's Ghost answered my questions politely, but I could see his attention was otherwise attracted, and he was covertly listening to a controversy which was going on between the Ghost of Hamlet's Father and the Headless Horseman.

"What is the trouble? " said I.

"The trouble is," replied Marley's Ghost, "that there are three ghosts who want to belong to the club, and Hamlet doesn't want them. He thinks they aren't sufficiently famous; and as, when the club is formed, Hamlet will doubtless be elected president, of course his opinion must be considered. But the Headless Horseman thinks these doubtful members should come in."

"Who are they?" I asked.

"There they stand," said Marley's Ghost, pointing to three phantom figures that stood apart from the rest.

Two seemed to be companions—a tall, erect man, with close-curling red hair and queer red whiskers, and a woman in black, pale, and with a dreadful face.

The other ghost stood alone, and seemed rather morose and dejected, though apparently the spirit of a well-to-do gentleman.

"Those two together," said Marley's Ghost, "are Peter Quint and Miss Jessel."

"And who are they?" said I.