It was shrouded in a deep black garment which concealed its form and left nothing of it visible, save one outstretched hand and eyes that gleamed yellow within the hood. But for this, it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the darkness by which it was surrounded.

The Spirit's silent, mysterious presence filled Scrooge with dread.

"Am I in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?'' he asked.

The Spirit did not answer, but pointed onward with its hand.

"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,'' Scrooge pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?''

The upper portion of the garment contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer Scrooge received.

Although Scrooge was almost familiar with ghostly company by now, the silent shape was so intimidating that his legs faltered, and he found that he could hardly stand when he made to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as if observing his condition and giving him time to recover, but the knowledge that those ghostly eyes were fixed on him only increased Scrooge's feeling of horror.

"Ghost of the Future!'' he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen so far. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be a changed man from what I was, I am prepared to walk with you, and do it with a grateful heart. Will you not speak to me?''

The Spirit gave him no reply, its hand still pointing straight before them.

"Lead on then!'' said Scrooge. "The night is fading fast, and time is precious to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!''

The Phantom moved away and Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress.

Once they moved, it felt as if the city had sprung up directly around them. Scrooge surveyed their surroundings… They were in the heart of the City, on the Exchange. Businessmen hurried up and down and conversed in groups, full of self-importance, as Scrooge had often seen them.

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of men. Observing that its hand was pointed at them, Scrooge got close to listen to their conversation.

"No,'' said a little man with a thick Scottish accent, "I don't know much about it, I only know he's dead. Happened last night, I believe.''

"Why, what was the matter with him?'' asked another. "I thought he'd never die.''

"God knows, Monaghan,'' replied the first, with a yawn.

"What has he done with his money?'' asked a thick-set man.

"I haven't heard, Astin,'' said the little man, yawning again. "Took it with him to the grave, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me. That's all I know.''

The remark was received with a general laugh.

"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral,'' the man continued, "for upon my life I don't know of anybody who will go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?''

"Well, I'll offer to go, if we all will and if there's a nice bit of lunch to follow. When I come to think of it, it is likely that I was his best friend seeing that once he greeted me in the street!" the man called Astin joked.

The three men strolled away and went to mix with other groups. Scrooge knew these men, but he found their conversation puzzling, and he looked to the Spirit for an explanation.

The Phantom merely glided into another street and pointed its finger to two men passing each other. Scrooge listened in again, thinking that the explanation might lie here.

These men he also knew quite well. They were businessmen too: very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point of always standing well in their esteem, as they could be useful to him in his business dealings.

"How are you, Weaving?'' said one.

"How are you, Sinclair?'' returned the other.

"Well!'' said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at last, did you hear?''

"So I am told,'' returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?''

"Seasonable for Christmas time. Good morning!''

"And good morning to you."

Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit was having him listen in to conversations apparently so trivial, but feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to ponder what he had heard.

These conversations could scarcely be supposed to concern the death of David Marley, his old partner, for that was Past, and this ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of any one immediately connected with himself to whom they could apply. From what he'd heard, however, this man who had died had led his life in such a way that he was not missed now, and that in itself was a moral lesson.

He looked around, expecting his own future self to appear, seeing that the spirit had brought him to the circles where he usually was to be found, but another man stood in the corner he considered his rightful spot and he could not see himself among the businessmen milling around.

In a way he was not surprised, though. He had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and that would mean his future self would not be frequenting these circles anymore. So he thought and hoped that his absence here was a sign of his newborn resolutions having been carried out.

When Scrooge roused himself from his musings, the Phantom was beside him, silent and dark with its hand still outstretched. He felt that the unseen eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold.

They left the Exchange and moved on to an obscure part of town that Scrooge had never set foot in before, though he knew it by its bad reputation. The streets were dirty and narrow; the shops and houses looked dingy, the people drunken and ugly. The whole quarter reeked with crime, filth and misery.

The ghost led Scrooge to a disreputable-looking shop in which iron scraps and old rags were traded. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in was a grey-haired rascal, his eyes sunken in his long, pasty face.

Scrooge and the Phantom came in just as a care-worn woman with a small bundle slunk into the shop, followed shortly by a wiry man in faded black.

Scrooge listened with fascinated horror to the conversation these two carried on with the keeper of the shop. It was clear from it that the woman had been doing housechores for someone who had died yesterday, most likely the same man they had been talking about in the City, while the man worked for the undertaker.

He watched them as they haggled over the meager spoils they had taken from that unknown man, viewing them with a disgust that could hardly have been greater if they had been demons, fighting over the corpse itself.

"Spirit!'' said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I see... the case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life is headed to that end right now. Oh God, what is this?'' He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he was standing by a bed on which, on a bare mattress, beneath a ragged sheet, laid something covered up.

The room was quite dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy. Only a pale eerie light fell straight upon the bed, showing the body of a man, abandoned and uncared for.

Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointing to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it would have disclosed the face. He thought of how easy it would be to do so, and longed to do it, but had no more power to lift the veil than to dismiss the ghost at his side.

If this man could talk now, what would be his foremost thoughts, Scrooge wondered. Greed, riches, out-smarting others? These were most likely what had brought him to this lonely end… He lay in a dark empty house, with not a single human being to say that he had been kind and loving and would be sorely missed. There was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in this room and why they were so restless, Scrooge did not dare to think.

"Spirit!'' he said, "This is a frightening place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!''

Still the Ghost pointed to the head.

"I understand you,'' Scrooge returned, "and I would do it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit, and I cannot bear to think of how cold and pointless this man's life seems now.''

Scrooge turned to the Spirit, as if feeling its gaze.

"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death!'' pleaded Scrooge. "Let me forget this dark chamber, Spirit, though it will be for ever imprinted in my soul.''

The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing; when he withdrew it, they were standing in a street already familiar to Scrooge. He looked around and recognized a place he had visited before with another spirit, Viggo Cratchit's house.

He froze, but the spirit gestured to the window, so he went and looked inside. The couple he had seen before inviting Viggo to Christmas lunch was seated on the small couch.

They were quiet, very quiet, still as statues almost. Then the woman started whimpering softly, like a wounded animal.

"Don't, my darling," the man pleaded, holding her close, trying to comfort her. "You know he wouldn't want you to make yourself and the baby sick with crying."

"I know Karl, he was such a gentle, caring soul," she sobbed. "Ah, but I can't help grieving, it's so unfair... it would have taken so very little to help him, to see that he could go to a doctor and pay for the proper treatments. Why, I think that just decent heating and food and thick warm clothing would have been enough to save him..."

There was anger now under the broken sobbing, and the man cradled her in his arms and let her cry, whispering soft comforting nothings even though his own face was also devastated by grief and his eyes brimming with tears.

"Promise me that we will go to visit him often," she said, the words muffled against the man's shoulder, "and that once the little one is born we will take him or her there so that Viggo might see the baby. He longed so much to hold our baby in his arms…"

"We will Miranda, I promise. It is not such a bad place, you'll see, it's quiet and green and restful. I think he will be okay there. And we will never forget him, we will never leave him alone."

Scrooge's face seemed composed as he stepped back from the window, but his eyes were red and swollen and his palms showed ugly crescent marks, the blood welling under them where nails had dug hard into the flesh.

"Spectre,'' he said in a broken voice, "something tells me that our parting moment is near. There is one thing I need to ask of you… Who was that man we saw lying dead?''

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come nodded, acknowledging the request, and swept him again to the City.

The moment in time seemed different now, though still in the Future. The Spirit went straight on, as in a hurry, until Scrooge, spotting his own office, asked him to stop there a moment, so that he might see what he would be in the days to come.

The Spirit stopped, though its hand remained pointed elsewhere.

Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself.

The Phantom gestured again, urgently, and Scrooge followed it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to look round before entering, wondering where they were.A graveyard.

Here, then, the wretched man whose name he was now to learn, had been buried. The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to one. Scrooge advanced towards it trembling.

"Before I approach that stone to which you point,'' said Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they just shadows of things that May be?''

Still the ghost pointed to the grave by which it stood.

"Men's choices of action will foreshadow certain ends. If they persevere in these choices the end will be the one expected,'' Scrooge insisted. "But if the chosen behaviors change, the end will change. Say it is so with what you are about to show me!''

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

Scrooge crept towards the grave and read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Sean Scrooge.

"Am I that man who laid upon the bed?'' he cried, falling to his knees.

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

"No, Spirit! Oh no, no! Spirit," he cried, clutching at its robe, "hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?''

For the first time the Spirit's hand appeared to shake.

"Good Spirit,'' Scrooge persisted, "I know you pity me, I beg you to intercede for me. Tell me that I may still change these shadows you have shown me, by leading a different life!''

The hand trembled.

"I will honor Christmas in my heart and actions, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall be always within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may wipe away the writing on this stone!''

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his pleading, and held it tight.

The Spirit though was stronger, and snatched his hand away as its shape seemed to alter under the hood and robe. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.