“I must bear it, if you let it in.” (Laying the palest shadow of a

stress upon the second word.) The opened half-door was opened a

little further, and secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of

light fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an

unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few

common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on

his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a

hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and

thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under

his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they

had been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and

looked unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the

throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his

old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of

clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded

down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would

have been hard to say which was which.

He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the

very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly

vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

before him, without first looking down on