And here I fell asleep.

And what woke me?
The ghost of a cry.

The ghost of one terrific shriek, which shriek was followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog: a long, dismal, woeful howl, such as a dog gives when a person's dead.

That was _my_ last Christmas Eve.' 'What do you mean ?' is the very abrupt, and, one might say, fierce retort.
'I mean that I made inquiries everywhere about, and, that no living ears but mine heard either that cry or that howl.

So I say they was both ghosts; though why they came to me, I've never made out.' 'I thought you were another kind of man,' says Jasper, scornfully.
'So I thought myself,' answers Durdles with his usual composure; 'and yet I was picked out for it.' Jasper had risen suddenly, when he asked him what he meant, and he now says, 'Come; we shall freeze here; lead the way.' Durdles complies, not over-steadily; opens the door at the top of the steps with the key he has already used; and so emerges on the Cathedral level, in a passage at the side of the chancel.