At nearer the age of five than four, illegally sold into the London chimney sweeping trade as a chimney sweep's apprentice--a Climbing Boy--for the pittance of back rent owed to the landlord of the shack he had lived in with his widowed, just-deceased mother, Zachariah became little more than a slave to his owner, an abusive inebriate. His mother dead these past five years, the image of her face fading from memory, the little child struggled to remember, but appearing only in deep shadow, even in his dreams, the boy could no longer envision his mother. Then on this day before Christmas in 1843, the very day of the same mystical Christmas Eve that Ebenezer Scrooge had his three ghostly visitors, the oddly familiar face of a kindly lady struck a deep chord that rekindled the memory of the image missing from his dreams--the face of his mother--and gave Zachariah hope for the future. Finally, left alone to find his way home on this magical Christmas Eve, encountering his intoxicated master and severely beaten, Zachariah is saved by.