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and bent her head forwards--but all would not do. You stood very seriously all
together, although it was difficult enough; but I laughed to myself, and then
I fell off the table, and got a bump, which I have still--for it was not
right of me to laugh. But the whole now passes before me again in thought, and
everything that I have lived to see; and these are the old thoughts, with what
they may bring with them.

"Tell me if you still sing on Sundays? Tell me something about little Mary!
And how my comrade, the other pewter soldier, lives! Yes, he is happy enough,
that's sure! I cannot bear it any longer!"

"You are given away as a present!" said the little boy. "You must remain. Can
you not understand that?"

The old man now came with a drawer, in which there was much to be seen, both
"tin boxes" and "balsam boxes," old cards, so large and so gilded, such as one
never sees them now. And several drawers were opened, and the piano was
opened; it had landscapes on the inside of the lid, and it was so hoarse when
the old man played on it! and then he hummed a song.

"Yes, she could sing that!" said he, and nodded to the portrait, which he
had bought at the broker's, and the old man's eyes shone so bright!

"I will go to the wars! I will go to the wars!" shouted the pewter soldier as
loud as he could, and threw himself off the drawers right down on the floor.
What became of him? The old man sought, and the little boy sought; he was
away, and he stayed away.

"I shall find him!" said the old man; but he never found him. The floor was
too open--the pewter soldier had fallen through a crevice, and there he lay as
in an open tomb.

That day passed, and the little boy went home, and that week passed, and
several weeks too. The windows were quite frozen, the little boy was obliged
to sit and breathe on them to get a peep-hole over to the old house, and there
the snow had been blown into all the carved work and inscriptions; it lay
quite up over the steps, just as if there was no one at home--nor was there
any one at home--the old man was dead!

In the evening there was a hearse seen before the door, and he was borne into
it in his coffin: he was now to go out into the country, to lie in his grave.
He was driven out there, but no one followed; all his friends were dead, and
the little boy kissed his hand to the coffin as it was driven away.

Some days afterwards there was an auction at the old house, and the little boy
saw from his window how they carried the old knights and the old ladies away,
the flower-pots with the long ears, the old chairs, and the old
clothes-presses. Something came here, and something came there; the portrait
of her who had been found at the broker's came to the broker's again; and
there it hung, for no one knew her more--no one cared about the old picture.

In the spring they pulled the house down, for, as people said, it was a ruin.
One could see from the street right into the room with the hog's-leather

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