une."

"I will go to the wars! I will go to the wars!" cried the tin
soldier as loud as he could, and threw himself down on the floor.
Where could he have fallen? The old man searched, and the little boy
searched, but he was gone, and could not be found. "I shall find him
again," said the old man, but he did not find him. The boards of the
floor were open and full of holes. The tin soldier had fallen
through a crack between the boards, and lay there now in an open
grave. The day went by, and the little boy returned home; the week
passed, and many more weeks. It was winter, and the windows were quite
frozen, so the little boy was obliged to breathe on the panes, and rub
a hole to peep through at the old house. Snow drifts were lying in all
the scrolls and on the inscriptions, and the steps were covered with
snow as if no one were at home. And indeed nobody was home, for the
old man was dead. In the evening, a hearse stopped at the door, and
the old man in his coffin was placed in it. He was to be taken to
the country to be buried there in his own grave; so they carried him
away; no one followed him, for all his friends were dead; and the
little boy kissed his hand to the coffin as the hearse moved away with
it. A few days after, there was an auction at the old house, and
from his window the little boy saw the people carrying away the
pictures of old knights and ladies, the flower-pots with the long
ears, the old chairs, and the cup-boards. Some were taken one way,
some another. Her portrait, which had been bought at the picture
dealer's, went back again to his shop, and there it remained, for no
one seemed to know her, or to care for the old picture. In the spring;
they began to pull the house itself down; people called it complete
rubbish. From the street could be seen the room in which the walls
were covered with leather, ragged and torn, and the green in the
balcony hung straggling over the beams; they pulled it down quickly,
for it looked ready to fall, and at last it was cleared away
altogether. "What a good riddance," said the neighbors' houses. Very
shortly, a fine new house was built farther back from the road; it had
lofty windows and smooth walls, but in front, on the spot where the
old house really stood, a little garden was planted, and wild vines
grew up over the neighboring walls; in front of the garden were
large iron railings and a great gate, which looked very stately.
People used to stop and peep throu