of staring. Now let him hang up there and shine, that I may see
myself. If I only knew how I could manage to move from this place, I
should like so much to move. If I could, I would slide along yonder on
the ice, just as I see the boys slide; but I don't understand it; I
don't know how to run."

"Away! away!" barked the old Yard Dog. He was quite hoarse, and could
not pronounce the genuine "bow, wow." He had got the hoarseness from
the time when he was an indoor dog, and lay by the fire. "The sun will
teach you to run! I saw that last winter, in your predecessor, and
before that in _his_ predecessor. Away! away!--and away they all go."

"I don't understand you, comrade," said the Snow Man. "That thing up
yonder is to teach me to run?" He meant the moon. "Yes, it was running
itself, when I saw it a little while ago, and now it comes creeping
from the other side."

"You know nothing at all," retorted the Yard Dog. "But then you've
only just been patched up. What you see yonder is the moon, and the
one that went before was the sun. It will come again to-morrow, and
will teach you to run down into the ditch by the wall. We shall soon
have a change of weather; I can feel that in my left hind leg, for it
pricks and pains me: the weather is going to change."

"I don't understand him," said the Snow Man; "but I have a feeling
that he's talking about something disagreeable. The one who stared so
just now, and whom he called the sun, is not my friend. I can feel
that too."

"Away! away!" barked the Yard Dog; and he turned round three times,
and then crept into his kennel to sleep.

The weather really changed. Towards morning, a thick damp fog lay over
the whole region; later there came a wind, an icy wind. The cold
seemed quite to seize upon one; but when the sun rose, what splendour!
Trees and bushes were covered with hoar frost, and looked like a
complete forest of coral, and every twig seemed covered with gleaming
white buds. The many delicate ramifications, concealed in summer by
the wreath of leaves, now made their appearance: it seemed like a
lace-work, gleaming white. A snowy radiance sprang from every twig.
The birch waved in the wind--it had life, like the rest of the trees
in summer. It was wonderfully beautiful. And when the sun shone, how
it all gleamed and sparkled, as if diamond dust had been strewn
everywhere, and big diamonds had been dropped on the snowy carpet of
the earth! or one could imagine that count