the finest thing in the world at this
season. I went under the stove, and could lie down quite beneath it.
Ah! I still dream of that stove. Away! away!"

"Does a stove look so beautiful?" asked the Snow Man. "Is it at all
like me?"

"It's just the reverse of you. It's as black as a crow, and has a long
neck and a brazen drum. It eats firewood, so that the fire spurts out
of its mouth. One must keep at its side, or under it, and there one is
very comfortable. You can see it through the window from where you
stand."

And the Snow Man looked and saw a bright polished thing with a brazen
drum, and the fire gleamed from the lower part of it. The Snow Man
felt quite strangely: an odd emotion came over him, he knew not what
it meant, and could not account for it; but all people who are not
snow men know the feeling.

"And why did you leave her?" asked the Snow Man, for it seemed to him
that the stove must be of the female sex. "How could you quit such a
comfortable place?"

"I was obliged," replied the Yard Dog. "They turned me out of doors,
and chained me up here. I had bitten the youngest young master in the
leg, because he kicked away the bone I was gnawing. 'Bone for bone,' I
thought. They took that very much amiss, and from that time I have
been fastened to a chain and have lost my voice. Don't you hear how
hoarse I am? Away! away! I can't talk any more like other dogs. Away!
away! that was the end of the affair."

But the Snow Man was no longer listening to him. He was looking in at
the housekeeper's basement lodging, into the room where the stove
stood on its four iron legs, just the same size as the Snow Man
himself.

"What a strange crackling within me!" he said. "Shall I ever get in
there? It is an innocent wish, and our innocent wishes are certain to
be fulfilled. I must go in there and lean against her, even if I have
to break through the window."

"You will never get in there," said the Yard Dog; "and if you approach
the stove you'll melt away--away!"

"I am as good as gone," replied the Snow Man. "I think I am breaking
up."

The whole day the Snow Man stood looking in through the window. In the
twilight hour the room became still more inviting: from the stove came
a mild gleam, not like the sun nor like the moon; no, it was only as
the stove can glow when he has something to eat. When the room-door
opened, the flame started out of his mouth; this was a habit the stove
had. The flame fell distinctl