rd dog. "They turned me out of doors
and chained me up here. I had bitten the youngest of my master's sons in
the leg, because he kicked away the bone I was gnawing. 'Bone for bone,'
I thought. But they were very angry, and since 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 like other dogs any more. Away, away! That
was the end of it all."

But the Snow Man was no longer listening. He was looking into the
housekeeper's room on the lower story, where the stove, which was about
the same size as the Snow Man himself, stood on its four iron legs.
"What a strange crackling I feel within me," he said. "Shall I ever get
in there? It is an innocent wish, and innocent wishes are sure to be
fulfilled. I must go in there and lean against her, even if I have to
break the window."

"You must never go in there," said the yard dog, "for if you approach
the stove, you will melt away, away."

"I might as well go," said the Snow Man, "for I think I am breaking up
as it is."

During the whole day the Snow Man stood looking in through the window,
and in the twilight hour the room became still more inviting, for from
the stove came a gentle glow, not like the sun or the moon; it was only
the kind of radiance that can come from a stove when it has been well
fed. When the door of the stove was opened, the flames darted out of its
mouth,--as is customary with all stoves,--and the light of the flames
fell with a ruddy gleam directly on the face and breast of the Snow Man.
"I can endure it no longer," said he. "How beautiful it looks when it
stretches out its tongue!"

The night was long, but it did not appear so to the Snow Man, who stood
there enjoying his own reflections and crackling with the cold. In the
morning the window-panes of the housekeeper's room were covered with
ice. They were the most beautiful ice flowers any Snow Man could desire,
but they concealed the stove. These window-panes would not thaw, and he
could see nothing of the stove, which he pictured to himself as if it
had been a beautiful human being. The snow crackled and the wind
whistled around him; it was just the kind of frosty weather a Snow Man
ought to enjoy thoroughly. But he did not enjoy it. How, indeed, could
he enjoy anything when he was so stove-sick?

"That is a terrible disease for a Snow Man to have," said the yard dog.
"I have suffered from it myself, but I got over it. Away