Page:Fairy tales and other stories (Andersen, Craigie).djvu/112

100 it now. He lay with his legs turned towards a porch, and opposite to him sat the watchman asleep.

'Good heavens! have I been lying here in the street dreaming?' he exclaimed. 'Yes, this is East Street sure enough! how splendidly bright and gay! It is terrible



what an effect that one glass of punch must have had on me!'

Two minutes afterwards he was sitting in a fly, which drove him out to Christian's Haven. He thought of the terror and anxiety he had undergone, and praised from his heart the happy present, our own time, which, with all its shortcomings, was far better than the period in which he had been placed a short time before.

III

'On my word, yonder lies a pair o' goloshes!' said the watchman. 'They must certainly belong to the lieutenant who lives upstairs. They are lying close to the door.'

The honest man would gladly have rung the bell and delivered them, for upstairs there was a light still burning; but he did not wish to disturb the other people in the house, and so he let it alone.

'It must be very warm to have a pair of such things on,' said he. 'How nice and soft the leather is!' They fitted