Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/237



HERE was a man who once knew very many new fairy tales, but now they had slipped from his memory, he said. The fairy tales which used to come of themselves and visit him did not come any more and knock at his door, and why did they not come? True enough, the man had not been thinking of them for years and days, and had not been expecting they would come and knock again; but most probably they had not been near him at all, for abroad there was war, and in his country the sorrow and distress which war carries with it.

The storks and the swallows came back from their long journey; they had not been thinking of any danger, but when they arrived they found their nests were burned, the dwellings of men and the wicket-gates out of order or even gone, the horses of the enemy trampling over the old graves. They were hard and gloomy times; but even they must come to an end.

And now they had come to an end, the people said; still the fairy tales did not knock at the door or give any sign of themselves.

"They are dead and gone, I suppose, with all the others," said the man.

But fairy tales never die.

And more than a year passed and he began to long sorely after them.

"I wonder if the fairy tales will ever come back and knock at my