Oh, how dark and tiresome it was! But it was worse than that one day, when they told him he was to be hanged, "hanged to-morrow," they told him.
What a fright the soldier was in, and, worst of all, he had left his tinder-box at the hotel.
Morning came! Through the narrow bars of his little window the soldier could see the people all hurrying out of town. They were going to see him hanged.
He heard the drums, he saw the soldiers marching along. He wished he were marching with them. Alas, alas! that could never be now—
A little shoemaker's apprentice, with a leather apron, came running along. He was in such a hurry that he lost one of his slippers. It fell close under the soldier's window, as he sat peering out through the narrow bars.
The soldier called to the boy, "There is no hurry, for I am still here. Nothing will happen till I go. I will give you two-pence if you will run to the house where I used to live and fetch me my tinder-box. You must run all the way."
The shoemaker's boy thought he would like to earn twopence, and off he raced to bring the tinder-box.
He found it. "A useless little box," he said to himself, but back he raced with it to the soldier; and then—what do you think happened?
Outside the town the scaffold had been raised, the soldiers were drawn up round it, as well as crowds of people.