He strikes a match to light the tinder box so he can look around his room, when lo and behold! The dog from the first chamber in the tree appears before him. Living in rags and in squalid digs, he has nothing but the tinder box he had fetched for the witch. Unfortunately, he keeps spending, and because he has no job, he is eventually penniless again. The soldier becomes well-liked about town, not least because he gives a fair amount of his money away. When the soldier hears of a beautiful princess who is kept locked away in a brazen castle (i.e., a castle made of brass) by her father, the king, because the king had heard a prophecy that his daughter would marry a common soldier (and there’s nothing kings want less than for their daughters to marry ordinary soldiers), the soldier longs to see the princess, but he’s told it’s no good: nobody can see her. With his new-found wealth, he turns himself into a fine-looking gentleman, wearing the best clothes.

He then continues on his way towards town, with all his treasure – and with the tinder box. She says she won’t tell him and, true to his word, the soldier cuts her head off. But before he does so, he demands to know what she wants with it, and threatens to cut off her head with his sword if she refuses. When he’s back out of the tree and standing before the witch, she tells him to hand over the tinder box. When he signals to the witch to pull him up, she reminds him about her tinder box, and he confesses he’d forgotten it! So he goes and finds it.

Tinderbox fairy tale