Out come the children:  little ones in night gowns; bigger ones, with playthings, toy animals, dolls.  He pipes, gayer and louder.  They pour in, right and left.  Motion and music fill the air.  The piper lifts Jan to his shoulder (dropping the little crutch) and marches off, up the street at the rear, piping, in the midst of them all.

Last, out of the Minster come tumbling two little acolytes in red, and after them, Peter the Sacristan.  He trips over them in his amazement and terror; and they are gone after the vanishing children before the church-people come out.

The old folks lean from their windows.

Old Ursula
The bell, the bell! the church bell!  They’re bewitched!

[Peter rushes to the bell-rope and pulls it.  The bell sounds heavily.  Reenter, from the church, the citizens by twos and threes and scores.

Old Ursula
I told ye all,—­I told ye!—­Devils’ bargains!
[The bell]
[Kurt, Jacobus, and the others appear.]

Kurt
Peter the Sacristan!  Give by the bell. 
What means this clangor?

Peter the Sacristan
They’re bewitched! bewitched!
[Still pulling and shouting.]

Ursula
They’re gone!

Kurt
  Thy wits!

Old Claus
They’re gone—­they’re gone—­they’re gone!

Peter the Sacristan
The children!

Ursula
—­With the Piper!  They’re bewitched! 
I told ye so.

Old Claus
  —­I saw it with these eyes! 
He piped away the children.

[Horror in the crowd.  They bring out lanterns and candles.  Veronika holds up the forgotten crutch’

Veronika
  Jan—­my Jan!

Kurt
[to her]
Thy boy!  But mine, my three, all fair and straight.—­

AXEL’S wife
[furiously to him]
’T was thy false bargain, thine; who would not pay
The Piper.—­But we pay!

Peter the Sacristan
  Bewitched, bewitched! 
The boys ran out—­and I ran after them,
And something red did trip me—­’t was the Devil. 
The Devil!

Old Ursula
  Ah, ring on, and crack the bell: 
Ye’ll never have them back.—­I told ye so!

[The bell clangs incessantly]

Curtain

ACT II

Scene I:  Inside ‘the Hollow Hill.’

A great, dim-lighted, cavernous place, which shows signs of masonry.  It is part cavern and part cellarage of a ruined, burned-down and forgotten old monastery in the hills.—­The only entrance (at the centre rear), a ramshackle wooden door, closes against a flight of rocky steps.—­Light comes from an opening in the roof, and from the right, where a faggot-fire glows under an iron pot.—­The scene reaches (right and left) into dim corners, where sleeping children lie curled up together like kittens.