MICHAEL
  Wake her, and see!
[The PIPER crosses, humming.]

PIPER
Mind your eyes, tune your tongue! 
Let it never be said, but sung, but sung,
  ‘Out of your cage, out of your cage!’
  Maiden, maiden,—­
[He wakes her gently.  BARBARA sits up, plainly bewildered;
then she sees the PIPER, and says happily:—­

BARBARA
Oh!—­you have come to save me.  They are gone. 
All this, for love of me!

PIPER
[ruefully]
  No, no—­I—­No!

BARBARA
You—­you are robbers?
[Her hands go to the pearls about her neck.]

PIPER
[indignant]
  No!  Blood on the Moon! 
This is the maddest world I ever blinked at.—­
Fear nothing, maiden.  I will tell you all. 
Come, sit you down; and Michael shall keep watch
From yonder hillock, lest that any pass. 
Fear nothing.  None will pass:  they are too sure
The Devil hath this cross-ways!—­Sit you down.

[MICHAEL watches, with jealous wistfulness, from the road (left rear).—­BARBARA half fearfully sits up, on the bank by the well.

BARBARA
Not love?  And yet . . . you do not want my pearls? 
Then why—­

PIPER
  For why should all be love or money? 
Money!  Oho,—­that mouldy thousand guilders
You think of!—­But it was your Hamelin friends
That loved the guilders, and not I.

BARBARA
  Then why—­
Why did you steal me hence?

PIPER
  Why did yourself
Long to be stolen?

BARBARA
[shuddering]
  Ah! to be shut up. . . 
Forever,—­young—­alive!

PIPER
  Alive and singing;
Young,—­young;—­and four thick walls and no more sun,
No music, and no wandering, and no life! 
Think you, I would not steal ail things alive
Out of such doom?—­How can I breathe and laugh
While there are things in cages?—­You are free;
And you shall never more go back again.

BARBARA
And you, who are you then?

PIPER
  How do I know? 
Moths in the Moon!—­Ask me a thing in reason.

BARBARA
And ’t was not . . . that you loved me.

PIPER
  Loved thee?  No!—­
Save but along with squirrels, and bright fish,
And bubbling water.

BARBARA
Then where shall I go?

PIPER
Oh, little bird,—­is that your only song? 
Go?  Everywhere!  Here be no walls, no hedges,
No tolls, no taxes,—­rats nor aldermen! 
Go, say you?  Round the world, and round again!
[Apart]
—­Ah, she was Hamelin-born.
[He watches her]
  But there’s a man,—­
Sky-true, sword-strong, and brave to look upon;
One that would thrust his hand in dragon’s mouth
For your bright sake; one that would face the Devil,
Would swallow fire—­

BARBARA
  You would?

PIPER
[desperately]
  I?—­No, not I! 
Michael,—­yon goodman Michael.