PIPER
  Oh, how horrible! 
Why should he not be living?—­What am I?

VERONIKA
I do not know.

PIPER
  Do you take me for the Devil?

VERONIKA
I do not know.

PIPER
  Yet you were not afraid?

VERONIKA
What is there now to fear?

PIPER
[watching her]
  Where are the townsfolk?

VERONIKA
They are all gone to Rudersheim. . .

PIPER
[still watchful]
  How so?

VERONIKA
Where, for a penance, Barbara, Jacob’s daughter,
Will take the veil.  His one, for all of ours! 
It will be over now.

PIPER
  Have none returned?

VERONIKA
I know not; I am searching, since the dawn.

PIPER
To-day?

VERONIKA
And every day. 
PIPER
  That herd-bell, there
Why do you bring it?

VERONIKA
[sobbing]
Oh, he loves them so. 
I knew, if he but heard it, he would follow—­

PIPER
No more.  I know!

VERONIKA
  An if he could!

PIPER
[like a wounded animal]
  You hurt me
Somewhere,—­you hurt me!

VERONIKA
  You!—­A man of air?

PIPER
What, am I that?

VERONIKA
What are you?—­Give them back! 
Give them to me, I say.  You have them hidden. 
Are they all living?

PIPER
[struggling with pity]
  Yes, yes.

VERONIKA
  Give them back!

PIPER
No.

VERONIKA
But they live, they live?

PIPER
  —­Wilt thou believe me?

VERONIKA
And are they safe?

PIPER
  Yes.

VERONIKA
  And you hide them?

PIPER
  Yes.

VERONIKA
And are they . . . warm?

PIPER
  —­Yes.

VERONIKA
  Are they happy?—­Oh,
That cannot be!—­But do they laugh, sometimes?

PIPER
Yes.

VERONIKA
—­Then you’ll give them back again!

PIPER
No, never.

VERONIKA
[Half to herself, distraught between suspense and hope]
I must be patient.

PIPER
  Woman, they all are mine. 
I hold them in my hands; they bide with me. 
What’s breath and blood,—­what are the hearts of children,
To Hamelin,—­while it heaps its money-bags?

VERONIKA
You cared not for the money.

PIPER
  No?—­You seem
A foreign woman,—­come from very far,
That you should know.

VERONIKA
  I know.  I was not born
There.  But you wrong them.  There were yet a few
Who would have dealt with you more honestly
Than this Jacobus, or—­

PIPER
  Or Kurt the Syndic! 
Believe It not.  Those two be tongue and brain
For the whole town!  I know them.  And that town
Stands as the will of other towns, a score,
That make us wandering poor the things we are! 
It stands for all, unto the end of time,