Still the pipers played and the figures danced on; and the Meanest Trustee was compelled to hear and see.  To him it seemed an interminable time.  He would have stopped his ears with his fingers and shut his eyes, only, strangely enough, he could not.  But at last it all came to an end—­the figures floated laughing away, and the pipers came and stood about him, their caps in their hands out-stretched before him.

He eyed them suspiciously.  “What’s that for?”

“It is time to pay the pipers,” said one.

“Let those who dance pay; that’s according to the adage,” and he smiled caustically at his own wit.

“It’s a false adage,” said a second, “like many another that you follow in your world.  It is not the ones who dance that should pay, but the ones who keep others from dancing—­the ones who help to rob the world of some of its joy.  And the ones who rob the most must pay the heaviest.  Come!” And he shook his cap significantly.

A sudden feeling of helplessness overpowered the Meanest Trustee.  Muttering something about “pickpockets” and “hold-ups,” he ferreted around in his pocket and brought out a single coin, which he dropped ungraciously into the insistent cap.

“What’s that?” asked the head piper, curiously.

“It looks to me like money—­good money—­and I’m throwing it away on a parcel of rascals.”

“Come, come, my good man,” and the piper tapped him gently on the shoulder, in the fashion of a professional philanthropist when he remonstrates with a professional vagrant; “don’t you see you are not giving your soul any room to grow in?  A great deal of joy might have reached the world across your open palm.  Instead, you have crushed it in a hard, tight fist.  You must pay now for all the souls you’ve kept from dancing.  Come—­fill all our caps.”

“Fill!” There was something akin to actual terror in the voice of the Meanest Trustee.  He could feel himself growing pale; his tongue seemed to drop back in his throat, choking him.  “That would take a great deal of money,” he managed to wheeze out at last; and then he braced himself, his hands clutched deep in his pockets.  “I will never pay; never, never, never!”

“Oh yes, you will!” and the piper’s smile was insultingly cheerful.  “It was a great deal of joy, you know,” he reminded him.  “Come, lads”—­to the other pipers—­“hold out your caps, there.”

The Meanest Trustee had the strange experience of feeling himself worked by a force outside of his own will; it was as if he had been a marionette with a master-hand pulling the wires.  Quite mechanically he found himself taking something out of his pocket and dropping it into the caps thrust under his very nose, and at the same time his pockets began to fill with money—­his money.  In and out, in and out, his hands flew like wooden members, until there was not a coin left and the last piper turned away satisfied.  He closed his eyes, for he was feeling very weak; then he became conscious of the touch of a warm, friendly hand on his wrist and he heard the voice of the old family doctor—­the one who had set his leg when he was a little shaver and had fallen off the banisters, sliding downstairs.