“Ho, ho!” he laughed.  “They say it is an ill wind that blows good to none.  Now thou dost prove the proverb.  The tempest that didst blow thee from thy course mayhap may send me on my way rejoicing.  I long have wished to leave this land and seek the distant province where my kindred dwell, but there was never one to take my place.  And when I spake of going, my townsmen said me nay.  ’Twas quite as bad, they vowed, as if the priest should suddenly desert his parish, with none to shepherd his abandoned flock.  ‘Who’ll cheer us in our doldrums?’ they demanded.  ’Who’ll help us bear our troubles by making us forget them?  Thou canst not leave us, Piper, until some other merry soul comes by to set our feet a-dancing.’  Now thou art come.”

“Yes, I!  A merry soul indeed!” Aldebaran cried in bitterness.

“Well, maybe not quite that,” his host admitted.  “But thou couldst pass as one.  Thou couldst at least put on my grotesque garb, couldst learn the quips and quirks by which I make men laugh.  Thou wouldst not be the first man who has hid an aching heart behind a smile.  The tune thou pipest may not bring thee pleasure, but if it sets the world to dancing it is enough.  And, too, it is an honest way to earn thy bread.  Canst think of any other?”

Aldebaran hid his face within his hands.  “No, no!” he groaned.  “There is no other way, and yet my soul abhors the thought, that I, a king’s son, should descend to this!  The jester’s motley and the cap and bells.  How can I play such a part?”

“Because thou art a king’s son,” said the Jester.  “That in itself is ample reason that thou shouldst play more royally than other men whatever part Fate may assign thee.”

Aldebaran sat wrapped in thought.  “Well,” was the slow reply after long pause, “an hundred years from now, I suppose, ’twill make no difference how circumstances chafe me now.  A poor philosophy, but still there is a grain of comfort in it.  I’ll take thy offer, friend, and give thee gratitude.”

And so next day the two went forth together.  Aldebaran showed a brave front to the crowd, glad of the painted mask that hid his features, and no one guessed the misery that lurked beneath his laugh, and no one knew what mighty tax it was upon his courage to follow in the Jester’s lead and play buffoon upon the open street.  It was a thing he loathed, and yet, ’twas as the Jester said, his training in the royal court had made him sharp of wit and quick to read men’s minds; and to the countrymen who gathered there agape, around him in the square, his keen replies were wonderful as wizard’s magic.

And when he piped—­it was no shallow fluting that merely set the rustic feet a-jig, it was a strange and stirring strain that made the simplest one among them stand with his soul a-tiptoe, as he listened, as if a kingly train with banners went a-marching by.  So royally he played his part, that even on that first day he surpassed his teacher.  The Jester, jubilant that this was so, thought that his time to leave was near at hand, but when that night they reached his dwelling Aldebaran tore off the painted mask and threw himself upon the hearth.