It was like a race in a dream.  Their feet seemed not to touch the ground.  The leaves rustled—­no, the children chattered as they fluttered—­no, hurried along.  Doris could catch little sentences here and there; but they seemed to be in a strange tongue, and she did not understand.  But by and by she grew very familiar with the sounds, and, strangely enough, she found she could make out the meaning of the queer words.

“It ’s German,” she thought; “I know they’re talking German;” and so she listened very attentively.

“Sie ist eine Fremde,” she heard one say to another; “sie gehoert nicht zu uns,”—­which she immediately knew meant:  “She is a stranger; she doesn’t belong to us.”

“Nein,” replied the other; “aber sie scheint gut und brav zu sein.”  At which Doris smiled; she liked to be thought “good and sweet.”

On and on they went; and after a time things began to have a very foreign look, and this startled Doris considerably.

“We can’t have crossed the ocean,” she thought.  But when she asked her nearest neighbor where they were and whether they had crossed the Atlantic, he smiled and said,—­

“Ja, gewiss; wir sind in Deutschland.  Wir gehen, schon, nach Hamelin,”—­which rather puzzled Doris; for she found they had crossed the sea and were in Germany and going to Hamelin.

“It must be the Piper’s wonderful way,” she thought.

But she did not feel at all homesick nor tired nor afraid; for the Piper’s fife seemed to keep them all in excellent spirits, and she found herself wondering what she would do when they came to the fabled hill-side,—­for she never doubted they would go there.  On they went, faster and faster, the Piper behind them playing all the while.

She saw the broad river; and all the children shouted, “Die Weser.”

One little flaxen-haired girl told her they were nearing Hamelin.

“It used to have a big wall around it, with twenty towers and a large fort; but that was all blown up by the French, years and years ago,” she explained.

“But it has a chain-bridge,” she remarked proudly,—­“a chain-bridge that stretches quite across the Weser.”

Doris was just about to say:  “Why, that’s nothing!  We have a huge suspension bridge in New York;” but the words seemed to twist themselves into a different form, and the memory of home to melt away, and she found herself murmuring, “Ach, so?” quite like the rest of the little Teutons.

But at length the fife ceased playing, and the children stopped.

There they were in quaint old Hamelin, with its odd wooden houses, and its old Munster that was all falling to ruin, and its rosy-cheeked children, who did not seem to notice the new-comers at all.

“We must be invisible,” thought Doris; and indeed they were.

Then the Pied Piper came forward and beckoned them on, and softly they followed him to the very hill-side, that opened, as Doris knew it would, and they found themselves in a vast hall.  A low rumbling startled Doris for a moment, but then she knew it was only the hill-side closing upon them.  She seemed to hear a faint cry as the last sound died, away, and was tempted to run back, for she feared some child had been hurt; but her companion said,—­