“It can’t be helped, dear; he always gets left outside, and then he weeps.  You see he is lame, and he cannot keep up with us.”

So Doris knew it was the self-same little lad of whom Browning had written in his story of the Piper.

What a chattering there was, to be sure; and what a crowd was gathered about the Piper at the farther end of the hall!  Every once in a while all the children would laugh so loudly that the very ceiling shook.  It was such a merry throng.

“Tell me,” said Doris to her little neighbor,—­“tell me, are you always so gay here?  Do you never quarrel? and have you really lived in this hillside all this long, long time,—­ever since the Piper first came to Hamelin five hundred years ago?”

“Ja, wohl,” replied the girl, nodding her flaxen head.  “We are always so happy; we never quarrel; therefore we are ever young, and what thou callest five hundred years are as nothing to us.  Ah! we are well cared for here, and the Piper teaches us, and we him; and we play and frolic and sometimes travel, ‘und so geht’s.’”

“But what can you teach him?” asked Doris, wondering.

“Ah! many things.  We teach him to tune his fife to the sounds of our laughter, so that when he travels he may pipe new songs.  Ah! thou foolish one, thou thoughtest him the wind.  And we teach him to be as a little child, and then he keeps young always, and his heart is warm and glad.  And we teach him—­ But thou shalt see;” and she nodded again, and smiled into Doris’s wondering eyes.

The hall they were in was long and wide, and hung all about the walls were the most beautiful pictures, that seemed to shift and change every moment into something more strange and lovely.  And as Doris looked she seemed to know what the pictures were,—­and they were only reflections of the children’s pure souls that shone out of their eyes.

“How beautiful!” she thought.

But the Piper was singing to them now; and as she drew nearer him she saw he had two little tots in his arms, and was putting them to sleep on his breast.

So the children were still while the Piper sang his lullaby, and presently the two little ones began to nod; and the Piper did not move, but held them to his kind heart until they were fast asleep.  Then he rose and carried them away and laid them down somewhere.  Doris could not see where, but it must have been far enough away to be out of the sound of their voices; for when he came back he did not lower his tones, but spoke up quite naturally and laughed gayly as he said,—­

“Well, what now, Children?  Shall we show the new friend our manufactory?”

And they were all so anxious to do whatever he proposed that in a moment they had formed quite a bodyguard about the Pied Piper, and were following and leading him down the vast hall.

“What is the manufactory?” asked Doris of a boy who happened to be beside her.