e 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,--

"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
se