know about the Pied Piper?" "_What_ about the Pied Piper?" we said.
And this is what they told us about him.

It seems that once, long, long ago, that little town was dreadfully
troubled with rats. The houses were full of them, the shops were full of
them, the churches were full of them, they were _everywhere_. The people
were all but eaten out of house and home. Those rats,

They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats!

At last it got so bad that the people simply couldn't stand it any longer.
So they all came together and went to the town hall, and they said to the
Mayor (you know what a mayor is?), "See here, what do we pay you your
salary for? What are you good for, if you can't do a little thing like
getting rid of these rats? You must go to work and clear the town of them;
find the remedy that's lacking, or--we'll send you packing!"

Well, the poor Mayor was in a terrible way. What to do he didn't know. He
sat with his head in his hands, and thought and thought and thought.

Suddenly there came a little _rat-tat_ at the door. Oh! how the Mayor
jumped! His poor old heart went pit-a-pat at anything like the sound of a
rat. But it was only the scraping of shoes on the mat. So the Mayor sat
up, and said, "Come in!"

And in came the strangest figure! It was a man, very tall and very thin,
with a sharp chin and a mouth where the smiles went out and in, and two
blue eyes, each like a pin; and he was dressed half in red and half in
yellow--he really was the strangest fellow!--and round his neck he had a
long red and yellow ribbon, and on it was hung a thing something like a
flute, and his fingers went straying up and down it as if he wanted to be
playing.

He came up to the Mayor and said, "I hear you are troubled with rats in
this town."

"I should say we were," groaned the Mayor.

"Would you like to get rid of them? I can do it for you."

"You can?" cried the Mayor. "How? Who are you?"

"Men call me the Pied Piper," said the man, "and I know a way to draw
after me everything that walks, or flies, or swims. What will you give me
if I rid your t