then,
She goes to be a nun?

MICHAEL
Youth to the grave!
And I--vile nothing--cannot go to save her,
Only to look my last--

PIPER
Who knows?

MICHAEL
[bitterly]
Ah, thou!--

PIPER
Poor Nightingale!
[Fingers Us pipe, noiselessly.]

MICHAEL
[rapt with grief]
Oh, but the scorn of her!

PIPER
She smiled on thee.

MICHAEL
Until she heard the truth:--
A juggler,--truly,--and no wandering knight!
Oh, and she wept.
[Wildly]
Let us all hang together.

PIPER
Thanks. Kindly spoken.--Not this afternoon!

MICHAEL
Thou knowest they are given up for dead?

PIPER
Truly.

MICHAEL
Bewitched?

PIPER
So are they.

MICHAEL
Sold to the Devil?

PIPER
[Facing softly up and down, with the restless cunning
of a squirrel at watch]
Pfui! But who else? Of course. This same old Devil!
This kind old Devil takes on him all we do!
Who else is such a refuge in this world?
Who could have burned the abbey in this place,
Where holy men did live? Why, 't was the Devil!
And who did guard us one secluded spot
By burying a wizard at this cross-ways?--
So none dare search the haunted, evil place!
The Devil for a landlord!--So say I!
And all we poor, we strollers, for his tenants;
We gypsies and we pipers in the world,
And a few hermits and sword-swallowers,
And all the cast-aways that Holy Church
Must put in cages--cages--to the end!
[To Michael, who is overcome]
Take heart! I swear,--by all the stars that chime!
I'll not have things in Cages!

MICHAEL
Barbara!
So young,--so young and beautiful!

PIPER
And fit
To marry with friend Michael!

MICHAEL
Do not mock.

PIPER
I mock not.--(Baa--Baa--Barbara!)

MICHAEL
Ay, she laughed,
On that first day. But still she gazed.--I saw
Her, all the while! I swallowed--

PIPER
Prodigies!
A thousand swallows, and no summer yet!
But now,--'t is late to ask,--why did you not
Swallow her father?--That had saved us all.

MICHAEL
They will be coming soon. They will cut off
All her bright hair,--and wall her in forever.

PIPER
Never. They shall not.

MICHAEL
[dully]
Will you give them back,
_Now_?

PIPER
I will never give them back. Be sure.

MICHAEL
And she is made an offering for the town!
I heard it of the gossips.--They have sworn
Jacobus shall not keep his one ewe-lamb
While all the rest go childless.

PIPER
And I swear
That he shall give her up,--to none but thee!

MICHAEL
You cannot do it!

PIPE