FROM Hanover to Hameln is a good twenty-five mile walk, with a mountain at the end: to go over which, however, shortens the journey by several miles.

In the case of Tom Osgood and Fred Taylor, who reached the foot of the mountain towards the close of what had been to them a long and weary day, the one—that is, Tom—concluded to go around the mountain, while Fred chose the shorter if rougher path over the top. Why the boys should have taken this long and tiresome tramp when a railroad runs the whole way in sight of the road which they travelled, or why they should not have walked to Hildesheim, or Minden, or Nienburg, or any other of the equally unattractive places within the same distance from Hanover, I am sure I do not know. If they had, though—and for that matter if one of them had not chosen to climb the Koppenberg rather than go around it—this story would most likely have never been written.

For my own part I am very glad they did it; and Fred Taylor as long as he lives will never cease to be glad that he was the one to take the mountain path, though with the pleasure—as indeed is the case with nearly all our best pleasures—there will always come a little sudden thrill of pain.

Why the mountain was called the Koppenberg does not concern this story at all. It is quite enough to know that it was a pretty tough mountain to climb and that before Fred was a quarter of the way up he began to be sorry he had not taken the longer route with Tom. It was too late now however to turn back; and besides unless he made good time Tom would beat him in the race, which considering the greater distance Tom had to travel would be humiliating in the extreme. So putting a little extra steam in his legs, and whistling a tune his quick ear had picked up on the way, he trudged on, up the steep road, through the terraced vineyards, past an old ruin here and a herdsman’s hut there, until finally the road lost itself in a path and went winding up into the woods which covered the mountain for more than half the distance from its top.

It was late in the afternoon; but in Hanover on the 26th of June the sun does not set until nearly half-past eight, so that Fred had no fear of being overtaken by the dark.

For some time Fred had not heard a sound but his own whistle. Indeed now that he was fairly in the solitude of the woods he did not expect to hear or meet any one, and he was accordingly startled when suddenly out of the deeper woods came a sound that seemed to be another whistle answering his own.

Fred stopped and listened.

Was it a whistle? or were they the notes of a flute?

At any rate it could be nothing dangerous. Highwaymen and banditti do not usually whistle or play musical instruments, and Fred felt that it would be perfectly safe to push on. As he drew nearer, the tones became louder and with them were mixed what were unmistakably the voices of children. Fred, with increasing curiosity, hastened his steps; and in another moment a sight that was as odd as it was pretty met his eyes.

Yes, they were children—as many as a hundred of them, Fred thought—funny little old-fashioned German children; the girls with long flaxen braids and dresses that might have been their grandmothers’, and the boys with garments so extraordinary that Fred, who thought he could never be astonished by what a German boy might have on, was fairly lost in surprise.

But more odd than all the rest was the musician himself—a tall, thin, smooth-faced man, with blue eyes and scanty hair and an astonishing cloak, half of yellow and half of red, that reached from his shoulders to his heels. He was playing, on what seemed to be a flageolet, a brisk enlivening tune, and was lightly beating time with his feet.

Fred looked on in amazement. “It must be a Sunday-school picnic,” he said to himself at last, “only I never heard of such a thing in Germany, and what a queer-looking man for a superintendent.”

If it were a Sunday-school picnic it was a very remarkable one. There were no grown-up people at all but the one man, and the children seemed to be having no end of a good time. There were two little girls, it is true, standing quietly and soberly not far from Fred, but all of the others were either dancing or playing some lively game.

Fred could not help wondering why the two were left out; and going up to them he asked in his politest manner and best German: “Why aren’t you dancing and why do you look so sad when everybody else is so happy?”

The little things looked up curiously. They were pretty, Fred thought, but not so pretty as another and older girl who came out of the crowd just then and overheard Fred’s question.

“They’ve been sad all day,” she answered in a pretty, motherly way; “their little brothers were left behind and they can’t enjoy it because their brothers aren’t enjoying it too.”

“Mine was lame,” said one of the little girls sadly.

“And mine was dumb,” said the other.

“Oh come!” said Fred, “you’d better go in and have a dance. It will be getting dark before long and you’ll have to go home and then you can tell your little brothers all about it.”

The little children seemed puzzled and a grave look came on the elder girl’s face.

“It is never dark,” she said. “It is always light here.”

It seemed indeed to be lighter than before. Where it had come from, Fred could not tell, but all the forest was lit up with a strange warm glow. There were beautiful flowers too growing at his feet and birds singing in the air that Fred had not noticed before.

“Won’t you come and dance?” the girl went on.

Fred was very fond of dancing, and it was hard to refrain, especially since the music was now fairly exhilarating; but he was very tired and had still before him a tedious climb. Under the circumstances he would rather rest himself by talking to this pretty sweet-voiced German girl—if she would only stay.

“Well, to tell the truth,” he said apologetically, “I’ve walked from Hanover to-day and I’m rather tired. But I’d like awfully to talk to you. Can’t you stay away from them for a few minutes? You aren’t a teacher, are you?”

“A teacher?” inquiringly.

“Yes. Isn’t it a Sunday-school?”

“I don’t think I understand.”

Fred thought his German must be at fault.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said, “‘Sontags-schule,’ that’s what they call it in New York. I’ve seen it on the German churches.”

“New York? what is that?”

Fred gazed in greater astonishment.

“Now you don’t mean to say you don’t know where New York is?”

The girl shook her head in a dreamy, abstracted way.

“I have heard of Hameln,” she said, “and Hanover, and Jerusalem where the Holy Sepulchre is. It was there the Count Rudolph went to war against the Turks. But he never came back. Do you know,” eagerly, “whether the Christians have taken Jerusalem?”

“My gracious!” exclaimed Fred below his breath, “it must be a lunatic asylum!” Then aloud: “Why there hasn’t been a war in Jerusalem for five hundred years—not since the crusades.”

She passed her hand across her forehead in a bewildered way.

“I don’t know,” she said, “it seems as though I had forgotten. Perhaps it’s because I don’t talk. I’m the eldest, and all the others dance and play games, and the Piper, he plays all the time and so I don’t have anybody to talk to at all.”

Fred was now quite confirmed in his new idea; and yet the girl was so pretty and gentle that he could not bear to think of her being out of her mind.

“Why don’t you go back,” he asked kindly, “if you’re unhappy? Was it Hameln you came from?”

She shook her head.

“It was so long ago,” she said, “I can’t recollect.”

“Well, it couldn’t have been much over fourteen years. I’m only fifteen myself. Perhaps I’d ought to have introduced myself. I’m Fred Taylor, of New York and I’m studying German at Hanover. It’s purer there, you know, than it is most anywhere else.”

Fred was uncertain how much she understood. Her own language, he had noticed, was very simple, and when he used an unaccustomed word her forehead would contract as though she could not follow him. Her next words, though, showed that she had understood his introduction.

“I am Gretchen Haffelfinger,” she said simply; “and you must not think I am not happy, because I am. The Piper is very kind to us.”

“And do you live up here all the time?”

Her forehead contracted again.

“What is time?” she asked.

This was a problem that Fred wasn’t prepared to solve and he discreetly changed the form of his question.

“Do you live near here?”

The girl’s look turned toward a long glade in the forest, through which Fred fancied he could see a lofty castle with battlemented walls and windows that gleamed in the strange, rich glow.

“Is that the asylum?” he cried.

“I don’t think I understand,” wistfully.

What was there she did understand? Fred’s heart warmed compassionately toward the simple-minded child, while a sudden thought came into his head. Once back in her own place—if Hameln were her own place—might not the familiar scenes bring back her scattered wits? Of the difficulties in the way he did not think.

“Say, Gretchen!” he whispered, eagerly, “wouldn’t you like to go back with me to Hameln?”

A sudden light gleamed in the soft eyes and her breath came and went quickly as she moved a step nearer and looked beseechingly into his face. Fred will always insist that if they had started at that moment she would have gotten off. He reached forward, and for one instant her warm little hand lay in his. But before he could fairly grasp it, the Piper had sounded one clear, sharp note; the fingers that he so nearly held drew themselves away; the blue eyes which had been fixed on his, turned with a troubled look to the Piper; the slight form moved back, at first a single step, then slowly retreated from Fred’s side, while the children, attracted by the same call, came running from all directions and formed in a double column behind their curiously dressed leader. In another moment the whole procession was in motion. Fred counted them mechanically as they filed by. Without Gretchen, who still delayed, or the Piper, there were just one hundred and twenty-nine.

What a weird intoxicating march it was! The children, for their part, laughed and sang; the Piper played as though he, too, were insane; and even Fred could scarcely resist the impulse to join in. If he did not get away he felt that he should be carried off by the music in spite of himself. But he would make at least one more effort to save his little friend.

“Gretchen!” he cried, holding out his hands.

She smiled, half sadly, and shook her head.

“Gretchen!” he cried once more, “come!”

There was no answer. The music had suddenly stopped, the Piper with the children had vanished; and, while Fred looked, the little maiden with the soft eyes and tender wistful smile faded out of his sight. The glow had gone, too, with the birds and the flowers; there was no longer any battlemented castle in the distance: it was the shade of the forest, and Fred was all alone.

Tom Osgood meanwhile had trudged his scarcely less weary way along the road around the foot of the mountain, and about seven o’clock had reached the city gate. Not that there was any gate—that had been gone for generations—but there was an old stone archway overgrown with ivy, in and out of which the birds fluttered and under which Tom had to walk to enter the city. Just before reaching it, he stopped for a moment and looked down into the river that flowed swiftly below the city walls. The sight struck a chord of recollection.

“What was it I used to read about this place?” he asked himself. “Seems to me it was in a piece I spoke once at school.”

He waited a minute, but memory made no response. Then picking up his satchel he pushed on into the town.

To his surprise, when he had reached the hotel where they had agreed to meet, Fred was not there nor had anything been heard of him. The Portier assured Tom that the road was perfectly plain and nothing could have happened; but this did not altogether relieve him and it was with a good deal of anxiety, having ordered supper, that he sat down to wait. His suspense, however, did not last long. In fifteen minutes the door opened and Fred came in.

That something had happened, Tom guessed at once. There was a strange look of excitement on Fred’s face, and his step was more active, Tom thought, than a boy’s ought to be who had just walked over the Koppenberg.

“Feel my pulse, won’t you, Tom?” he cried nervously, throwing down his satchel, “and see if I’ve got a fever. Did I seem out of my head when I left you? Did I talk wild, Tom? Did you ever hear of insanity in my family? Really and truly, Tom, I don’t know whether I’m crazy or not.”

Tom was gazing at his friend in speechless astonishment.

“What in the world’s got into you?” he gasped.

“It didn’t get into me. I got into it; and it was a lunatic asylum as near as I could make out. Only the keeper looked like a clown in a circus and the rest were all children. I tried to get one of them away, Tom”—Fred’s voice broke a little—“but just then the whole thing vanished, just like people do in a dream, you know. I don’t know where she went. I could see the spot where she stood, but she wasn’t there—”

“Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” interrupted Tom.

“Dreaming!” indignantly. “Do I generally dream in daylight? Would I stop to dream when I was in such a hurry to get here ahead of you? and besides, Tom, I can whistle the march the man played. Just listen.”

Fred was a good whistler and never had to hear a tune more than once to remember it perfectly. Now his excitement lent strength and clearness to his notes so that any one might have taken them for those of the Piper himself. So loud and clear were they indeed that the Portier was drawn by them from his desk, the Ober-kellner from the dining-room, the Director from the office, and most of the guests from the reading and smoking rooms. In fact, before Fred was through he had quite an audience, most of whom, he noticed, had a puzzled, inquiring look on their faces as though something about the whistle or the tune were out of the way. What the look meant he did not have to wait long to find out.

“You whistle very well, sir,” the Director remarked, almost before Fred was fairly through; “but perhaps you are not aware that that tune is forbidden in Hameln.”

Fred was surprised, and a little frightened.

“Why,” he stammered, “I only learned it to-day.”

“Not from any one in Hameln?”

“No, I don’t suppose it was. He was on the other side of the mountain.”

The Director shook his head sagaciously.

“It is not allowed in Hameln,” he repeated; “I wouldn’t whistle it again if I were you.”

“But why not?” demanded Fred. “Why can’t a man whistle what he likes?”

“For the same reason,” gravely, “that it is forbidden to play music of any kind in the Bungenstrasse.”

Fred stared.

“What is the Bungenstrasse?” he asked; “and why may not one play in it?”

“Do not the young herren know the story?”

The young herren did not know the story, or if they did had forgotten it.

“Is there a story?” cried Tom. “Tell it to us, won’t you, Herr Director?”

The Director bowed gravely.

“Probably the young herren will recall it, for one of their English poets has written about it. It happened nearly six hundred years ago that the town of Hameln was overrun with rats—”

That was enough. Tom had found his clue.

“Of course I’ve read it!” he cried. “That was what I’ve been trying to remember all day:

Don’t you recollect, Fred? They couldn’t get rid of them, and one day an old fellow came into town and offered to pipe them out for a thousand dollars or whatever it was, and they took him up. But when he had done it, and the rats were all drowned in the river, they wouldn’t stick to the bargain, and so he struck up his pipe again, and this time all the children followed him—why, what’s the matter, Fred?”

“The young gentleman is ill,” exclaimed the Portier, and would have rushed off for a doctor, had not Fred interfered.

“No! no!” impatiently, “I’m not sick, Tom; but don’t you see? Is it so?” turning to the Director, “Is that the story?”

The Director nodded. He was flattered by their interest, and besides nothing that an American did ever surprised him.

“Evidently the young gentleman has read it,” he said. “All the children in town followed him as far as the mountain side, and then, when their fathers and mothers thought they could go no further, the mountain opened and they were all swallowed up—all, that is, but one little boy who was dumb, and another who was lame. This was the street they went down. On the Rattenfangerhauser opposite is a tablet commemorating the event; and ever since that time there has been no music played in the Bungenstrasse. Even if a bridal procession goes through the street the music must not play. And the tune which you were whistling was the tune the Piper played. It was scored at the time by the Kapellmeister, and every one in Hameln knows it, just as one knows the Wacht am Rhein; but no one may play it, or whistle it, or sing it on the streets. Of course, if the young gentleman had known it was forbidden he would not have whistled it.”

“Of course not,” said Fred, abstractedly. “Where is the house with the inscription on it? Can we see it?”

“Certainly,” said the Director. “It is not yet too dark. The house is yonder on the corner of the Osterstrasse.”

By this time Tom was burning with curiosity, and longing for a chance to speak with Fred alone.

“Come along,” he cried, “let’s go over to the old place and look at it.”

Fred was not unwilling, and tired and hungry though they were, both boys rushed out of the hall across the Platz. The hotel people interchanged smiles and shrugs, the Ober-kellner went back to the dining-room, the Portier to his desk, the Director to his office and the guests to their rooms. “Americans!” one said to the other, quite as though that dismissed the subject.

In the few minutes which it took to cross the square, Fred gave his friend all the particulars of the story which in his excitement he had not before supplied, and for lack of which Tom had not been able until now to obtain a clear idea of what had happened. “Then your idea is,” he said soberly, when Fred had finished, “that those were the children who were lost?”

Fred nodded gravely. “I suppose they must have been,” he said.

“And that the man was the Pied Piper of Hameln?”

Fred nodded as before. By this time they were in front of the house and had discovered the inscription, which was written in queer old characters, once gilded, but now so weather beaten as to be scarcely legible.

“What in the world does it say?” asked Tom.

Fred scanned it as closely as he could in the fading light.

“It’s hard to tell,” he said. “Part of it is Latin and part German; but it’s badly spelled, and there is some of it that must be Dutch. As near as I can make out it reads like this:

“Anno 1284 am dage Johannis et Pauli war der 26 Junii dorch einen Piper mit allerei farve bekledet gewesen 130 Kinder verledet binnen Hameln gebon to Calvarie, bi den Koppen verloren!”

“What gibberish!” Tom exclaimed. “Do you suppose you can translate it?”

Fred looked uncertain; but began word by word, as one construes a Latin lesson in school.

“Anno 1284, in the year 1284, am dage Johannis et Pauli, on the day of St. John and St. Paul, war der 26 Junii, which was the 26th of June—this very day, Tom—a piper with allerlei farve bekledet—that must be parti-colored clothes—led 130 children born in Hameln by the Koppenberg to Calvary. That means to their death I suppose.”

Tom nodded, and for a minute the boys looked at one another without speaking.

“Well, what are you going to do about it?” asked Tom at length.

With another look at the tablet Fred turned towards the hotel.

“There’s nothing to be done about it,” he said. “I don’t think I had better tell anybody here.”

Tom deliberated a minute.

“No, I don’t think you had,” he said. “It happened five hundred and ninety-five years ago: there aren’t any of their relatives alive, and nobody would believe you anyhow. Besides, they seemed to be having a good time, didn’t they?”

Fred’s thoughtful gaze was turned down the street toward the mountain, where so many years ago the little feet had pattered to their grave.

But was it to their grave?

He wondered if instead of dying they had not lived all that time, and whether any one else had ever seen them besides himself. He was so absorbed indeed that he did not hear Tom’s question until it was repeated.

“Oh, did you speak?” he asked. “Yes, I suppose they were. She said so.”

“Well, I’m glad of that. I always felt sorry for the poor little beggars and wondered if they got out of the other side of the hill. It’s a great relief, Fred, to think of their having a good time. The Piper couldn’t have been a bad sort of fellow. As it turned out, Fred, you might say as the little lame boy—it must have been his sister, by the way, you spoke to—did in the poem:

Fred drew a long breath of relief as he brought his thoughts back from the mountain.

“Well,” he said, “I’m glad I know who they were. I couldn’t bear to think of their being lunatics. And if Gretchen and the two little girls had been as happy as all the rest, I should have thought—”

“What would you have thought?”

Fred hesitated an instant.

“That I was getting a little glimpse into heaven. But then, it couldn’t be that, you know.”

Tom shook his head wisely.

“Oh, no,” he said; “of course it couldn’t be that.”