y three, all fair and straight.--

AXEL'S WIFE
[furiously to him]
'T was thy false bargain, thine; who would not pay
The Piper.--But we pay!

PETER the Sacristan
Bewitched, bewitched!
The boys ran out--and I ran after them,
And something red did trip me--'t was the Devil.
The Devil!

OLD URSULA
Ah, ring on, and crack the bell:
Ye'll never have them back.--I told ye so!

[The bell clangs incessantly]

Curtain

ACT II

SCENE I: Inside 'the Hollow Hill.'

A great, dim-lighted, cavernous place, which shows signs of masonry.
It is part cavern and part cellarage of a ruined, burned-down and
forgotten old monastery in the hills.--The only entrance (at the
centre rear), a ramshackle wooden door, closes against a flight
of rocky steps.--Light comes from an opening in the roof, and from
the right, where a faggot-fire glows under an iron pot.--The scene
reaches (right and left) into dim corners, where sleeping children
lie curled up together like kittens.

By the fire sits the PIPER, on a tree-stump seat, stitching at a bit
of red leather. At his feet is a row of bright-colored small shoes,
set two and two. He looks up now and then, to recount the children,
and goes back to work, with quizzical despair.

Left, sits a group of three forlorn Strollers. One nurses a lame
knee; one, evidently dumb, talks in signs to the others; one is
munching bread and cheese out of a wallet. All have the look of
hunted and hungry men. They speak only in whispers to each other
throughout the scene; but their hoarse laughter breaks out now and
then over the bird-like ignorance of the children.

A shaft of sunlight steals through the hole in the roof. JAN, who
lies nearest the PIPER, wakes up.

JAN
Oh!

[The PIPER turns]
Oh, I thought. . . I had a dream!

PIPER
[softly]
Ahe?

JAN
I thought. . . I dreamed. . . somebody wanted me.

PIPER
Soho!

JAN
[earnestly]
I thought. . . Somebody Wanted me.

PIPER
How then?
[With watchful tenderness.]

JAN
I thought I heard Somebody crying.

PIPER
Pfui!--What a dream.--Don't make me cry again.

JAN
Oh, was it you?--Oh, yes!

PIPER
[apart, tensely]
No Michael yet!

[JAN begins to laugh softly, in a bewildered way; then grows
quite happy and forgetful. While the other children waken, he
reaches for the pipe and tries to blow upon it, to the PIPER'S
amusement. ILSE and HANSEL, the Butcher's children, wake.

ILSE
Oh!

HANSEL
--Oh!

PIPER