e your soul on a pilgrimage!
Pease in your shoes, an if you must!--
But out and away, before you're dust:
Scribe and Stay-at-home,
Saint and Sage,
Out of your cage,
Out of your cage!--
[He feigns to be terror-struck at sight of the pipe
in Michael's hands]
Ho, help! Good Michael, Michael, loose the charm!
Michael, have mercy! I'm bewitched!--

MICHAEL
[giving him the pipe]
Cock's faith!
Still mocking!--Well ye know, it will not play
Such games for me.

PIPER
Be soothed,--'twas as I guessed,
[Unslings the jars]
All of them hungry,--and the Rainbow going;--

And Cheat-the-Devil pining in a corner.
'Twas well I went: they were for leaking out,
And then,--lopped ears for two!

MICHAEL
Oh, that will come.

PIPER
Never believe it! We have saved her, look you;
We save them all! No prison walls again,
For anything so young, in Hamelin there.
Wake her, and see.

MICHAEL
Ay, wake her. But for me,
Her sleep is gentler.

PIPER
[comfortingly]
Nay, but wait.--Good faith,
Wait. We have broke the bars of iron now;
Still there are golden!--'Tis her very self
Is caged within herself. Once coax her out,
Once set her own heart free!--

MICHAEL
Wake her, and see!
[The PIPER crosses, humming.]

PIPER
Mind your eyes, tune your tongue!
Let it never be said, but sung, but sung,
'Out of your cage, out of your cage!'
Maiden, maiden,--
[He wakes her gently. BARBARA sits up, plainly bewildered;
then she sees the PIPER, and says happily:--

BARBARA
Oh!--you have come to save me. They are gone.
All this, for love of me!

PIPER
[ruefully]
No, no--I--No!

BARBARA
You--you are robbers?
[Her hands go to the pearls about her neck.]

PIPER
[indignant]
No! Blood on the Moon!
This is the maddest world I ever blinked at.--
Fear nothing, maiden. I will tell you all.
Come, sit you down; and Michael shall keep watch
From yonder hillock, lest that any pass.
Fear nothing. None will pass: they are too sure
The Devil hath this cross-ways!--Sit you down.

[MICHAEL watches, with jealous wistfulness, from the road (left
rear).--BARBARA half fearfully sits up, on the bank by the well.

BARBARA
Not love? And yet . . . you do not want my pearls?
Then why--

PIPER
For why should all be love or money?
Money! Oho,--that mouldy thousand guilders
You think of!--But it was your Hamelin friends
That loved the guilders, and not I.

BARBARA
Then why--
Why did you steal me henc