[THE CHILDREN OF THE KOPPENBERG.]
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.
THE PIPER SOUNDED ONE SHARP NOTE.
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.