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.