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: