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!