One little flaxen-haired girl told her they were nearing Hamelin.
"It used to have a big wall around it, with twenty towers and a large fort; but that was all blown up by the French, years and years ago," she explained.
"But it has a chain-bridge," she remarked proudly,—"a chain-bridge that stretches quite across the Weser."
Doris was just about to say: "Why, that's nothing! We have a huge suspension bridge in New York;" but the words seemed to twist themselves into a different form, and the memory of home to melt away, and she found herself murmuring, "Ach, so?" quite like the rest of the little Teutons.
But at length the fife ceased playing, and the children stopped.
There they were in quaint old Hamelin, with its odd wooden houses, and its old Munster that was all falling to ruin, and its rosy-cheeked children, who did not seem to notice the new-comers at all.
"We must be invisible," thought Doris; and indeed they were.
Then the Pied Piper came forward and beckoned them on, and softly they followed him to the very hill-side, that opened, as Doris knew it would, and they found themselves in a vast hall. A low rumbling startled Doris for a moment, but then she knew it was only the hill-side closing upon them. She seemed to hear a faint cry as the last sound died, away, and was tempted to run back, for she feared some child had been hurt; but her companion said,—
"It can't be helped, dear; he always gets left outside, and then he weeps. You see he is lame, and he cannot keep up with us."
So Doris knew it was the self-same little lad of whom Browning had written in his story of the Piper.