“No—not exactly. They’re like those ghost-stories of yours. They weren’t true—but you didn’t expect us to believe them, so they weren’t lies.”
“That yarn about the divining rod is no lie, anyhow,” said Mary. “Old Jake Crawford over-harbour can work it. They send for him from everywhere when they want to dig a well. And I believe I know the Wandering Jew.”
“Oh, Mary,” said Una, awe-struck.
“I do—true’s you’re alive. There was an old man at Mrs. Wiley’s one day last fall. He looked old enough to be anything. She was asking him about cedar posts, if he thought they’d last well. And he said, ‘Last well? They’ll last a thousand years. I know, for I’ve tried them twice.’ Now, if he was two thousand years old who was he but your Wandering Jew?”
“I don’t believe the Wandering Jew would associate with a person like Mrs. Wiley,” said Faith decidedly.
“I love the Pied Piper story,” said Di, “and so does mother. I always feel so sorry for the poor little lame boy who couldn’t keep up with the others and got shut out of the mountain. He must have been so disappointed. I think all the rest of his life he’d be wondering what wonderful thing he had missed and wishing he could have got in with the others.”
“But how glad his mother must have been,” said Una softly. “I think she had been sorry all her life that he was lame. Perhaps she even used to cry about it. But she would never be sorry again—never. She would be glad he was lame because that was why she hadn’t lost him.”
“Some day,” said Walter dreamily, looking afar into the sky, “the Pied Piper will come over the hill up there and down Rainbow Valley, piping merrily and sweetly. And I will follow him—follow him down to the shore—down to the sea—away from you all. I don’t think I’ll want to go—Jem will want to go—it will be such an adventure—but I won’t. Only I’ll have to—the music will call and call and call me until I must follow.”
“We’ll all go,” cried Di, catching fire at the flame of Walter’s fancy, and half-believing she could see the mocking, retreating figure of the mystic piper in the far, dim end of the valley.
“No. You’ll sit here and wait,” said Walter, his great, splendid eyes full of strange glamour. “You’ll wait for us to come back. And we may not come—for we cannot come as long as the Piper plays. He may pipe us round the world. And still you’ll sit here and wait—and wait.”