you any reward you can name, and you will for my sake demand his daughter’s hand for me.” The piper laughed at the youth’s words, and only remarked, “we must humour a child’s follies to prevent him from crying.” So he took his pipes under his arm, and sauntered slowly down the market-place, where the mob, armed with pikes and hatchets, and torches and pickaxes, were commencing a furious attack upon the mayor’s mansion-house.
Here Master Wilibald coolly planted himself with his back against a pillar, and began to play ‘the Grandfather’s Dance,’ whereupon countenances which but a moment before were distorted with fury brightened up,—brows which had been knit together in wrath became smooth,—axes and torches dropt from upraised hands,—and the whole multitude stood transformed in the twinkling of an eye from an infuriated mob to a gay dancing party. The piper then took his way through the streets of the city, followed by old and young; and each burgher went dancing and skipping into his own house, with feelings as different from those which animated him, when he left it in the morning, as can well be conceived.
There was no end to the mayor’s thanks. In the excess of his gratitude he even offered to share his property with Master Wilibald, But the piper assured him with a smile that he coveted nothing of the kind, and would feel quite rewarded if his lordship would just grant a friend of his one favour, which he could easily comply with,—it was his daughter’s hand which he was solicitous to obtain for his own dear Wido.
But the suggestion displeased the mayor exceedingly. After making a number of excuses, from all of which he was successively driven by the pertinacious piper, who would not listen to any other proposal than that now advanced, his lordship at last became quite incensed, and ordered Master Wilibald to be clapt into prison as a disturber of the public peace, a line of conduct which we occasionally see higher
