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!

Jan
[earnestly]
I thought. . .  Somebody Wanted me.

Piper
How then?
[With watchful tenderness.]

Jan
  I thought I heard Somebody crying.

Piper
Pfui!—­What a dream.—­Don’t make me cry again.

Jan
Oh, was it you?—­Oh, yes!

Piper
[apart, tensely]
  No Michael yet!

[Jan begins to laugh softly, in a bewildered way; then grows quite happy and forgetful.  While the other children waken, he reaches for the pipe and tries to blow upon it, to the Piper’s amusement.  Ilse and Hansel, the Butcher’s children, wake.

Ilse
Oh!

Hansel
  —­Oh!

Piper
  Ahe?

Ilse
  I thought I had a dream.

Piper
Again?

Ilse
. . .  It was some lady, calling me.

Hansel
Yes, and a fat man called us to come quick;
A fat man, he was crying—­about me! 
That same fat man I dreamt of, yesterday.

Piper
Come, did you ever see a fat man cry,
About a little Boy?

[The Strollers are convulsed with hoarse mirth.

Hansel
No,—­Never.

Ilse
  Never! 
Oh, what a funny dream!

[They giggle together.] [The piper silences the Strollers, with a gesture of warning towards the rocky door.

Piper
[to himself]
’T is Hans the Butcher.
[To the Children]
  Well, what did he say?

Hansel
‘Come home, come home, come home!’ But I didn’t go. 
I don’t know where. . .  Oh, what a funny dream!

Ilse
Mine was a bad dream!—­Mine was a lovely lady
And she was by the river, staring in.