shrieking, the hurrying and scurrying, so that you could neither hear
yourself speak nor get a wink of good honest sleep the live-long night!
Not to mention that, Mamma must needs sit up, and keep watch and ward
over baby's cradle, or there'd have been a big ugly rat running across
the poor little fellow's face, and doing who knows what mischief.

Why didn't the good people of the town have cats? Well they did, and
there was a fair stand-up fight, but in the end the rats were too many,
and the pussies were regularly driven from the field. Poison, I hear you
say? Why, they poisoned so many that it fairly bred a plague.
Ratcatchers! Why there wasn't a ratcatcher from John o' Groat's house to
the Land's End that hadn't tried his luck. But do what they might, cats
or poison, terrier or traps, there seemed to be more rats than ever, and
every day a fresh rat was cocking his tail or pricking his whiskers.

The Mayor and the town council were at their wits' end. As they were
sitting one day in the town hall racking their poor brains, and
bewailing their hard fate, who should run in but the town beadle.
"Please your Honour," says he, "here is a very queer fellow come to
town. I don't rightly know what to make of him." "Show him in," said the
Mayor, and in he stepped. A queer fellow, truly. For there wasn't a
colour of the rainbow but you might find it in some corner of his dress,
and he was tall and thin, and had keen piercing eyes.

"I'm called the Pied Piper," he began. "And pray what might you be
willing to pay me, if I rid you of every single rat in Franchville?"

Well, much as they feared the rats, they feared parting with their money
more, and fain would they have higgled and haggled. But the Piper was
not a man to stand nonsense, and the upshot was that fifty pounds were