Page:The Children Who Followed the Piper.djvu/56

 —milk out of the pitcher, bread and honey, nuts and apples and grapes out of the basket that the old woman set before them. Each of the children wanted to be beside John Ball who had ridden old Baldwin, but John Ball and Valentine and Golden Hood stayed always together.

Then, out under the great ash trees, the children played. There was that sort of light there that there is before children are called home. And the light did not change. It was no darker than it had been when they came down the mountainside; the star that was in the sky then still dangled there, and there was no other star.

After they had played the children lay under the trees and slept. It did not become any colder. When they wakened up the same light was in the sky, and the same star hung dangling there. And it was always the same.

About where they were was a silence like the silence of a great forest. Old Philemon, leaning on his staff, told them of the forest that grew down from the side of the mountain and closed