Page:The Literary Magnet 1824 vol 2.djvu/191

 when all the dancers, great and small, returned to their narrow cells; the player took his bag-pipe under his arm, and likewise returned to his vacant coffin. Long before the dawn of the day, the watchmen awoke the Mayor, and made him, with trembling lips and knocking knees, the awful report of the horrid night-scene. He enjoined strict secresy on them, and promised to watch with them the following night on the tower. Nevertheless, the news soon spread through the town, and at the close of the evening, all the surrounding windows and roofs were lined with virtuosi and conoscenti of the dark Fine Arts, who all beforehand were engaged in discussions on the possibility or imposibility of the events they expected to witness before midnight.

The bag-piper was not behind his time. At the first sound of the bell announcing the eleventh hour, he rose slowly, leaned against the tombstone, and began his tune. The ball-guests seemed to have been waiting for the music; for at the very first notes they rushed forth out of the graves and vaults, through grass-hills and heavy stones. Corpses and skeletons, shrouded and bare, tall and small, men and women, all running to and fro, dancing and turning, wheeling and whirling round the player, quicker or more slow according to the measure he played, till the clock tolled the hour of midnight. Then dancers and piper withdrew again to rest. The living spectators, at their windows and on their roofs, now confessed, that “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” The Mayor had no sooner retired from the tower, than he ordered the painter to be cast into prison that very night, hoping to learn from his examination, or perhaps by putting him to the torture, how the magic nuisance of his foster-father might be removed.

Wido did not fail to remind the Mayor of his ingratitude towards Master Wilibald, and maintained, that the deceased troubled the town, bereft the dead of their rest, and the living of their sleep, only because he had received, instead of the promised reward for the liberation of the Mayor, a scornful refusal, and moreover had been thrown into prison most unjustly, and buried in a degrading manner. This speech made a very deep impression upon the minds of the magistrates; they instantly ordered the body of Master Wilibald to be taken out of his tomb, and laid in a more respectable place. The sexton, to show his penetration on the occasion, took the bag-pipe out of the coffin, and hung it over his bed. For he reasoned thus: if the enchanting or enchanted musician could not help following his profession even in the tomb, he at least would not be able to play to the dancers without his instrument. But at night, after the clock had struck eleven, he heard distinctly a knock at his door; and when he opened it, with the expectation of some deadly and lucrative accident requiring his skill, he beheld the buried Master Wilibald in propria persona. “My bag-pipe,” said he, very composedly, and passing by the trembling sexton, he took it from the wall where it was hung up: then he returned to his tombstone, and began to blow. The guests, invited by the tune, came like the preceding night, and were preparing for their midnight dance in the church-yard. But this time the musician began to march forward, and proceeded