I

The boy came into the town at six o’clock in the morning, but the baker at the corner of the first street was up, as is the way of bakers, and when he saw the boy passing, he hailed him with a jolly shout.

“Hullo, boy! What are you after?”

“I’m going about my business,” the boy said pertly.

“And what might that be, young fellow?”

“I might be a good tinker, and worship god Pan, or I might grind scissors as sharp as the noses of bakers. But, as a matter of fact, I’m a piper, not a rat-catcher, you understand, but just a simple singer of sad songs, and a mad singer of merry ones.”

“Oh,” said the baker dully, for he had hoped the boy was in search of work. “Then I suppose you have a message.”

“I sing songs,” the boy said emphatically. “I don’t run errands for anyone save it be for the fairies.”

“Well, then, you have come to tell us that we are bad, that our lives are corrupt and our homes sordid. Nowadays there’s money in that if you can do it well.”

“Your wit gets up too early in the morning for me, baker,” said the boy. “I tell you I sing songs.”

“Aye, I know, but there’s something in them, I hope. Perhaps you bring news. They’re not so popular as the other sort, but still, as long as it’s bad news —”

“Is it the flour that has changed his brains to dough, or the heat of the oven that has made them like dead grass?”

“But you must have some news ——?”

“News! It’s a fine morning of summer, and I saw a kingfisher across the watermeadows coming along. Oh, and there’s a cuckoo back in the fir plantation, singing with a May voice. It must have been asleep all these months.”

“But, my dear boy, these things happen every day. Are there no battles or earthquakes or famines in the world? Has no man murdered his wife or robbed his neighbour? Is no one oppressed by tyrants or lied to by their officers.”

The boy shrugged his shoulders.

“I hope not,” he said. “But if it were so, and I knew, I should not tell you. I don’t want to make you unhappy.”

“But of what use are you then, if it be not to rouse in us the discontent that is alone divine? Would you have me go fat and happy, listening to your babble of kingfishers and cuckoos, while my brothers and sisters in the world are starving?”

The boy was silent for a moment.

“I give my songs to the poor for nothing,” he said slowly. “Certainly they are not much use to empty bellies, but they are all I have to give. And I take it, since you speak so feelingly, that you, too, do your best. And these others, these people who must be reminded hourly to throw their crusts out of window for the poor — would you have me sing to them? They must be told that life is evil, and I find it good; that men and women are wretched, and I find them happy; that food and cleanliness, order and knowledge are the essence of content while I only ask for love. Would you have me lie to cheat mean folk out of their scraps?”

The baker scratched his head in astonishment.

“Certainly you are very mad,” he said. “But you won’t get much money in this town with that sort of talk. You had better come in and have breakfast with me.”

“But why do you ask me?” said the boy, in surprise.

“Well, you have a decent, honest sort of face, although your tongue is disordered.”

“I had rather it had been because you liked my songs,” said the boy, and he went in to breakfast with the baker.
ii

Over his breakfast the boy talked wisely on art, as is the wont of young singers, and afterwards he went on his way down the street.

“It’s a great pity,” said the baker; “he seems a decent young chap.”

“He has nice eyes,” said the baker’s wife.

As the boy passed down the street he frowned a little.

“What is the matter with them?” he wondered. “They’re pleasant people enough, and yet they did not want to hear my songs.”

Presently he came to the tailor’s shop, and as the tailor had sharper eyes than the baker, he saw the pipe in the boy’s pocket.

“Hullo, piper!” he called. “My legs are stiff. Come and sing us a song!”

The boy looked up and saw the tailor sitting cross-legged in the open window of his shop.

“What sort of song would you like?” he asked.

“Oh! the latest,” replied the tailor. “We don’t want any old songs here.” So the boy sung his new song of the kingfisher in the water-meadow and the cuckoo who had overslept itself.

“And what do you call that?” asked the tailor angrily, when the boy had finished.

“It’s my new song, but I don’t think it’s one of my best.” But in his heart the boy believed it was, because he had only just made it.

“I should hope it’s your worst,” the tailor said rudely. “What sort of stuff is that to make a man happy?”

“To make a man happy!” echoed the boy, his heart sinking within him.

“If you have no news to give me, why should I pay for your songs! I want to hear about my neighbours, about their lives, and their wives and their sins. There’s the fat baker up the street — they say he cheats the poor with light bread. Make me a song of that, and I’ll give you some breakfast. Or there’s the magistrate at the top of the hill who made the girl drown herself last week. That’s a poetic subject.”

“What’s all this!” said the boy disdainfully. “Can’t you make dirt enough for yourself!”

“You with your stuff about birds,” shouted the tailor; “you’re a rank impostor! That’s what you are!”

“They say that you are the ninth part of a man, but I find that they have grossly exaggerated,” cried the boy, in retort; but he had a heavy heart as he made off alo............