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‘Friend Jack!’ cried the Friar, gathering himself up, ‘forbear, I pray you. I am nigh to death. Permit me to depart and I will be your friend for ever.’

‘Get up and go, then,’ cried Jack, ‘before I begin to play again.’

The good Friar needed no further permission. What remnant of a robe was left him he gathered up, and fled to his own home. There he clothed himself decently and made all haste to Jack’s parents.

When they saw his woebegone countenance they questioned him closely.

‘I have been with your son,’ he replied. ‘Grammercy! By these scratches on my face, and by others you cannot see, he is in league with the Evil One, or I am no holy Friar. He played a tune on his pipe and I danced–danced!–think of it! And all in the bramble bushes! Your son is plainly lost; I hesitate to think what it will cost you to save his soul from the devil’s clutch.’

‘Here is a fine thing,’ exclaimed the wife, turning to her husband. ‘This your son has nearly killed the holy Father!’

‘Benedicite!’ said the good man fervently, and the Friar wondered for a moment what he meant exactly.

When Jack returned home his father at once asked him what he had been doing. He replied that he had been having a merry time with the good Friar, who was so fond of music that he could dance to it anywhere–among bramble bushes for preference. These saints, of course—-

‘But what music is this you play?’ broke in his father, who was growing vastly interested. ‘I should like to hear it.’

‘Heaven forfend!’ cried the Friar, getting uneasy.

‘Yes, yes; I should like to hear it,’ persisted his father.

‘Then, if that is so, and you must hear his accursed tune, I beg that you will bind me to the door-post so that I cannot move. I have had more than enough of it.’

They took him at his word and bound him securely to the door-post; so that he was, so to speak, out of the dance when Jack took his pipe and began to play.

Then had you seen a merry spectacle! At the first notes the good man and his wife began to tread a sprightly measure, while the Friar, bound fast to the post, squirmed and wriggled, showing plainly that he would foot it if he could, and dispense with the brambles for once.

As the piping went on, the merry measure became a tarantelle. The staid old folks threw off their age, and kicked their heels high in the air. Faster and faster went the music; wilder and wilder grew the dance. The Friar burst his bonds and joined in. Nothing was safe: chairs were hustled into the fire; the table was pushed this way and that, and the lighted lamp upon it was rocking.

Seeing the fury of the thing, Jack got up and led the way out into the street, still piping. They followed; the neighbours flocked out and joined in the dance; even those who had gone to bed rushed down, and all followed at Jack’s heels down the village street, dancing madly to his wild piping. People jostled and fell and went on dancing on all fours, but the Friar kept his feet, if not his head, and whirled many a maid into the thick of it.

At length, when they had reached the village green, and the scene had become one of indescribable confusion and abandon, Jack’s father drew near him and said, as he whirled by: ‘Jack! if you have any consideration for your poor old father, for heaven’s sake, stop!’

Now the boy loved his father; so, on hearing these words, he ceased his piping. Suddenly all came to a standstill. There was a rapid melting away as if people had awakened from a dream in which they had been making themselves ridiculous. And, in the midst of this, came forward the Friar with Jack’s stepmother in close attendance.