Once he took
the pipe from his lips--only for a second--put his thumb to his nose and
wiggled his fingers at the gray rats; and then it looked as if they
wanted to throw themselves on him and bite him to death; but as soon as
he blew on his pipe they were in his power.
When the tiny creature had played all the gray rats out of Glimminge
castle, he began to wander slowly from the courtyard out on the highway;
and all the gray rats followed him, because the tones from that pipe
sounded so sweet to their ears that they could not resist them.
The tiny creature walked before them and charmed them along with him,
on the road to Vallby. He led them into all sorts of crooks and turns
and bends--on through hedges and down into ditches--and wherever he went
they had to follow. He blew continuously on his pipe, which appeared to
be made from an animal's horn, although the horn was so small that, in
our days, there were no animals from whose foreheads it could have been
broken. No one knew, either, who had made it. Flammea, the steeple-owl,
had found it in a niche, in Lund cathedral. She had shown it to Bataki,
the raven; and they had both figured out that this was the kind of horn
that was used in former times by those who wished to gain power over
rats and mice. But the raven was Akka's friend; and it was from him she
had learned that Flammea owned a treasure like this.
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