Mitchell Adrian. The Pied Piper

London: Oberon Books, 2006. — 133 p.Long ago, in the days to come, Hamelin was a small town with a large market on the edge of the River Weser. During the day the town was cheerful enough. But as darkness fell each night, the streets and alleys and drainpipes and cellars were invaded by an army of horrible, hairy rats.
Rats!
They tought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles.
Rats!
One dawn around evening, a stranger arrived in the town. Everybody thought he was the Mystery Tramp from the Valley of Nowhere. But really he was the Pied Piper, a magical musician famous for ridding towns of pests and parasites. He travelled in disguise because he was exhausted by such pest controlling work. He wanted to retire to a nearby mountain called the Koppelburg...