Julie, in Browning's telling, the moment the mayor says that he will not pay him the thousand gilders, the Pied Piper steps out onto the street and leads all the children in the town (except the lame child) into a portal in the mountain, never to be heard from again. That's a rather extreme reaction, I think. If you owed me money and refused to pay, I think you might call me a homocidal maniac if, instead of contacting a lawyer, I were to murder your children.
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