ned perfectly smooth. Then a little breeze sprang up, and
caused the water to dance, glitter, and sparkle in the early sunbeams, and
to dash, with a pleasant rippling murmur, against the hither shore.

The lake seemed so strangely familiar, that the old couple were greatly
perplexed, and felt as if they could only have been dreaming about a
village having lain there. But, the next moment, they remembered the
vanished dwellings, and the faces and characters of the inhabitants, far
too distinctly for a dream. The village had been there yesterday, and now
was gone!

"Alas!" cried these kind-hearted old people, "what has become of our poor
neighbors?"

"They no longer exist as men and women," said the elder traveler, in his
grand and deep voice, while a roll of thunder seemed to echo it at a
distance. "There was neither use nor beauty in such a life as theirs; for
they never softened or sweetened the hard lot of mortality by the exercise
of kindly affections between man and man. They retained no image of the
better life in their bosoms; therefore, the lake, that was of old, has
spread itself forth again, to reflect the sky!"

"And as for those foolish people," said Quicksilver, with his mischievous
smile, "they are all transformed to fishes. There needed but little
change, for they were already a scaly set of rascals, and the
coldest-blooded beings in existence. So, kind Mother Baucis, whenever you
or your husband have an appetite for a dish of broiled trout, he can throw
in a line, and pull out half a dozen of your old neighbors!"

"Ah," cried Baucis shuddering, "I would not, for the world, put one of
them on the gridiron!"

"No," added Philemon, making a wry face, "we could never relish them!"

"As for you, good Philemon," continued the elder traveler,--"and you, kind
Baucis,--you, with your scanty means, have mingled so much heartfelt
hospitality with your entertainment of the homeless stranger, that the
milk became an inexhaustible fount of nectar, and the brown loaf and the
honey were ambrosia. Thus, the divinities have feasted, at your board, off
the same viands that supply their banquets on Olympus. You have done well,
my dear old friends. Wherefore, request whatever favor you have most at
heart, and it is granted."

Philemon and Baucis looked at one another, and then--I know not which of
the two it was who spoke, but that one uttered the desire of both their
hearts.

"Let us live together, while we live, a