there ever since the
creation of the world. For an instant, the lake remained 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 exist no longer 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 utt