and meet these people. No doubt they feel almost too heavy-hearted to climb the hill."

"Go you and meet them," answered Baucis, "while I make haste within doors, and see whether we can get them anything for supper. A comfortable bowl of bread and milk would do wonders toward raising their spirits."

Accordingly, she hastened to the cottage. Philemon, on his part, went forward, and extended his hand, saying in the heartiest tone imaginable, "Welcome, strangers! welcome!"

"Thank you," replied the younger of the two, in a lively kind of a way, notwithstanding his weariness and trouble. "This is quite another greeting than we have met with yonder in the village. Pray, why do you live in such a bad neighborhood?"

"Ah," observed old Philemon, with a quiet and benign smile, "Providence put me here, I hope, among other reasons, in order that I may make you what amends I can for the inhospitality of my neighbors."

"Well said, old father!" cried the traveller, laughing; "and, if the truth must be told, my companion and myself need some amends. Those children have bespattered us finely with their mud-balls; and one of the dogs has torn my cloak, which was ragged enough. But I took him across the muzzle with my staff; and I think you may have heard him yelp, even thus far off."

Philemon was glad to see him in such good spirits;

nor, indeed, would you have fancied, by the traveller's look and manner, that he was weary with a long day's journey, besides being disheartened by the rough treatment at the end of it. He was dressed in rather an odd way, with a sort of cap on his head, the brim of which stuck out over both ears.

Though it was a summer evening, he wore a cloak, which he kept wrapped closely about him. Philemon perceived, too, that he had on a singular pair of shoes; but he could not precisely tell in what the strangeness consisted. One thing, certainly, seemed queer. The traveller was so wonderfully light and active, that it appeared as if his feet sometimes rose from the ground of their own accord. "I used to be light-footed, in my youth," said Philemon to the traveller. "But I always find my feet grow

heavier toward nightfall."

"There is nothing like a good staff to help one along,' answered the stranger; "and I happen to have an excellent one, as you see."

This staff, in fact, was the oddest-looking staff that Philemon had ever beheld; it was made of olive-wood, and had something like a little pair of wings near the top. Two snakes, carved in wood, were represented as twining themselves about the staff, and were so very skilfully executed that old Philemon (whose eyes, you know, were getting rather dim) almost thought them alive, and that he could see them wriggling and twisting.

"A curious piece of work, sure enough!" said he. "A staff with wings! It would be an excellent kind of stick for a little boy to ride astride of!"

Before he could ask any questions, the elder stranger drew his attention from the wonderful staff by speaking to him.

"Was there not," asked the stranger, in a remarkably deep tone of voice, "a lake, in very ancient times, covering the spot where now stands yonder village?"

"Not in my time, friend," answered Philemon; "and yet I am an old man, as you see. There were always the fields and meadows, just as they are now, and the trees, and the stream murmuring through the midst of the valley. My father, and his father before him, never saw it otherwise, so far as I know; and doubtless it will still be the same when I shall be gone and forgotten!"

"That is more than can be safely foretold," observed the stranger; and there was something very stern in his deep voice. He shook his head, too, so that his dark and heavy curls were shaken with the movement. "Since the inhabitants of yonder village have forgotten the affections and sympathies of their nature, it were better that the lake should be rippling over their dwellings again!'

The traveller looked so stern that Philemon was frightened; the more so, that, at his frown, the twilight seemed to grow darker, and when he shook his head, there was a roll as of thunder in the air.

While Baucis was getting the supper, the travellers both began to talk very sociably with Philemon. The younger, indeed, made so many witty remarks, that the good old man continually burst out a-laughing, and pronounced him the merriest fellow whom he had seen for many a day.

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Pray, my young friend," said he, as they grew familiar together, "what may I call your name?"

66

Why, I am very nimble, as you see," answered the traveller. "So, if you call me Quicksilver, the name will fit tolerably well."

"Quicksilver? Quicksilver?" repeated Philemon, looking in the traveller's face, to see if he were making fun of him. "It is a very odd name! And your companion there? Has he as strange a one?"

"You must ask the thunder to tell it you;" replied Quicksilver, putting on a mysterious look. "No other voice is loud enough."

Then Philemon told the strangers about the events of

1 Find the definition and pronunciation of these words in the vocabulary.

his past life, in the whole course of which he had never been a score of miles from this very spot. His wife Baucis and himself had dwelt in the cottage from their youth upwards, earning their bread by honest labor, always poor, but still contented. He said, too, that because they loved one another so very much, it was the wish of both that death might not separate them, but that they should die, as they had lived, together.

As the stranger listened, a smile beamed over his countenance, and made its expression as sweet as it was grand.

"You are a good old man," said he to Philemon, “and you have a good wife to be your helpmeet. It is fit that your wish should be granted."

And it seemed to Philemon just then, as if the sunset clouds threw up a bright flash from the west and kindled a sudden light in the sky.

Baucis had now got supper ready and, coming to the door, began to make apologies for the poor fare which she was forced to set before her guests.

"Had we known you were coming," said she, "my good man and myself would have gone without a morsel, rather than you should lack a better supper. But I took the most part of to-day's milk to make cheese; and our last loaf is already half eaten. Ah me! I never feel the sorrow of being poor, save when a poor traveller knocks at our door."