le. "This is quite another
greeting than we have met with yonder in the village. Pray, why do you
live in such a bad neighbourhood?"

"Ah!" observed old Philemon, with a quiet and benign smite, "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 neighbours."

"Well said, old father!" cried the traveller, laughing; "and, if the
truth must be told, my companion and myself need some amends. Those
children (the little rascals!) have bespattered us finely with their mud
balls; and one of the curs has torn my cloak, which was ragged enough
already. 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 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 wrapt closely about
him, perhaps because his undergarments were shabby. Philemon perceived,
too, that he had on a singular pair of shoes; but, as it was now growing
dusk, and as the old man's eyesight was none the sharpest, 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, or could only be kept down by an effort.

"I used to be light footed, in my youth," said Philemon to the
traveller. "But I always found 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 the 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 stic