ectly 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 uttered the desire of both
their hearts.

"Let us live together, while we live, and l