terrible thing were to happen to all the people in the village, unless
they mend their manners. But, as for you and me, so long as Providence
affords us a crust of bread, let us be ready to give half to any poor,
homeless stranger, that may come along and need it."

"That 's right, husband!" said Baucis. "So we will!"

These old folks, you must know, were quite poor, and had to work pretty
hard for a living. Old Philemon toiled diligently in his garden, while
Baucis was always busy with her distaff, or making a little butter and
cheese with their cow's milk, or doing one thing and another about the
cottage. Their food was seldom anything but bread, milk, and
vegetables, with sometimes a portion of honey from their beehive, and
now and then a bunch of grapes, that had ripened against the cottage-
wall. But they were two of the kindest old people in the world, and
would cheerfully have gone without their dinners, any day, rather than
refuse a slice of their brown loaf, a cup of new milk, and a spoonful of
honey, to the weary traveller who might pause before their door. They
felt as if such guests had a sort of holiness, and that they ought,
therefore, to treat them better and more bountifully than their own
selves.

Their cottage stood on a rising ground, at some short distance from a
village, which lay in a hollow valley, that was about half a mile in
breadth. This valley, in past ages, when the world was new, had
probably been the bed of a lake. There, fishes had glided to and fro in
the depths, and water-weeds had grown along the margin, and trees and
hills had seen their reflected images in the broad, and peaceful mirror.
But, as the waters subsided, men had cultivated the soil, and built
houses on it, so that it was now a fertile spot, and bore no traces of