180 THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER.

able curmudgeon happened to sip, he was pretty cer-
tain to twist his visage into‘a hard knot, and pronounce
it a pitcher of sour milk!

Thus the old couple lived m their palace a great, great
while, and grew older and older, and very old indeed.
At length, however, there came a summer morning when -
Philemon and Baucis failed to make their appearance, as
on other mornings, with one hospitable smile overspread-
ing both their pleasant faces, to invite the guests of over-
night to breakfast. The guests searched everywhere,
from top to bottom of the spacious palace, and all to no
purpose. But, after a great deal of perplexity, they es-
pied, in front of the portal, two venerable trees, which
nobody could remember to have seen there the day be-
fore. Yet there they stood, with their roots fastened
deep into the soil, and a huge breadth of. foliage over-
shadowing the whole front of the edifice. One was an
oak, and the other a linden-tree. Their boughs — it
was strange and beautiful to see — were intertwined to-
gether, and embraced one another, so that each tree
seemed to live in the other tree’s bosom, much more than
in its own.

While the guests were marvelling how these trees,
that must have required at least a century to grow,
could have come to be so tall and venerable in a sin-
gle night, a breeze sprang up, and set their intermingled
boughs astir. And then there was a deep, broad mur-
mur in the air, as if the two mysterious trees were
speaking.

“T am old Philemon!” murmured the oak.