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 leave the world at the same instant, when we die!  For we have always loved one another!”

“Be it so!” replied the stranger, with majestic kindness, “Now, look toward your cottage!”

They did so.  But what was their surprise on beholding a tall edifice of white marble, with a wide-open portal, occupying the spot where their humble residence had so lately stood!

“There is your home,” said the stranger, beneficently smiling on them both.  “Exercise your hospitality in yonder palace as freely as in the poor hovel to which you welcomed us last evening.”

The old folks fell on their knees to thank him; but, behold! neither he nor Quicksilver was there.

So Philemon and Baucis took up their residence in the marble palace, and spent their time, with vast satisfaction to themselves, in making everybody jolly and comfortable who happened to pass that way.  The milk pitcher, I must not forget to say, retained its marvellous quality of being never empty, when it was desirable to have it full.  Whenever an honest, good-humoured, and free-hearted guest took a draught from this pitcher, he invariably found it the sweetest and most invigorating fluid that ever ran down his throat.  But, if a cross and disagreeable curmudgeon happened to sip, he was pretty certain to twist his visage into a hard knot, and pronounce it a pitcher of sour milk!

Thus the old couple lived in 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 overspreading 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 espied, in front of the portal, two venerable trees, which nobody could remember to have seen there the day before.  Yet there they stood, with their roots fastened deep into the soil, and a huge breadth of foliage overshadowing 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 together, 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 single night, a breeze sprang up, and set their intermingled boughs astir.  And then there was a deep, broad murmur in the air, as if the two mysterious trees were speaking.

“I am old Philemon!” murmured the oak.