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 no longer exist 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!"