Nathaniel Hawthorne
They sat shaking their heads, while the noise came nearer and nearer, until, at the foot of the little hill on which their cottage stood, they saw two travellers approaching, on foot. Close behind them came the fierce dogs, snarling at their very heels. A little farther off ran a crowd of children, who sent up shrill cries, and flung stones at the two strangers with all their might. The travellers were very humbly clad, and this, I am afraid, was the reason why the villagers had allowed their children and dogs to treat them so rudely.
“Come, wife,” said Philemon to Baucis, “let us go and meet these people.”
“Go you and meet them,” answered Baucis, “while I make haste within doors, and see whether we can get them anything for supper.”
Accordingly, she hastened into the cottage. Philemon went forward and extended his hand, saying in the heartiest tone, “Welcome, strangers! welcome!”
“Thank you,” replied the younger of the two, in a lively kind of a way. “This is quite another greeting than we have met with yonder in the village.”
Philemon was glad to see him in such good spirits; nor, indeed, would you have fancied, by the traveller’s look and manner, that he was weary with a long day’s journey. He was dressed in rather an odd way, with a sort of cap on his head, the brim of which stuck out over both ears. Though it was a summer evening, the traveller wore a cloak, which he kept wrapped closely about him. Philemon perceived, too, that he had on a singular pair of shoes. He was so wonderfully light and active that it appeared as if his feet sometimes rose from the ground of their own accord.
“I used to be light-footed in my youth,” said Philemon to the traveller. “But I always find my feet grow heavier towards nightfall.”
“There is nothing like a good staff to help one along,” answered the stranger; “and I happen to have an excellent one, as you see.”
This staff, in fact, was the oddest-looking staff that Philemon had ever beheld; it was made of olive wood, and had something like a little pair of wings near the top. Two snakes carved in the wood were twining themselves about the staff, and old Philemon almost thought them alive, and that he could see them wriggling and twisting. Before he could ask any questions, however, the elder stranger drew his attention from the wonderful staff by speaking to him.