So the matter which had bade fair to be so disastrous for a good many people turned out very well after all. Apollo returned to Mount Olympus when the period of his exile on the earth was up and he delighted the Muses much with the sweet tones of his lyre. He even pleaded with his father, Jupiter, to take pity on Aesculapius and the god at last made a place for the physician on the road of stars that leads across the sky. HOW JUPITER GRANTED A WISH. Each of the villagers in a town of Phrygia heard a knock at the door of his cottage one summer day in the long-ago time of the myths. Each, on opening it, saw two strangers, weary travellers, who sought food and a shelter for the night. It was a part of the temple teachings that a man should succor a stranger, no matter how humble, but these Phrygians were a pleasure-loving, careless people, neglectful of hospitality and of their temple, even, which had fallen into decay. So it happened that the same retort met the strangers at whatever door they stopped. "Be off! We have only sufficient food for ourselves and no room for any but members of our own family." There was not a single door but was shut in the faces of these travellers. The afternoon was passing and it would soon be dusk. The strangers, tired and half famished, climbed a hill on the edge of the village and came at last upon a little cottage set there among the trees. It was a very poor and humble cottage, thatched with straw, and barely large enough for the two old peasants, Philemon and his wife, Baucis, who lived there. But it opened at once when the strangers knocked to let in the two strangers. "We have come to-day from a far country," the one who seemed to be the older of the two explained. "And we have not touched food since yesterday," added the younger one who might have been his son. "Then you are welcome to whatever we have to offer you," said Philemon. "We are as poor as the birds that nest in the straw of our eaves, but my old wife, Baucis, can prepare a meal from very little which may perhaps serve you if you are hungry. Come in, and share with us whatever we have." The two guests crossed the humble threshold, bowing their heads in order to pass beneath the low lintel, and Baucis offered them a seat and begged them to try and feel at home. The day had grown chilly and the old woman raked out the coals from the ashes, covered them with leaves and dry bark, and blew the fire into flame with her scanty breath. Then she brought some split sticks and dry branches from a corner where she had kept them like a treasure and put them under the kettle that hung over the fire. Afterward, she spread a white cloth on the table.