A pair of wagtails, which used to make their nest in the top of the willow’s trunk among the sprouting branches, had intended to begin their building that very day.  But among the whipping shoots the birds found no quiet.  They came flying with straws and root fibres and dried sedges, but they had to turn back with their errand unaccomplished.  Just then they noticed old Hatto, who called upon God to make the storm seven times more violent, so that the nests of the little birds might be swept away and the eagle’s eyrie destroyed.

Of course no one now living can conceive how mossy and dried-up and gnarled and black and unlike a human being such an old plain-dweller could be.  The skin was so drawn over brow and cheeks, that he looked almost like a death’s-head, and one saw only by a faint gleam in the hollows of the eye sockets that he was alive.  And the dried-up muscles of the body gave it no roundness, and the upstretched, naked arms consisted only of shapeless bones, covered with shrivelled, hardened, bark-like skin.  He wore an old, close-fitting, black robe.  He was tanned by the sun and black with dirt.  His hair and beard alone were light, bleached by the rain and sun, until they had become the same green-gray color as the under side of the willow leaves.

The birds, flying about, looking for a place to build, took Hatto the hermit for another old willow-tree, checked in its struggle towards the sky by axe and saw like the first one.  They circled about him many times, flew away and came again, took their landmarks, considered his position in regard to birds of prey and winds, found him rather unsatisfactory, but nevertheless decided in his favor, because he stood so near to the river and to the tufts of sedge, their larder and storehouse.  One of them shot swift as an arrow down into his upstretched hand and laid his root fibre there.

There was a lull in the storm, so that the root-fibre was not torn instantly away from the hand; but in the hermit’s prayers there was no pause:  “May the Lord come soon to destroy this world of corruption, so that man may not have time to heap more sin upon himself!  May he save the unborn from life!  For the living there is no salvation.”

Then the storm began again, and the little root-fibre fluttered away out of the hermit’s big gnarled hand.  But the birds came again and tried to wedge the foundation of the new home in between the fingers.  Suddenly a shapeless and dirty thumb laid itself on the straws and held them fast, and four fingers arched themselves so that there was a quiet niche to build in.  The hermit continued his prayers.

“Oh Lord, where are the clouds of fire which laid Sodom waste?  When wilt Thou let loose the floods which lifted the ark to Ararat’s top?  Are not the cups of Thy patience emptied and the vials of Thy grace exhausted?  Oh Lord, when wilt Thou rend the heavens and come?”

And feverish visions of the Day of Doom appeared to Hatto the hermit.  The ground trembled, the heavens glowed.  Across the flaming sky he saw black clouds of flying birds, a horde of panic-stricken beasts rushed, roaring and bellowing, past him.  But while his soul was occupied with these fiery visions, his eyes began to follow the flight of the little birds, as they flashed to and fro and with a cheery peep of satisfaction wove a new straw into the nest.