into his belt, for his arms were uplifted in prayer. Ever since
sunrise he had raised his gnarled, hairy arms towards heaven, as
untiringly as a tree stretches up its branches, and he meant to
remain standing so till night. He had a great boon to pray for.

He was a man who had suffered much of the world's anger. He had
himself persecuted and tortured, and persecutions and torture from
others had fallen to his share, more than his heart could bear. So
he went out on the great heath, dug himself a hole in the river
bank and became a holy man, whose prayers were heard at God's throne.

Hatto the hermit stood there on the river bank by his hole and
prayed the great prayer of his life. He prayed God that He should
appoint the day of doom for this wicked world. He called on the
trumpet-blowing angels, who were to proclaim the end of the reign
of sin. He cried out to the waves of the sea of blood, which were
to drown the unrighteous. He called on the pestilence, which should
fill the churchyards with heaps of dead.

Round about stretched a desert plain. But a little higher up on the
river bank stood an old willow with a short trunk, which swelled
out at the top in a great knob like a head, from which new,
light-green shoots grew out. Every autumn it was robbed of these
strong, young branches by the inhabitants of that fuel-less heath.
Every spring the tree put forth new, soft shoots, and in stormy
weather these waved and fluttered about it, just as hair and beard
fluttered about Hatto the hermit.

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