Hatto, the hermit, stood in the desert and prayed to God. The storm was on, and his long hair and beard blew about him as wind-whipped grass blows about an old ruin. But he did not brush back the hair from his eyes, nor did he fasten his long beard to his girdle, for his arms were raised in prayer. Since sunrise he had held his gaunt, hairy arms out-stretched toward heaven, as untiring as a tree stretching out its boughs, and thus he would remain until evening. It was a great thing for which he was praying. He was a man who had suffered much from the wickedness and dishonesty of the world. He himself had persecuted and tortured others, and persecution and torture had been his portion, more than he could endure. Therefore, he had gone forth into the wilderness, had dug himself a cave on the river bank, and had become a holy man whose prayers found hearing at the throne of God. Hatto, the hermit, stood on the river bank before his cave and prayed the great prayer of his life. He prayed God to send down the Day of Judgment upon this wicked world. He cried to the angels of the trumpets, who are to herald the end of the reign of sin. Round about him was the wilderness, barren and desolate. But a little up the bank stood an old willow with shortened trunk, which swelled out at the top of a round hump like a queer head, and from it new, freshly green twigs were sprouting. Every autumn the peasants from the unwooded flatlands robbed the willow of her fresh new shoots. But every year the tree put forth new ones, and on stormy days the slender, flexible twigs whipped about the old willow, as hair and beard whipped about Hatto, the hermit. It was just on this day that a pair of water thrushes, who usually built their nest on the trunk of the old willow between the new twigs, had decided to begin their work. But the wild whipping of the twigs disturbed the birds. They flew up with their bits of dry grass with nothing accomplished. Then it was that they caught sight of old Hatto. No one now living can picture to himself how moss-grown and dried-up, how gnarled and black and generally unlike a human being, such an old desert hermit can become. His skin clung so close to forehead and cheekbones that his head looked like a skull, and only a tiny gleam down in the depth of his eyeballs showed that there was still life in him. The dried-up muscles gave no curve to the body; the outstretched naked arms were merely a couple of narrow bones, covered with hard, wrinkled, bark-like skin. He wore an old black cloak, clinging close to his body. He was tanned brown by the sun and black with dirt. His hair and beard alone were of a lighter shade, for rain and sunshine had faded them to the grey-green hue of the under side of willow leaves.