‘Ask him,’ said the old man.
‘What are you doing, my fine fellow?’
‘I am putting the fog into my sack. That is my business.’
‘Ask him if he will come with us,’ whispered the hermit.
And the man answered: ‘If you will give me enough to eat and drink I will gladly stay with you.’
So they took him on their ship, and the youth said, as they started off again, ‘Good father, before we were two, and now we are three!’
After they had travelled a little further they met a man who had torn up half the forest, and was carrying all the trees on his shoulders.
‘Good father,’ exclaimed the youth, ‘only look! What can he have done that for?’
‘Ask him why he has torn up all those trees.’
And the man replied, ‘Why, I’ve merely been gathering a handful of brushwood.’