Claes seized his cross bow and said:
“May the Devil save his Hawkship!”
Having made ready his cross bow, he took his stand in the yard, following every movement of the bird, so as not to miss it. The light in the sky was between day and night, Claes could only discern a black speck. He loosed the quarrel and saw a stork come tumbling down into the yard.
Claes was sorely grieved thereat; but Soetkin was grieved worse, and cried out:
“Cruel, thou hast slain God’s own bird!”
Then she took up the stork, and saw that she was but wounded in a wing, went to fetch a balsam, and said while she was dressing the wound:
“Stork, my dear, ’tis not clever of you that we all love, to hover in the sky like the sparhawk we all hate. And so poor folks’ arrows fly to the wrong address. Art thou hurt in thy poor wing, stork, that dost submit so patiently, knowing that our hands are the loving hands of friends?”
When the stork was healed, she had everything to eat that she wanted; but she liked best the fish Claes went and caught in the canal for her. And every time the bird of God saw him coming, she opened her huge beak.
She followed Claes about like a dog, but stayed in the kitchen for preference, warming her belly by the fire, and knocking with her beak on Soetkin’s front as she got the dinner ready, as much as to ask her:
“Is there nothing for me?”