Two newly married swallows, with the important business of building a nest, on their minds, stopped to rest one morning on the hands of a great church clock in the town of Newark, New Jersey. Presently they noticed a little hole on its face just large enough for a swallow to enter. They looked in, and saw a lovely place for a nest among a collection of wheels that seemed perfectly quiet.
There is a great difference, you must know, in the movement of the wheels of the great clocks. Some turn swiftly, while the larger ones move so slowly that, unless they are watched for a long time, they seem to be standing still.
The swallows thought it would be delicious to live in the clock. No boys could disturb them, and unless some one should invent a new kind of flying cat, they would never have any unwelcome and dangerous visitors.
So they began to build. They carried hay and grass and cotton into the clock, and by night their nest was half finished. They slept in a neighboring tree, and in the morning flew back with fresh building materials.
Something very strange had happened. The nest that they had partly built had nearly disappeared. They had to begin again. All that day they worked hard. The next morning they found that the same cruel trick had been played on them.
They now became very indignant, and that night they perched on the hands of the clock, so as to be near in case any one should try to destroy their nest. In the course of the night the hands of the clock turned around and tumbled them off, but in the morning they saw that their nest had only been slightly disturbed. They repaired the damage, finished their work, and moved in that night.
For two days they were very happy, but on the third day a man climbed into the tower to see why the clock had stopped. He found nearly a peck of straw and grass and cotton that had been drawn by the wheels into the inmost recesses of the clock, and had finally so clogged the wheels that they could move no more. Then he found the nest that the swallows had made, and threw it away, and stopped up the hole in the clock face.
And so it happened that the swallows had to go and build a nest under the eaves after all.