help it. For say that I planted such a tree for
such a man. There it stands, to remind me that he died. When I look
at its broad shadow, and remember what it was in his time, it helps me
to the age of my other work, and I can tell you pretty nearly when I
made his grave.'

'But it may remind you of one who is still alive,' said the child.

'Of twenty that are dead, in connexion with that one who lives, then,'
rejoined the old man; 'wife, husband, parents, brothers, sisters,
children, friends--a score at least. So it happens that the sexton's
spade gets worn and battered. I shall need a new one--next summer.'

The child looked quickly towards him, thinking that he jested with his
age and infirmity: but the unconscious sexton was quite in earnest.

'Ah!' he said, after a brief silence. 'People never learn. They never
learn. It's only we who turn up the ground, where nothing grows and
everything decays, who think of such things as these--who think of
them properly, I mean. You have been into the church?'

'I am going there now,' the child replied.

'There's an old well there,' said the sexton, 'right underneath the
belfry; a deep, dark, echoing well. Forty year ago, you had only to
let down the bucket till the first knot in the rope was free of the
windlass, and you heard it splashing in the cold dull water. By little
and little the water fell away, so that in ten year after that, a
second knot was made, and you must unwind so much rope, or the bucket
swung tight and empty at the end. In ten years' time, the water fell
again, and a third knot was made. In ten years more, the well dried
up; and now, if you lower the bucket till your arms are tired, and let
out nearly all the cord, you'll hear it, of a sudden, clanking and
rattling on the ground below; with a sound of being so deep and so far
down, that your heart leaps into your mouth, and you start away as if
you were falling in.'

'A dreadful place to come on in the dark!' exclaimed the child, who had
followed the old man's looks and words until she seemed to stand upon
its brink.

'What is it but a grave!' said the sexton. 'What else! And which of
our old folks, knowing all this, thought, as the spring subsided, of
their own failing strength, and lessening life? Not one!'

'Are you very old yourself?' asked the child, involuntarily.

'I shall be seventy-nine--next summer.'

'You still work when you are well?'

'Work! To be sure. You shall