have walked a mile with great
difficulty in half-a-dozen hours) exchanged a remark with him about his
work, the child could not help noticing that he did so with an
impatient kind of pity for his infirmity, as if he were himself the
strongest and heartiest man alive.

'I'm sorry to see there is this to do,' said the child when she
approached. 'I heard of no one having died.'

'She lived in another hamlet, my dear,' returned the sexton. 'Three
mile away.'

'Was she young?'

'Ye-yes' said the sexton; not more than sixty-four, I think. David,
was she more than sixty-four?'

David, who was digging hard, heard nothing of the question. The
sexton, as he could not reach to touch him with his crutch, and was too
infirm to rise without assistance, called his attention by throwing a
little mould upon his red nightcap.

'What's the matter now?' said David, looking up.

'How old was Becky Morgan?' asked the sexton.

'Becky Morgan?' repeated David.

'Yes,' replied the sexton; adding in a half compassionate, half
irritable tone, which the old man couldn't hear, 'you're getting very
deaf, Davy, very deaf to be sure!'

The old man stopped in his work, and cleansing his spade with a piece
of slate he had by him for the purpose--and scraping off, in the
process, the essence of Heaven knows how many Becky Morgans--set
himself to consider the subject.

'Let me think' quoth he. 'I saw last night what they had put upon the
coffin--was it seventy-nine?'

'No, no,' said the sexton.

'Ah yes, it was though,' returned the old man with a sigh. 'For I
remember thinking she was very near our age. Yes, it was seventy-nine.'

'Are you sure you didn't mistake a figure, Davy?' asked the sexton,
with signs of some emotion.

'What?' said the old man. 'Say that again.'

'He's very deaf. He's very deaf indeed,' cried the sexton petulantly;
'are you sure you're right about the figures?'

'Oh quite,' replied the old man. 'Why not?'

'He's exceedingly deaf,' muttered the sexton to himself. 'I think he's
getting foolish.'

The child rather wondered what had led him to this belief, as, to say
the truth, the old man seemed quite as sharp as he, and was infinitely
more robust. As the sexton said nothing more just then, however, she
forgot it for the time, and spoke again.

'You were telling me,' she said, 'about your gardening. Do you ever
plant things here?'

'In the churchyard?' returned the sexton, 'Not I.'

'I have