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.