"I daresay you be right, sir," he said. "I must just go and have a look
about, though. Here's Agnes. She'll tell you about mother."

He took his spade from the corner, and went out. He often brought his tools
into the cottage. He had carved the handle of his spade all over with the
names of the people he had buried.

"Tell your mother, Agnes, that I will call in the evening and see her, if
she would like to see me. We are going now to see Mrs. Stokes. She is very
poorly, I hear."

"Let us go through the churchyard, papa," said Wynnie, "and see what the
old man is doing."

"Very well, my dear. It is only a few steps round."

"Why do you humour the sexton's foolish fancy so much, papa? It is
such nonsense! You taught us it was, surely, in your sermon about the
resurrection?"

"Most certainly, my dear. But it would be of no use to try to get it out of
his head by any argument. He has a kind of craze in that direction. To get
people's hearts right is of much more importance than convincing their
judgments. Right judgment will follow. All such fixed ideas should be
encountered from the deepest grounds of truth, and not from the outsides of
their relations. Coombes has to be taught that God cares for the dead more
than he does, and _therefore_ it is unreasonable for him to be anxious
about them."

When we reached the churchyard we found the old man kneeling on a grave