"His soul is in my charge," sighed the good priest, "and I cannot even make him hear what I have got to say. A heavy reckoning will be demanded of me!" "The sermons are in fault, beyond a doubt," the Kyrkegrim said. "The farmer's wife is quite right. She's a sensible woman, and can use a mop as well as myself." "Hoot, hoot!" cried the church owl, pushing his head out of the ivy-bush. "And shall she be Kyrkegrim when thou art turned preacher, and the preacher sits on the judgment seat? Not so, little Niss! Dust thou the pulpit, and leave the parson to preach, and let the Maker of souls reckon with them." "If the preacher cannot keep the people awake, it is time that another took his place," said the Kyrkegrim. "He is not bound to find ears as well as arguments," retorted the owl, and he drew back into his ivy bush. But the Kyrkegrim settled his red cap firmly on his head, and betook himself to the priest, whose meekness (as is apt to be the case) encouraged the opposite qualities in those with whom he had to do. "The farmer must be roused somehow," said he. "It is a disgrace to us all, and what, in all the hundreds of years I have been Kyrkegrim, never befell me before. It will be well if next Sunday you preach a stirring sermon on some very important subject." So the preacher preached on Sin--fair of flower, and bitter of fruit!--and as he preached his own cheeks grew pale for other men's perils, and the Kyrkegrim trembled as he sat listening in the porch, though he had no soul to lose. "Was that stirring enough?" he asked, twitching the sleeve of the farmer's wife as she flounced out after service. "Splendid!" said she, "and must have hit some folk pretty hard too." "It kept your husband awake this time, I should think," said the Kyrkegrim. "Heighty teighty!" cried the farmer's wife. "I'd have you to know my good man is as decent a body as any in the parish, if he does take a nap on Sundays! He is no sinner if he is no saint, thank Heaven, and the parson knows better than to preach at him." "Next Sunday," said the Kyrkegrim to the priest, "preach about something which concerns everyone; respectable people as well as others." So the preacher preached of Death--whom tears cannot move, nor riches bribe, nor power defy. The uncertain interruption and the only certain end of all life's labors! And as he preached, the women sitting in their seats wept for the dead whose graves they had been tending, and down the aged cheeks of the Kyrkegrim there stole tears of pity for poor men, whose love and labors are cut short so soon. But the farmer slept as before. "Do you expect to die?" asked the Kyrkegrim. "Surely," replied the farmer, "we must all die some day, and one does not need a preacher to tell him that. But it was a funeral sermon, my wife thinks. There has been bereavement in the miller's family."