Chloe's turban welcomed us first, then Chloe's self. Breakfast, that morning, had a rare charm about it for me. I felt that I had a right to it; in some wise it was a breakfast earned. Aaron looked melancholy; his coffee was not charmful, I knew; the chemical changes that sugar and milk wrought were not the same as when Sophie presided over the laboratory of the breakfast-tray. I am not an absorbent, and so I reflected Aaron's discomfort. He was disposed to question me for a reason for Miss Axtell's aberration. I was not empowered to give one, and was fully determined to impart no information until such time as I could with honor tell all. Aaron desisted after a while, and changed interrogation for information. "We're to have a new sexton," he said. "Why, Aaron?" I asked,--and, in my surprise, put sugar, destined for my coffee, into a glass of water. "Because Abraham Axtell has resigned." "When?" "This very morning." "He will be sexton until you find another, will he not?" "For one week only," he said. I remembered that my pocket held the church-key. I could not send it to him without exciting question. Aaron would surely ask how I came by it, if I trusted him to restore it. So, sleepy, weary, I sat down at the window from which Sophie and her sister Anna had watched the strange man digging in the frosty earth,--sat down to my last watching, waiting to see Mr. Axtell come up to ring the first bell. I found I was an hour too early; so I went and talked to Chloe a little, scattered crumbs for the first-come birds and corn for the chickens, and looked down the deep, deep well, with its curb lichened over, into the dark pupil of water, whose iris is never disturbed, unless by the bucket that hung in such gibbety repose on the lofty extreme of the great sweep, that creaked dismally, uttering a pitiful cry of complaint. If it hadn't been Sunday, I would have coaxed Aaron to pour some oil on its turbulence; but since Sunday it was, I was to be content to let it screech on. It was not a "sheep fallen into a pit," only a disturbed well-sweep. Do well-sweeps feel, I wonder? Why not? Mr. Axtell asked how I knew that the dead cannot hear. Aaron came out in search of me. He had been assiduously trying to make a ministerial disposition of his cravat, until it was creased and wrinkled beyond repair. "I did not know that you put on the paraphernalia of pastorhood so early," I said, "or I would have come in." "I shall be very thankful, if you'll give me a respectable appearance," he said, which I faithfully tried to do. I gave him the sermon and the proper handkerchief, then left him to his hour of seclusion before service, when even Sophie never went nigh.