The other picked up his hat, brushed off the dust with his coat-sleeve, and then, without any observation on the accident, raised his voice, saying,
"I wish you would come down, sexton, and let me into the church."
"What makes you think I am sexton?" asked the old man, gruffly. "I never buried you or any of your kin."
"No, but you look like old father Time," answered the other, laughing; "and he buries all men."
"Then you should take me by the forelock," answered the sexton, whom the joke seemed to mollify a little; "and I have no forelock to take. So you are out, master. I am the sexton, however. But what do you want in the church?"
"I hear you have some fine statues there," replied the other; "and I want to see them."
But the old man was not yet satisfied.
"Why, what do you know about statues?" he asked, running his eye over the round, fat, unstatue-like figure of the other, with a somewhat contemptuous look.
"More than you do, old boy," replied the visitor, "though perhaps you have lived amongst them all your life; for I have made them all my life; and, depend upon it, there is no such way of knowing a thing as making it."
"That depends upon the workman," answered the sexton, beginning to descend the ladder. "I have made graves all my days, and yet don't know them as well as many who are lying underneath there. But I'll let you in," he added, in a more placable tone; "for they are fine monuments, finer than any for a hundred miles round; and, if you do know anything about such things, you'll say so."