St. Michael’s or Saint Katherine’s; the breath of regions where one went hat in hand, the head reverently bowed, walking weavingly on the tips of one’s toes; seemed, too, to hear the remote and set-apart hush of those echoing places. Religious feeling mingled in his mind with thoughts of death and a sense of history, as he listened to the sombre syllable; he received therefrom an ineffable gratification⁠—indeed, it may have been for the sake of hearing the sound that he so often begged to see the christening basin.

Grandfather set the vessel back on the tray, and let the boy look into the smooth, faintly golden inside, which caught the light from the window in the ceiling.

“Yes,” he said, “it will soon be eight years since we held you over it, and the water flowed into it from your baptism. Lassen, the sexton of St.