OW.

Ericson was recovering slowly. He could sit up in bed the greater part
of the day, and talk about getting out of it. He was able to give Robert
an occasional help with his Greek, and to listen with pleasure to his
violin. The night-watching grew less needful, and Ericson would have
dispensed with it willingly, but Robert would not yet consent.

But Ericson had seasons of great depression, during which he could not
away with music, or listen to the words of the New Testament. During one
of these Robert had begun to read a chapter to him, in the faint hope
that he might draw some comfort from it.

'Shut the book,' he said. 'If it were the word of God to men, it would
have brought its own proof with it.'

'Are ye sure it hasna?' asked Robert.

'No,' answered Ericson. 'But why should a fellow that would give his
life--that's not much, but it's all I've got--to believe in God, not be
able? Only I confess that God in the New Testament wouldn't satisfy
me. There's no help. I must just die, and go and see.--She'll be left
without anybody. 'What does it matter? She would not mind a word I
said. And the God they talk about will just let her take her own way. He
always does.'

He had closed his eyes and forgotten that Robert heard him. He opened
them now, and fixed them on him with an expression that seemed to ask,
'Have I been saying anything I ought not?'

Robert knelt by the bedside, and said, slowly, with strongly repressed
emotion,

'Mr. Ericson, I sweir by God, gin there be ane, that gin ye dee, I'll
tak up what ye lea' ahin' ye. Gin there be onybody ye want luikit
efter, I'll luik efter her. I'll do what I can for her to the best o' my
abeelity, sae help me God--aye savin' what I maun do for my ain father,
gin he be in life, to fess (bring) him back to the richt gait, gin there
be a richt gait. Sae ye can think aboot whether there's onything ye wad
like to lippen till me.'

A something grew in Ericson's eyes as Robert spoke. Before he had
finished, they beamed on the boy.

'I think there must be a God somewhere after all,' he said, half
soliloquizing. 'I should be sorry you hadn't a God, Robert. Why should
I wish it for your sake? How could I want one for myself if there never
was one? If a God had nothing to do with my making, why should I feel
that nobody but God can set things right? Ah! but he must be such a God
as I could imagine--altogether, absolutely true and good. If we came
out of nothing, we cou