ricson, feebly, 'he has sent his angel to
deliver me.'

'But you do believe in him, Eric?'

The voice expressed anxiety no less than love.

'I am going to see. There is no other way. When I find him, I shall
believe in him. I shall love him with all my heart, I know. I love the
thought of him now.'

'But that's not himself, my--darling!' she said.

'No. But I cannot love himself till I find him. Perhaps there is no
Jesus.'

'Oh, don't say that. I can't bear to hear you talk so,'

'But, dear heart, if you're so sure of him, do you think he would turn
me away because I don't do what I can't do? I would if I could with all
my heart. If I were to say I believed in him, and then didn't trust him,
I could understand it. But when it's only that I'm not sure about what I
never saw, or had enough of proof to satisfy me of, how can he be vexed
at that? You seem to me to do him great wrong, Mary. Would you now
banish me for ever, if I should, when my brain is wrapped in the clouds
of death, forget you along with everything else for a moment?'

'No, no, no. Don't talk like that, Eric, dear. There may be reasons, you
know.'

'I know what they say well enough. But I expect Him, if there is a Him,
to be better even than you, my beautiful--and I don't know a fault in
you, but that you believe in a God you can't trust. If I believed in
a God, wouldn't I trust him just? And I do hope in him. We'll see, my
darling. When we meet again I think you'll say I was right.'

Robert stood like one turned into marble. Deep called unto deep in his
soul. The waves and the billows went over him.

Mary St. John answered not a word. I think she must have been
conscience-stricken. Surely the Son of Man saw nearly as much faith in
Ericson as in her. Only she clung to the word as a bond that the Lord
had given her: she would rather have his bond.

Ericson had another fit of coughing. Robert heard the rustling of
ministration. But in a moment the dying man again took up the word. He
seemed almost as anxious about Mary's faith as she was about his.

'There's Robert,' he said: 'I do believe that boy would die for me, and
I never did anything to deserve it. Now Jesus Christ must be as good as
Robert at least. I think he must be a great deal better, if he's Jesus
Christ at all. Now Robert might be hurt if I didn't believe in him. But
I've never seen Jesus Christ. It's all in an old book, over which the
people that say they believe in it the most