But calling anybody good doesn't make him good, you know.' 'Then ye dinna believe 'at God is good, Mr.Ericson ?' said Robert, choking with a strange mingling of horror and hope.
'I didn't say that, my boy.

But to know that God was good, and fair, and kind--heartily, I mean, not half-ways, and with ifs and buts--my boy, there would be nothing left to be miserable about.' In a momentary flash of thought, Robert wondered whether this might not be his old friend, the repentant angel, sent to earth as a man, that he might have a share in the redemption, and work out his own salvation.
And from this very moment the thoughts about God that had hitherto been moving in formless solution in his mind began slowly to crystallize.
The next day, Eric Ericson, not without a piece in ae pouch and money in another, took his way home, if home it could be called where neither father, mother, brother, nor sister awaited his return.

For a season Robert saw him no more.
As often as his name was mentioned, Miss Letty's eyes would grow hazy, and as often she would make some comical remark.
'Puir fallow!' she would say, 'he was ower lang-leggit for this warld.' Or again: 'Ay, he was a braw chield.

But he canna live.

His feet's ower sma'.' Or yet again: 'Saw ye ever sic a gowk, to mak sic a wark aboot sittin' doon an' haein' his feet washed, as gin that cost a body onything!'.