Between Ericson and Robert, as the former recovered his health, communication from the deeper strata of human need became less frequent. Ericson had to work hard to recover something of his leeway; Robert had to work hard that prizes might witness for him to his grandmother and Miss St. John. To the latter especially, as I think I have said before, he was anxious to show well, wiping out the blot, as he considered it, of his all but failure in the matter of a bursary. For he looked up to her as to a goddess who just came near enough to the earth to be worshipped by him who dwelt upon it. The end of the session came nigh. Ericson passed his examinations with honour. Robert gained the first Greek and third Latin prize. The evening of the last day arrived, and on the morrow the students would be gone--some to their homes of comfort and idleness, others to hard labour in the fields; some to steady reading, perhaps to school again to prepare for the next session, and others to be tutors all the summer months, and return to the wintry city as to freedom and life. Shargar was to remain at the grammar-school. That last evening Robert sat with Ericson in his room. It was a cold night--the night of the last day of March. A bitter wind blew about the house, and dropped spiky hailstones upon the skylight. The friends were to leave on the morrow, but to leave together; for they had already sent their boxes, one by the carrier to Rothieden, the other by a sailing vessel to Wick, and had agreed to walk together as far as Robert's home, where he was in hopes of inducing his friend to remain for a few days if he found his grandmother agreeable to the plan. Shargar was asleep on the rug for the last time, and Robert had brought his coal-scuttle into Ericson's room to combine their scanty remains of well-saved fuel in a common glow, over which they now sat. 'I wonder what my grannie 'ill say to me,' said Robert. 'She'll be very glad to see you, whatever she may say,' remarked Ericson. 'She'll say “Noo, be dooce,” the minute I hae shacken hands wi' her,' said Robert. 'Robert,' returned Ericson solemnly, 'if I had a grandmother to go home to, she might box my ears if she liked--I wouldn't care. You do not know what it is not to have a soul belonging to you on the face of the earth. It is so cold and so lonely!' 'But you have a cousin, haven't you?' suggested Robert. Ericson laughed, but good-naturedly. 'Yes,' he answered, 'a little man with a fishy smell, in a blue tail-coat with brass buttons, and a red and black nightcap.' 'But,' Robert ventured to hint, 'he might go in a kilt and top-boots, like Satan in my grannie's copy o' the Paradise Lost, for onything I would care.'