'Now you'll think me a fool, Robert, if I tell you why.' 'Far be it frae me to daur think sic a word, Mr. Ericson!' said Robert devoutly. 'Well, I'll tell you, whether or not,' returned Ericson. 'I could, I believe, amputate a living limb with considerable coolness; but put a knife in a dead body I could not.' 'I think I know what you mean. Then you must be a lawyer.' 'A lawyer! O Lord!' said Ericson. 'Why not?' asked Robert, in some wonderment; for he could not imagine Ericson acting from mere popular prejudice or fancy. 'Just think of spending one's life in an atmosphere of squabbles. It's all very well when one gets to be a judge and dispense justice; but--well, it's not for me. I could not do the best for my clients. And a lawyer has nothing to do with the kingdom of heaven--only with his clients. He must be a party-man. He must secure for one so often at the loss of the rest. My duty and my conscience would always be at strife.' 'Then what will you be, Mr. Ericson?' 'To tell the truth, I would rather be a watchmaker than anything else I know. I might make one watch that would go right, I suppose, if I lived long enough. But no one would take an apprentice of my age. So I suppose I must be a tutor, knocked about from one house to another, patronized by ex-pupils, and smiled upon as harmless by mammas and sisters to the end of the chapter. And then something of a pauper's burial, I suppose. Che sara sara.' Ericson had sunk into one of his worst moods. But when he saw Robert looking unhappy, he changed his tone, and would be--what he could not be--merry. 'But what's the use of talking about it?' he said. 'Get your fiddle, man, and play The Wind that Shakes the Barley.' 'No, Mr. Ericson,' answered Robert; 'I have no heart for the fiddle. I would rather have some poetry.' 'Oh!--Poetry!' returned Ericson, in a tone of contempt--yet not very hearty contempt. 'We're gaein' awa', Mr. Ericson,' said Robert; 'an' the Lord 'at we ken naething aboot alane kens whether we'll ever meet again i' this place. And sae--' 'True enough, my boy,' interrupted Ericson. 'I have no need to trouble myself about the future. I believe that is the real secret of it after all. I shall never want a profession or anything else.' 'What do you mean, Mr. Ericson?' asked Robert, in half-defined terror. 'I mean, my boy, that I shall not live long. I know that--thank God!' 'How do you know it?' 'My father died at thirty, and my mother at six-and-twenty, both of the same disease. But that's not how I know it.' 'How do you know it then?' Ericson returned no answer. He only said-- 'Death will be better than life. One thing I don't like about it though,' he added, 'is the coming on of unconsciousness. I cannot bear to lose my consciousness even in sleep. It is such a terrible thing!'