His real name when he left home was Thomas Robertsen, but it had got changed somehow in America, and he kept to it as it was.
Tom Robson was the cleverest foreman on the whole west coast, but his drinking propensities tried to the utmost both the patience and the firmness of his employers.

He had already built several vessels for Garman and Worse, but he was determined that the one he was now superintending at Sandsgaard should be his masterpiece.
This vessel was of about nine hundred tons burden, and was the largest craft that had been built at that port up to the present time, and Consul Garman had given orders that nothing should be spared to make it a model of perfection.
Tom Robson was thus only able to get drunk by fits and starts, which he did when they came to any important epoch in the building.

On that day, for instance, the time had just arrived for beginning to lay the planking upon the timbers.
As Gabriel neither found his friend nor saw anything of the carriage from Sandsgaard, which generally met him on his way from school, he set off to walk homewards, down the long avenue which led to the family property.

It was a good half-hour's walk, and while he sauntered along, swinging his heavy burden of the books he so cordially hated, he was lost in gloomy thought.

Every day, on his way from school, he met the younger clerks going to their dinner in the town.