’"He is dying!” the Bishop said. ’"Father, into Thy hands we commend his spirit."’

Patteson’s ‘Amen’ came from his heart.  The poor fellow made no sound as he lay with his frame rigid, his back arched so that an arm could be thrust under it.  He was gone in that moment, unbaptized.  Patteson writes:—­

’I had much conflict with myself about it.  He had talked once with me in a very hopeful way, but during his illness I could not obtain from him any distinct profession of faith, anything to make me feel pretty sure that some conviction of the truth of what he he hd been taught, and not mere learning by rote, was the occasion of his saying what he did say.  I did wish much that I might talk again with the Bishop about it, but his death took us by surprise.  I pray God that all my omission and neglect of duty may be repaired, and that his very imperfect and unconscious yearnings after the truth may be accepted for Christ’s sake.’

The arrow was reported to have been poisoned, but by the time the cause of the injury had been discovered it had been thrown away and could not be recovered for examination.  Indeed, lockjaw seems to be so prevalent in the equatorial climates, and the natives so peculiarly liable to it, that poison did not seem needful to account for the catastrophe.

Altogether, these lads were exotics in New Zealand, and exceedingly fragile.  In the very height of summer they had to wear corduroy trousers, blue serge shirts, red woollen comforters, and blue Scotch caps, and the more delicate a thick woollen jersey in addition; and with all these precautions they were continually catching cold, or getting disordered, and then the Bauro and Grera set could only support such treatment as young children generally need.  The Loyalty Islanders were much tougher and stronger and easier to treat, but they too showed that the climate of Auckland was a hard trial to their constitutions.

On the last day of March came tidings of the sudden death of the much-beloved and honoured Dr. James Coleridge of Thorverton.

‘It is a great shock,’ says the letter written the same day; ’not that I feel unhappy exactly, nor low, but that many many memories are revived and keep freshening on my mind....  And since I left England his warm, loving, almost too fond letters have bound me very closely to him, and sorely I shall miss the sight of his handwriting; though he may be nearer to me now than before, and his love for me is doubtless even more pure and fervent.

’I confess I had thought sometimes that if it pleased God to take you first, the consciousness that he would be with you was a great comfort to me—­not that any man is worth much then.  God must be all in all.  But yet he of all men was the one who would have been a real comfort to you, and even more so to others.’  To his cousin he writes:—­

’Wednesday in Passion Week, 1858:  St. John’s College.