’Your loving Friend,

‘J.  Patteson.’

The July mail was without a letter from the father.  The end had come in the early morning of June 28, 1861, with a briefer, less painful struggle than had been thought probable, and the great, sound, wise, tender heart had ceased to beat.

There is no need to dwell on the spontaneous honours that all of those who had ever been connected with him paid to the good old Judge, when he was laid beside his much-loved wife in Feniton churchyard.  Bishop Sumner of Winchester, the friend of his boyhood, read the funeral service.

‘His works do follow him:’  and we turn to that work of his son’s in which assuredly he had his part, since one word of his would have turned aside the course that had brought such blessing on both, had he not accepted the summons, even as Zebedee, when he was left by the lake side, while his sons became fishers of men.

Unknowing of the tidings in reserve for him, the Bishop was on his voyage, following the usual course; hearing at Anaiteum that a frightful mortality had prevailed in many of these southern islands.  Measles had been imported by a trader, and had, in many cases, brought on dysentery, and had swept away a third of Mr. Geddie’s Anaiteum flock.  Mr. Gordon’s letters had spoken of it as equally fatal in Erromango, and there were reports of the same, as well as of famine and war, in Nengone.

’God will give me men in His time; for could I be cut up into five pieces already I would be living at Nengone, Lifu, Mai, Mota, and Bauro!’ was the comment on this visit; and this need of men inspired a letter to his uncle Edward, on a day dear to the Etonian heart:—­

’Schooner “Dunedin,” 60 tons.

’In sight of Erromango, New Hebrides:  June 4, 1861.

’My dear Tutor,—­Naturally I think of Eton and of you especially to-day.  I hope you have as fine a day coming on for the cricket-match and for Surley as I have here.  Thermometer 81°; Tanna and Erromango, with their rugged hilly outlines, breaking the line of the bright sparkling horizon.

’I managed to charter the vessel for the voyage just in time to escape cold weather in New Zealand.  She is slow, but sound; the captain a teetotaller, and crew respectable in all ways.  So the voyage, though lengthy, is pleasant.

’I have some six or seven classes to take, for they speak as many more languages; and I get a little time for reading and writing, but not much.

’I need not tell you how heavily this new responsibility presses on me, as I see the islands opening, and at present feel how very difficult it must be to obtain men to occupy this opening—­

’True, we have not to contend with subtle and highly-elaborated systems of false religion.  It is the ignorantia purae negationis, comparatively speaking, in some of the islands; yet, generally, there is a settled system of some kind observed among them, and in the Banks Islands, an extraordinarily developed religion, which enters into every detail of social and domestic life, and is mixed up with the daily life of every person in the archipelago.