’Then came the happy, blessed service, the whole population present, every confirmed person communicating, my voice trembling at the Fifth Commandment and the end of the Prayer for the Church Militant, my heart very full and thankful.  I preached to them extempore, as one can preach to no other congregation, from the lesson, “Jesus gone to be the guest of a man that is a sinner,” the consequences that would result in us from His vouchsafing to tabernacle among us, and, as displayed in the Parable of the Pounds, the use of God’s gifts of health, influence, means; then, specifying the use of God’s highest gifts of children to be trained to His glory, quoting 1 Samuel i. 27, 28, “lent to the Lord,” I spoke with an earnestness that felt strange to me at the time.

’Simon Young said afterwards:  “My wife could not consent months ago to Fisher’s going away, but she has told me now that she consents.  She can’t withhold him with the thought of holy Hannah in her mind.”  And I felt as if I might apply (though not in the first sense) the prophecy “Instead of thy fathers, thou shalt have children.”

’To add to all, Mr. Nobbs said:  “I have quite altered my mind about the Melanesian school, I quite see that I was mistaken;” and the people are considering how to connect themselves closely with us.

’You may imagine, dear Joan, that joy and grief made a strange, yet not unhappy tumult in my mind.  I came away at 3 P.M. (the wind being very fair) hoping to revisit them, and, by the Bishop of Tasmania’s desire, hold a confirmation in six months’ time.  How I am longing to hear the last record of the three days intervening between June 25 and 28, you may well imagine....  Already, thank God, four months have passed, and you are recovering from the great shock.  Yours is a far harder trial than mine.  May God comfort and bless us all, and bring us to dwell with our dear parents in heaven, for our blessed Lord’s sake.

’Your very loving Brother,

‘J.  C. Patteson.’

And this most touching account from within is supplemented by the following, by Mr. Dudley, from without:—­

’He took it [the tidings of his father’s death] quite calmly.  Evidently it had been long expected and prepared for.  He was even cheerful in his quiet grave way.  In the evening there was singing got up for him by some of the Norfolk Islanders, in one of the large rooms of the old barracks.  He enjoyed it; and after it had gone on some time, he thanked them in a few touching words that went home, I am sure, to the hearts of many of them, and then we all knelt down, and he prayed extempore.  I wish I had kept the words of that prayer!  Everyone was affected, knowing what was then occupying his mind, but we were still more so next morning, at the service in church.  His voice had that peculiarly low and sweet tone which always came into it when he was in great anxiety or sorrow, but his appeal to the