’The Captain and Mr. Bice almost carried him up the hill to our house.  He was very thankful to be on shore, and spoke cheerfully about the improvement he had made on the voyage.  It was not very apparent to us who had not seen him for two years.  Even then he was looking worn and ill, but still was a young active man.  He seemed now quite a wreck.  For the first fortnight his faithful attendant Malagona slept in his room, and was ready at all hours to wait upon his beloved Bishop.  Day by day he used to sit by the fire in an easy chair, too weak to move or to attend to reading.  He got up very early, being tired of bed.  His books and papers were all brought out, but he did little but doze.’

Yet, in his despatch of the 2nd of May, where the manuscript is as firm, clear, and beautiful as ever, only somewhat less minute, he says that he had improved wonderfully on the voyage, though he adds that the doctor told him, ’At an office, they would insure your life at fifty, instead of forty-three years of age.’

Dr. Goldsboro had, on examination, discovered a chronic ailment, not likely, with care and treatment, to be dangerous to life, but forbidding active exertion or horse exercise, and warning him that a sudden jar or slip or fall on rugged ground would probably bring on acute inflammation, which might prove fatal after hours of suffering.

After, in the above-mentioned letter, communicating his exact state, he adds:—­’The pain has been at times very severe, and yet I can’t tell you of the very great happiness and actual enjoyment of many of those sleepless nights; when, perhaps at 2 A.M., I felt the pain subsiding, and prayer for rest, if it were His will, was changed into thanksgiving for the relief; then, as the fire flickered, came restful, peaceful, happy thoughts, mingled with much, I trust, heart-felt sorrow and remorse.  And Psalms seemed to have a new meaning, and prayers to be so real, and somehow there was a sense of a very near Presence, and I felt almost sorry when it was 5.30, and I got up, and my kind Melanesian nurse made me my morning cup of weak tea, so good to the dry, furred tongue.

’Well, that is all past and gone; and now the hope and prayer is, that when my time is really come, I may be better prepared to go.

’Sir William and Lady Martin are pretty well; and I am in clover here, getting real rest, and gaining ground pretty well.  I have all confidence in the prudence of the other missionaries and leave the work thankfully in their hands, knowing well Whose work it is, and to Whose guidance and protection we all trust.’

On the 9th, in a letter sent by a different route, he adds:—­

’So I think it will come to my doing my work on Norfolk Island just as usual, with only occasional inconvenience or discomfort.  But I think I shall have to forego some of the more risky and adventurous part of the work in the islands.  This is all right.  It is a sign that the time is come for me to delegate it to others.  I don’t mean that I shall not take the voyages, and stop about on the islands (D.V.) as before.  But I must do it all more carefully, and avoid much that of old I never thought about.  Yet I think it will not, as a matter of fact, much interfere with my work.