26 WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 



am afraid I must ask you to help me in." He 

 walked from the landing-place into the house, 

 changed his clothes, and came and sat in the large 

 room below. The pain increasing, he rose from 

 his seat after he had seen his doctor, and though 

 he had been bent double with anguish, he persisted 

 in walking up-stairs without help, and would have 

 gone to his own room in the top storey, if, for the 

 sake of saving trouble to others, he had not been 

 induced to stop half-way in Miss Edmonstone's 

 sitting-room. Here he lay down upon the sofa, 

 and was attended by his sisters-in-law. The pain 

 abated, and the next day he seemed better. In 

 the afternoon he talked to me a good deal, chiefly 

 about natural history. But he was well aware of 

 his perilous condition, for he remarked to me, 

 "This is a bad business," and later on he felt his 

 pulse often, and said, "It is a bad case." He was 

 more than self-possessed. A benignant cheerful- 

 ness beamed from his mind, and in the fits of pain 

 he frequently looked up with a gentle smile, and 

 made some little joke. Towards midnight he grew 

 worse. The priest, the Eeverend E. Browne, was 

 summoned, and Waterton got ready to die. He 

 pulled himself upright without help, sat in the 

 middle of the sofa, and gave his blessing in turn to 

 his grandson, Charlie, to his grand-daughter, 

 Mary, to each of his sisters-in-law, to his niece, 

 and to myself, and left a message for his son, who 

 was hastening back from Eome. He then received 

 the last sacraments, repeated all the responses. 

 Saint Bernard's hymn in English, and the first 

 two verses of the Dies Irce. The end was now at 

 hand, and he died at twenty-seven minutes past 



