440 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



love of women." Cheerful reminiscences he had of past labor by 

 the lake-side; then came kindness and care to soothe the weakness 

 and troubles of advancing age ; and, last of all, the touch of a ten- 

 der hand by the dying bed. Poor old man ; he had come to pay me 

 a visit at Lixmount, where I was then residing, when he took his 

 last illness ; he lay some weeks, fading gradually away. Before his 

 last hour came, I sent to let my father know I thought it was at 

 hand ; my message brought him immediately. He walked the dis- 

 tance — about two miles from Gloucester Place ; and walking at 

 that time was beginning to fatigue him, so he arrived heated and 

 tired, but went at once, without taking rest, to his old comrade's 

 room, where he found him conscious, though too weak to speak. 

 Billy's eye lighted up the moment it rested on the beloved face be- 

 fore him, and he made an effort to raise his hand — the weather- 

 beaten hand that had so often pulled an oar on Windermere ; it 

 was lying unnerved and white, barely able to return the pressure 

 so tenderly given. The other held in its helpless grasp a black silk 

 handkerchief which he seemed desirous of protecting. As the day 

 wore on life wore away. The scene was simple and sad. Pale and 

 emaciated, the old man rested beneath the white drapery of his bed, 

 noiseless almost as a shadow ; while my father sat beside him, still 

 fresh in face and powerful in frame, exhibiting in his changing coun- 

 tenance the emotions of solemn thought and a touched heart. Soon 

 the change came ; a stronger breathing for a moment, a few faint 

 siffhs, and then that unmistakable stillness nowhere to be heard but 

 in the chamber of death. The old boatman had passed to other 

 shores. The handkerchief he grasped in his hand was one given to 

 him by his master ; he had desired his wife to lay it beside him. It 

 was a something tangible when memory was leaving him, that re- 

 vived in his heart recollections of the past. Billy Balmer was in- 

 terred in the Warriston Cemetery. My father walked at the head 

 of his coffin, and laid him in his grave. 



The next letter is written in September : — 



" My dear Blair : — Golly and Jane having both written to you 

 from Billholm, I need say little of my visit to it. You know, too, 

 of the sudden appearance of the dear Doctor.* We left them all 

 well on the Wednesday -preceding the Queen's arrival. But we 



* Dr. Blair. 



