her to read to him some of the many letters that had come by that morning's post, which she does. But his strangely altered aspect and feeble, almost inarticulate, utterance alarm her. After a while, at his request, she reads to him the 25th and 26th chapters of Isaiah. Doubtless he chose these chapters because he recollected the texts contained in them, as applicable to himself, lying sick unto death in India, and he hears them again in these supreme hours of his life — 'the heat in a dry place, even the heat with the shadow of a cloud' — 'he will swallow up death in victory' — 'thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee' — 'the dead shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise.' Then he lapses into a half-slumber for some hours. Awaking he is found to be dangerously weak, still unable to take nourishment, and apprehensive of any movement lest it should resuscitate the agony of the previous night. Great and increasing trouble ensues upon every effort he makes to speak. Considering all this, Hay calls in a second medical man, and they both pronounce him to be in a critical and precarious condition; this aggravates the fears that had been oppressing his daughters all day. When bed-time arrives he does not receive them to wish them good-night. Soon afterwards Hay perceives a further change, arouses them with a hurried intimation that their father is sinking, and takes them to his bed-side about an hour before midnight. Seeing them enter at this unusual hour, he asks Hay, 'Have you summoned them?' and the
