_stylus_ in hand, toiling cheerfully over the vellum
page. It was the last night of the week when the
presentiment of his end came strongly upon him. "This
day," he said to his disciple and successor, Dermid, "is
called the day of rest, and such it will be for me, for
it will finish my labours." Laying down the manuscript,
he added, "let Baithen finish the rest." Just after
Matins, on the Sunday morning, he peacefully passed away
from the midst of his brethren.

Of his tenderness, as well as energy of character,
tradition, and his biographers have recorded many instances.
Among others, his habit of ascending an eminence every
evening at sunset, to look over towards the coast of his
native land. The spot is called by the islanders to this
day, "the place of the back turned upon Ireland." The
fishermen of the Hebrides long believed they could see
their saint flitting over the waves after every new storm,
counting the islands to see if any of them had foundered.
It must have been a loveable character of which such
tales could be told and cherished from generation to
generation.

Both Education and Nature had well fitted Columbkill to
the great task of adding another realm to the empire of
Christendom. His princely birth gave him power over his
own proud kindred; his golden eloquence and glowing
verse--the fragments of which still move and delight the
Gaelic scholar--gave him fame and weight in the Christian
schools which had suddenly sprung up in every glen and