res of
religious joy could have done. He displays the same evenness of temper
in the sight of death as has marked his equable and consistent life."

He died in the early morning of 3rd January 1841. His son William thus
describes the scene: "It was the first time any of us except our
mother had looked on the face of the dying in the act of departing,
and that leaves an impression that can never be effaced. When the end
came, and each had truly realised what had happened, our mother in a
broken voice asked that 'the Books' might be laid on the table; then
she gave out that verse in the 107th Psalm--

'The storm is changed into a calm
At his command and will;
So that the waves that raged before,
Now quiet are and still.'

It was her voice, too, that raised the tune. Then she asked Thomas to
read a chapter of the Bible and afterwards to pray. We all knelt down,
and Thomas made a strong effort to steady his voice, but he failed
utterly; then the dear mother herself lifted the voice of thanksgiving
for the victory that had been won, and after that the neighbours were
called in."[4]

Cairns was soon to have further experience of anxiety in respect to
the health of those who were near to him. Towards the close of the
year in which his father died, his brother William, who had almost
completed his apprenticeship to a mason at Chirnside, in Berwickshire,
was seized with inflammation, and for some weeks hung between life and
death. At length he recovered sufficiently to be removed under his
elder brother's careful and loving supervision to the Edinburgh
Infirmary, where he remained for four months. During all that time
Cairns visited his brother twice every day, he taught himself to apply
to the patient the galvanic treatment which had been prescribed, and
brought him an endless supply of books, periodicals, and good things
to eat and smoke.

[Footnote 4: It would appear that it was not an uncommon custom in
Scotland in former times to have family worship immediately after
a death. Perhaps, too, this verse from the 107th Psalm was the one
usually sung on such occasions. There may be a reminiscence of this,
due to its author's Seceder training, in a passage in Carlyle's
_Oliver Cromwell_, where, after describing the Protector's death,
and the grief of his daughter Lady Fauconberg, he goes on to say,
"Husht poor weeping Mary! Here is a Life-battle right nobly done.
Seest thou not

'The storm is changed i