The touching narrative which both his biographers, Cummene and Adamnan, give of his last days has been often quoted; but it presents such a charming picture of what his life in the island was, that it may well be repeated here. In the year 597 Columba had reached his seventy-seventh year, and towards the end of May in that year, says Cummene, the man of God, worn with age and carried in a car, goes to visit the working brethren, who were, adds Adamnan, then at work on the western side of the island, and addresses them, saying, ‘During the Paschal solemnities in the month of April just past I could have desired to depart to Christ, but lest a joyous festival should be turned for you into mourning my departure has been deferred,’ Hearing these words, the brethren, or, as Adamnan calls them, the beloved monks, were greatly afflicted. The man of God, however, as he sat in his car, turned his face towards the east and blessed the island with its insular inhabitants. After the words of blessing, the saint was carried back to his monastery. On Sunday the second of June we find him celebrating the solemn offices of the eucharist, when, as his eyes were raised to heaven, the brethren observed a sudden expression of rapture on his face, which he explained to them was caused by his seeming to see an angel of the Lord looking down upon them within the church and blessing it, and who, he believed, had been sent on account of the death of some one dear to God, or, as Adamnan expresses it, ‘to demand a deposit dear to God, by which he understood was meant his own soul, as a deposit intrusted to him by God.’