An interesting episode pertaining to this period was narrated by the Free Church minister of Newhaven. "The election," he wrote to Dr. Duns, "took place on a Monday, and it was on the Sabbath preceding, between sermons, that one of my people, a fisherman, called on me stating that his wife was apparently dying, but that she and all her friends were longing most intensely for a consultation with Sir James. I did not know well what to do, for I knew that his mind was likely to be very much harassed, and I shrank from adding to his troubles. But in the urgency of the case I wrote him a note simply stating that one of the best women in the town was at the point of death and longed for his help, leaving the matter without another word to himself. The result was that he came down immediately, spent three hours beside his patient, performed, I am told, miracles of skill, and did not leave her till the crisis was over. She would, I am assured, have died that evening, but she was one of the sincerest mourners at his funeral, and she still lives to bless his memory. After all was over he went into a friend's house and threw himself down on a sofa in a state of utter exhaustion. This was the way in which, without hope of fee or reward, and while others were waiting for him able to give him both, Sir James spent the evening preceding the election. Some will say it was no great matter after all. Why, for that part of it, neither was the cup of cold water which the dying Sir Philip Sidney passed from his own lips to those of a wounded soldier in greater agony than himself. But the incident is recalled whenever his name is mentioned as adding to the glory of the knight _sans peur et sans reproche_, and the incident I have mentioned in the Newhaven fisherman's house surely gives to Sir James a place beside him in the glorious order of chivalrous generosity."