" And it
was while lying here,--only now and then uttering a few words,--that
Mr. Lockhart says of him, "He expressed his will as determinedly as
ever, and expressed it with the same apt and good-natured irony that
he was wont to use."
Sir Walter's great and urgent desire was to return to Abbotsford, and at
last his physicians yielded. On the 7th July he was lifted into his
carriage, followed by his trembling and weeping daughters, and so taken to
a steamboat, where the captain gave up his private cabin--a cabin on
deck--for his use. He remained unconscious of any change till after his
arrival in Edinburgh, when, on the 11th July, he was placed again in his
carriage, and remained in it quite unconscious during the first two stages
of the journey to Tweedside. But as the carriage entered the valley of the
Gala, he began to look about him. Presently he murmured a name or two,
"Gala water, surely,--Buckholm,--Torwoodlee." When the outline of the
Eildon hills came in view, Scott's excitement was great, and when his eye
caught the towers of Abbotsford, he sprang up with a cry of delight, and
while the towers remained in sight it took his physician, his son-in-law,
and his servant, to keep him in the carriage.
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