ost, while the wind
and rain beat upon me, always expecting a call to pull my
rope.... They spied the harbour of Lochiern, and _Col_ cried,
"Thank God, we are safe!" Dr Johnson had all this time been
quiet and unconcerned. He had lain down on one of the beds, and
having got free from sickness, was satisfied. The truth is, he
knew nothing of the danger we were in. Once he asked whither we
were going; upon being told that it was not certain whether to
Mull or Col, he cried, "Col for my money!" I now went down to
visit him. He was lying in philosophick tranquillity, with a
greyhound of _Col's_ at his back keeping him warm.'

Mull, Tobermory, Ulva's Isle, and Inch Kenneth followed. Then
Iona,--'the sacred place which as long as I can remember, I had thought
on with veneration.' The two friends, as they landed on the island,
'cordially embraced,' as they had done in the _White Horse_ at
Edinburgh, and the mark of feeling is a note that we are yet with them
in the eighteenth century. They lay in a barn with a portmanteau for a
pillow, and 'when I awaked in the morning and looked round me, I could
not help smiling at the idea of the chief of the Macleans, the great
English moralist, and myself lying thus extended in such a situation.'
The old Boswell of the Roman Catholic days appears at this time.
'Boswell,' writes Johnson to Mrs Thrale, 'who is very pious went into
the chapel at night to perform his devotions, but came back in haste for
fear of spectres.' Second sight was often in their thoughts and
conversation on their tour; at the club Colman had jocularly to bid
Boswell 'cork it up' when he was too full of his belief on the point.
His fear of ghosts reminds one of Pepys in the year of the great plague,
as he went through the graveyard of the church, with the bodies buried
thick and high, 'frighted and much troubled.'

'I left him,' says Boswell himself, 'and Sir Allan at breakfast in our
barn, and stole back again to the cathedral, to indulge in solitude and
devout meditation. When contemplating the venerable ruins, _I reflected
with much satisfaction_, that the solemn scenes of piety _never lose
their sanctity and influence_, though the cares and follies of life may
prevent us from visiting them.... I hoped that, ever after having been
in this holy place, I should maintain an exemplary conduct. One has a
strange propensity to fix upon some point of time from whence a better
cour