Hunter-Blair, seeing the volumes at the bookseller's,
was surprised to learn that they had been ordered by one
of his men. Greatly pleased thereat, Sir David had the
books handsomely bound and sent to Train, free of
charge; and later obtained for him an appointment in the
Excise in the Ayr district. He was a faithful and
efficient officer, but owing to the then prevalent
custom of giving the higher places in the Excise to
Englishmen, all Scott's efforts for the advancement of
his friend were unavailing; he remained supervisor till
he went on the retired list in 1836. In 1829 Train was
admitted a member of the Scottish Society of
Antiquaries. Though the death of Scott made a sad blank
in his life, his interest in his favorite studies
continued to the end. The latter part of his life was
spent in a cottage at Castle Douglas, where he was
visited shortly before his death by James Hannay, who
found him in a little parlor, crowded with antiquities
of interest and value,--the antiquary, "a tall old man,
with an autumnal red in his face, hale looking, and of
simple, quaint manners." (See _Household Words_, July
10, 1853.) Train's last extended works were an
_Historical and Statistical Account of the Isle of Man,
with a view of its peculiar customs and popular
superstitions_ (1845); and a study of a local religious
sect in _The Buchanites from First to Last_ (1846); but
he was an occasional contributor to various periodicals.
He died December 1, 1852.]]

{p.004} His first considerable communication, after he had formed the
unselfish determination above mentioned, consisted of a collection of
anecdotes concerning the Galloway gypsies, and "a local story of an
astrologer, who calling at a farmhouse at the moment when the goodwife
was in travail, had, it was said, predicted the future fortune of the
child, almost in the words placed in the mouth of John MacKinlay, in
the Introduction to Guy Mannering." Scott told him, in reply, that the
story of the astrologer reminded him of "one he had heard in his
youth;" that is to say, as the Introduction explains,