unaffected earnestness which excited both thought and Christian feeling." Nor was he merely a preacher. By his pastoral visitations and "diets of examination" he always kept himself in close touch with his people, and he made himself respected by rich and poor alike.

The shepherd's family occupied a pew at Stockbridge in front of the pulpit and just under the gallery, which ran round three sides of the church. That pew was rarely vacant on a Sunday. There was no herding to be done on that day, and in the morning the father looked the sheep in the parks himself that the herd-boy might have his full Sabbath rest. He came back in time to conduct family worship, this being the only morning in the week when it was possible for him to do so, although in the evening it was never omitted, and on Sunday evening was always preceded by a repetition of the Shorter Catechism. After worship the family set out for church, where the service began at eleven.

The situation of Stockbridge, it has been already said, was solitary, but on Sundays, when the hour of worship drew near, the place lost its solitude. The roads in all directions were thronged with vehicles, men on horseback, and a great company on foot; the women wearing the scarlet cloaks which had not yet given place to the Paisley shawls of a later period, and each carrying, neatly wrapped in a white handkerchief, a Bible or Psalm-book, between whose leaves were a sprig or two of southernwood, spearmint, or other fragrant herb from the cottage garden.

The service lasted about three hours. There was first a "lecture" and then a sermon, each about fifty minutes long; several portions of psalms were sung; and of the three prayers, the first, or "long prayer," was seldom less than twenty minutes in length. In summer there was an interval of half an hour between the lecture and the sermon, "when," says Mr. William Cairns, "there was opportunity for a delightful breathing-time, and the youths who were swift of foot could just reach the bottom of a hill whereon were plenteous blaeberries, and snatch a fearful joy if one could swallow without leaving the tell-tale marks on the lips and tongue."

At the close of the afternoon service there was a Sunday school, chiefly conducted by Mr. Inglis himself, at which an examination on the sermon that had just been delivered formed an important part of the exercises. And tradition has it that the questioning and answering, which had at first been evenly distributed among the pupils, usually in the end came to resolve themselves pretty much into a dialogue between Mr. Inglis and John Cairns. It was here that the minister first came to close grips with his elder's son and took the measure of the lad's abilities. After he did so, his interest in John's classical studies was constant and helpful; and, although he gave him no direct assistance in them (if he had done so, he would have called down upon himself the wrath of Mr. M'Gregor), he was always ready to lend him books and give him useful advice.

After three years at herding and at Mr. M'Gregor's, the question arose, and was the subject of anxious debate in the family councils, as to what was to be done with John. He was now sixteen. His elder brother, Thomas, had got a post under his father, whom he afterwards succeeded as shepherd at Dunglass. His elder sister had gone to a situation. And now James, the brother next younger than himself, had also left home to be apprenticed to a tailor. It was time for some decision to be come to with regard to him. Mr. M'Gregor was anxious that a superstructure should be built on the foundation laid by himself by his going to College. Mr. Inglis's advice was unhesitatingly given in the same direction. With his father, the old scruples arose about setting one of his children above the rest; but again his mother's chief concern was more about ways and means. His father's question was, Ought it to be done? his mother's, Can it be done? There were great difficulties in the way of answering this practical question in the affirmative. There were then no bursaries open for competition; and though the expenses at home were not so great as they had once been, now that three of the family had been so far placed in life, the University class-fees and the cost of living, even in the most frugal way, entailed an expense which was formidable enough. Still, the mother thought that this could be faced, and, in order to acquaint herself more fully with all the facts of the situation, she resolved to pay a long-promised visit to her youngest brother, who with his family was now living in Edinburgh. He was a carrier between that city and Jedburgh, and, though still in a comparatively humble way, was said to be doing well.

The visit was a great success. Mrs. Cairns was most warmly received by her brother and his wife, who proposed that John should stay with them and share with their own family in what was going. This offer was gratefully accepted, so far as the question of lodging was concerned. As to board, John's mother had ideas of her own, and insisted on paying for it, if not in money at least in kind. Thus it was settled that John was to go to College, but nothing was settled beyond this. Perhaps his parents may have had their own wishes, and his minister and his schoolmaster their own expectations, about a career for him; but in the boy's unworldly heart there was nothing as yet beyond the desire for further learning and the earnest resolution to be not unworthy of the sacrifices which had made the realisation of this desire possible. He worked at his herding up till the day before he left for the University, in the end of October 1834; and then, starting in the middle of the night with William Christison, the Cockburnspath carrier, he trudged beside the cart that conveyed the box containing his clothes and his scanty stock of books all the thirty-five miles between Dunglass and Edinburgh.

CHAPTER III

COLLEGE DAYS

When John Cairns entered the University of Edinburgh in November 1834 he passed into a world that was entirely strange to him. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that between the low-roofed village school and the spacious quadrangle surrounded by heavily balustraded stone terraces and stately pillared façades, into which, at the booming of the hourly bell, there poured from the various classrooms a multitudinous throng of eager young humanity. And he himself in some mysterious way seemed to be changed almost beyond his own recognition. Instead of being the Jock Cairns who had herded sheep on the braes of Dunglass, and had carried butter to the Cockburnspath shop, he was now, as his matriculation card informed him, "Joannes Cairns, Civis Academiae Edinburgeniae;" he was addressed by the professor in class as "Mr. Cairns," and was included in his appeal to "any gentleman in the bench" to elucidate a difficult passage in the lesson of the day.

He attended two classes this winter—that of "Humanity" or Latin taught by Professor Pillans, and that of Greek under the care of Professor George Dunbar. Pillans had been a master at Eton, and at a later period Rector of the Edinburgh High School. He was a little man with rosy cheeks, and was a sound scholar and an admirable teacher, whose special "fad" was Classical Geography. Dunbar had begun life as a working gardener at Ayton Castle. He had compiled a Greek Lexicon which had some repute in its day, but he was not an inspiring teacher, and his gruff manners made him far from popular.

Trained by a country schoolmaster, and having no experience of competition except what a country school affords, John Cairns had until now no idea of his own proficiency relatively to that of others; and it was something of a revelation to him when he discovered how far the grounding he had received from Mr. M'Gregor enabled him to go. His classical attainments soon attracted notice, and at the end of the session,