But his regular schooldays were now drawing to an end. His father, though engaged as the shepherd at Dunglass, had other duties of a very multifarious kind to discharge, and part of his shepherd work had been done for him for some time by his eldest son, Thomas. But Thomas was now old enough to earn a higher wage by other work on the home-farm or in the woods, and so it came to be John's turn to take up the work among the sheep. When his father told Mr. M'Gregor that John would have to leave school, the schoolmaster was so moved with regret at the thought of losing so promising a scholar, that he said that if John could find time for any study during the day he would be glad to have him come to his house two or three nights in the week, and to go over with him then what he had learned. As Mr. M'Gregor had become more and more solitary in his habits of late—he was a bachelor, and his aged mother kept house for him—this offer was considered to be a very remarkable proof of his regard, and it was all the more gratefully accepted on that account.
It fortunately happened that the work to which John had now to turn his hand allowed him an opportunity of carrying on his studies without interfering with its efficiency. That work was of a twofold character. He had to "look" the sheep, and he had to "herd" them. The looking came first. Starting at six o'clock in the morning, accompanied by the faithful collie "Cheviot," he made a round of all the grass-parks on the home-farm, beginning down near the sea and thence working his way round to a point considerably higher up than the mansion-house. His instructions were to count the sheep in each field, so that he might be able to tell whether they were all there, and also to see whether they were all afoot and feeding. In the event of anything being wrong, he was to report it to his father. The circuit was one of three or four miles, and the last field to be looked was that in which were gathered the fifty or sixty sheep that were to be brought out to the unfenced lawns round the mansion-house and be herded there during the day.
These sheep were generally to be found waiting close to the gate, and when it was opened they could quite easily find their own way down to their feeding-ground. As they passed slowly on, cropping the grass as they went, John was able to leave them and go home for his breakfast of porridge and milk. Breakfast having been despatched, and Cheviot fed, he once more wrapped his shepherd's plaid about him, remembering to put a book or two, and perhaps a piece of bannock, into the neuk of it, and set out to find his flock. There was usually little difficulty in doing so, for the sheep knew the way and did not readily wander out of it; while, even if they had deviated a little from the direct route, no great harm would at this stage of their passage have resulted. It was quite different when they came down to the lawns near the house. These were surrounded by ornamental shrubbery, and it was to keep the sheep from invading this and the adjacent flower-borders that the services of the herd-boy were required.
What he had to do, then, after he had brought the sheep down, was to take his place on some knoll which commanded the ground where they were feeding, and keep an eye on them. If nothing disturbed them they would feed quietly enough, and a long spell of reading might be quite safely indulged in. If any of them showed signs of wandering out of bounds, a stroll in their direction, book in hand, would usually be quite sufficient, with or without Cheviot's aid, to turn them. And if a leading sheep were turned, the others would, sheep-like, follow the new lead thus imparted. This was the usual state of things in fine weather. In wet weather there were not the same possibilities of study, unless the feeding-ground happened to be in the neighbourhood of the old church, where sufficient shelter could be found for reading and the sheep could be watched through the open doorway. About four o'clock—in winter somewhat earlier—it was time to take the sheep back to the fold-field, and then the parks had to be again looked, this time in the reverse order, the shepherd's cottage being gained in time for supper.
After supper, John would go into Cockburnspath to recite the lessons he had prepared to Mr. M'Gregor. The schoolmaster never prescribed any definite section to be learned; he left this to his pupil, in whose industry and interest in his work he had sufficient confidence. He rarely bestowed any praise. A grim smile of satisfaction, and sometimes a "Very well, sir," were all that he would vouchsafe; but to others he would be less reticent, and once he was heard to say, "I have so far missed my own way, but John Cairns will flourish yet."
John is described as having been at this time a well-grown boy, somewhat raw-boned and loose-jointed, with an eager look, ruddy and healthy, and tanned with the sun, his hair less dark than it afterwards became. He was fond of schoolboy games—shinty, football, and the rest—and would play at marbles, even when the game went against him, until he had lost his last stake. Archery was another favourite amusement, and he was expert at making bows from the thinnings of the Dunglass yews, and arrows tipped with iron ousels—almost the only manual dexterity he possessed. Like all boys of his class, his usual dress was a brown velveteen jacket and waistcoat and corduroy trousers that had once been white.
Along with the teaching he got from Mr. M'Gregor, there went another sort of education of a less formal kind which still deserves to be mentioned. Now that he was earning a wage,—it was about eightpence or tenpence a day,—which of course went into the common stock, he ventured occasionally to ask his mother for sixpence to himself. With this he could obtain a month's reading at the Cockburnspath library. A very excellent library this was, and during the three years of his herding he worked his way pretty well through it. It was especially strong in history and standard theology, and in these departments included such works as Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Mitford's History of Greece, Russell's Modern Europe, Butler's Analogy, and Paley's Evidences. In biography and fiction it was less strong, but it had a complete set of the Waverley Novels in one of the early three-volume editions. When he went to Mr. M'Gregor's, John used often to take butter churned by his mother to the village shop, and the basket in which he carried it was capacious enough to hold a good load of books from the library on the return journey.
All the family were fond of books, and the small store of volumes, mostly of old Scotch divinity, in the little bookcase at Dunglass was well thumbed. But reading of a lighter kind was also indulged in, and on winter nights, when the mother was plying her spinning-wheel and the father had taken down his cobbler's box and was busily engaged patching the children's shoes, it was a regular practice for John to sit near the dim oil-lamp and read to the rest. Sometimes the reading would be from an early number of Chambers's Journal, sometimes from Wilson's Tales of the Borders, which were then appearing—both of these being loans from a neighbour. But once a week there was always a newspaper to be read. It was often a week or a fortnight old, for, as it cost sixpence halfpenny, it was only by six or eight neighbours clubbing together that such a luxury could be brought within the reach of a working-man's family; but it was never so old as to be uninteresting to such eager listeners.
But the most powerful of all the influences which affected John Cairns at this period of his life remains to be mentioned—that which came to him from his religious training and surroundings. The Christian religion has acted both directly and indirectly on the Scottish peasantry, and it has done so the more powerfully because of the democratic character of the Presbyterian form which that religion took in Scotland. Directly, it has changed their lives and has given them new motives and new immortal hopes. But it has also acted on them indirectly, doing for them in this respect much of what education and culture have done for others. It has supplied the element of idealism in their lives. These lives, otherwise commonplace and unlovely, have been lighted up by a perpetual vision of the unseen and the eternal; and this has stimulated their intellectual powers and has so widened their whole outlook upon life as to raise them high above those of their own class who lived only for the present. All who have listened to the prayers of a devout Scotch elder of the working-class must have been struck by this combination of spiritual and intellectual power; and one thing they must have specially noticed is that, unlike the elder of contemporary fiction, he expressed himself, not in broad Scotch but in correct and often stately Bible English.
But this intellectual activity is often carried beyond the man in whom it has first manifested itself. It tends to reappear in his children, who either inherit it or have their own intellectual powers stimulated in the bracing atmosphere it has created. The instances of Robert Burns and Thomas Carlyle, who both came out of homes in which religion—and religion of the old Scottish type—was the deepest interest, will occur to everyone. Not the least striking illustration of this principle is shown in the case of John Cairns. In the life of his soul he owed much to the godly upbringing and Christian example shown to him by his parents; but the home at Dunglass, where religion was always the chief concern, was the nursery of a strong mind as well as of a strong soul, and both were fed from the same spring. In this case, as in so many others, spiritual strength became intellectual strength in the second generation.