ith 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 c