istant to take charge of the
school until a new teacher should be appointed. There were between one
hundred and fifty and two hundred children in the school; he was the
sole teacher, and he was only seventeen. Moreover, some delay occurred
before the teacher who had been appointed to succeed Mr. Trotter could
come to take up his work. But Cairns proved equal to the situation.
The tradition is that his rule was an exceedingly stern one, that he
kept the children hard at work, and that he flogged extensively and
remorselessly.

When the new master arrived upon the scene, he subsided into his
original post of assistant. It had been his original intention to go
back to the University in November 1836; but as that date approached
it became evident that the financial difficulty was not yet removed,
so he accepted an engagement to continue his work in Ayton for another
year.

His stay in Ayton was a very happy one. He liked his work, and had
several warm friends in the village and district. Among these were Mr.
Ure, the kindly old minister who had married his parents and baptized
himself. Then there was Mr. Stark, minister of another Secession
church in the village--a much younger man than Mr. Ure, but a good
scholar and a well-read theologian. There was also a fellow-student,
Henry Weir, whose parents lived in Berwick, and who used often to walk
out to Ayton to see him, Cairns returning the visits, and seeing for
the first time, under Weir's auspices, the old Border town in which
so much of his own life was to be spent.

All this while he was working hard at his private studies. To these
studies he gave all the time that was not taken up by his teaching.
He read at his meals, and so far into the night that his aunt became
alarmed for his health. He worked his way through a goodly number of
the Greek and Latin classics, in copies borrowed from the libraries of
the two ministers; and he not only read, but analysed and elaborately
annotated what he read. But in the notes of the books read during the
year 1837 a change becomes evident. It can be seen that he took more
and more to the study of theology and Christian evidences, and his
note-books are full of references to Baxter and Jeremy Taylor, to
Robert Hall, Chalmers, and Keith.

At length in the summer a crisis was reached. A letter to his father,
which has not been preserved, announced that his views and feelings
with regard to spiritual things had undergone a great and