Latin studies and in Greek prose.  Nor were these the only interests that occupied him.  A fellow-student, the late Dr. James Hardy, writes of him that from the first he was great in controversy, and that in the classroom during the ten minutes before the appearance of the professor, he was always the centre of a knot of disputants on the Voluntary Church question or some question of politics.  Also it is recorded that, on the day after a Parliamentary election for the city, he had no voice left, having shouted it all away the day before in honour of the two successful Whig candidates.

During this session, as had been previously arranged, he lodged in Charles Street with his mother’s brother, whose eldest son, John Murray, shared his room.  For this cousin, who was about his own age, he had always the greatest regard, and he was specially grateful to him for the kindness with which he helped him over many of the difficulties which, as a raw lad from the country, he experienced when he first came to live in the city.  The friendship between the cousins remained unbroken—­though their paths in life were widely different—­till they died, within a fortnight of each other, nearly sixty years later.

All through the winter a box travelled with the Cockburnspath carrier every three or four weeks between Edinburgh and Dunglass, taking with it on the outward journey clothes to be washed and mended, and on the return journey always including a store of country provisions—­scones, oatmeal, butter, cheese, bacon, and potatoes.  The letters that passed between the student and his family were also sent in the box, for as yet there was no penny post, and the postage of a letter between Dunglass and Edinburgh cost as much as sixpence halfpenny or sevenpence.  Often, too, John would send home some cheap second-hand books, for he had a general commission to keep his eye on the bookstalls.  Amongst these purchases was sometimes included a Bible, so that before the end of the winter each member of the family had a separate Bible to take to church or Sunday school.

At the close of the winter session he accepted the invitation of another brother of his mother, who was a farmer at Longyester, near Gifford in East Lothian, on the northern fringe of the Lammermoors, to come and be tutor to his three boys during the summer.  At Longyester he spent four very happy months in congenial work among kind people.  He learned to ride, and more than once he rode along the hill-foots to Dunglass, twenty miles to the eastward, to spend the Sunday with his father and mother.

During these months he also came into personal contact with a family whose influence on him during these early years was strong and memorable—­the Darlings of Millknowe.  Millknowe is a large sheep-farm in the heart of the Lammermoors, just where the young Whitadder winds round the base of Spartleton Law.  The family at Millknowe, consisting at this time of three brothers and two sisters, all of whom had reached