Within two years Greek had been added to the Latin; and, as the unavoidable bustle and noise which arose in the evening when the whole family were together in the one room of the house made study difficult, John stipulated with his mother that she should call him in the morning, when she rose, an hour before anybody else, to light the fire and prepare the breakfast.  And so it happened that, if any of the rest of the family awoke before it was time to get up, they would see John studying his lesson and hear him conjugating his Greek verbs by the light of the one little oil-lamp that the house afforded.  Perhaps, too, it was what he saw, in these early morning hours, of the unwearied and self-forgetful toil of his mother that taught him to be in an especial degree thoughtful for her comfort and considerate of her wants both then and in after-years.

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.