lem, let my right hand forget her cunning,' inclines me
rather to self-examination and to serious fear lest any among you
should have suffered through my failure to set forth and urge home
this gospel of salvation. If then any of you should be in this case,
through my fault or your own, that you have not yet obeyed the gospel
of Christ, I address to you in Christ's name one parting call that you
may at length receive the truth."

A few weeks later he and his sister removed to Edinburgh, where they
were joined in the autumn by their brother William. William Cairns,
who had been schoolmaster at Oldcambus for thirty-two years, was in
many respects a notable man. Deprived, as we have seen, in early
manhood of the power of walking, he had set himself to improve his
mind and had acquired a great store of general information. He was
shrewd, humorous, genial, and intensely human, and had made himself
the centre of a large circle of friends, many of whom were to be found
far beyond the bounds of his native parish and county. Since his
mother's death an elder sister had kept house for him, but she had
died in the previous winter, and at his brother's urgent request he
had consented to give up his school al Oldcambus and make his home for
the future with him in Edinburgh. The house No. 10 Spence Street, in
which for sixteen years the brothers and sister lived together, is a
modest semi-detached villa in a short street running off the Dalkeith
Road, in one of the southern suburbs of the city. It had two great
advantages in Dr. Cairns's eyes--one being that it was far enough away
from the College to ensure that he would have a good walk every day in
going there and back; and the other, that its internal arrangements
were very convenient for his brother finding his way in his
wheel-chair about it, and out of it when he so desired.

The study, as at Berwick, was upstairs, and was a large lightsome
room, from which a view of the Craigmillar woods, North Berwick Law,
and even the distant Lammermoors, could be obtained--a view which was,
alas! soon blocked up by the erection of tall buildings. At the back
of the house, downstairs, was the sitting-room, where the family meals
were taken and where William sat working at his desk. He had been
fortunate enough to secure, almost immediately after his arrival in
Edinburgh, a commission from Messrs. A. & C. Black to prepare the
Index to the ninth edition of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, then