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The father had been engaged by the Dunglass factor to act, in the absence of a regular tenant, as joint steward and shepherd at Oldcambus, and the family lived in the otherwise unoccupied farmhouse.
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.
He lingered till the autumn, and passed away at Oldcambus at the end of September. It was with this background of change and shadow that the ordination of John Cairns took place at Berwick on August 6, 1845. Berwick is an English town on the Scottish side of the Tweed.
After two years, the death of the Whiterigg farmer made another change necessary, and the family returned to the Dunglass estate and settled at Aikieside, a forester's cottage quite near to their former home at Oldcambus Mains, and within easy reach of Oldcambus School.
Their first removal was from Ayton Hill to Oldcambus Mains, in the parish of Cockburnspath, where they came into touch with the Dunglass estate and the Stockbridge Church, with both of which they were in after-years to have so close a connection.
Having set himself resolutely to a course of study and mental improvement under his brother John's guidance, he was able to accept a kindly proposal made to him by Sir John Hall of Dunglass, that he should become the teacher of the little roadside school at Oldcambus, which John had attended as a child.
But he drew closer to those who were still left especially to his own kindred, to his sisters, to his brother William at Oldcambus, and to his brother David, who had now been settled for some years as minister at Stitchel, near Kelso. Dr. Brown had nominated him as one of his literary executors, and his family were urgent in their request that he should write their father's Life.
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.
Here he duly put on the dunce's cap which he had seen them wear, and which bore the inscription, "For my bad conduct I stand here." A tenant having been at length found for Oldcambus Mains, the family, which had been increased by the birth of three more children, removed back to the Ayton district, to the farm of Whiterigg, two miles from the village.
On the marriage of his eldest brother in the summer of 1845 the widowed mother came to keep house for him, and henceforth the Oldcambus schoolhouse became the family headquarters. But that summer brought sorrow as well as change.
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