On the south side of the street, just in front of the church, stood the old schoolhouse--a low one storey building, roofed with the red tiles characteristic of the neighbourhood, and built on to the schoolmaster's two-storey dwelling. The schoolmaster at this time was John M'Gregor, a man of ripe and accurate scholarship and quite separate individuality. The son of a Perthshire farmer, he had studied for the ministry at St. Andrews University, and had, it was said, fulfilled all the requirements for becoming a licentiate of the Church of Scotland except the sending in of one exercise, This exercise he could never be persuaded to send in, and that not because he had any speculative difficulties as to the truth of the Christian revelation, nor yet because he had any exaggerated misgivings as to his own qualifications for the work of the ministry; but because he preferred the teaching profession, and was, moreover, indignant at what he conceived to be the overbearing attitude which the ministers of the Established Church assumed to the parish schools and schoolmasters. This feeling ultimately became a kind of mania with him. He was at feud with his own parish minister, and never entered his church except when, arrayed in a blue cloak with a red collar, he attended to read proclamations of marriages; and he could make himself very disagreeable when the local Presbytery sent their annual deputation to examine his school. Yet he was essentially a religious man; he had a reverence for what was good, and he taught the Bible and Shorter Catechism to his scholars carefully and well. As he disliked the ministers, so he showed little deference to the farmers, who were in some sort the "quality" of the district, and to such of their offspring as came under his care. The farmers retaliated by setting up an opposition school in Cockburnspath, which survived for a few years; but it never flourished, for the common people believed in M'Gregor, whom they regarded as "a grand teacher," as indeed he was. He had a spare, active figure, wore spectacles, and took snuff. There was at all times an element of grimness in him, and he could be merciless when the occasion seemed to demand it. "Stark man he was, and great awe men had of him," but this awe had its roots in a very genuine respect for his absolutely just dealing and his masterful independence of character.