152 REMINISCENCES OF 



cider too ". She said, " Cider beant good for you, 

 ye'ull get cramp in the night". He got his cider, 

 and we sat and chatted and drank whisky and hot 

 water till the middle of the night. 



Saw the foxhounds in kennel next day. Harry 

 Seabright, huntsman. Returned to London in the 

 evening. 



I St February, 1879. — Snow hunt at Ayton Hill; 

 ten degrees of frost ; seventeen miles to covert ; got 

 there 1 1.30 ; two ladies in a sledge and the field on 

 foot ; five inches of snow ; deep drifts ; very clear 

 and still. Lots of foxes, but a long time before we 

 got hounds to settle, and never could get a view. 

 " Marksman " hunted a line by himself, digging his 

 nose into the snow at every pad-mark ; the other 

 hounds rushed at him and knocked him off the line. 

 Kept touching it up to Glenduckie, a large wood, 

 and not so much snow under the trees ; ran hard and 

 three foxes broke. I went away with one, but 

 having only eight couple, went back to the other 

 lot. Ran back to Ayton Hill, and got a view at 

 him round the hill, and away as hard as they could 

 go into Glenduckie again. When I got to the top 

 of the hill I saw the fox on the top of Higham Hill 

 going towards the Tay, past Barnbreich to the 

 banks of the river. The drift ice was thirty or forty 

 yards broad. Hunted on ice along the edge of the 

 water, sometimes in mud, the tide being low ; some- 

 times a drive along the footpath and then on the ice 

 again, nearly three miles, where a broad tidal ditch 

 runs at right angles into the river. When the hounds 



