WHEN I WAS YOUNG 23 



since passed into the shades, to the regret of all 

 who knew him. His brother, G. L., was certainly 

 one of the finest athletes of his day, and as a for- 

 ward at Rugby unequalled in quickness on the ball 

 and tackling. He also excelled in all other games, 

 besides being the most good-natured person in the 

 world. 



George (who was in the Cambridge fifteen), 

 Willie and I went to Stromness in December 1886 

 for the usual month's " flighting " and tramping 

 the moors or hunting in the seas. The day we left 

 Stromness George received a telegram asking him 

 to play for England at Edinburgh on January 8, 

 1886. As we crossed the Pentland Firth a fearful 

 snowstorm and gale, the worst I have ever seen 

 in Scotland, fell upon us from the north, and we 

 had much difficulty in making the Scrabster harbour 

 at Thurso, where, on the morning of January 4th, 

 we found eight feet of snow. After struggling 

 through the drifts, we at last reached Henderson's 

 Hotel, where we received the unwelcome news that 

 the line was blocked for many miles to the south. 

 Now at any other time young fellows like ourselves 

 would have cared nothing for an enforced visit of 

 a few days, but for George to be debarred from 

 playing in the great game was more than a joke. 



I went to the rocks, where I killed my first 

 Glaucous and Iceland Gulls, and a great rarity in 

 the shape of an adult Ivory Gull, the sixth British 

 example. George and Willie discussed with fisher- 

 men the possibility of getting a sailing-boat round 

 the coast to Aberdeen, an altogether hopeless 

 proposition in the gale then still raging. 



To make a long story short, a train from the south 



