SOME EARLY EXPERIENCES 33 



safe, and that my father and mother were both at 

 a neighbouring cottage. It appeared that my 

 soldier servant, John Whiteford, had lit a fire in 

 my room the night before to air it and had then 

 gone to bed. About 4 a.m. my mother's maid 

 heard a dog howling, and being nervous about 

 burglars, having formerly been frightened on one 

 occasion, she went to explore, and found the pas- 

 sages full of smoke and the back stairs on fire. She 

 at once raised the alarm, and all the residents got 

 out just as the whole of the lower part of the house 

 burst into flames. John Whiteford, who was a 

 plucky fellow, and knowing that I particularly 

 valued the guns and a certain case containing a 

 series of drawings I had done in Western America, 

 smashed the large window from the outside and 

 entered the blazing room. The smoke was so 

 dense and the heat so great that he was only able 

 to snatch the portfolio of drawings, and being by 

 that time in a fainting condition, was unable to 

 rescue the guns, which lay beneath the bed, so they 

 were irretrievably lost. My father was much 

 pleased at Whiteford's behaviour, and gave him a 

 new outfit and other things, and also presented me 

 with a new pair of guns by Reilly, which I have 

 used ever since. 



My father was a man of great common sense, as well 

 as a sportsman of the best kind. He was generous in 

 the extreme towards anything he thought was cal- 

 culated to foster the true interests of any game or 

 outdoor pastime, but severe in his condemnation of 

 anything unsportsmanlike. I remember once in 

 1882, when, on my return from my first term at 

 Cambridge, he said one day 



