AND STIRLINGSHIRE HUNT 



Hardly had salutations been exchanged, how- 

 ever, before someone rode up and told him that 

 the hounds had found. After listening for a 

 moment, he said, " So they have — running like 

 hell, too," and then galloped off, leaving the 

 minister, one of the meekest and mildest of old 

 gentlemen, on his doorstep, very much astonished. 

 Although Captain Sandilands had left his regi- 

 ment in the end of the year 1851, he had hitherto 

 allowed the greater part if not the whole of the 

 detail connected with the management to rest with 

 Captain Fleeming. Now, however, he began to de- 

 vote all his energy to the hunting of the country,^ 

 and in the ten seasons which followed, proved 

 himself one of the best and most popular of masters. 

 Before the first of these seasons had come to an 

 end he had ample evidence of the high regard in 

 which he was then already held, for on the 11th 

 of April 1856, he was the guest of the gentlemen 

 connected with the district at a dinner given by 

 them in his honour at the Star and Garter hotel, 

 Linlithgow, when the party numbered from seventy 

 to eighty. The chairman, Major Shairp of Hous- 

 toun, proposed the health of " The Master of the 

 Hounds," which was received with the greatest 

 enthusiasm. " The fond feeling evinced through 

 the whole of the proceedings must have been very 

 gratifying to Captain Sandilands, as affording an 

 earnest of his own popularity, and of a continuance 



* Copy correspondence in scrap-book which belonged to Captain 

 Sandilands, in the possession of Lord Torphichen. 



167 



