COL. ANSTRUTHER THOMSON 411 



" You passed me two or three times in the 

 twilight last summer driving in these parts. I was 

 on the wrong side of the top of the omnibus once, 

 or you would have stared to hear the familiar cobbler 

 sound, Good-night, Capting! 1 Your driving and 

 my riding road north quite differ. I rode by 

 Kendal, Settle, Bromley, Manchester, Buxton, Derby, 

 Leicester, Daventry, Worcester and St. Albans." 



My son wrote the following account of the 

 Queen's Staghounds : 



" ETON, TUESDAY, 



"2jth October, 1869. 



" DEAR PAPA, 



" As I was standing looking on at a match 

 to-day, about twenty minutes to dinner time, I 

 heard something which sent a thrill through my 

 carcase, and after listening for a second I said to 

 Lyttleton, ' If those arn't hounds my name is not 

 Thomson,' and I bolted to see them. When I had 

 run nearly to Surley Hall across country, I heard 

 the horn and saw the hounds. By that time it was 

 about dinner time, but I forgot all about dinner as 

 soon as I saw the hounds. I ran on and saw a 

 crowd standing on the river bank, ran up and saw 

 the deer swimming down stream with three punts 

 after him and two whips on their feet each side of 

 the river and a crowd of cads. I think they made 

 more noise than when a fox breaks before the Pytchley 

 cobblers everybody yelled and nobody seemed to 



1 The greeting of the cobblers as I passed through Long Buckby 

 in the dark on my way home from hunting. 



