132 REMINISCENCES OF 



" PlTFIRRANE, 



"7th March, 1876. 



" MY DEAR THOMSON, 



"We have had our meeting, and the 

 hounds are to go on. George Prentice, Willy and 

 Leslie Drysdale, Fred Bruce and W. P. Adam, a 

 committee of management ; I to continue as master ; 

 the hounds to be hunted by a huntsman. 



" Lord Minto has promised his stables and 

 kennels, etc., at Lochgelly House provided none of 

 his people are to occupy the place during the 

 hunting season, which is not likely. It is a capital 

 place, has boilers, men's rooms, and a furnished 

 cottage for headman, which the forester who is in it 

 says he will let. ^490 subscribed. I am to 

 continue to look after the proprietors, the keepers 

 and the coverts, and to be present in the field as 

 often as possible. I think that will work. 



" We had a ' fell hunt ' yesterday in a snowstorm. 

 Found a brace at Dunearn ; got away with one to the 

 Binn, and having to coast round the walls, I kept 

 viewing him away from all the woods, through the 

 gorse cover at Meadowfield, across the road in the 

 bottom to the Grangehill, through the flower garden 

 of Mr. Johnstone's villa, that we pass in the railway, 

 and on to Kinghorn. I could get no farther with 

 them than Johnstone's garden wall, and when we 

 got to Kinghorn the four hounds that were leading 

 all the way, 'Reginald,' Falstaff,' 'Saffron' and 

 ' Benjamin,' were not to be found. We had a line 

 across the railway, when a man said he had seen the 



