354 SPORTING STORIES 



and finally galloped off. Then Lord Saltoun and his 

 brother plotters quickly took possession of the vacant beds, 

 barricaded their doors, and slept the sleep of the just. 



About four miles from Campbeltown, in the Mull of 

 Kintyre, a lovely glen runs right up into the heart of the 

 wooded hill-side. In the foreground, among its trim lawns, 

 stands Saddell House ; close by are the ruins of a grim old 

 castle-keep ; and one can trace the venerable avenue of 

 stately beeches which leads to the ancient abbey where 

 the old monks of Saddell enjoyed themselves six hundred 

 years ago. It is a place which has a peculiar interest for 

 sportsmen, for it was the home of John Campbell of 

 Saddell, whose hunting songs have won for him in 

 Scotland a reputation as great as that of Whyte-Melville 

 or Egerton Warburton in England — a man, too, who 

 could not only write good songs, but sing them as no one 

 else could. 



" Johnny " Campbell was a welter-weight, scaling some- 

 thing like sixteen stone, yet he was always in the first 

 flight. He chose his horses more for strength than 

 appearance, and seldom rode one over fifteen hands, but 

 they were all short legged and well bred. When he was at 

 Melton Mowbray in 1832 he was looked upon as the 

 maddest of Scotsmen, because, in trying to save his 

 horses, he would jump into the hedges instead oi over them, 

 quite regardless of the consequences to himself; for, like 

 Assheton Smith, the Laird of Saddell did not mind how 

 many falls he got. He was a tall, handsome man, and 

 when dressed at night in his scarlet coat with green facings 

 and buff breeches (the uniform of the Buccleuch Hunt) his 

 equal would have been hard to find in the three kingdoms. 



It is not often that the qualities of poet, singer, bon 

 vivant, and sportsman are found combined in one person- 

 ality, as they were in "Johnny" Campbell, and conse- 

 quently it is not surprising that the Laird of Saddell was 

 immensely popular, or that he was the life and soul of the 

 convivial parties, where he would sometimes improvise a 

 song, setting it to an air and singing it the same evening. 

 When he was a guest at Rossie Priory, Lord Kinnaird's 

 Perthshire seat, in 1831, they had had a famous run with 



