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HUNTING AND SHOOTING   III

travagances, who wasted a large fortune and died unhappily. His life has been published ; a brief account of it may be read in the Dictionary of National Biography. The son's career seemed moulded on that of his father, and he too wasted a fortune that had somehow accrued to him, and died prematurely. There was no question as to his ability and power over others.

A more or less unfortunate fate befell most of my other companions at the Hunt Club. Many of the small party who habitually dined there were social favourites, and two at least of them were of more than average social rank. Five of these men contrived to main themselves by betting acid gamblitig, and to end

Plrily, For all that, they were bright collipanior1$ in the heyday of their fortunes. They lived in good style and as a rule not very prodigally, though all had fits of recklessness. One of the most valuable qualities in a man of moderately independent means who has to live in a society of this kind is a carelessness to the attraction of gambling.

A Leamington friend, Fazakerley, asked me to the Highlands to shoot. His moor was called Culrain ; it was about fifteen miles long by three broad, and the small house on it was three miles from Bonar Bridge. I bought a beautiful Irish setter which a friend chose for me, and we shot in the leisurely fashion of those days, when driving game was never practised. I slept in a neighbouring bothy, for the house was small, and I quickly obtained some knowledge of English sport on the moors. At the end of the season, the weather being still fine, I made my way to John O'Groat's House, opposite the Orkneys,