I AM outraged to see that Sheriff James Fraser at his court in Dingwall has fined an old age pensioner #600, no less, because the pensioner had kept a family antique, an old ''stick'' gun older than himself, some 100 years old, without either concealing it or declaring it to the authorities - thinking it unnecessary, as to any normal person it would seem.

Today, however, our governance is not in the hands of what an earlier generation regarded as normal, hence septuagenarian Mr Fennell's conviction, fine, and discomfiture.

Recently at the behest of a Chief Constable I myself relinquished (not ''surrendered'', as demanded!) what I carried at one time, my old Service revolver, a different one from that surrendered to my Japanese captor who, by force of arms, won the right to demand it, a Colt that I carried for self-protection while endeavouring to safeguard the upgrowing if not the birth of the same Chief Constable.

In 1939 from every nook and cranny, every attic and hayloft, came the firearms of every age and description that, for a moment in history, were all that stood between our freedom, such as it now is, that we have today and subjection to alien rule.

Now, at Dingwall, that freedom that we take for granted has once more been jeopardised by a judge, a sheriff, whose freedom to pontificate was bought for him, at a high price - but not high enough, it now seems.

David Rowan Henderson,

Cnoc-ard, Ardfern, Lochgilphead.

May 11.