Fortune favoured me, as two of the horses I thought most dangerous, Damon and Borderer, fell, the former at the last brook; whilst Lord Henry Bentinck with one or two others made a bad turn, and practically lost a field at the half-way flag. This was an awkward moment for all of us, as it was impossible to see the home flag from the field in which we were, which was walled round with an enormous high black bullfinch, so dense that though several of us had it, Sir Savile Crossley’s horse came down with a heavy fall into the next field, and Nora Creina literally hung in the top before she dropped out on to the grass ten feet below. Among the congratulations I received on my victory were those telegraphed to me by my political chief, Mr. Gladstone; but the ones I think I prized most were from my Cleveland hunting companions, with whom my good grey mare and I had spent many a happy day in our wild rough country. II THE LIFE OF A HUNTER [Illustration: “QUEEN MAB.”] II MY name is Queen Mab. I am little more than twenty years old, not a great age, counted by years, as the life of a horse goes; but it is the pace that kills, and I have been made to go the pace in my younger days, and have done my duty as far as in me lay, since I have withdrawn from the more active scenes of the world. I have brought up five of my offspring and never lost a foal, and I have gained the admiration and affection of those with whom I have been associated. It is with some hesitation that I undertake the task of recording my own career, for I feel that I must give some account of my personality and qualities, and after the lapse of so many years I know my memory is defective as to the earlier days; but, standing as I do, with the last big fence which we all have to take in front of me, I am only desirous of giving a fair portrait of myself, and am careless of criticism. My days are numbered, but I, who never knew what fear was, feel no dread of the end, and I know I shall soon rest under the green grass of the paddock where I have lived out in comfort the last years of my life. I have seen many of my contemporaries pass away, and I shall lie beside brave comrades. At one time the idea that I might possibly at the last be sent to the kennels was a disagreeable one, but, in a meditative old age, I have derived comfort from the thought that, even if this was my ultimate fate, my poor old body would enter into the young blood of the hounds with whom I spent the best time of my life, and that I ought to consider it a privilege to be incorporated with the flying pack, and so in a sense live for evermore.