[Illustration: INCIDENTS WITH THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY DRAG. From a sketch by C. M. Newton.] VIII IF anyone were to ask me which was the best run I ever saw, I should say the great run with the Cleveland hounds on Monday, January 9, 1882. Probably many, if not most, hunting-men would turn up their noses at it if they saw the country over which the most extraordinary fox in my experience took us, for I admit that nothing but the fact of having been bred in such a wild hunting country would make it in the widest sense a rideable one. I must further confess that the fact of being sole survivor of it makes its memory all the dearer, though I regret to this day that I had no companion during the last twenty-five minutes to support my evidence, or to discuss with me in after years its wonders. I trust that in attempting to describe it, if I seem to be utterly devoid of modesty and to be blowing loud blasts on my own horn, it will be remembered that every man has some day in a long life, in which he is conscious that he has had the best of it. This was my day, and I certainly felt at the end of it that it would have been worth risking one’s life for; it gave me the sensation that comes now and again in every life, of not having lived in vain. The following account is for the most part from my diary, written while I was still stiff from the previous day’s exertions. Monday, 9th January 1882.--Hounds met at Ayton, where there was breakfast at the Buck. This was the most extraordinary day I ever had. I rode Queen Mab in the morning till she got an overreach, when I changed on to Faraway, on which horse I finished the first, and was there when Bob Brunton took the fox from the hounds in Hell Gill. I state this to correct the press accounts, which describe my getting my second horse in the great run--not to save my own credit, but to preserve the record of my horse’s marvellous performance. The first was a ringing run, fairly fast, on the hills between Roseberry Topping and Guisborough Banks, and for forty minutes I rode Faraway up and down the hills, over the moors, and in and out of the gills before we found the second and ever-memorable fox. My brother Jack did not have a second horse, but rode his mount (a blood Irish hunter called Sligo, that cost two hundred and fifty guineas, and was worth every sixpence of the money) all day, and “let him have it” in the first run. If we had both started from scratch, he might have taken first honours; as it was, he took the second place in a numerous field, as the sequel will show. I have no doubt that the competition between us ministered to my success, for we generally rode a trifle jealous, but were always best pleased when we could share the honours.