At last, when the animal was very near the queen, its rider suddenly plunged his knife deep into its throat, “so that the blood spurted out and the beast fell dead just by her feet.” This display is said to have delighted the queen so greatly that she soon afterwards granted Selwyn several favours, and on the monument still to be seen at Walton-on-Thames he is portrayed in the act of stabbing, in the manner described, the stag slaughtered on that memorable occasion. Selwyn died on 27th March, 1587. * * * * * Of the famous horses of fiction and romance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one or two more must be mentioned. Don Quixote's immortal squire, Sancho Panza, who, it will be remembered, rode upon an ass named Dapple, was Governor of Barataria. Though endowed with common sense, and though his proverbs have become historical, he was wholly devoid of what is sometimes called “spirituality.” Nevertheless Don Quixote and his horse, Rosinante—a name that means literally “formerly a hack”—came gradually to be renowned the world over. To this day, indeed, “a perfect Rosinante” is the comment not infrequently passed upon a horse that is mostly skin and bone. Peter of Provence's wooden horse, Babieca, is another “creature” whose name must not be omitted. “This very day,” we read in Don Quixote, “may be seen in the King's armoury the identical peg with which Peter of Provence turned his wooden horse which carried him through the air. It is rather bigger than the pole of a coach, and stands near Babieca's saddle.” Don Quixote himself rode astride the wooden horse, Clavileno, on the occasion when he wished to disenchant the Infanta Antonomasia and her husband shut up in the tomb of Queen Maguncia, of Candaya, and Peter of Provence rode it when he made off with beautiful Magalona. Merlin was the name of its maker, and the horse was so constructed that it could be governed by turning a wooden peg in its forehead. The name means “wooden peg.” A comprehensive description of these incidents may be found in the fourth and fifth chapters of the third book of “Don Quixote,” but the description is not of sufficient interest to be quoted here. The story of the Cid's horse, to date back to an earlier century, is almost as well known as the story of Rosinante. The Cid's horse died some two and a half years after its master's death, and during the whole of that period none rode it, the order having gone forth that under no circumstances was anybody to mount the animal. At its death its body was buried near the gate of the monastery at Valencia, two trees being planted close to the grave to mark its whereabouts.