limbs, the old fire wakened in all
his dauntless blood; like the charger at sound of the trumpet-call, he
lived in his past victories, and was athirst for more. But yet--between
him and the sunny morning there seemed a dim, hazy screen; on his
delicate ear the familiar clangor smote with something dulled and
strange; there seemed a numbness stealing down his frame; he shook his
head in an unusual and irritated impatience; he did not know what ailed
him. The hand he loved so loyally told him the work that was wanted of
him; but he felt its guidance dully too, and the dry, hard, hot earth,
as he struck it with his hoof, seemed to sway and heave beneath him; the
opiate had stolen into his veins and was creeping stealthily and surely
to the sagacious brain, and over the clear, bright senses.

The signal for the start was given; the first mad headlong rush broke
away with the force of a pent-up torrent suddenly loosened; every
instinct of race and custom, and of that obedience which rendered him
flexible as silk to his rider's will, sent him forward with that stride
which made the Guards' Crack a household word in all the Shires. For a
moment he shook himself clear of all the horses, and led off in the old
grand sweeping canter before the French bay, three lengths in the one
single effort.

Then into his eyes a terrible look of anguish came; the numb and sickly
nausea was upon him, his legs trembled, before his sight was a blurred,
whirling mist; all the strength and force and mighty life within him
felt ebbing out, yet he struggled bravely. He strained, he panted, he
heard the thundering thud of the first flight gaining nearer and nearer
upon him; he felt his rivals closing hotter and harder in on him; he
felt the steam of his opponent's smoking, foam-dashed withers burn
on his own flanks and shoulders; he felt the maddening pressure of a
neck-to-neck struggle; he felt what in all his victorious life he had
never known--the paralysis of defeat.

The glittering throngs spreading over the plains gazed at him in the
sheer stupor of amazement; they saw that the famous English hero was
dead-beat as any used-up knacker.

One second more he strove to wrench himself through the throng of the
horses, through the headlong crushing press, through--worst foe of
all!--the misty darkness curtaining his sight! One second more he
tried to wrestle back the old life into his limbs, the unworn power
and freshness into nerve and sinew. Th