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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thoroughbreds, by W. A. Fraser
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Thoroughbreds
+
+Author: W. A. Fraser
+
+Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9088]
+Posting Date: July 23, 2009
+Last Updated: March 15, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOROUGHBREDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THOROUGHBREDS
+
+by W. A. Fraser
+
+
+
+Dedicated to a THOROUGHBRED MY WIFE
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Less than a hundred miles from the city of Gotham, across broad green
+fields, dotted into squares and oblong valleys by full-leafed maple,
+and elm, and mulberry, was the village of Brookfield. A hundred years
+of expansion in the surrounding land had acted inversely with the little
+hamlet, and had pinched it into a hermitical isolation.
+
+The Brookfieldians had discovered a huge beetle in the amber of their
+serene existence; it was really the Reverend Dolman who had unearthed
+the monster. The beetle in the amber was horse racing, and the prime
+offender, practically the sole culprit, was John Porter.
+
+By an inconsistent twist of fate he was known as Honest John. His father
+before him had raced in old Kentucky to considerable purpose, and with
+the full vigor of a man who races for sport; and so to the son John,
+in consequence, had come little beyond a not-to-be-eradicated love
+of thoroughbreds. To race squarely, honestly, and to the glory of
+high-couraged horses was to him as much a matter of religion as the
+consistent guardianship of parish morals was to the Reverend George
+Dolman. Therefore, two men of strong beliefs were set on opposite sides
+of the fence.
+
+Even in the Porter household, which was at Ringwood Farm, was divided
+allegiance. Mrs. Porter was possessed of an abhorrent detestation of
+horse racing; also an assertive Christianity. The daughter, Allison, had
+inherited the horse taint. The swinging gallop of a striving horse was
+to her the obliteration of everything but sunshine, and the smile of
+fields, and the blur of swift-gliding hedges, and the driving perfume
+of clover-laden winds that passed strong into spread nostrils. For
+Alan Porter, the son, there were columns of figures and musty-smelling
+bundles of tattered paper money where he clerked in the bank. There had
+been great unison in the Porter household over the placing of Alan. In
+addition to horse lore, John Porter was a fair judge of human nature,
+and, beyond doubt, there was a streak of velvet in Alan which would have
+twisted easily in the compressive grip of the race course.
+
+The Porter family were not the only dwellers of Brookfield who took
+part in racing. Philip Crane, the banker, wandering from the respectable
+highway of finance, had allowed himself to become interested in race
+horses. But this fact was all but unknown in Brookfield, so the full
+resentment of the place was effusively tendered to John Porter.
+
+In his younger days some money had come to Philip Crane. The gambler
+spirit, that was his of inheritance, had an instinctive truth as
+allied to finance; but, unfortunately for Philip Crane, chance and a
+speculative restlessness led him amongst men who commenced with the
+sport of kings. With acute precipitancy he was separated from the
+currency that had come to him. The process was so rapid that his racing
+experience was of little avail as an asset, so he committed the first
+great wise act of his life-turned his back upon the race course and
+marched into finance, so strongly, so persistently, that at forty he was
+wealthy and the banker of Brookfield.
+
+Twenty years of deliberate reminiscence convinced him that he could
+gratify the desire that had been his in those immature days, and
+possibly work out a paying revenge. Thus it was that he had got together
+a small stable of useful horses; and, of far greater moment, secured a
+clever trainer, Dick Langdon.
+
+Crane's latter-day racing had been successful--he made money at it.
+No man was ever more naturally endowed to succeed on the turf than was
+Banker Philip Crane. Cold, passionless, more given to deep concentrated
+thought than expression, holding silence as a golden gift--even as a
+gift of rare rubies--nothing drew from him an unguarded word, no sudden
+turmoil quivered his nerve. It was characteristic of the man that he had
+waited nearly twenty years to resume racing, which really came as near
+to being a passion with him as was possible for anything to be. There is
+a saying in England that it takes two years of preparation to win a
+big handicap; and these were the lines upon which Philip Crane, by
+instinctive adaptation, worked.
+
+Quite by chance Dick Langdon had come into his hands over a matter of
+borrowed money. It ended by the banker virtually owning every horse that
+raced in the trainer's name. In addition, two or three horses ran in
+Philip Crane's own name. If there had been any distinctive project in
+the scheme of creation that gave Dick Langdon to the world, it probably
+was that he might serve as the useful tool of a subtle thinker. Now
+it did seem that Langdon had come into his own--that he had found his
+predestined master.
+
+John Porter had not been successful; ill fortune had set in, and there
+was always something going wrong. Horses would break down, or get beaten
+by accident--there was always something. The steady financial drain had
+progressed even to an encumbrance on Ringwood.
+
+Ringwood was simply a training farm, located close to an old disused
+race course, for there had been no racing in Brookfield for years.
+
+      *         *         *         *         *         *
+
+Inadvertently the Reverend Mr. Dolman had intensified the strained
+relationship that existed between the good people who frowned upon all
+racing endeavor and those who saw but little sinfulness in John Porter's
+way of life.
+
+The church was in debt--everything in Brookfield was, except the town
+pump. The pastor was a nervous, zealous worker, and it occurred to
+him that a concert might lighten the financial load. The idea was not
+alarmingly original, and the carrying out of it was on conventional
+lines: local volunteer talent, and a strong appeal to the people of
+Brookfield for their patronage.
+
+The concert in the little old clap-boarded church, it's sides faded
+and blistered by many seasons of tempest and scorching sun, was an
+unqualified success up to the fifth number. Nothing could have been more
+successful, or even evoked greater applause, than the fourth effort,
+“Anchored,” as rendered by the village pride in the matter of baritone
+singing; even De Reszke never experienced a more genuine triumph. The
+applause gradually fell away, and programmes were consulted preparatory
+to a correct readiness for the fifth offering. The programmes confided
+that “The Death of Crusader,” by Miss Allis Porter, was the next item.
+
+In the front row of seats a prim little body, full of a severe
+quaintness in every quirk of dress, tilted her head toward a neighbor,
+and whispered, “It's that racin' gal of John Porter's.”
+
+The neighbor answered in a creak meant for a whisper: “I'm right glad
+she's took to religion for onct, an' is givin' us somethin' about them
+Crusaders. They was in Palestine, you know. She's been away to boardin'
+school all winter, an' I guess it'll be a high-falutin' account of the
+war.”
+
+The quaint little old lady jerked her head up and down with
+decisive bobbiness. On the third upward bob her eyes opened wide in
+astonishment--a small, slim figure in a glaring red coat stood in the
+center of the improvised platform.
+
+From beneath the coat fell away in long graceful lines a black riding
+skirt; a dark oval face, set with large wondrous gray eyes--the Porter
+eyes--confronted the quaint little old lady.
+
+“That's the Porter gal,” her neighbor squeaked; “I've seen her a-top
+them race horses more'n a hundred times. My! you'd think butter wouldn't
+melt in her mouth, she's that prim now.”
+
+“The coat would melt it,” commented the quaint one.
+
+Then a clear, soft girlish voice, with just a tremble of apprehensive
+nervousness, giving it a lilt like a robin's, said:--
+
+
+                   THE RUN OF CRUSADER
+
+                              I
+
+    Full weight they had given the gallant big Black--a hundred
+        and sixty he carried;
+    And the run for the “Hunt Cup” was over three miles, with
+      mud-wall and water-jump studded.
+    The best racing days of the old horse were past--there'd
+          never been better nor braver
+    But now once again he must carry the silk I was needing the
+       help of Crusader.
+    Could he win at the weight, I whisperingly asked, as I
+       cinched up the saddle girt' tight;
+    He snuggled my hand as I gathered the rein, and I laughed
+       when they talked of defeat.
+    To the call of the bugle I swung to his back--like a rock was
+        the strength of his quarters.
+    At sight of the people he arched his lean neck, and they,
+        cheered for my King of all Hunters.
+
+                              II
+
+    Ten horses would strive for the prize--a big field, and the
+        pace would be killing.
+    From the West came Sweet Silver, a gray, gallant, and
+        fearless in jumping.
+    A rakish old nag who walked over the sticks, had been sent
+        for the Cup from Kentucky;
+    On a bay, Little Jack, who was fast, they had put but a
+        hundred and thirty.
+    But I knew that North Star, a big brown--even the Black was
+        no gamer-
+    With a pull of ten pounds in the weight, was almost a match
+        for Crusader.
+    We made a brave troop, long-striding and strong, with the
+        pick of cross-country riders,
+    As we filed past the Stand in stately parade, with its
+        thousands of eager admirers,
+    And down to the turn on the lower far side, where a red flag
+        was flicking the sunlight;
+    For twice we must circle the green-swarded field, and finish
+        close under the paddock.
+
+                              III
+
+    Just once we lined up; then down cut the flag, and “Go!”
+         hoarse-voiced the Starter;
+    And the thunder of hoofs, and the clanking of bits, made
+        music to me on Crusader.
+    Quick to the front, like a deer, sped a mare, a chestnut,
+        making the running;
+    But I steadied my mount, and took him far back--with his
+        weight he would need all my nursing.
+    They took the first hedge like sheep in a bunch, bit to bit,
+        and stirrups a-jingle;
+    And so past the Stand to the broad water-jump, where three
+        went down, in a tangle.
+    I trailed at the heels of the Silver Gray--but Crusader was
+        begging for halter
+    And flew the wide ditch with the swoop of a bird, and on
+        again, lapped on his quarter.
+    Then over the Liverpool, racing like mad,--where Sweet
+        Silver fell fighting for lead,
+    And his rider lay crushed, white-faced to the sky; and to
+        miss him Crusader jumped wide.
+
+                              IV
+
+    At the bank something struck, and a cloud of white dust hid
+        the wall as though it were shrouded;
+    But the big gallant Black took off with a swing--full thirty
+        feet ere we had landed.
+    As we rounded the turn I could see Little Jack go up to the
+         mare that was leading;
+    Then I let out a wrap, and quickened my pace, to work clear
+         of those that were tiring.
+    Once again past the Stand we drove at the ditch that some
+         would never get over;
+    And a cheer shook the air as the Bay landed safe; with the
+         mare on her back in the water.
+    Then over went North Star--though he pecked, and nearly
+         emptied his saddle.
+    As I lifted the Black at his heels, he frothed the Brown's
+         flank with his nozzle.
+
+                              V
+
+    Then down the back stretch, o'er hedge and o'er bank, we
+         three were racing together;
+    Till at the next rail the Bay jostled the Brown, and
+         riderless crashed through the timber.
+    So we rounded the turn, and into the straight--North Star's
+         lean flank we were lapping
+    But we shot to the front when I gave the Black head, and I
+         saw that the other was stopping.
+    We raced as one horse at the very last hedge--just a nose in
+         front was Crusader;
+    I felt the big Brown bump twice at my side, and knew he was
+         ready to blunder.
+    With stirrups a-ding, empty-saddled the Bay, stride for
+         stride, galloped and floundered.
+    Just missing his swerve, I called on the Black, and drew out
+         as he bravely responded.
+
+                              VI
+
+    Just the last jump! and Crusader took off twenty feet from
+         the brush-covered timber.
+    Then the Bay jumped--too short for his stride--and fell,
+         with his head on my wither.
+    Down, down! almost to earth,--brought to his knees in the
+         struggle,
+    The Black lost a length, the Brown forged ahead, and I was
+         half out of the saddle.
+    How I sat down and rode! how the old horse strove! and the
+         Brown rolling tired in his gallop.
+    On, gallant Black! on, my brave pet!  We were almost under
+         the paddock.
+    Then we nosed the Brown's dank; then we reached to his girt';
+         neck and neck I rode at his shoulder.
+    As we flashed past the post I had won by a head. How they
+         cheered, “Bravo, Crusader!”
+
+                              VII
+
+    But Crusader stopped short; gave a sigh and fell dead; I
+         stood all alone in the winning.
+    And a hush came over the clamorous mob; like a babe on his
+         neck I was sobbing.
+    He had run his last race; game to the end, his brave heart
+         broke in the striving.
+
+The girl's voice faltered and died away to a broken whisper as she told
+of the death of Crusader. For a full minute there was a noiseless hush.
+The full pathos of the gallant horse's striving had crept into the
+hearts that were flesh and blood; and, carried away by their feelings,
+the people had forgotten all about their tortured convictions of the
+sinfulness of making a horse go faster than a sharp trot. Gradually
+into their awakening senses stole a conviction that somehow they were
+countenancing the sin of racing.
+
+Before the complete horror of the situation had mastered the audience,
+a strong pair of hands, far back in the church, came together with
+an explosive clap. Like the rat-rat-tat of a quick-firing gun was the
+appreciative volley of recognition from the solitary applauder. It
+went rolling and crackling through the church defiantly, derisively,
+appreciatively. Halfway up the aisle a softer pair of hands touched
+the rattle with what sounded like a faint echo; then there was
+sudden silence. The entire audience turned and looked disparagingly,
+discouragingly, at the man who had figuratively risen as a champion
+of the scandalous recitation. Resentment had taken hold of the good
+Christians. That Crusader had enlisted their sympathies for a few
+minutes showed the dangerous subtlety of this “horseracin' business.”
+
+The rest of the programme might just as well have been eliminated; the
+concert, as a concert, would be discussed for all time to come as having
+projected “The Death of Crusader.”
+
+The people flowed from the church full of an expressive contentiousness,
+seeking by exuberant condemnation of the sacrilege to square themselves
+somehow with their consciences for the brief backsliding.
+
+Where the church path turned into the road a group of men had drawn
+together, attracted by the magnet of discussion. They quite blocked the
+pathway, oblivious to everything but their outraged feelings. Like a
+great dark blotch in the night the group stood; and presently two
+slight gray shadows slipping up the path, coming to the human barricade,
+stopped, wavered, and circled out on the grass to pass. The shadows were
+Allis Porter and her brother Alan.
+
+One of the men, overfilled with his exceeding wrath, seeing the girl,
+gave expression to a most unchristian opinion of her modesty. The sharp
+ears of the boy heard the words of the man of harsh instinct, and his
+face flushed hot with resentment. He half turned, bitter reproach rising
+to his lips. How could men be so brutish? How could they be so base? To
+speak ill of his sister Allis, who was just the purest, sweetest little
+woman that ever lived--too brave and true to be anything else but good!
+
+As he turned he saw something that checked his futile anger. A tall
+shadow that had come up the path behind them stretched out an arm, and
+he heard the vilifier's words gurgle and die away, as one of the strong
+hands that had beat the tattoo of approbation clutched him by the
+throat. The boy would have rushed to the assistance of this executive
+friend if the girl had not clasped his arm in detention.
+
+“It's Mortimer!” he cried, as a voice from the strong-armed figure cut
+the night air with sharp decision.
+
+Then the shadowy forms twisted up grotesquely, weaving in and out. There
+were voices of expostulation and strong words of anger; but the new
+serious business that had materialized had most effectually put a stop
+to reflections upon the innocent girl who had so unwittingly offended.
+
+“It's George Mortimer--he's in our bank,” Alan confided to his sister,
+as they moved away. “He's all right--he's strong as a horse; and I bet
+Crandal'll have a kink in his neck to-morrow, where George pinched him.”
+
+“What was it about?” the girl asked.
+
+“Crandal was jawing about people who own race horses,” the boy answered,
+evasively. “It's Crandal, the butcher.”
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It was the May meeting at Morris Park, and Morris Park is the most
+beautiful race course in all America.
+
+John Porter, walking up the steps of the Grand Stand, heard some one
+call him by name. Turning his head, he saw it was James Danby, an owner,
+sitting in his private box. Porter turned into the box, and taking the
+chair the other pushed toward him, sat down.
+
+“What about Lucretia?” asked Danby, with the air of an established
+friendship which permitted the asking of such questions.
+
+“She's ready to the minute,” replied Porter.
+
+“Can she get the five furlongs?” queried Danby. “She's by Assassin, and
+some of them were quitters.”
+
+“She'll quit if she falls dead,” replied the other man, quietly. “I've
+worked her good enough to win, and I'm backing her.”
+
+“That'll do for me,” declared Danby. “To tell you the truth, John,
+I like the little mare myself; but I hear that Langdon, who trained
+Lauzanne, expects to win.”
+
+“The mare'll be there, or thereabouts,” asserted her owner; “I never
+knew a Lazzarone yet much good as a two-year-old. They're sulky brutes,
+like the old horse; and if Lucretia's beat, it won't be Lauzanne that'll
+turn the trick.”
+
+The bell clanged imperiously at the Judges' Stand. Porter pulled out his
+watch and looked at it.
+
+“That's saddling,” he remarked, laconically; “I must go and have a bit
+on the mare, and then take a look at her before she goes out.”
+
+As Porter went down the steps his companion leaned over the rail and
+crooked his fingers at a thin-faced man with a blond mustache who had
+been keeping a corner of his eye on the box.
+
+“What are they making favorite, Lewis?” queried Danby, as the thin-faced
+man stood beside him.
+
+“Lucretia.”
+
+“What's her price?”
+
+“Two to one.”
+
+“What's second favorite?”
+
+“Lauzanne--five to two.”
+
+“Porter tells me Lucretia is good business,” said Danby, in a tentative
+tone.
+
+“Langdon thinks it's all over bar the shouting; he says Lauzanne
+outclasses his field,” retorted Lewis.
+
+“Langdon's a betting man; Porter's an owner, and a good judge,” objected
+Danby; “and he's got a good boy up, too, McKay,” he added, slowly
+focusing his field glasses on the jockey board opposite the Stand.
+
+“Crooked as a dog's hind legs,” snarled Lewis, biting viciously at his
+cigar.
+
+“Bob, it's damned hard to find a straight-legged dog,” laughed Danby.
+“And when John Porter starts a horse, there's never anything doing.
+Here's six hundred; put' it on the mare--straight.”
+
+As Lewis pushed his way into the shoving, seething, elbowing crowd in
+the betting ring, he was suddenly struck in the chest by something which
+apparently had the momentum of an eight-inch shell; but it was only John
+Porter, who, in breaking through the outer crust of the living mass, had
+been ejected with more speed than was of his own volition.
+
+Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who
+the unwitting offender was, and asked, “What are they doin' to the mare
+in the ring?”
+
+“Not much,” answered his assailant, catching his breath; “there's a
+strong play on Langdon's horse, and if I didn't know my boy pretty well,
+and Lucretia better, I'd have weakened a bit. But she can't lose, she
+can't lose!” he repeated in the tone of a man who is reassuring himself.
+
+Lewis battled his way along till he stood in front of a bookmaker with
+a face cast very much on the lines of a Rubens' cherub; but the
+cherub-type ended abruptly with the plump frontispiece of “Jakey” Faust,
+the bookmaker. Lewis knew that. “If there's anythin' doin', I'm up
+against it here,” he muttered to himself. “What's Lauzanne's price?” he
+asked, in an indifferent voice, for the bookmaker's assistant was busy
+changing the figures on his list.
+
+Faust pretended not to hear him.
+
+“Sure thing!” whispered Lewis to himself. Then aloud he repeated the
+question, touching the bookmaker on the elbow.
+
+The Cherub smiled blandly. “Not takin' any,” he answered, nodding his
+head in the pleasant manner of a man who knows when he's got a good
+thing.
+
+“What's Lucretia?” persisted Lewis.
+
+“Oh! that's it, is it? I'll lay you two to one.”
+
+The questioner edged away, shaking his head solemnly.
+
+“Here! five to two--how much--” but Lewis was gone.
+
+He burrowed like a mole most industriously, regardless of people's
+toes, their ribs, their dark looks, and even angry expressions of strong
+disapproval, and when he gained the green sward of the lawn, hurried to
+his friend's box.
+
+“Did you get it on?” queried the latter.
+
+“No; I don't like the look of it. Faust is holding out Lauzanne, and
+stretched me half a point about the mare. He and Langdon are in the same
+boat.”
+
+“But that won't win the race,” remonstrated Danby. “Lauzanne is a
+maiden, and Porter doesn't often make a mistake about any of his own
+stock.”
+
+“I thought I'd come back and tell you,” said Bob Lewis, apologetically.
+
+“And you did right; but if the mare wins, and I'm not on, after getting
+it straight from Porter, I'd want to go out and kick myself good and
+hard. But put it on straight and place; then if Lauzanne's the goods
+we'll save.”
+
+Lewis was gone about four minutes.
+
+“You're on,” he said, when he returned; “I've two hundred on the
+Chestnut for myself.”
+
+“Lauzanne?”
+
+“It's booked that way; but I'm backin' the Trainer, Langdon. I went on
+my uppers two years ago backing horses; I'm following men now.”
+
+“Bad business,” objected his stout friend; “it's bad business to back
+anything that talks.”
+
+When John Porter reached the saddling paddock, his brown mare, Lucretia,
+was being led around in a circle in the lower corner. As he walked down
+toward her his trainer, Andy Dixon, came forward a few paces to meet
+him.
+
+“Are they hammerin' Crane's horse in the ring, sir?” he asked, smoothing
+down the grass with the toe of one foot, watching this physical process
+with extreme interest.
+
+“Just what you'd notice,” replied Porter. “Why?”
+
+“Well, I don't like the look of it a little bit. Here's this Lauzanne
+runs like a dog the last time out--last by the length of a street--and
+now I've got it pretty straight they're out for the stuff.”
+
+“They'd a stable-boy up on him that time.”
+
+“That's just it,” cried Dixon. “Grant comes to me that day--you know
+Grant, he works the commission for Dick Langdon--and tells me to leave
+the horse alone; and to-day he comes and--” he hesitated.
+
+“And what?”
+
+“Tells me to go light on our mare.”
+
+“Isn't Grant broke?” asked Porter, with seeming irrelevance.
+
+“He's close next it,” answered the Trainer.
+
+“Aren't his friends that follow him all broke?”
+
+“A good many of them have their address in Queer Street.”
+
+“Look here, Andy,” said the owner, “there isn't a man with a horse in
+this stake that doesn't think he's going to win; and when it's all over
+we'll see Lucretia's number go up. Grant's a fool,” he added, viciously.
+“Didn't he break Fisher-didn't he break every other man that ever stuck
+to him?”
+
+“It's not Grant at all,” replied Dixon, rubbing the palms of his hands
+together thoughtfully--a way he had when he wished to concentrate in
+concrete form the result of some deep cogitation--“it's Langdon, an'
+he's several blocks away from an asylum.”
+
+“Langdon makes mistakes too.”
+
+“He cashes in often when he's credited with a mistake,” retorted the
+other.
+
+“Well, I've played the little mare,” asserted Porter.
+
+“Much, sir?” asked Dixon, solicitously.
+
+“All I can stand--and a little more,” he added, falteringly; “I needed a
+win, a good win,” he offered, in an explanatory voice. “I want to clear
+Ringwood--but never mind about that, Andy. The mare's well--ain't she?
+There can't be anything doing with McKay--we've only put him up a few
+times, but he seems all right.”
+
+“I think we'll win,” answered the Trainer; “I didn't get anythin'
+straight--just that there seemed a deuced strong tip on Lauzanne,
+considerin' that he'd never showed any form to warrant it. Yonder he is,
+sir, in number five--go and have a look at him.”
+
+As John Porter walked across the paddock a horseman touched the fingers
+of his right hand to his cap. There was a half-concealed look of
+interest in the man's eye that Porter knew from experience meant
+something.
+
+“What do you know, Mike?” he asked, carelessly, only half halting in his
+stride.
+
+“Nottin' sir; but dere's somebody in de know dis trip. Yer mare's a good
+little filly, w'en she's right, but ye'r up against it.”
+
+Porter stopped and looked at the horseman. He was Mike Gaynor, a
+trainer, and more than once Porter had stood his friend. Mike always had
+on hand three or four horses of inconceivable slowness, and uncertainty
+of wind and limb; consequently there was an ever-recurring inability to
+pay feed bills, so he had every chance to know just who was his friend
+and who was not, for he tried them most sorely.
+
+Porter knew all this quite well; also that in spite of Mike's chronic
+impecuniosity he was honest, and true as steel to a benefactor. He
+waited, feeling sure that Gaynor had something to tell.
+
+“There's a strong play on Lauzanne, ain't there, sir?”
+
+Porter nodded.
+
+“Sure t'ing! That Langdon's a crook. I knowed him when he was ridin' on
+freight cars; now he's a swell, though he's a long sprint from bein'
+a gentleman. I got de tip dat dere was a killin' on, an' I axed Dick
+Langdon if dere was anyt'ing doin'; an' Dick says to me, says he,
+puttin' hot' t'umbs up”--and Mike held both hands out horizontally with
+the thumbs stiff and vertical to illustrate this form of oath--“'there's
+nottin' doin', Mike,' says he. What d'ye t'ink of that, sir, an' me
+knowin' there was?” asked Mike, tragically.
+
+“It's the biggest tip that always falls down, Gaynor; and they've got to
+be pretty swift to beat Lucretia.”
+
+“That filly's all right; she's worked out well enough to do up that
+field of stiffs. I ain't no rail bird, but I've hed me eye on her. But I
+ain't doin' no stunt about horses, Mister Porter; I'm talkin' about men.
+Th' filly's honest, and ye'r honest sir, but ye don't roide th' mare
+yerself, do ye?”
+
+“You think, Mike--” began Mr. Porter, questioningly; but Gaynor
+interrupted him with: “I don't think nothin', sir, an' I ain't sayin'
+nothin. I ain't never been before the Stewards yet for crooked work, or
+crooked talk; but there's a boy ridin' in dat bunch to-day w'at got six
+hundred for t'rowing me down once, see? S'elp me God! he pulled Blue
+Smoke to a standstill on me, knowin' that it would break me. That was at
+Coney Island, two years ago.”
+
+“And you don't remember his name, I suppose, Mike?”
+
+“I don't remember not'in' but that I got it in th' neck. But ye keep yer
+eye open, sir. Ye t'ink that none of the b'ys would t'row ye down cause
+ye've been good to 'em; but some of 'em are that mean they'd steal th'
+sugar from a fly. I know 'em. I hears 'em talk, cause they don't mind
+me--t'ink I'm one of th' gang.”
+
+“Thank you very much, Gaynor; I appreciate your kindly warning; but I
+hope you're mistaken, all the same,” said Porter. Then he proceeded on
+his way toward stall five, in which was Lauzanne.
+
+“How are you, Mr. Porter?”
+
+It was Philip Crane, standing just outside of the stall, who thus
+addressed him. “Got something running today?” he continued, with vague
+innocence.
+
+Langdon, just inside the box, chuckled softly. Surely Crane was a past
+master in duplicity.
+
+“I'm starting Lucretia in this race,” replied Honest John.
+
+“Oh!” Then Crane took Porter gently by the sleeve and drew him half
+within the stall. “Mr. Langdon, who trains a horse or two for me,
+says this one'll win;” and he indicated the big chestnut colt that the
+Trainer was binding tight to a light racing saddle. “You'd better have a
+bit on, Mr. Porter,” Crane added.
+
+“Lucretia carries my money,” answered Porter in loyalty.
+
+Langdon looked up, having cinched the girth tight, and took a step
+toward the two men.
+
+“Well, we both can't win,” he said, half insolently; “an' I don't think
+there's anything out to-day'll beat Lauzanne.”
+
+“That mare'll beat him,” retorted Porter, curtly, nettled by the other's
+cocksureness.
+
+“I'll bet you one horse against the other, the winner to take both,”
+ cried Langdon in a sneering, defiant tone.
+
+“I've made my bets,” said Lucretia's owner, quietly.
+
+“I hear you had an offer of five thousand for your filly, Mr. Porter,”
+ half queried Crane.
+
+“I did, and I refused it.”
+
+“And here's the one that'll beat her to-day, an' I'll sell him for half
+that,” asserted the Trainer, putting his hand on Lauzanne's neck.
+
+Exasperated by the persistent boastfulness of Langdon, Porter was
+angered into saying, “If he beats my mare, I'll give you that for him
+myself.”
+
+“Done!” snapped Langdon. “I've said it, an' I'll stick to it.”
+
+“I don't want the horse--” began Porter; but Langdon interrupted him.
+
+“Oh, if you want to crawl.”
+
+“I never crawl,” said Porter fiercely. “I don't want your horse, but
+just to show you what I think of your chance of winning, I'll give you
+two thousand and a half if you beat my mare, no matter what wins the
+race.”
+
+“I think you'd better call this bargain off, Mr. Porter,” remonstrated
+Crane.
+
+“Oh, the bargain will be off,” answered John Porter; “if I'm any judge,
+Lauzanne's running his race right here in the stall.”
+
+His practiced eye had summed up Lauzanne as chicken-hearted; the sweat
+was running in little streams down the big Chestnut's legs, and dripping
+from his belly into the drinking earth spit-spit, drip-drip; his head
+was high held in nervous apprehension; his lips twitched, his flanks
+trembled like wind-distressed water, and the white of his eye was
+showing ominously.
+
+Langdon cast a quick, significant, cautioning look at Crane as Porter
+spoke of the horse; then he said, “You're a fair judge, an' if you're
+right you get all the stuff an' no horse.”
+
+“I stand to my bargain whatever happens,” Porter retorted.
+
+At that instant the bugle sounded.
+
+“Get up, Westley,” Langdon said to his jockey, “they're going out.”
+
+As he lifted the boy to the saddle, the Trainer whispered a few concise
+directions.
+
+“Hold him steady at the post,” he muttered; “I've got him a bit on edge
+to-day. Get off in front and stay there; he's feelin' good enough to
+leave the earth. This'll be a matter of a couple of hundred to you if
+you win.”
+
+“All out! all out!” called the voice, of the paddock offcial. “Number
+one!” then, “Come on you, Wesltey! they're all out.”
+
+The ten starters passed in stately procession from the green-swarded
+paddock through an open gate to the soft harrowed earth, gleaming
+pink-brown in the sunlight, of the course. How consciously beautiful
+the thoroughbreds looked! The long sweeping step; the supple bend of the
+fetlock as it gave like a wire spring under the weight of great broad
+quarters, all sinewy strength and tapered perfection; the stretch of
+gentle-curved neck, sweet-lined as a greyhound's, bearing a lean, bony
+head, set with two great jewels of eyes, in which were honesty and
+courage, and eager longing for the battle of strength and stamina, and
+stoutness of heart; even the nostrils, with a red transparency as of
+silk, spread and drank eagerly the warm summer air that was full of the
+perfume of new-growing clover and green pasture-land.
+
+Surely the spectacle of these lovely creatures, nearest to man in their
+thoughts and their desires, and superior in their honesty and truth, was
+a sight to gladden the hearts of kings. Of a great certainty it was a
+sport of kings; and also most certainly had it at times come into the
+hands of highway robbers.
+
+Some such bitter thought as this came into the heart of John Porter as
+he stood and watched his beautiful brown mare, Lucretia, trailing with
+stately step behind the others. He loved good horses with all the fervor
+of his own strong, simple, honest nature. Their walk was a delight to
+him, their roaring gallop a frenzy of eager sensation. There was nothing
+in the world he loved so well. Yes--his daughter Allis. But just now
+he was thinking of Lucretia--Lucretia and her rival, the golden-haired
+chestnut, Lauzanne.
+
+He passed through the narrow gate leading from the paddock to the Grand
+Stand. The gate keeper nodded pleasantly to him and said: “Hope
+you'll do the trick with the little mare, sir. I'm twenty years at the
+business, and I haven't got over my likin' for an honest horse and an
+honest owner yet.”
+
+There was covert insinuation of suspicion, albeit a kindly one, in the
+man's voice. The very air was full of the taint of crookedness; else
+why should the official speak of honesty at all? Everyone knew that John
+Porter raced to win.
+
+He crossed the lawn and leaned against the course fence, to take a
+deciding look at the mare and the Chestnut as they circled past the
+stand in the little view-promenade which preceded the race.
+
+His trained eye told him that Lauzanne was a grand-looking horse; big,
+well-developed shoulders reached back toward the huge quarters until the
+small racing saddle almost covered the short back. What great promise of
+weight-carrying was there!
+
+He laughed a little at the irrelevance of this thought, for it was not a
+question of weight-carrying at all; two-year-olds at a hundred pounds
+in a sprint of only five furlongs. Speed was the great factor to be
+considered, and surely Lucretia outclassed the other in that way. The
+long, well-ribbed-up body, with just a trace of gauntness in the flank;
+the slim neck; the deep chest; the broad, flat canon bones, and the
+well-let-down hocks, giving a length of thigh like a greyhound's--and
+the thighs themselves, as John Porter looked at them under the tucked-up
+belly of the gentle mare, big, and strong, and full of a driving force
+that should make the others break a record to beat her.
+
+From the inquisition of the owner's study Lucretia stood forth
+triumphant; neither the Chestnut nor anything else in the race could
+beat her. And Jockey McKay--Porter raised his eyes involuntarily,
+seeking for some occult refutation of the implied dishonesty of the boy
+he had trusted. He found himself gazing straight into the small shifty
+eyes of Lucretia's midget rider, and such a hungry, wolfish look of
+mingled cunning and cupidity was there that Porter almost shuddered. The
+insinuations of Mike Gaynor, and the other things that pointed at a job
+being on, hadn't half the force of the dishonesty that was so apparent
+in the tell-tale look of the morally, irresponsible boy in whose hands
+he was so completely helpless. All the careful preparation of the mare,
+the economical saving, even to the self-denial of almost necessary
+things to the end that he might have funds to back her heavily when she
+ran; and the high trials she had given him when asked the question, and
+which had gladdened his heart and brought an exclamation of satisfaction
+from his phlegmatic trainer; the girlish interest of his daughter in
+the expected triumph--all these contingencies were as less than nothing
+should the boy, with the look of a demon in his eyes, not ride straight
+and honest.
+
+Even then it was not too late to ask the Stewards to set McKay down, but
+what proof had he to offer that there was anything wrong? The boy's good
+name would be blasted should he, John Porter, say at the last minute
+that he did not trust him; and perhaps the lad was innocent. Race people
+were ready to cry out that a jockey was fixed-that there was something
+wrong, when their own judgment was at fault and they lost.
+
+Suddenly Porter gave a cry of astonishment. “My God!” he muttered, “the
+boy has got spurs on. That'll set the mare clean crazy.”
+
+He turned to Dixon, who was at his elbow: “Why did you let McKay put on
+the steels?”
+
+“I told him not to.” “He's got them on.”
+
+“They've got to come off,” and the Trainer dashed up the steps to the
+Stewards. In two minutes he returned, a heavy frown on his face.
+
+“Well?” queried Porter.
+
+“I've made a mess of it,” answered Dixon, sullenly. “It seems there's
+hints of a job on, an' the Stewards have got the wrong end of the
+stick.”
+
+“They refused to let the mare go back to the paddock?” queried Porter.
+
+“Yes; an' one of them said that if trainers would stick closer to their
+horses, an' keep out of the bettin' ring, that the public'd get a better
+run for their money.”
+
+“I'm sorry, Andy,” said Porter, consolingly.
+
+“It's pretty tough on me, but it's worse on you, sir. That boy hadn't
+spurs when he weighed, an' there's the rankest kind of a job on, I'll
+take me oath.”
+
+“We've got to stand to it, Andy.”
+
+“That we have; we've just got to take our medicine like little men. Even
+if we make a break an' take McKay off there isn't another good boy left.
+If he jabs the little mare with them steels she'll go clean crazy.”
+
+“It's my fault, Andy. I guess I've saved and petted her a bit too much.
+But she never needed spurs--she'd break her heart trying without them.”
+
+
+“By God!” muttered Dixon as he went back to the paddock, “if the boy
+stops the mare he'll never get another mount, if I can help it. It's
+this sort of thing that kills the whole business of racing. Here's a
+stable that's straight from owner to exercise boy, and now likely to
+throw down the public and stand a chance of getting ruled off ourselves
+because of a gambling little thief that can spend the income of a
+prince. But after all it isn't his fault. I know who ought to be warned
+off if this race is fixed; but they won't be able to touch a hair of
+him; he's too damn slick. But his time'll come--God knows how many men
+he'll break in the meantime, though.”
+
+As John Porter passed Danby's box going up into the stand, the latter
+leaned over in his chair, touched him on the arm and said, “Come in and
+take a seat.”
+
+“I can't,” replied the other man, “my daughter is up there somewhere.”
+
+“I've played the mare,” declared Danby, showing Porter a memo written in
+a small betting book.
+
+The latter started and a frown crossed his brown face.
+
+“I'm sorry--I'm afraid it's no cinch.”
+
+“Five to two never is,” laughed his friend. “But she's a right smart
+filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a
+fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him over to
+me, John.”
+
+“The mare's good enough,” said Porter, “and I've played her myself--a
+stiffish bit, too; but all the same, if you asked me now, I'd tell
+you to keep your money in your pocket. I must go,” he added, his eye
+catching the flutter of a race card which was waving to him three seats
+up.
+
+“Here's a seat, Dad,” cried the girl, cheeringly, lifting her coat from
+a chair she had kept for her father.
+
+For an instant John Porter forgot all about Lucretia and her troubles.
+The winsome little woman had the faculty of always making him forget his
+trials; she had to the fullest extent that power so often found in
+plain faces. Strictly speaking, she wasn't beautiful--any man would have
+passed that opinion if suddenly asked the question upon first seeing
+her. Doubt of the excellence of this judgment might have crept into his
+mind after he had felt the converting influence of the blue-gray eyes
+that were so much like her father's; in them was the most beautiful
+thing in the world, an undoubted evidence of truth and honesty and
+sympathy. She was small and slender, but no one had ever likened her
+to a flower. There was apparent sinewy strength and vigor in the small
+form. Her life, claimed by the open air, had its reward--the saddle is
+no cradle for weaklings. Bred in an atmosphere of racing, and surrounded
+as she had always been by thoroughbreds, Allis had grown up full of
+admiration for their honesty, and courage, and sweet temper.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+In John Porter's home horse racing had no debasing effect. If a man
+couldn't race squarely--run to win every time--he had better quit the
+game, Porter had always asserted. He raced honestly and bet openly,
+without cant and without hypocrisy; just as a financier might have
+traded in stocks in Wall Street; or a farmer might plant his crops and
+trust to the future and fair weather to yield him a harvest in return.
+
+So much of the racing life was on honor--so much of the working out of
+it was in the open, where purple-clovered fields gave rest, and health,
+and strength, that the home atmosphere was impregnated with moral truth,
+and courage, and frankness, in its influence on the girl's development.
+
+Every twist of her sinewy figure bore mute testimony to this; every
+glance from her wondrous eyes was an eloquent substantiating argument
+in favor of the life she affected. John Porter looked down at the small,
+rather dark, upturned face, and a half-amused smile of content came to
+his lips. “Did you see Lucretia?” he asked. “Isn't she a beauty? Hasn't
+Dixon got her in the pink of condition?”
+
+“I saw nothing else, father.” She beckoned to him with her eyes, tipped
+her head forward, and whispered: “Those people behind us have backed
+Lauzanne. I think they're racing folks.”
+
+The father smiled as an uncultured woman's voice from one row back
+jarred on his ear. Allis noticed the smile and its provocation, and
+said, speaking hastily, “I don't mean like you, father--”
+
+“Like us,” he corrected.
+
+“Well, perhaps; they're more like betting or training people, though.”
+ She put her hand on his arm warningly, as a high-pitched falsetto
+penetrated the drone of their half-whispered words, saying, “I tell you
+Dick knows all about this Porter mare, Lucretia.”
+
+“But I like her,” a baritone voice answered. “She looks a rattlin'
+filly.”
+
+“You'll dine off zwieback and by your lonely, Ned, if you play horses on
+their looks--”
+
+“Or women either,” the baritone cut in.
+
+“You're a fair judge, Ned. But Dick told me to go the limit on Lauzanne,
+and to leave the filly alone.”
+
+“On form Lucretia ought to win,” the man persisted; “an' there's never
+anythin' doin' with Porter.”
+
+“Perhaps not;” the unpleasant feminine voice sneered mockingly, with
+an ill-conditioned drawl on the “perhaps”; “but he doesn't ride his own
+mare, does he?”
+
+John Porter started. Again that distasteful expression fraught with
+distrust and insinuation. There was a strong evil odor of stephanotis
+wafted to his nostrils as the speaker shook her fan with impatient
+decision. The perfume affected him disagreeably; it was like the
+exhalation of some noisome drug; quite in keeping with the covert
+insinuation of her words that Dick, as she called him--it must be Dick
+Langdon, the trainer of Lauzanne, Porter mused--had given her advice
+based on a knowledge quite irrespective of the galloping powers of the
+two horses.
+
+“Did you hear that, father?” Allis whispered.
+
+He nodded his head.
+
+“What does it all mean?”
+
+“It means, girl,” he said, slowly, “that all the trouble and pains I
+have taken over Lucretia since she was foaled, two years ago, and her
+dam, the old mare, Maid of Rome, died, even to raising the little filly
+on a bottle, and watching over her temper that it should not be ruined
+by brutal savages of stable-boys, whose one idea of a horse is that
+he must be clubbed into submission--that all the care taken in her
+training, and the money spent for her keep and entries goes for nothing
+in this race, if Jockey McKay is the rascal I fear he is.”
+
+“You think some one has got at him, Dad?”
+
+Her father nodded again.
+
+“I wish I'd been a boy, so that I could have ridden Lucretia for you
+to-day,” Allis exclaimed with sudden emphasis.
+
+“I almost wish you had, Little Woman; you'd have ridden straight
+anyway--there never was a crooked one of our blood.”
+
+“I don't see why a jockey or anybody else should be dishonest--I'm sure
+it must take too much valuable time to cover up crooked ways.”
+
+“Yes, you'd have made a great jock, Little Woman;” the father went on,
+musingly, as he watched the horses lining up for the start. “Men think
+if a boy is a featherweight, and tough as a Bowery loafer, he's sure
+to be a success in the saddle. That's what beats me--a boy of that sort
+wouldn't be trusted to carry a letter with ten dollars in it, and on the
+back of a good horse he's, piloting thousands. Unless a jockey has the
+instincts of a gentleman, naturally, he's almost certain to turn out a
+blackguard sooner or later, and throw down his owner. He'll have more
+temptations in a week to violate his trust than a bank clerk would have
+in a lifetime.”
+
+“Is that why you put Alan in the bank, father?”
+
+Porter went on as though he had not heard the daughter's query. “To make
+a first-class jock, a boy must have nerves of steel, the courage of a
+bulldog, the self-controlling honesty of a monk. You've got all these
+right enough, Allis, only you're a girl, don't you see--just a good
+little woman,” and he patted her hand affectionately.
+
+“They're off!” exclaimed the baritone.
+
+“Not this trip,” objected the falsetto.
+
+“The spurs--the young fiend!” fiercely ejaculated John Porter.
+
+“What is it, father?”
+
+“The boy on Lucretia is jabbing her with the spurs, and she's cutting
+up.”
+
+“That's the fourth false start,” said Ned, the baritone. “I don't think
+much of your Lauzanne, he's like a crazy horse.”
+
+Allis heard the woman's shrill voice, smothered to a hissing whisper,
+answer something. Two distinct words, “the hop,” carried to her ears.
+There was a long-drawnout baritone, “Oh-h!” then, in the same key, “I
+knew Lauzanne was a sluggard, and couldn't make out why he was so frisky
+to-day.”
+
+“Dick's got it down fine”--just audibly from the woman; “Lauzanne'll try
+right enough this time out.”
+
+“The mare's actin' as if she'd a cup of tea, too,” muttered her
+companion, Ned.
+
+This elicited a dry chuckle from the woman.
+
+Allis pinched her father's arm again, and looked up in his face
+inquiringly, as from the seat behind them the jumbled conversation came
+to their ears. Porter nodded his head understandingly, and frowned. The
+stephanotis was choking his nostrils, and an occasional word was filling
+his heart with confirmation of his suspicions.
+
+“I don't like it,” he muttered to Allis. “They've had four breaks, and
+the mare's been left each time. The Chestnut's the worst actor I ever
+saw at the post. But I'm thinking he'll leave the race right there, the
+way he's cutting up.”
+
+“My God!” he exclaimed in the next breath. He had startled the girl with
+the fierce emphasis he threw into the words; she sprang to her feet in
+excitement.
+
+A bell had clanged noisily, there was the shuffle of thousands of eager
+feet; a hoarse cry, “They're off!” went rolling from tier to tier, from
+seat to seat, to the topmost row of the huge stand.
+
+“Lauzanne is off with a flying lead of three lengths, and the mare is
+left absolutely-absolutely last. The boy whipped her about just as the
+flag fell.” There was the dreary monotone of crushed hope in Porter's
+voice as he spoke.
+
+“Yes, we're out of it, Little Woman,” he continued; and there was almost
+a tone of relief, of resignation. Suspense was gone; realization of the
+disaster seemed to have steadied his nerves again. Allis attempted to
+speak, but her low voice was hushed to a whisper by the exultant cries
+that were all about them.
+
+“Didn't I tell you--Lauzanne wins in a walk!” the falsetto voice was an
+exultant squeak of hilarious excitement.
+
+“You called the turn.” Even Ned's baritone had risen to a false-keyed
+tenor; he was standing on his toes, peering over the heads of taller men
+in front.
+
+Allis brushed from her eyes the tears of sympathy that had welled into
+them, and, raising her voice, spoke bravely, clinging to the vain hope:
+“Lucretia is game, father--she may win yet--the race is not lost till
+they're past the post.”
+
+Then her voice died away, and she kept pleading over and over in her
+heart, “Come on Lucretia--come on, brave little mare! Is she gaining,
+father--can you see?”
+
+“She'll never make it up,” Porter replied, as he watched the jumble
+of red, and yellow, and black patterned into a trailing banner, which
+waved, and vibrated, and streamed in the glittering sunlight, a furlong
+down the Course--and the tail of it was his own blue, whitestarred
+jacket. In front, still a good two lengths in front, gleamed scarlet,
+like an evil eye, the all red of Lauzanne's colors.
+
+“Where is Lucretia, father?” the girl asked again, stretching her slight
+figure up in a vain endeavor to see over the shoulders of those in
+front.
+
+“She had an opening there,” Porter replied, speaking his thoughts more
+than answering the girl, “but the boy pulled her into the bunch on the
+rail. He doesn't want to get through. Oh!” he exclaimed, as though some
+one had struck him in the face.
+
+“What's wrong? Has she--”
+
+“It's the Minstrel. His boy threw him fair across Lucretia, and knocked
+her to her knees.” He lowered his glasses listlessly. “It's Lauzanne all
+the way, if he lasts out. He's dying fast though, and Westley's gone to
+the whip.”
+
+He was looking through his glasses again. Though beaten, his racing
+blood was up. “If Lauzanne wins it will be Westley's riding; the Hanover
+colt, The Dutchman, is at his quarter. He'll beat him out, for the
+Hanovers are all game.”
+
+“Come on you, Lauzanne!” Even the exotic stephanotis failed to
+obliterate the harsh, mercenary intensity of the feminine cry at the
+back of Allis.
+
+“He's beat!” a deep discordant voice groaned. “I knew he was a quitter;”
+ the woman's companion was pessimistic.
+
+Like trees of a forest, swayed by strong compelling winds, the people
+rocked in excitement, tiptoed and craned eager necks, as they watched
+the magnificent struggle that was drawing to a climax in the stretch.
+Inch by inch the brave son of Hanover was creeping up on Lauzanne. How
+loosely the big Chestnut galloped--rolling like a drunken man in the
+hour of his distress. Close pressed to his neck, flat over his wither
+lay the intense form of his rider--a camel's hump--a part of the racing
+mechanism, unimpeding the weary horse in the masterly rigidity of his
+body and legs; but the arms, even the shoulders of the great jockey
+thrust his mount forward, always forward--forward at each stride; fairly
+lifting him, till the very lurches of Lauzanne carried him toward the
+goal. And at his girth raced the compact bay son of Hanover; galloping,
+galloping with a stout heart and eager reaching head; straining every
+sinew, and muscle, and nerve; in his eye the brave desire, not to be
+denied.
+
+Ah, gallant little bay! On his back was the offspring of unthinking
+parents--a pin-head. Perhaps the Evil One had ordained him to the
+completion of Langdon's villainy with Lauzanne. At the pinch his
+judgment had flown--he was become an instrument of torture; with whip
+and spur he was throwing away the race. Each time he raised his arm and
+lashed, his poor foolish body swayed in the saddle, and The Dutchman was
+checked.
+
+“Oh, if he would but sit still!” Porter cried, as he watched the equine
+battle.
+
+The stand mob clamored as though Nero sat there and lions had been
+loosed in the arena. The strange medley of cries smote on the ears of
+Allis. How like wild beasts they were, how like wolves! She closed her
+eyes, for she was weary of the struggle, and listened. Yes, they were
+wolves leaping at the throat of her father, and joying in the defeat of
+Lucretia. Deep-throated howls from full-chested wolves: “Come on you,
+Lauzanne! On, Westley, on! The Bay wins! The Dutchman--The Dutchman for
+a thousand!”
+
+“I'll take--”
+
+But the new voice was stilled into nothingness by the shrill,
+reawakening falsetto. “Go on, Westley! Lauzanne wins--wins--wins!” it
+seemed to repeat. Allis sank back into her seat. She knew it was all
+over. The shuffle of many feet hastening madly, the crash of eager heels
+down the wooden steps, a surging, pushing, as the wolf-pack blocked each
+passage in its thirstful rush for the gold it had won, told her that the
+race was over.
+
+No one knew which horse had won. Presently a quiet came over the mob
+like a lull in a storm. Silently they waited for the winning number to
+go up.
+
+“I believe it's a dead heat,” said Porter; and Allis noted how calm
+and restful his voice sounded after the exultant babel of the
+hoarse-throated watchers.
+
+“Where was Lucretia, father?”
+
+“Third,” he answered, laconically, schooling his voice to indifference.
+“I hope it's a dead heat, for if Lauzanne gets the verdict I've got to
+take him. I don't want him after that run; they made him a present of
+the race at the start, and he only just squeezed home.”
+
+“Why must you take the horse, father, if you don't want him? I don't
+understand.”
+
+“I suppose there's no law for it--I said I would, that's all. The whole
+thing is crooked though; they stole the race from Lucretia and planted
+me with a dope horse, and hanged if I don't feel like backing out. Let
+Langdon go before the Stewards about the sale if he dare.”
+
+“Did you give your word that you'd buy the horse, father?”
+
+“I did; but it was a plant.”
+
+“Then you'll take him, father. People say that John Porter's word is as
+good as his bond; and that sounds sweeter in my ears than if I were to
+hear them say that you were rich, or clever, or almost anything.”
+
+“Lauzanne gets it!” called the eager grating voice behind them. “There
+go the numbers, Ned--three, five, ten; Lauzanne, The Dutchman, Lucretia.
+I knew it. Dick don't make no mistakes when he's out for blood.”
+
+“He drew it a bit fine that time,” growled Ned, still in opposition; “it
+was the closest sort of a shave.”
+
+“Hurrah, Lauzanne!”
+
+Again there was more hurrying of feet as the Chestnut's backers who had
+waited in the stand for the Judge's decision, hurried down to the gold
+mart.
+
+“You'll take Lauzanne, father,” Allis said, when the tumult had stilled;
+“it will come out right somehow--I know it will--he'll win again.”
+
+John Porter stood irresolutely for a minute, not answering the girl,
+as though he were loath to go close to the contaminating influence that
+seemed part and parcel of Lauzanne, and which was stretching out to
+envelop him. He was thinking moodily that he had played against a man
+who used loaded dice, and had lost through his own rashness. He had
+staked so much on the race that the loss would cut cripplingly into his
+affairs.
+
+“I guess you're right, Allis,” he said; “a man's got to keep his word,
+no matter what happens. I never owned a dope horse yet, and unless I'm
+mistaken this yellow skate is one to-day. I'll take him though, girl;
+but he'll get nothing but oats from me to make him gallop.”
+
+Then Porter went resolutely down the steps, smothering in his heart the
+just rebellion that was tempting him to repudiate his bargain.
+
+As he reached the lawn, a lad swung eagerly up the steps, threw his eye
+inquiringly along row after row of seats until it stopped at Allis. Then
+he darted to her side.
+
+“Hello, Sis--been looking for you. Where's Dad?”
+
+“Gone to get Lauzanne.”
+
+“Lauzanne!” and the boy's eyes that were exactly like her own, opened
+wide in astonishment.
+
+“Yes; father bought him.”
+
+“The deuce! I say, Allis, that won't do. Don't you know there's
+something wrong about this race? I just saved myself. I backed the
+little mare for a V--then I heard something. This Langdon's a deuce of a
+queer fish, I can tell you. I wonder Crane has anything to do with him,
+for the Boss is straight as they make them.”
+
+“Did you back Lauzanne then, Alan?”
+
+“You bet I did; quick, too; and was hunting all over for the gov'nor to
+tell him. You see, I know Langdon--he comes to the bank sometimes. He's
+that slick he'll hardly say 'Good-day,' for fear of giving something
+away.”
+
+“Then how did you--how did people know there was something wrong?”
+
+“Oh, a woman, of course--she blabbed. I think she's Dick Langdon's
+sister, and--”
+
+“Hush-hh!” and Allis laid her hand on the boy's arm, indicating with her
+eyes the woman in the seat behind.
+
+“I'd better go and tell father--”
+
+“You needn't bother; he knows. It's a question of honor. Father said
+he'd buy the horse, and he's gone to make good.”
+
+“I wouldn't; that sort of thing will break a man.”
+
+“It's a good way to go broke, Alan. Perhaps we'd all be richer if it
+wasn't so strong in the Porter blood; but all the same, brother, you do
+just as father is doing to-day--always keep your word. I tell you
+what it is, boy”--and her face lighted up as she spoke--“father is a
+hero--that's what he is; he's just the biggest, bravest man ever lived.
+He couldn't do a mean act. How did you get away from the bank, Alan?”
+ she said, changing the subject; “I didn't know you were coming to-day.”
+
+“Mortimer was light, and took on my work. He's a good sort.”
+
+“Does he bet?”
+
+The boy laughed. “Mortimer bet? That's rich. We call him 'Old Solemnity'
+in the bank; but he doesn't mean any harm by it--he just can't help it,
+that's all. If he had a stiff ruff about his neck, you could pose him
+for a picture of one of those old Dutch burgomasters.”
+
+“He's doing your work, and you're making fun of him, boy.”
+
+“You can't make fun of him, at him, or with him; he's a grave digger;
+but you can trust him.”
+
+“That's better.”
+
+“If I'd killed a man and needed a friend to help me out, I'd go straight
+to Mortimer; he's got that kind of eyes. Do you know why he's doing my
+work to-day?”
+
+“Because you're away, I suppose.”
+
+“Because you recited that doggerel about The Run of Crusader.”
+
+“Alan! I've never spoken to Mr. Mortimer.”
+
+“That's why he choked the butcher the night of the concert--I mean--”
+
+“You're talking nonsense, Alan.”
+
+“I'm not, I know when a man's interested. Hello. Blest if the Boss isn't
+coming this way--there's Crane. See, Allis? I've a notion to tell him
+that his trainer is a crook.”
+
+“No, you won't, Alan--you're too young to gabble.”
+
+Philip Crane had evidently intended going higher up in the stand, but
+his eye lighting on the brother and sister, he stopped, and turned in to
+where they were sitting.
+
+“Good afternoon, Miss Porter.”
+
+Allis started. Was the stand possessed of unpleasant voices? There was
+a metallic ring in Crane's voice that affected her disagreeably. He was
+almost a stranger to her; she hardly remembered ever having spoken to
+him.
+
+He turned and nodded pleasantly to Alan, saying, “May I take this seat?
+I'm tired. The Cashier let you oft for the day, eh?” he continued. “Came
+up to see your father's mare run, I suppose--I'm deuced sorry she was
+beaten.”
+
+“What are they waiting for--why have they taken the horses' numbers down
+again? Are they trying to steal the race from Lauzanne now?” It was the
+woman's voice behind them, petulantly exclaiming.
+
+Crane turned in his seat, looked over his shoulder, and raised his hat.
+
+“The impatient lady is my trainer's sister,” he explained in a modulated
+tone to Allis. “A trainer is quite an autocrat, I assure you, and one
+must be very careful not to forget any of the obvious courtesies.”
+
+Allis wondered why he should find it necessary to make any explanation
+at all.
+
+“I want to thank you, Miss Porter, for that reading about Crusader.”
+
+Allis's eyes opened wide.
+
+“Yes, I was there,” Crane added, answering the question that was in
+them.
+
+As he said this a man came hurriedly up the steps, spoke to a policeman
+on guard, and searched the faces with his eyes. Catching sight of Crane,
+he came quickly forward and whispered something in his ear.
+
+“Excuse me, I must go--I'm wanted,” Crane said to Allis.
+
+As he turned, the Trainer's sister spoke to him.
+
+“What's the matter, Mr. Crane--there's something going on up in the
+Stewards' Stand?”
+
+“I fancy there's an objection, though I don't know anything about it,”
+ he answered, as he went down the steps with the messenger.
+
+Allis breathed more freely when he had gone. Somehow his presence had
+oppressed her; perhaps it was the fierce stephanotis that came in
+clouds from the lady behind that smothered her senses. Crane had said
+nothing--just an ordinary compliment. Like an inspiration it came to the
+girl what had affected her so disagreeably in Crane--it was his eyes.
+They were hard, cold, glittering gray eyes, looking out from between
+partly closed eyelids. Allis could see them still. The lower lids cut
+straight across; it was as though the eyes were peeping at her over a
+stone wall.
+
+“What did I tell you about Crusader?” Alan said, triumphantly. “There's
+another.”
+
+“Alan!”
+
+“I wondered why Mr. Crane was so deuced friendly; but there's nothing to
+get cross about, girl, he's a fine old chap, and got lots of wealth.”
+
+He leaned forward till he was close to his sister's ear, and added, in
+a whisper, “Her ladyship behind, Belle Langdon, is trying to hook him.
+Phew!--but she's loud. But I'm off--I'm going to see what the row is
+about.”
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+When John Porter left the stand, the horses had just cantered back
+to weigh in. The jockeys, one after another, with upraised whip, had
+saluted the Judge, received his nod to dismount, pulled the saddles
+from their steeds, and, in Indian file, were passing over the scales.
+As Lucretia was led away, Porter turned into the paddock. He saw that
+Langdon was waiting for him.
+
+“Well, he won, just as I said he would,” declared the latter; “you've
+got a good horse cheap. You'd ought to've had a bet down on him, an' won
+him out.”
+
+“He won,” answered Porter, looking straight into the other's shifty
+eyes, “but he's a long way from being a good horse--no dope horse is a
+good horse.”
+
+“What're you givin' me?” demanded Langdon, angrily.
+
+“Just what every blackguard ought to have--the truth.”
+
+“By God!” the Trainer began, in fierce blasphemy, but John Porter took
+a step nearer, and his gray eyes pierced the other man's soul until it
+shriveled like a dried leaf, and turned its anger into fear.
+
+“Oh, if you want to crawl--if you don't want to take Lauzanne--”
+
+But Porter again interrupted Langdon---“I said I'd take the horse, and
+I will; but don't think that you're fooling me, Mr. Langdon. You're a
+blackguard of the first water. Thank God, there are only a few parasites
+such as you are racing--it's creatures like you that give the sport a
+black eye. If I can only get at the bottom of what has been done to-day,
+you'll get ruled off, and you'll stay ruled off. Now turn Lauzanne over
+to Andy Dixon, and come into the Secretary's office, where I'll give you
+a check for him.”
+
+“Well, we'll settle about the horse now, an' there'll be somethin'
+to settle between us, John Porter, at some other time and some other
+place,” blustered Langdon, threateningly.
+
+Porter looked at him with a half-amused, half-tolerant expression on his
+square face, and said, speaking in a very dry convincing voice: “I guess
+the check will close out all deals between us; it will pay you to keep
+out of my way, I think.”
+
+As they moved toward the Secretary's office, Porter was accosted by his
+trainer.
+
+“The Stewards want to speak to you, sir,” said Dixon.
+
+“All right. Send a boy over to this man's stable for Lauzanne--I've
+bought him.”
+
+The Trainer stared in amazement.
+
+“I'll give you the check when I come back,” Porter continued, speaking
+to Langdon.
+
+“There's trouble on, sir,” said Dixon, as they moved toward the
+Stewards' box.
+
+“There always is,” commented Porter, dryly.
+
+“The Stewards think Lucretia didn't run up to her form. They've had me
+up, an' her jock, McKay, is there now. Starter Carson swears he couldn't
+get her away from the post--says McKay fair anchored the mare. He fined
+the boy fifty dollars at the start.”
+
+“I think they've got the wrong pig by the ear--why don't they yank
+Langdon? he's at the bottom of it. It a pretty rich, Andy, isn't it?
+They hit me heavy over the race, and now they'd like to rule me off for
+that thief's work,” and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the
+direction of Langdon.
+
+“Yes, racin's hell now,” commented Dixon with laconic directness. “It
+seems just no use workin' over a good horse when any mut of a crook who
+is takin' a turn at plungin' can get at the boy. I believe Boston Bill's
+game of gettin' a straight boy to play, an' lettin' the horses go hang,
+is the proper racket.”
+
+“Yes, a good boy is better than a good horse nowadays; but they're like
+North Poles--hard to come by.”
+
+“Some mug give the Stewards a yarn that you'd bought Lauzanne, sir, an'
+sez that's why you didn't win with the mare.”
+
+Porter stopped, and gasped in astonishment. What next?
+
+“You see,” continued Dixon, apologetically, “I didn't know you was
+meanin' to buy that skate, so I says it was all a damned lie.”
+
+“Things are mixed, Andy, ain't they?”
+
+“I didn't know, sir.”
+
+“Of course not--I didn't mention it to you--it was all a fluke. But I
+don't blame you, Andy. I'll go and talk to the Stewards--they're all
+right; they only want to get at the truth of it.”
+
+As Porter went up the steps of the Stewards' Stand, he felt how like a
+man mounting a scaffold he was, an innocent man condemned to be hanged
+for another's crime.
+
+The investigation had been brought about by a note one of the Stewards
+had received. The sender of the missive stated in it that he had backed
+Lucretia heavily, but had strong reasons for believing there was a
+job on. The backer was a reliable man and asked for a fair run for his
+money. The note had come too late--just as the horses were starting--to
+be of avail, except as a corroboration of the suspicious features of
+the race. Starter Carson's evidence as to McKay's handling of the mare
+coincided with the contents of the note. Then there was the fact of
+Porter's having bought Lauzanne. The Stewards did not know the actual
+circumstances of the sale, but had been told that Lucretia's owner had
+acquired the Chestnut before the race. Where all was suspicion, every
+trivial happening was laid hold of; and Alan's trifling bet on Lauzanne
+had been magnified into a heavy plunge--no doubt the father's money had
+been put up by the boy. A race course is like a household, everything is
+known, absolutely everything.
+
+Porter was aghast. Were all the Furies in league against him? He was
+more or less a believer in lucky and unlucky days, but he had never
+experienced anything quite so bad as this. He, the one innocent man in
+the transaction, having lost almost his last dollar, and having been
+saddled with a bad horse, was now accused of being the perpetrator
+of the villainy; and the insinuation was backed up by such a mass of
+circumstantial evidence. No wonder he flushed and stood silent, lost for
+words to express his indignation.
+
+“Speak up, Mr. Porter,” said the Steward, kindly. “Those that lost on
+Lucretia are swearing the mare was pulled.”
+
+“And they're right,” blurted out Porter. “I know what the mare can do;
+she can make hacks of that bunch. She was stopped, and interfered with,
+and given all the worst of it from start to finish; but my money was
+burnt up with the public's. I never pulled a horse in my life, and I'm
+too old to begin now.”
+
+“I believe that,” declared the Steward, emphatically. “I've known you,
+John Porter, for forty years, man and boy, and there never was anything
+crooked. But we've got to clear this up. Racing isn't what it used to
+be--it's on the square now, and we want the public to understand that.”
+
+“What does the boy say,” asked Porter; “you've had him up?”
+
+“He says the mare was 'helped;' that she ran like a drunken man--swayed
+all over the course, and he couldn't pull her together at all.”
+
+“Does he mean she was doped?”
+
+“You've guessed it,” answered the Steward, laconically.
+
+“That's nonsense, sir; and he knows it. Why, the little mare is as sweet
+as a lamb, and as game a beast as ever looked through a bridle. Somebody
+got at the boy. I can prove by Dixon that Lucretia never had a grain of
+cocaine in her life--never even a bracer of whiskey--she doesn't need
+it; and as for the race, I hadn't a cent on Lauzanne.”
+
+“But your son.”
+
+“He had a small bet; I didn't know that, even, until they were running.”
+
+“Did you tell him not to back Lucretia, for he did Lauzanne?”
+
+“I told him not to bet at all.”
+
+“And you played the mare yourself?”
+
+For answer Porter showed the Steward his race programme, on which was
+written the wager he had made on Lucretia, and the bookmaker's name.
+
+“Ask Ullmer to bring his betting sheet,” the Steward said to an
+assistant.
+
+On the sheet, opposite John Porter's badge number, was a bet, $10,000 to
+$4,000, in the Lucretia column.
+
+“Did this gentleman make that bet with you?” the Steward asked of
+Ullmer.
+
+“He carries the number; besides I know Mr. Porter, I remember laying it
+to him.”
+
+“Thank you, that will do. Hit you pretty hard,” he said, turning to
+Porter. “And you hadn't a saver on Lauzanne?”
+
+“Not a dollar.”
+
+“What about your buying him--is there anything in that story?”
+
+Porter explained the purchase. The Steward nodded his head.
+
+“They seem to have been pretty sure of winning, those other people,”
+ he commented; “but we can't do anything to them for winning; nor about
+selling you the horse, I fear; and as far as you're concerned, Lucretia
+was supposed to be trying. Who gave your jockey orders?”
+
+“Dixon. I don't interfere; he trains the horses.”
+
+“We'd like to have Dixon up here again for a minute. I'm sorry we've
+had to trouble you, Mr. Porter; I can see there is not the slightest
+suspicion attaches to you.”
+
+In answer to the Steward's query about the order to McKay, Dixon said:
+“I told McKay the boss had a big bet down, and to make no mistake--no
+Grand Stand finish for me. I told him to get to the front as soon as he
+could, and stay there, and win by as far as he liked. I got the office
+that there'd be somethin' doin' in the race, an' I told him to get out
+by himself.”
+
+After Dixon was dismissed, the Stewards consulted for a minute, with the
+result that McKay was suspended for the balance of the meeting, pending
+a further investigation into his methods.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * *
+
+During the carpeting of Porter and Dixon, a sea of upturned faces,
+furrowed by lines of anxious interest, had surrounded the Judge's box.
+Wave on wave the living waters reached back over the grassed lawn to the
+betting ring. An indefinable feeling that something was wrong had crept
+into the minds of the waiting people, tense with excitement.
+
+As the horses had flashed past the post, and, after a brief wait for
+decision, Lauzanne's number had gone up, his backers had hastened
+eagerly to the money mart, and lined up in waiting rows behind the
+bookmakers' stands. There they waited, fighting their impatient souls
+into submission, for the brief wait would end in the acquiring of gold.
+Why did not the stentorian-voiced crier send through the ring the joyful
+cry of “All right!” The minutes went by, and the delay became an age.
+A whisper vibrated the throng, as a breeze stirs slender branches, that
+the winner had been disqualified--that there had been an objection.
+First one dropped out of line; then another; one by one, until all
+stood, an army of expectant speculators, waiting for the verdict that
+had its birthplace up in that tiny square building, the Stewards' Stand.
+
+“It's over the pulling of Lucretia,” a man said, simply to relieve his
+strained feelings.
+
+“It was the most barefaced job I ever saw,” declared another; “it's even
+betting the stable gets ruled off.” He had backed Porter's mare, and was
+vindictive.
+
+“Not on your life,” sneered a Tout, wolfishly; “a big owner always gets
+off. The jock'll get it in the neck if they've been caught.”
+
+“Why don't they pay?” whined the fourth. “What's the pulling of the mare
+got to do with it? The best horse won.” He was a backer of Lauzanne.
+
+“Bet yer life the bookies won't part till the numbers of the placed
+horses an' riders are up on that board again. They've run them down,
+don't you see?” chimed in the Tout.
+
+“I'll take two to one The Dutchman gets it,” said a backer of that
+horse. “There's a job on, and they'll both get disqualified. Porter's
+kid won ten thousand over Lauzanne, and that's why they stiffened the
+mare.”
+
+“That's what the Public are up against in this game,” sneered the backer
+of Lucretia.
+
+“And the jock'll have to stand the shot; I know how it goes,” asserted
+the Tout.
+
+“You ought to know,” drawled Lauzanne's backer. The racing men within
+earshot smiled, for the Tout had been a jockey before his license had
+been taken away for crooked work.
+
+“Hello! here it comes,” cried Lauzanne's backer, as a fat, red-faced man
+came swiftly down from the Stewards' Stand, ran to the betting ring, and
+pushing his way through the crowd, called with the roar of a gorilla:
+“Al-l-l right! Lauzanne, first! The Dutchman, second! Lucretia, third!
+They're al-l-l weighed in!”
+
+A Niagara of human beings poured from the lawn to the ring; they ran as
+though the course was on fire and they sought to escape.
+
+“What about Lucretia?” some one asked.
+
+“They've broke McKay,” the red-faced crier answered; “suspended him.”
+
+“What did I tell you?” sneered the Tout, maliciously; “it's the under
+dog gets the worst of it every time.”
+
+* * * * * * * * * * *
+
+A Celt, is an outspoken man when the prod of his hot temper has loosened
+his tongue, and Mike Gaynor was a Celt in excess.
+
+The injustice that had come to his benefactor, John Porter, had stirred
+a tempest in his Irish soul. A fierce exclamation of profane wrath had
+gone up from him as he watched the bad start from over the paddock rail.
+
+A misguided retribution led Starter Carson to pass from the Judges'
+Stand after the race, along the narrow passage between the Club Stand
+and the course, to the paddock gate. There he met Mike, who forthwith
+set to flailing him.
+
+“Did ye notice a little mare called Lucretia in that race, Mr.
+Carson--did ye see anythin' av her at all down at the post?”
+
+Carson's eyes twinkled uneasily. Years of starting had taught him that
+self-control was nine out of ten rules which should govern the Starter's
+actions.
+
+“Was there anythin' th' mather wit' yer ancestor's eyes that ye come by,
+Mister Carson?”
+
+The Starter made answer with a smile of good-humored tolerance. But Mike
+was only warming up; the hot blood was stinging his quick brain, and his
+sharp tongue galloped on with unbridled irresponsibility. With the deep
+pathos of scorn he continued:
+
+“Ye'r Carson the Stharter--Mister Carson! S'help me, Bob! ye couldn't
+sthart a sthreet car down hill wit' bot' brakes off!”
+
+Carson ceased to smile; the smile had passed to other faces, the owners
+of which were listening with fiendish delight to the castigation.
+
+Some one touched Mike on the arm, saying, “Come over into the paddock,
+Gaynor; you're barkin' up the wrong tree.” It was Dixon.
+
+“Bot' t'umbs up! This game's too tough fer me--I'll ship me plugs to
+Gravesend. Whin a straight man like Porther gets a deal av this kind.”
+
+“Never mind, Mike,” interrupted Dixon; “let it drop.”
+
+Carson opened his lips to retort, then closed them tight, set his square
+jaw firmly, turned on his heel, and walked away.
+
+“What d' ye think av it, b'ys?” appealed Mike to the others.
+
+“You're wrong, Gaynor,” declared a thin, tall, hawkfaced man, who was in
+his shirt sleeves; “my boy was in that run, and it isn't Carson's fault
+at all. It's dope, Mike. Lauzanne was fair crazy with it at the post;
+and McKay was dead to the world on the little mare--the Starter couldn't
+get him away.”
+
+“That's right, Mike,” added Dixon; “Carson fined the boy fifty, an' the
+Stewards set him down.”
+
+“Is that straight goods?” asked Gaynor, losing confidence in the justice
+of his wordy assault.
+
+“Yes, you're wrong, Mike,” they all asserted.
+
+In five minutes Gaynor had found Carson, and apologized with the full
+warmth of a penitent Irishman.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+For a week John Porter brooded over Lucretia's defeat, and, worse still,
+over the unjust suspicion of the unthinking public. Touched in its
+pocket, the public responded in unsavory references to Lucretia's race.
+Porter loved a good horse, and liked to see him win. The confidence
+of the public in his honesty was as great a reward as the stakes. The
+avowed principle of racing, that it improved the breed of horses, was
+but a silent sentiment with him. He believed in it, but not being rich,
+raced as a profession, honestly and squarely. He had asserted more than
+once that if he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But
+his income must be derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and
+just at this time he was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad
+luck; financially, he was in a hole; morally, he stood ill with the
+public.
+
+His reason told him that the ill-fortune could not last; he had one
+great little mare, good enough to win, an honest trainer--there the
+inventory stopped short; his stock in trade was incomplete--he had not a
+trusty jockey. In his dilemma he threshed it out with Dixon.
+
+“How's the mare doing, Andy?” he asked. “What did the race do to her?”
+
+“She never was better in her life,” the Trainer answered, proudly. Then
+he added, to ease the troubled look that was in the gray eyes of his
+master, “She'll win next time out, sir--I'll gamble my shirt on that.”
+
+“Not with another McKay up.”
+
+“I think she's good enough for the 'Eclipse,' sir, dashed if I don't. I
+worked her the distance, and she shaded the time they made last year.”
+
+“What's the use,” said Porter, dejectedly; “where'll we get a boy?”
+
+“Oh, lots of the boys are straight.”
+
+“I know that,” Porter answered, “but all the straight ones are tied hand
+and foot to the big stables.”
+
+“I've been thinkin' it over,” hazarded Dixon, tentatively--“Boston
+Bill's got a good lad--there's none of them can put it over him, an' his
+boss ain't got nothin' in the 'Eclipse,' I know.”
+
+“That means the same old game, Andy; we nurse the horse, get him into
+condition, place him where he can win, and then turn him over to a
+plunger and take the small end of the divide. Boston Bill would back her
+off the boards.
+
+“The stake'd mount up to seven or eight thousand, an' the win would
+square the little mare with the public.”
+
+“And I'd do that, if I didn't land a dollar,” said Porter. “Andy, it
+hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did
+giving up the money.”
+
+The Trainer smiled. With him this was unusual; there was a popular
+superstition that he never smiled except when one of his horses won.
+But his heart expanded at Porter's words, for he, too, was fond of the
+little mare.
+
+Then Porter spoke again, abruptly, and fast, as though he feared he
+might change his mind: “They downed me last trip, Dixon--I guess I'm
+getting a bit slow in my paces; and you do just as you like--arrange
+with Boston Bill if you think it's good business. He makes a specialty
+of winning races--not pulling horses, and we need a win, too, I guess.”
+
+“Thank you, sir. We'll land that stake; an' p'raps the sharp division'll
+take a tumble. I'll bet a dollar they'll go for The Dutchman--he ran a
+great race the other day, an' he's in the Eclipse--if they start him.
+Lurcetia's right on edge, she's lookin' for the key hole, an' may go
+back if we don't give her a race. We'd better get the money for the oat
+bill while it's in sight. She oughter be a long price in the bettin',
+too,” continued Dixon, meditatively; “the public soon sour on a beaten
+horse. You'll have a chance to get even.”
+
+“I don't like that part of it,” muttered Porter; “I'm in the black books
+now. People have no reason at all--no sense; they've got it into their
+heads that dirty job was of my making, and if the filly starts at ten to
+one, and I win a bit, they'll howl.”
+
+“You can't make a success of racin', sir, an' run your stable for the
+public--they don't pay the feed bill.”
+
+“Perhaps you're right, Dixon,” answered Porter.
+
+For immediate financial relief Porter knew that he must look to
+Lucretia--no other horse in his stable was ready to win; but more
+immediately he must arrange certain money matters with his banker, who
+was Philip Crane. To Porter, Crane had been a tolerant financier, taking
+the man's honesty liberally as a security; not but what Ringwood
+had been called upon as a tangible asset. So that day, following his
+conversation with Dixin, the master of Ringwood had an interview with
+his banker. It was natural that he should speak of his prospects--his
+hopes of winning the Eclipse with Lucretia, and, corroboratively,
+mention her good trial.
+
+“I think that's a good mare of yours, Mr. Porter,” said Crane,
+sympathetically. “I only race, myself in a small way, just for the
+outdoor relaxation it gives me, you know, so I'm not much of a
+judge. The other horse you bought--the winner of the race, I mean,
+Lauzanne--will also help put you right, I should say.”
+
+Porter hesitated, uneasily. He disliked to talk about a man behind his
+back, but he knew that Langdon trained for Crane, and longed to give
+the banker a friendly word of warning; he knew nothing of the latter's
+manipulation of the trainer.
+
+With a touch of rustic quaintness he said, with seeming irrelevance to
+the subject, “Have you ever picked wild strawberries in the fields, Mr.
+Crane?”
+
+“I have,” answered the other man, showing no surprise at the break, for
+life in Brookfield had accustomed him to disjointed deals.
+
+“Did you ever notice that going down wind you could see the berries
+better?”
+
+Crane thought for a moment. “Yes, that's right; coming up wind the
+leaves hid them.”
+
+“Just so,” commented Porter; “and when a man's got a trainer he's nearly
+always working up wind with him.”
+
+“The trainer hides things?” queried Crane.
+
+“Some do. But the outsiders walking down wind see the berries.”
+
+And the Banker pondered for a minute, then he said, “Whose garden are
+the berries in, Mr. Porter, yours or mine?”
+
+“Well, you've always been a good friend of mine, Mr. Crane,” Porter
+answered, evasively.
+
+“I see,” said the other, meditatively; “I understand. I'm much obliged.
+If I thought for an instant that any trainer wasn't dealing perfectly
+straightforward with me, I'd have nothing more to do with him--nothing
+whatever.”
+
+Crane sat looking through the open window at John Porter as the latter
+went down the street. About his thin-lipped, square-framed mouth hovered
+an expression that might have been a smile, or an intense look of
+interest, or a touch of avaricious ferocity. The gray eyes peeped over
+the wall of their lower lids, and in them, too, was the unfathomable
+something.
+
+“Yes,” he repeated, as though Porter still stood beside him, “if Langdon
+tried to deceive me, I'd crush him. Poor old Porter with his story of
+the strawberries! If he were as clever as he is honest, he wouldn't have
+been stuck with a horse like Lauzanne. I told Langdon to get rid of that
+quitter, but I almost wish he'd found another buyer for him. The horse
+taint is pretty strong in that Porter blood. How the girl said that
+line,
+
+        'And a hush came over the clamorous mob;
+        Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing.'
+
+She's cleverer than her father.”
+
+Crane sat for an hour. Porter had vanished from the landscape, but still
+the Banker's thoughts clung to his personality as though the peeping
+eyes saw nothing else.
+
+From the time of the first loan obtained upon Ringwood, Crane had
+coveted the place. It appealed to him with its elm-bordered, sweeping
+driveway, leading from gate to old colonial residence. Its thick-grassed
+fields and running water made it just the place for a man who tempered
+his passion for racing with common sense. And it would pass from
+Porter's hands right enough--Crane knew that. Porter might call it ill
+luck, but he, Crane the Banker, knew it was the lack of something, the
+inability to make money.
+
+“Made music to me on Crusader.” Yes, that was it. With the Porters it
+was jingle of spurs, and stride of the horse. All very fine in theory,
+but racing, as he looked at it, was a question of proper odds, and many
+other things connected with the betting ring.
+
+Why did the girl, Allis, with her jingling verse creep into his mind.
+Perhaps it was because she was so different from the woman who was
+always steeped in stephanotis. Of the one there was only the memory
+of an unmodulated voice and oppressive perfume; in truth, of the other
+there was not much more--just a pair of big, blue-gray, honest
+eyes, that somehow stared at him fearlessly, and withal with a great
+sweetness.
+
+Crane suddenly chuckled in dry disapprobation of himself. Grotesquely
+enough, all at once he remembered that he was forty--that very day
+forty. He ran his hand over his waistcoat, dipped two fingers into the
+pocket and drew out a cigar. Ordinarily the face of an alabaster Buddha
+was mobile and full of expression compared with Crane's. His mind worked
+behind a mask, but it worked with the clean-cut precision of clockwork.
+When his thoughts had crystallized into a form of expression, Crane was
+very apt to be exactly right in his deductions.
+
+Save for the curling smoke that streamed lazily upward from his cigar
+one might have thought the banker fast asleep in his chair, so still he
+sat, while his mind labored with the quiescent velocity of a spinning
+top. He had won a big stake over Lauzanne's victory. The race had helped
+beggar Porter, and brought Ringwood nearer his covetous grasp. If Porter
+failed to win the Eclipse, his finances would be in a pitiable state; he
+might even have to sell his good filly Lucretia. That would be a golden
+opportunity.
+
+From desiring the farm, insensibly Crane drifted into coveting the mare.
+He fell to wondering whether The Dutchman might not beat Lucretia. A
+question of this sort was one of the few he discussed with Langdon.
+Crane had smoked his cigar out, had settled the trend of many things,
+and developed the routine for his chessmen.
+
+“I'll give Porter rope enough, in the way of funds, to tangle himself,
+and in the meantime I'll run up to New York and see what Langdon thinks
+about The Dutchman,” was the shorthand record of his thoughts as he
+threw away the end of his cigar, took his hat, and passed out of the
+bank.
+
+That evening he talked with his trainer.
+
+“What should win the Eclipse, Langdon?” he asked.
+
+“Well, I don't know what'll start,” began the Trainer, with diplomatic
+caution, running over in his mind the most likely twoyear-olds.
+
+“Would Porter's mare have a chance?”
+
+“I think she would. I hear somethin' about a trial she gave them good
+enough to win--if I could find out her time--Porter don't talk much, an'
+Andy Dixon's like a clam. There's a boy in the stable, Shandy, that I
+might pump--”
+
+“Don't bother, Mr. Langdon; I dislike prying into anybody's business.”
+
+The Trainer stared, but he didn't know that Porter had told Crane all
+about the trial, and so the latter could afford to take a virtuous pose.
+
+“Has The Dutchman a look in?” continued Crane.
+
+“On his runnin' he has; he wasn't half fit, an' got as bad a ride as
+ever I see in my life. The race ought to be between 'em--I ain't seen no
+two-year-olds out to beat that pair.”
+
+“If I thought The Dutchman would win I'd buy him. I like game horses,
+and men, too--that'll take the gaff and try.”
+
+“I don't know as the owner'd sell him.”
+
+“Do you remember the buying of Silver Foot, Langdon?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“He was a good horse.”
+
+“The best handicap horse in the country, an' he was sold for a
+song--seven thousand.”
+
+“Less than that, the first time,” corrected Crane.
+
+“Yes, they stole him from old Walters; made him believe the horse was no
+good.”
+
+“Just so,” commented Crane; “I've heard that story,” and his smooth,
+putty-like face remained blank and devoid of all meaning, as his eyes
+peered vacantly over their lower lids at the Trainer.
+
+Langdon waited for the other to continue, but the Banker seemed wrapped
+up in a retrospect of the Silver Foot deal.
+
+“I know Billy Smith, that trains The Dutchman,” hazarded Langdon; “he's
+a boozer.”
+
+“I'm glad of that--I mean, that you know Smith,” declared Crane. “I
+happen to know the owner--his name is Baker. His racing is what might be
+called indiscriminate, and like men of that class he sometimes blunders
+upon a good horse without knowing it; and I doubt very much but that if
+he knew all about the other race--how bad Lauzanne really is; how the
+mare, Lucretia--well--got shut off, and couldn't get through her horses,
+say--of course his own trainer, Smith, would have to tell these things,
+you understand. In fact, if he knew the exact truth, he might take a
+reasonable offer for The Dutchman.”
+
+Langdon nodded approvingly. He loved his subtle master; cards up his
+sleeves tingled his nerves, and loaded dice were a joy for evermore.
+
+Crane proceeded to unwind the silken cord. “Naturally Smith would hate
+to lose a fair horse out of his stable, and would, perhaps, attempt to
+thwart any deal; so I think you might remunerate him for his loss.”
+
+“When Silver Foot was sold, they gave him a bad trial before the sale--”
+
+“I'm not interested in Silver Foot,” interrupted Crane; “and I shouldn't
+like to have anything--well, I don't want my name associated with
+anything shady, you understand, Langdon? You are to buy The Dutchman as
+cheap as you can, and run him as your own horse in the Eclipse. I
+think Porter's mare will win it, so we needn't lose anything over The
+Dutchman.”
+
+Langdon started. With all his racing finesse he was a babe. The smooth,
+complacent-faced man in front of him made him realize this.
+
+“But,” he gasped, “there was a row over Lauzanne's race. If The Dutchman
+runs in my name, an' a lot o' mugs play him--it's dollars to doughnuts
+they will--an' he gets beat, there'll be a kick. I can't take no chances
+of bein' had up by the Stewards.”
+
+“Wait a bit,” replied Crane, calmly. “Supposing Porter's mare worked
+five and a half furlongs in 1.07, how would she go in the Eclipse?”
+
+“She'd win in a walk; unless The Dutchman was at his best when he might
+give her an argument.”
+
+“Well, if I thought The Dutchman could beat the mare, I'd make him win,
+if he never carried the saddle again,” declared Crane, almost fiercely.
+Then he interrupted himself, breaking off abruptly. Very seldom indeed
+it was that Crane gave expression to sentiment; his words were simply
+a motor for carrying the impact of his well-thought-out plans to the
+executive agents. “It will be doing Porter a good turn to-to-that is, if
+Lucretia wins. I fancy he needs a win. Bad racing luck will hardly stop
+the mare this time--not twice in succession you know, Langdon,” and he
+looked meaningly at his jackal. “You buy The Dutchman, and be good to
+him.”
+
+He laid marked emphasis on the words “be good to him.” The trainer
+understood. It meant that he was to send The Dutchman to the post half
+fit, eased up in his work; then the horse could try, and the jockey
+could try, and, in spite of it all, the fast filly of Porter's would
+win, and his subtle master, Crane, would have turned the result to his
+own benefit. Why should he reason, or object, or counterplot, or do
+anything but just follow blindly the dictates of this past master in the
+oblique game he loved so well? Crane wanted The Dutchman because he was
+a good horse; he also wanted to have a heavy plunge on Lucretia; but
+with the son of Hanover in other hands the good thing might not come
+off. Somehow Langdon felt miserably inefficient in the presence
+of Crane--his self-respect suffered; the other man's mind was so
+overmastering, even to detail. The Trainer felt a sudden desire to
+right himself in Crane's estimation, give some evidence of ordinary
+intelligence, or capability to carry out his mission. “If The Dutchman's
+owner was made to think that the horse was likely to break down, throw a
+splint, or--”
+
+But Crane interrupted him in his quiet, masterful way, saying: “I know
+nothing of horse trading; I simply furnish the money, loan it to you, my
+dear Mr. Langdon, and you buy the animal in your own best way. You
+will pay for him with a check on my bank.” No man could close out an
+interview so effectually as Crane. As Langdon slipped away as though he
+had been thrust bodily from the room, there was in his mind nothing but
+admiration of his master--the man who backed up his delicate diplomacy
+with liberal capital.
+
+In spite of what he had said to Langdon, there was little doubt in
+Crane's mind but that the son of Hanover was a better horse than
+Lucretia. A sanguine owner--even Porter was one at times--was so apt
+to overrate everything in his own stable, especially if he had bred the
+animal himself, as Porter had Lucretia. To buy The Dutchman and back him
+on such short ownership to beat Lucretia would have been the policy of
+a very ordinary mind indeed; he would simply be fencing, with rapiers of
+equal length, with John Porter.
+
+Crane had attained to his success by thinking a little deeper than other
+men, going a little beyond them in the carefulness of his plans. He
+knew intuitively--in fact Porter's unguarded conversation had suggested
+it--that Lucretia's owner meant to win himself out of his difficult
+position by backing the little mare heavily for the Eclipse, expecting
+to get his money on at good odds. By owning The Dutchman Crane could
+whipsaw the situation; forestall Porter in the betting by backing
+Lucretia down to a short price himself, and have Jakey Faust lay with
+a full vigor against the Hanover colt. He would thus confine Porter to
+stake money, and Ringwood would still lie chained to his bank by the
+golden links he had forged on the place.
+
+Almost insensibly, side by side with this weed of villainy there was
+growing in Crane's mind a most peculiar flower of sentiment, a love
+blossom. Strive as he would--though the apathy of his rebellion somewhat
+startled him--Crane could not obliterate from his thoughts the wondrous
+gray eyes of Allis Porter. Even after Langdon was gone, the atmosphere
+of the room still smirched by unholy underplay, thoughts of the girl
+came to Crane, jostling and elbowing the evil conceptions of his
+restless mind. Grotesquely incongruous as it was, Crane was actually
+in love; but the love flower, pure enough in itself, had rooted in
+marvelous ground. His passion was absolutely love, nothing else--love at
+first sight. But he was forty, and the methods of that many years must
+still govern his actions. Instinctively he felt that he must win the
+girl by diplomacy; and Crane's idea of diplomacy was to get a man
+irrevocably in his power. If John Porter were indebted to him beyond
+redemption, if he practically owned Ringwood, why should he not succeed
+with Allis? All his life he had gone on in just that way, breaking men,
+for broken men were beyond doubt but potter's clay.
+
+Langdon bought The Dutchman. What methods he employed Crane took no
+pains to discover; in fact, stopped Langdon abruptly when he sought to
+enlarge on the difficulties he had overcome in the purchase. The price
+was the only item that interested Crane--seven thousand dollars; that
+included everything--even the secret service money.
+
+The horse acquired, Crane had one more move to make; he sent for Jakey
+Faust, the Bookmaker. Faust and Crane had a reciprocal understanding.
+When the Bookmaker needed financial assistance he got it from the
+Banker; when Crane needed a missionary among the other bookmakers, Faust
+acted for him.
+
+“I want to back Lucretia for the 'Eclipse,”' Crane said to the
+bookmaker.
+
+“Lucretia,” ejaculated Faust. “She'll have a rosy time beatin' Dutchy on
+their last race. They'll put a better boy up on the colt next time, an'
+he ought to come home all by himself” “Yes, a fairish sort of a jock
+will have the mount I think-Westley's a good enough boy.”
+
+“Westley?” came wonderingly from Faust.
+
+“Yes; Langdon owns The Dutchman now.”
+
+The Cherub pursed his fat round lips in a soft whistle of enlightenment.
+It had staggered him at first that Crane, for whose acumen he had a
+profound respect, should have intended such a hazardous gamble; now he
+saw light.
+
+“Then my book is full on the Porter mare?” he said, inquiringly. Crane
+nodded his head.
+
+“An' I lay against the Hanover colt?”
+
+Again Crane nodded.
+
+“It's not bookmaking,” continued Faust.
+
+“I'm not a bookmaker,” retorted Crane. “And see here, Faust,” he
+continued, “when you've got my money on the Porter mare--when and how I
+leave to you--I want you to cut her price short--do you understand? Make
+her go to the post two to one on, if you can; don't forget that.”
+
+“If the mare goes wrong?” objected Faust.
+
+“I don't think she will, but you needn't be in a hurry--there's plenty
+of time.”
+
+“What's the limit?” asked Faust.
+
+“I want her backed down to even money at least,” Crane answered;
+“probably ten thousand will do it. At any rate you can go that far.”
+
+Then for a few days Langdon prepared his new horse for the Eclipse
+according to his idea of Crane's idea; and Dixon rounded Lucretia to
+in a manner that gladdened John Porter's heart. They knew nothing of
+anything but that Lucretia was very fit, that they had Boston Bill's
+jockey to ride straight and honest for them, and that with a good price
+against the mare they would recoup all their losses.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The day of the race when John Porter went into the betting ring he was
+confronted with even money about his mare. If he had read on the ring
+blackboard a notice that she was dead, he would not have been more
+astonished. He fought his way back to the open of the paddock without
+making a bet.
+
+“Even money!” ejaculated Dixon when his owner told him of the ring
+situation, “why, they're crazy. Who's doin' it?”
+
+“Not the public,” declared Porter, “for I was there just after the first
+betting. It must be your friend Boston Bill that has forestalled us;
+nobody else knew of the mare's trial.”
+
+“Not on your life, Mr. Porter; Boston plays fair. D'ye think he could
+live at this game if he threw down his friends?”
+
+“But nobody else even knew that we'd got a good boy for the mare.”
+
+“It don't make no difference,” curtly answered Dixon; “it's a million
+dollars to a penny whistle that Boston hasn't a dollar on yet. Our
+agreement was that he'd send in his commission when they were at the
+post, an' his word's like your own, sir, as solid as a judge's decision.
+It's some one else. There's somebody behind that damned Langdon--he's
+not clever enough for all this. D'you know that The Dutchman's runnin'
+in Langdon's name to-day?”
+
+“He is?'
+
+“Yes; he's supposed to own him.”
+
+“But what's that got to do with Lucretia's price?”
+
+“It means that we're goin' to be allowed to win. The other day they
+laid against her, an' she got beat; to-day they're holdin' her out, so I
+suppose she'll win, but somebody else gets the benefit.”
+
+“Gad! that Langdon must be a crook,” muttered Porter. “I'm going to
+speak to my friend Crane about him again. No honest man should have
+horses in his stable.”
+
+“That they shouldn't,” asserted Dixon. “But we've got our own troubles
+to-day. From what I see of this thing, I'd rather back the mare at even
+money than I would if she was ten to one. If I'm any judge we're being
+buncoed good and plenty.”
+
+“I think you're right Dixon. I'll go back and have a good bet down on
+her at evens.”
+
+But in five minutes Lucretia's owner was back in the paddock with the
+cheerful intelligence that the mare was now three to five.
+
+“I wouldn't back 'Salvator' among a lot of cart horses at that price,”
+ commented Dixon; “leave it alone, an' we'll go for the Stake. We're
+up against it good and hard; somebody seems to know more about our own
+horse than we do ourselves.”
+
+“I think myself that the gods are angry with us, Dixon,” said Porter
+moodily; “and the mortals will be furious, too, whichever way the race
+goes. They've backed the little mare at this short price no doubt, an'
+if she's beaten they'll howl; if she wins they'll swear my money was on
+to-day, and that I pulled her in her last race.”
+
+John Porter sat in the Grand Stand with his usual companion, Allis,
+beside him, as The Dutchman, Lucretia, and the other Eclipse horses
+passed down the broad spread of the straight Eclipse course to the
+five-and-a-half furlong post.
+
+Though Porter had missed his betting, he intuitively felt the joy of an
+anticipated win. Only a true lover of thoroughbreds can know anything of
+the mad tumult of exultation that vibrates the heart strings as a
+loved horse comes bravely, gallantly out from the surging throng of his
+rivals, peerless and king of them all, stretching his tapered neck with
+eager striving, and goes onward, past the tribunal, first and alone, the
+leader, the winner, the one to be cheered of the many thousands wrought
+to frenzy by his conquest.
+
+“Surely Lucretia will win to-day, father--don't you think so?” asked
+Allis; “I feel that she will.”
+
+“She's got a big weight up,” he answered. “She's a little bit of a
+thing, and it may drive her into the ground coming down the Eclipse
+hill. I expect they'll come at a terrible jog, too; they don't often
+hang back on that course.”
+
+Now that the betting worry and the labor of getting an honest boy were
+over--that the horses had gone to the post, and that the race rested
+with Lucretia herself, Porter's mind had relaxed. Even at the time
+of the very struggle itself tension had gone from him; he was in a
+meditative mood, and spoke on, weighing the chances, with Allis as
+audience.
+
+“But they'll have to move some to beat the little mare's trial--they'll
+make it in record time if they head her, I think.”
+
+“Isn't the horse that beat her the other day in, too, father?”
+
+“The Dutchman-yes, but I fancy his owner is backing my mare.”
+
+“Father!”
+
+“It wouldn't make any difference, though; she'd beat him anyway. If I'm
+any judge, he's short.”
+
+Allis felt a rustle at her elbow as though someone wished to pass
+between the seats. The faintest whiff of stephanotis came to her on the
+lazy summer air. Involuntarily she turned her head and looked for the
+harsh-voiced woman who had been verily steeped in the aggressive odor
+the day of Lauzanne's triumph. Two burly men sat behind her. They,
+surely, did not affect perfumery. Higher up the stand her eye
+searched--four rows back sat the woman Alan had said was Langdon's
+sister. There was no forgetting the flamboyant brilliancy of her
+apparel. But the almost fancied zephyr of stephanotis was mingling
+with the rustle at her elbow; she turned her head inquiringly in that
+direction, and Crane's eyes peeped at her over the stone wall of their
+narrow lids. He was standing in the passage just beyond her father, now
+looking wistfully at the vacant seat on her left.
+
+“Good afternoon, Miss Porter--how are you, Porter? May I sit here with
+you and see Lucretia win?”
+
+“Come in, come in!” answered Porter, frankly.
+
+“I was sitting with some friends higher up in the stand, when I saw you
+here, and thought I'd like to make one of the victorious party.”
+
+Allis knew who the friends were; the clinging touch of stephanotis had
+come with him. The discrepancy in Crane's sentiments jarred on Allis.
+That other day this woman had been his trainer's sister, recognized for
+politic purposes; to-day he had been sitting with “friends.”
+
+Topping the rail in the distance, just where the course kinked a little
+to the left, Allis could see the blur of many colored silks in the
+sunlight. Then it seemed to flatten down almost level with the rail, as
+the horses broadened out to the earth in racing spread and the riders
+clung low to the galloping colts, for they had started.
+
+“There they come,” said Crane. “What's in the lead, Porter?” Porter
+did not answer. A man could have counted thirty before he said, “The
+Dutchman's out in front--a length, and they're coming down the hill like
+mad.”
+
+Allis felt her heart sink. Was it to be the same old story--was there
+always to be something in front of Lucretia?
+
+“Where is your mare?” Crane asked.
+
+His own glass lay idly in his lap. Though he spoke of the race, it was
+curious that his eyes were watching the play of Allis's features, as
+hope and Despair fought their old human-torturing fight over again in
+her heart.
+
+“Now she's coming!” Porter's voice made Crane jump; he had almost
+forgotten the race. To the close-calculating mind it had been settled
+days before. The Dutchman would not win, and Lucretia was the best of
+the others--why worry?
+
+They were standing now--everybody was.
+
+“Now, my beauty, they'll have to gallop,” Porter was saying. They were
+close up, and Crane could see that Lucretia had got to the bay colt's
+head, and he was dying away. He smiled cynically as he watched Westley
+go to the whip on The Dutchman, with Lucretia half a length in the lead.
+Most certainly Langdon was an excellent trainer; The Dutchman was just
+good enough to last into second place, and Lucretia had won handily.
+What a win Crane had had!
+
+A little smothered gasp distracted his momentary thought of success,
+and, turning quickly, he saw tears in a pair of gray eyes that were set
+in a smiling face.
+
+“Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing,” came back to Crane out of the
+poem Allis had recited.
+
+“I congratulate you, Miss Porter,” he said, raising his hat. Then he
+turned, and held out his hand to her father, saying: “I'm glad you've
+won, Porter--I thought you would. The Dutchman quit when he was
+pinched.”
+
+“It wasn't the colt's fault--he was short,” said Porter. “I shouldn't
+like to have horses in that man's stable--he's too good a trainer for
+me.”
+
+There was a marked emphasis on Porter's words; he was trying to give
+Crane a friendly hint.
+
+“You mean it's a case of strawberries?” questioned Crane.
+
+“Well I know it takes a lot of candles to find a lost quarter,” remarked
+Porter, somewhat ambiguously. Then he added, “I must go down to thank
+Dixon; I guess this is his annual day for smiling.”
+
+“I'm coming, too, father,” said Allis; “I want to thank Lucretia, and
+give her a kiss, brave little sweetheart.”
+
+After Allis and her father had left Crane, he sat for a minute or two
+waiting for the crowd of people that blocked the passageway after each
+race to filter down on the lawn. The way seemed clearer presently,
+and Crane fell in behind a knot of loud-talking men. The two of large
+proportions who had sat behind Allis, were like huge gate posts jammed
+there in the narrow way. As he moved along slowly he presently had
+knowledge of a presence at his side--a familiar presence. Raising his
+eyes from a contemplation of the heels in front of him, he saw Belle
+Langdon. She nodded with patronizing freedom.
+
+“I lost you,” she said.
+
+“I was sitting with some friends here,” he explained.
+
+“Yes, I saw her,” she commented pointedly.
+
+At that instant one of the stout men in front said, with a bear's snarl,
+“Well that's the worst ever; I've seen some jobs in my time, but this
+puts it over anything yet.”
+
+“Didn't you back the little mare?” a thin voice squealed. It was the
+'Pout.
+
+“Back nothin'! The last time out she couldn't untrack herself; an' today
+she comes, without any pull in the weight, and wins in a walk from The
+Dutchman; and didn't he beat her just as easy the other day?”
+
+Belle Langdon looked into Crane's face, and her eyes were charged with
+a look of reciprocal meaning. Crane winched. How aggressively obnoxious
+this half-tutored girl, mistress of many gay frocks, could make herself!
+There was an implied crime-partnership in her glance which revolted him.
+Dick Langdon must have talked in his own home. Crane's conscience--well,
+he hardly had one perhaps, at least it was always subevident; to put
+it in another way, the retrospect of his manipulated diplomacy never
+bothered him; but this gratuitous sharing in his evil triumph was
+disquieting. The malicious glitter of the girl's small black eyes
+contrasted strongly with the honest, unaffected look that was forever in
+the big tranquil eyes of Allis.
+
+They were just at the head of the steps, and the Tout was saying to the
+fat expostulator: “I could have put you next; I steered a big bettor
+on--he won a thousand over the mare. I saw Boston's betting man havin'
+an old-time play, an' I knew it was a lead-pipe cinch. He's a sure thing
+bettor, he is; odds don't make no difference to him, the shorter the
+better--that's when his own boy's got the mount.”
+
+“It's all right to be wise after the race,” grunted the fat man.
+
+“G'wan! the stable didn't have a penny on Lucretia last time; an' what
+do you suppose made her favorite to-day?” queried the Tout, derisively.
+“It took a bar'l of money,” he continued, full of his own logical
+deductions, “an' I'll bet Porter cleaned up twenty thousand. He's a
+pretty slick cove, is old 'Honest John,' if you ask me.”
+
+The girl at Crane's side cackled a laugh. “He's funny, isn't he?” she
+said, nodding her big plumed hat in the direction of the man-group.
+
+“He's a talkative fool!” muttered the Banker, shortly. “The steps are
+clear on the other side, Miss Langdon, you can get down there. I've got
+to go into the paddock; you'll excuse me.”
+
+Being vicious for the fun of the thing had never appealed to Crane; he
+raced as he did everything else--to win. If other men suffered, that
+was the play of fate. He never talked about these things himself, almost
+disliked to think of them. He turned his back on Belle Langdon and went
+down the right-hand steps. On the grass sward at the bottom he stopped
+for an instant to look across at the jockey board.
+
+Three men had just came out of the refreshment bar under the stand. They
+were possessed of many things; gold of the bookmakers in their pockets,
+and it's ever-attendant exhilaration in their hearts. One of them
+had cracked a bottle of wine at the bar, as tribute to the exceeding
+swiftness of Lucretia, for he had won plentifully. At that particular
+stage there was nothing left but to talk it over, and they talked.
+Crane, avaricious, unhesitating in his fighting, devoid of sympathy, was
+not of the eavesdropping class, but as he stood there he was as much
+a part of the other men's conversation as though he had been a fourth
+member of the brotherhood.
+
+“I tell you none of these trainers ain't in it with a gentleman
+owner--when he takes to racin'. When a man of brains takes to runnin'
+horses as a profesh, he's gen'rally a Jim Dandy.” It was he of the
+wine-opening who let fall these words of wise value.
+
+“D'you mean Porter, Jim?” asked number two of the trio.
+
+“Maybe that's his name. An' he put it all over Mister Langdon this
+trip.”
+
+“As how?” queried the other.
+
+“Last time he runs his mare she's got corns in her feet the whole
+journey, an' all the time he owns the winner, Lauzanne, see?--buys him
+before they go out. Then Langdon thinks The Dutchman's the goods, an'
+buys him at a fancy price--gives a bale of long goods for him--I've got
+it straight that he parted with fifteen thousand. Then the gentleman
+owner, Honest John, turns the trick with Lucretia, an' makes The
+Dutchman look like a sellin' plater.”
+
+“I guess Langdon'll feel pretty sick,” hazarded number three.
+
+“I'd been watchin' the game,” continued the wine man, “an' soon's I saw
+a move to-day from the wise guys in the ring, I plumped for the mare
+'toot sweet.”'
+
+What an extraordinary thing manipulation was, Crane mused, as he
+listened; also how considerable of an ass the public was in its
+theoretical wisdom.
+
+Then the three men drifted away to follow some new toy balloon of
+erratic possibilities, and Crane wound through the narrow passage which
+led to the paddock. There he encountered Langdon.
+
+“He didn't run a very good horse, sir,” began the Trainer.
+
+“I thought otherwise,” replied Crane, measuring the immediate vicinity
+of listeners.
+
+“I had to draw it a bit fine,” declared Langdon, with apologetic
+remonstrance.
+
+“Running second is always bad business, except in a selling race,”
+ retorted his master.
+
+“I've got to think of myself,” growled Langdon. “If he'd been beat off,
+there'd been trouble; the Stewards have got the other race in their crop
+a bit yet.”
+
+“I'm not blaming you, Langdon, only I was just a trifle afraid that you
+were going to beat Porter's mare. He's a friend of mine, and needed a
+win badly. I'm not exactly his father confessor, but I'm his banker,
+which amounts to pretty much the same thing.”
+
+“What about the horse, sir,” asked the Trainer.
+
+“We'll see later on. Let him go easy for the present.”
+
+“I wonder what he meant by that,” Langdon mused to himself, as Crane
+moved away. “He don't make nobody a present of a race for love.”
+ Suddenly he stumbled upon a solution of the enigma. “Well, I'm damned
+if that wasn't slick; he give me the straight tip to leave Porter to
+him--to let him do the plannin'; I see.”
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Porter was an easy man with his horses. Though he could not afford,
+because of his needs, to work out his theory that two-year-olds should
+not be raced, yet he utilized it as far as possible by running them at
+longer intervals than was general.
+
+“I'll start the little mare about once more this season,” he told Dixon.
+“The babes can't cut teeth, and grow, and fight it out in punishing
+races on dusty hay and hard-shelled oats, when they ought to be picking
+grass in an open field. She's too good a beast to do up in her young
+days. The Assassins made good three-year-olds, and the little mare's
+dam, Maid of Rome, wasn't much her first year out--only won once--but as
+a three-year-old she won three out of four starts, and the fourth year
+never lost a race. Lucretia ought to be a great mare next year if I lay
+her by early this season. She's in a couple of stakes at Gravesend and
+Sheepshead, and we'll just fit her into the softest spot.”
+
+“What about Lauzanne?” asked the Trainer, “I'm afraid he's a bad horse.”
+
+“How is he doing?”
+
+“He's stale. He's a bad doer--doesn't clean up his oats, an' mopes.”
+
+“I guess that killing finish with The Dutchman took the life out of him.
+That sort of thing often settles a soft-hearted horse for all time.”
+
+“I don't think it was the race, sir,” Dixon replied; “they just pumped
+the cocaine into him till he was fair blind drunk; he must a' swallowed
+the bottle. I give him a ball, a bran mash, and Lord knows what all, an'
+the poison's workin' out of him. He's all breakin' out in lumps; you'd
+think he'd been stung by bees.”
+
+“I never heard of such a thing,” commented Porter. “A man that would
+dope a two-year-old ought to be ruled off, sure.”
+
+“I think you oughter make a kick, sir,” said Dixon, hesitatingly.
+
+“I don't. When I squeal, Andy, it'll be when there's nothing but
+the voice left. I bought a horse from a man once just as he stood.
+I happened to know the horse, and said I didn't want any
+inspection--didn't want to see him, but bought him, as I say, just as
+he stood. When I went to the stable to get him he wasn't worth much,
+Andy--he was dead. Perhaps I might have made a kick about his not
+standing up, but I didn't.”
+
+“Well, sir, I'm thinkin' Lauzanne's a deuced sight worse'n a dead horse;
+he'll cost more tryin' to win with him.”
+
+“I dare say you're right, but he can gallop a bit.”
+
+“When he's primed.”
+
+“No dope for me, Andy. I never ran a dope horse and never will--I'm too
+fond of them to poison them.”
+
+“I'll freshen him up a bit, sir, and we'll give him a try in a day or
+two. Would you mind puttin' him in a sellin' race?--he cost a bit.”
+
+“He couldn't win anything else, and if anybody wants to claim him they
+can.”
+
+“I thought of starting Diablo in that mile handicap; he's in pretty
+light. He's about all we've got ready.”
+
+“All right, Dixon,” Porter replied. “It may be that we've broke our bad
+luck with the little mare.”
+
+They were standing in the paddock during this conversation. It was in
+the forenoon; Dixon had come over to the Secretary's office to see about
+some entries before twelve o'clock. When the Trainer had finished his
+business, the two men walked across the course and infield to Stable 12,
+where Dixon had his horses. As they passed over the “Withers Course,” as
+the circular track was called, Dixon pointed to the dip near the lower
+far turn.
+
+“It's a deuced funny thing,” he said, speaking reminiscently, “but that
+little hollow there settles more horses than the last fifty yards of
+the finish; it seems to make the soft ones remember that they're runnin'
+when they get that change, an' they stop. I bet Diablo'll quit right
+there, he's done it three or four times.”
+
+“He was the making of a great horse as a two-year-old, wasn't he, Andy?”
+
+“They paid a long price for him, if that's any line; but I think he
+never was no good. It don't matter how fast a horse is if he won't try.”
+
+“I've an idea Diablo'll be a good horse yet,” mused Porter. “You can't
+make a slow horse gallop, but there's a chance of curing a horse's
+temper by kind treatment. I've noticed that a squealing pig generally
+runs like the devil when he takes it into his head.”
+
+“Diablo's a squealing pig if there ever was one,” growled Dixon.
+
+They reached the track stable, and, as if by a mutual instinct, the two
+men walked on till they stood in front of Lauzanne's stall.
+
+“He's a good enough looker, ain't he?” commented Dixon, as he dipped
+under the door bar, went into the stall, and turned the horse about.
+“He's the picture of his old sire, Lazzarone,” he continued, looking the
+horse over critically; “an' a damned sight bigger rogue, though the
+old one was bad enough. Lazzarone won the Suburban with blinkers on his
+head, bandages on his legs, an' God knows what in his stomach. He was
+second in the Brooklyn that same year. I've always heard he was a mule,
+an' I guess this one got it all, an' none of the gallopin'.”
+
+“How does he work with the others?” queried Porter.
+
+“Runs a bit, an' then cuts it--won't try a yard. Of course he's sick
+from the dope, an' the others are a bit fast for him. If we put him in a
+sellin' race, cheap, he'd have a light weight, an' might do better.”
+
+Porter walked on to Lucretia's stall, and the trainer continued in a
+monologue to Lauzanne: “You big slob! you're a counterfeit, if there
+ever was one. But I'll stand you a drink just to get rid of you; I'll
+put a bottle of whisky inside of your vest day after to-morrow, an' if
+you win p'raps somebody'll buy you.”
+
+Lauzanne did not answer-it's a way horses have. It is doubtful if his
+mind quite grasped the situation, even. That neither Dixon, nor
+Langdon, nor the jockey boys understood him he knew--not clearly,
+but approximately enough to increase his stubbornness, to rouse his
+resentment. They had not even studied out the pathology of his descent
+sufficiently well to give him a fair show, to train him intelligently.
+They remembered that his sire, Lazzarone, had a bad temper; but they
+forgot that he was a stayer, not 'given to sprinting. Even Lauzanne's
+dam, Bric-a-brac, was fond of a long route, was better at a
+mile-and-a-half than five furlongs.
+
+Lauzanne knew what had come to him of genealogy, not in his mind so
+much as in his muscles. They were strong but sluggish, not active but
+non-tiring. Langdon had raced Lauzanne with sprinting colts, and when
+they ran away from him at the start he had been unequal to the task of
+overhauling them in the short two-year-old run of half-a-mile. Then the
+wise man had said that Lauzanne's courage was at fault; the jockeys
+had called it laziness, and applied the whip. And out of all this
+uselessness, this unthinking philosophy, the colt had come with a soured
+temper, a broken belief in his masters--“Lauzanne the Despised.”
+
+Porter's trust that his ill luck had been changed by a win was a faith
+of short life, for Diablo was most emphatically beaten in his race.
+
+And then came the day of forlorn hope, the day of Lauzanne's disgrace,
+inasmuch as it de-graduated him into the selling-platter class.
+
+Bad horse as Langdon knew Lauzanne to be, it occurred to him that Porter
+had planned a clever coup. He had an interview with Crane over the
+subject, but his master did not at all share the Trainer's belief.
+
+“What price would Lucretia, or The Dutchman, be in with the same lot?”
+ Langdon asked, argumentatively.
+
+“About one to ten,” Crane replied. “But the Chestnut's beating them had
+no bearing on this race. From what I see of Mr. Dixon, I don't at all
+class him with you as a trainer--he hasn't the same resource.”
+
+Langdon stood silent, sullenly turning over in his mind this doubtful
+compliment.
+
+“I'm not sure,” continued the Banker, “but that having stuck Porter with
+Lauzanne, you shouldn't give him a hint about--well, as to what course
+of preparation would make Lauzanne win a race for him. The ordinary diet
+of oats is hardly stimulating enough for such a sluggish animal.”
+
+Langdon frowned. If Crane had not been quite so strong, quite so full of
+unexpressed power, he would have rebelled at the assertion that he had
+stuck Porter; but he answered, and his voice struggled between asperity
+and deprecation, “There ain't no call for me to give that stable any
+pointers; Porter put it to me pretty straight that the horse had been
+helped.”
+
+“And what did you say?” blandly inquired Crane.
+
+“Told him to go to hell.”
+
+This wasn't exactly truthful as we remember the interview, but its
+terseness appealed to Crane, and he smiled as he said: “Porter probably
+won't take your advice, Langdon; he's stubborn enough at times. And even
+if he does know that--that--Lauzanne' requires special treatment, he
+won't indulge him--he's got a lot of old-fashioned ideas about racing.
+So you see Lauzanne is a bad betting proposition.”
+
+After Langdon had left Crane's thoughts dwelt on the subject they had
+just discussed.
+
+“From a backer's point of view Lauzanne is certainly bad business,” he
+mused; “but the public will reason just as Langdon does. And what's bad
+for the backers is good for the layers; I must see Faust.”
+
+“You had better make a book to beat Lauzanne,” Crane said to Jakey
+Faust, just before business had commenced in the ring that afternoon.
+
+The Cherub stared in astonishment; his eyes opened wide. That was
+nearly the limit of his fat little face's expression, no matter what the
+occasion.
+
+“You don't own him now, do you, sir?” he blurted out, with unthinking
+candor.
+
+“I do not.”
+
+“He's dropped into a soft spot--he rates best in the percentage card.”
+
+“Figures sometimes lie,” commented Crane.
+
+“Every handicapper tips him to win.”
+
+“They're all broke because of their knowledge.”
+
+“The books'll mark him up first choice.”
+
+“That's why it will be worth while playing the field to beat him.”
+
+“He's in with a gang of muts to-day, an' he beat some cracker-jacks last
+time out.”
+
+“You were hypnotized that day, Mr. Faust; so was the Judge. Lauzanne
+didn't beat anything.”
+
+“Didn't beat--what the hell--didn't the Chestnut get the verdict?”
+
+“He did; but--” and Crane looked at Faust, with patient toleration of
+his lack of perception.
+
+The Cherub waited for an explanation of these contradictory remarks. But
+he might have waited indefinitely--Crane had quite finished. The Cherub
+raised his little round eyes, that were like glass alleys, green and red
+and blue-streaked, to the other's face inquiringly, and encountered a
+pair of penetrating orbs peering at him over some sort of a mask--the
+face that sustained the eyes was certainly a mask--as expressionless.
+Then it came to Jakey Faust that there was nothing left to do but fill
+the Lauzanne column in his book with the many bets that would come his
+way and make much money.
+
+Crane watched Lauzanne go lazily, sluggishly down to the post for
+his race. He knew the horse's moods; the walk of the Chestnut was the
+indifferent stroll of a horse that is thinking only of his dinner.
+
+“They've given him nothing,” the Banker muttered to himself; “the
+heavy-headed brute won't try a yard. But he'll fight the boy when he
+tries to ride him out.”
+
+The whisky that Dixon had surreptitiously given Lauzanne had been as
+inefficacious as so much ginger beer; and in the race Lauzanne drew
+back out of the bustle and clash of the striving horses as quickly as
+he could. In vain his jockey used whip and spur; Lauzanne simply put his
+ears back, switched his tail, and loafed along, a dozen lengths behind
+his field.
+
+In the straight he made up a little of the lost ground, but he was
+securely out of the money at the finish. Fate still sat and threw the
+dice as he had for many moons--a deuce for John Porter, and a six for
+Philip Crane.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+It was late autumn; the legitimate racing season had closed. In August
+Porter had taken his horses back to Ringwood for the winter.
+
+When a man strives against Fate, when realization laughs mockingly
+at his expectations, there comes to him a time when he longs for a
+breathing spell, when he knows that he must rest, and wait until the
+wheel of life, slow-turning, has passed a little through the groove
+of his existence. John Porter had been beaten down at every point.
+Disastrous years come to all men, whether they race horses or point the
+truthful way, and this year had been but a series of disappointments to
+the master of Ringwood. After Lucretia's win in the Eclipse, Porter
+did not land another race. Lucretia caught cold and went off. He tried
+Lauzanne twice again, but the Chestnut seemed thoroughly soured. Now
+he was back at Ringwood, a dark cloud of indebtedness hanging over
+the beautiful place, and prospect of relief very shadowy. If Lucretia
+wintered well and grew big and strong she might extricate him from
+his difficulties by winning one or two of the big races the following
+summer. About any of the other horses there was not even this much of
+promise.
+
+Thoroughly distrusting Lauzanne, embittered by his cowardice, Porter
+had given him away--but to Allis. Strangely enough, the girl had taken
+a strong liking to the son of Lazzarone; it may have been because of
+the feeling that she was indirectly responsible for his presence
+at Ringwood. Allis Porter's perceptions had been developed to an
+extraordinary degree. All her life she had lived surrounded by
+thoroughbreds, and her sensitive nature went out to them, in their
+courage and loyalty, in a manner quite beyond possibility in a
+practical, routine-following horseman. To her they were almost human;
+the play of their minds was as attractive and interesting as the
+development of their muscles was to a trainer. When the stable had been
+taken back to Ringwood, she had asked for Lauzanne as a riding horse.
+
+“I'm going to give him away,” her father had replied; “I can't sell
+him--nobody would buy a brute with such a reputation.” This word brought
+to Porter's mind his chief cause of resentment against the Chestnut.
+The public having got into its head that Porter was playing coups,
+generously suggested that he was pulling Lauzanne to get him in some big
+handicap light.
+
+“I won't feed such a skate all winter,” he declared angrily, after a
+little pause.
+
+“Well, give him to me, father,” the girl had pleaded; “I am certain that
+he'll make good some day; you'll see that he'll pay you for keeping your
+word.”
+
+As Allis rode Lauzanne she discovered many things about the horse;
+that instead of being a stupid, morose brute, his intelligence was
+extraordinary, and, with her at least, his temper perfect.
+
+Allis's relationship with her father was unusual. They were chums; in
+all his trouble, in all his moments of wavering, buffeted by the waves
+of disaster, Allis was the one who cheered him, who regirt him in
+his armor:--Allis, the slight olive-faced little woman, with the big,
+fearless Joan-of-Arc eyes.
+
+“You'll see what we'll do next summer, Dad,” she said cheerily. “You'll
+win with Lucretia as often as you did with her mother; and I'll win with
+Lauzanne. We'll just keep quiet till spring, then we'll show them.”
+
+Langdon's horses, so silently controlled by Philip Crane, Banker, had
+been put in winter quarters at Gravesend, where Langdon had a cottage.
+Crane's racing season had been as successful as the Master of
+Ringwood's had been disastrous. He had won a fair-class race with The
+Dutchman--ostensibly Langdon's horse--and then, holding true to his
+nature, which was to hasten slowly, threw him out of training and
+deliberately planned a big coup for the next year. The colt was engaged
+in several three-year-old stakes, and Crane set Langdon to work to find
+out his capabilities. As his owner expected, he showed them in a severe
+trial gallop the true Hanover staying-power.
+
+Although Crane had said nothing about it at the time, he had his eye on
+the Eastern Derby when he commissioned Langdon to purchase this gallant
+son of Hanover. It was a long way ahead to look, to lay plans to win a
+race the following June, but that was the essence of Crane's existence,
+careful planning. He loved it. He was a master at it. And, after all,
+given a good stayer, such as he had in The Dutchman, the mile-and-a-half
+run of the Derby left less to chance than any other stake he could have
+pitched upon; the result would depend absolutely upon the class and
+stamina of the horses. No bad start could upset his calculations, no
+little interference in the race could destroy his horse's chance if he
+were good enough to win. The Dutchman's races as a two-year-old would
+not warrant his being made a favorite, and Langdon, properly directed,
+was clever enough to see that The Dutchman was at a comfortable price
+for betting purposes.
+
+Many things had crowded into this year of Crane's life. The bank, doing
+but a modest business always, was running so smoothly that it required
+little attention from the owner. This was one reason why he had thrown
+so much subtle energy into his racing; its speculation appealed to him.
+The plucking he had received as a moneyed youth rankled in his heart.
+The possession of such a faithful jackal as Langdon carried him to
+greater lengths than he would have gone had the obnoxious details been
+subject to his own execution. Though conscienceless, he was more or less
+fastidious. Had a horse broken down and become utterly useless, he would
+have ordered him to be destroyed without experiencing any feeling of
+compassion--he would have dismissed the matter entirely from his mind
+with the passing of the command; but rather than destroy the horse
+himself, he probably would have fed him. And so it was with men. If they
+were driven to the wall because of his plans, that was their own look
+out; it did not trouble Philip Crane.
+
+Porter he had known simply in a business way. From the first he had felt
+that Ringwood would pass out of its owner's possession, and he had begun
+to covet it. The Lauzanne race had been Langdon's planning altogether.
+Crane, cold-blooded as he was, would not have robbed a man he had
+business dealings with deliberately. He had told his trainer to win,
+if possible, a race with Lauzanne, and get rid of him. That Langdon's
+villainous scheme had borne evil fruit for John Porter was purely a
+matter of chance selection. There was a Mephistophelean restitution in
+not striving to wrest the Eclipse from Lucretia with The Dutchman.
+
+And now, in this year, had come the entirely new experience of an
+affection--his admiration for Allis Porter. It conflicted with every
+other emotion that governed his being. All his life he had been
+selfish--considering only Philip Crane, his mind unharrassed by anything
+but business obstacles in his ambitious career. Love for this quiet,
+self-contained girl, unadorned by anything but the truth, and honesty,
+and fearlessness that were in her big steadfast eyes, had come upon him
+suddenly and with an assertive force that completely mastered him. By
+a mere chance he had heard Allis give her recitation, “The Run of
+Crusader,” in the little church at Brookfield. Crane was not an
+agnostic, but he had interested himself little in church matters; and
+the Reverend Dolman's concert, that was meant to top down many weeds
+of debt that were choking the church, had claimed him simply because an
+evening in Brookfield had come to hang heavily on his hands. Now when
+the Reverend Dolman received Philip Crane's check for fifty dollars the
+next day, to be applied to the church encumbrance, he sought to allay
+his surprise by attributing the gift to his own special pleading that
+evening, of course backed up by Providence. If anybody had stated that
+the mainspring of the gift had been the wicked horse-racing poem of
+their denunciation he would have been scandalized and full of righteous
+disbelief. It is quite likely that even Crane would have denied that
+Allis's poem had inspired him to the check; but nevertheless it had.
+
+The world of feeling and sympathy and goodness that had hung in her
+voice had set a new window in his soul slightly ajar--so slightly ajar
+that even now, months afterward, the lovelight was only beginning to
+stream through. When love comes to a man at forty he is apt to play the
+game very badly indeed; he turns it into a very anxious business, and
+moves through the light-tripping measure with the pedantic dignity of
+a minuet dancer. But Philip Crane was not given to making mistakes; he
+knew that, like Crusader, “His best racing days (in the love stakes)
+were over”--especially where the woman was but a girl. So he sat down
+and planned it all out as he planned to win the Brooklyn Derby months
+later. And all the time he was as sincerely in love as if he had
+blundered into many foolishness; but his love making was to be
+diplomatic. Even now all the gods of Fate stood ranged on his side;
+Allis's brother was in his bank, more or less dependent upon him;
+Ringwood itself was all but in the bank; he stood fairly well with John
+Porter, and much better with Allis's mother, for already he had begun to
+ingratitate himself with Mrs. Porter. He would cast from the shoulders
+of the Reverend Dolman a trifle more of the load he was carrying. He
+would send the reverend gentleman another check.
+
+Why he should think it necessary to prepare his suit with so much
+subtlety he hardly knew; in all reason he should be considered a fair
+match for Allis Porter. He was not a bad man as the world understood
+him; he did not profess Christianity, but, on the other hand, his life
+was extremely respectable; he did not drink; he was not given to
+profane language; even in racing his presence seemed to lend an air of
+respectability to the sport, and it was generally supposed that he raced
+purely for relaxation. In truth, it seemed to him that his marriage with
+Allis would be a deuced good thing for the Porters.
+
+In actuality there were just two things that stood in the way--two
+things which his position and wealth could not obviate--his age, and the
+Porter pride. If Porter had not been dubbed “Honest John” early in life,
+he might have been saddled with “Proud Porter” later on. The pride
+had come up out of old Kentucky with all the other useless things--the
+horse-racing, and the inability to make money, and the fancy for keeping
+a promise. Something whispered to Crane that Allis would never come to
+him simply out of love; it might be regard, esteem, a desire to please
+her parents, a bowing to the evident decree of fate. Perhaps even the
+very difficulty of conquest made Crane the more determined to win, and
+made him hasten slowly.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+As a rule few visitors went to Ringwood.
+
+John Porter had been too interested in his horses and his home life to
+care much for social matters. Mrs. Porter was a home-body, too, caring
+nothing at all for society--at best there was but little of it in
+Brookfield--except where it was connected with church work. Perhaps that
+was one reason why Allis had grown so close into her father's life. It
+was a very small, self-contained household.
+
+Mike Gaynor had become attached to the staff at Ringwood this winter as
+a sort of assistant trainer to Porter. Dixon only trained the Ringwood
+horses during the racing season, Porter always supervising them in
+winter quarters. Perhaps it was Porter's great cloud of evil fortune
+which had cast its sinister influence over Mike because of his sympathy
+for the master of Ringwood; certain it is that the autumn found him
+quite “on his uppers,” as he graphically described his financial
+standing. An arrangement was made by which Mike's disconsolate horses
+were fed at Ringwood, and he took care of both strings. This delighted
+Allis, for she had full confidence in Gaynor's integrity and good sense.
+
+The early winter brought two visitors to Ringwood--Crane, who came quite
+often, and Mortimer, who went out to the farm a couple of times with
+Alan.
+
+George Mortimer might be described as an angular young man. His face,
+large-featured, square-jawed, and bold-topped by broad forehead,
+suggested the solemnity Alan had found so trying. Of course a young man
+of his make-up was sure to have notions, and Mortimer's mind was knotted
+with them; there seemed no soft nor smooth places in his timber. That
+was why he had reasoned with the butcher by energetically grasping his
+windpipe the evening that worthy gentleman had expressed himself so
+distastefully over Allis Porter's contribution to the Reverend Dolman's
+concert. Perhaps a young man of more subtle grace would have received
+some grateful recognition for this office, but the matter had been quite
+closed out so far as Mortimer was concerned; Alan tried to refer to it
+afterward, but had been curtly stopped.
+
+George Mortimer's chief notion was that work was a great thing,
+seemingly the chief end of man. Another notion almost equally
+prominent--he had derived it from his mother--was, that all forms
+of gambling were extremely bad business. First and foremost in this
+interdiction stood horse racing. The touch of it that hung like a small
+cloud over the Brookfield horizon had inspired Mrs. Mortimer, as it had
+other good people of the surrounding country, with the restricted
+idea that those who had to do with thoroughbred horses were simply
+gamblers--betting people. Her home was in Emerson, a dozen miles from
+Brookfield.
+
+Quite paradoxically, if Allis Porter had not given “The Run of
+Crusader”--most certainly a racing poem--in the little church, this
+angular young man with stringent ideas about running horses probably
+would have never visited Ringwood. Something of the wide sympathy that
+emanated from her as she told of the gallant horse's death struck into
+his strong nature, and there commenced to creep into his thoughts at
+odd intervals a sort of gratuitous pity that she should be inextricably
+mixed up with race horses. His original honesty of thought and the
+narrowness of his tuition were apt to make him egotistically sure
+that the things which appealed to him as being right were incapable of
+variation.
+
+At first he had liked Alan Porter, with no tremendous amount of
+unbending; now, because of the interest Allis had excited in him, the
+liking began to take on a supervisory form, and it was not without a
+touch of irritation in his voice that Alan informed his sister that he
+had acquired a second father, and with juvenile malignity attributed the
+incumbrance to her seductive influence.
+
+With all these cross purposes at work it can be readily understood that
+Mortimer's visits to Ringwood were not exactly rose-leaved. In truth,
+the actors were all too conventionally honest, too unsocialized, to
+subvert their underlying motives. Allis, with her fine intuition, would
+have unearthed Mortimer's disapprobation of racing--though he awkwardly
+strove to hide it--even if Alan had not enlarged upon this point. This
+knowledge constrained the girl, even drove her into rebellion. She took
+his misunderstanding as a fault, almost as a weakness, and shocked
+the young man with carefully prepared racing expressions; reveled with
+strange abandon in talks of gallops, and trials, and work-outs, and
+breathers; threw ironmouthed horses, pullers, skates, and divers other
+equine wonders at his head until he revolted in sullen irritation. In
+fact they misunderstood each other finely; in truth their different
+natures were more in harmony two miles apart, the distance that lay
+between the bank and Ringwood.
+
+By comparison Crane's visits to Ringwood were utopianly complacent.
+Strangely enough, Mrs. Porter, opposed to racing as she was, came
+quite readily under the glamor of his artistic unobtrusiveness. He had
+complete mastery over the science of waiting. His admission to the good
+lady of a passing interest in horses was an apology; there seemed such
+an utter absence of the betting spirit that the recreation it afforded
+him condoned the offense.
+
+There was this difference between the two men, the old and the young:
+Crane knew exactly why he went there, while Mortimer had asked himself
+more than once, coming back from Ringwood feeling that he had been
+misunderstood--perhaps even laughed at--why he had gone there at all.
+He had no definite plan, even desire; he was impelled to it out of some
+unrecognized force. It was because of these conditions that the one
+potter turned his images so perfectly, and the other formed only poor,
+distorted, often broken, dishes of inferior clay.
+
+It stood in the reason of things, however, that Mortimer, in spite of
+his uncompromising attitude toward racing, should be touched by its
+tentacles if he visited at Ringwood.
+
+His first baptism came with much precipitancy on the occasion of his
+fourth visit to the Porters. He had driven out with Alan to spend his
+Saturday afternoon at Ringwood. An afternoon is not exactly like an
+evening in the matter of entertaining a guest; something must be done;
+cigars, or music, or small chatter are insufficient. If one is on
+the western slope of life's Sierra perhaps a nap may kill the time
+profitably enough, but this was a case where a young man had to
+be entertained, a young man difficult of entertainment under the
+circumstances.
+
+Alan had some barbarous expedition of juvenile interest on hand; the
+unearthing of a woodchuck, or it might have been a groundhog, in a back
+field; but Allis would not become a party to the destruction of animal
+life for the sport of the thing. She had a much better programme
+mapped out for Mortimer. Some way she felt that if he could see
+the thoroughbred horses in their stalls, could come to know them
+individually, casually though it might be, he would perhaps catch a
+glimmer of their beautiful characters. So she asked Mr. Mortimer to go
+and have a look at her pets. Alan would none of it; he was off to his
+woodchuck or groundhog.
+
+“I'm glad you don't want to go and kill anything,” she said, turning
+gratefully to Mortimer when he refused Alan's invitation, saying that
+he preferred to look at the horses. “I'll show you Diablo, and Lucretia,
+and Lauzanne the Despised--he's my horse, and I'm to win a big race
+with him next year. Gaynor is down at the stables; and I'll give you a
+tip”--Mortimer winced--“if you want to stand well in with Mike, let him
+suspect that you're fond of horses.”
+
+At the stable door they met Mike Gaynor. Mike usually vacillated between
+a condition of chronic anger at somebody or something, and an Irish
+drollery that made people who were sick at heart laugh. Allis was as
+familiar with his moods as she was with the phases of Lauzanne's temper.
+On Mike's face was a map of disaster; the disaster might be trivial or
+great. That something was wrong the girl knew, but whether it was that a
+valuable horse was dead, or that a mouse had eaten a hole in a grain
+bag she could only discover by questioning Gaynor, for there were never
+degrees of expressed emotion in Mike's facile countenance; either a deep
+scowl or a broad grin were the two normal conditions.
+
+“What's the matter, Mike?” questioned Allis.
+
+“Mather, is it?” began Gaynor, “it's just this, Miss Allis; if yer
+father thinks I'm goin' to stand by an' see good colts spiled in their
+timper just because a rapscallion b'y has got the evil intints av ould
+Nick himself, thin he's mistook, that's all.”
+
+“Who is it Mike--Shandy?”
+
+“That's him, Miss. He's the divil on wheels, bangin' thim horses about
+as though he was King Juba.”
+
+Allis saw that Gaynor was indeed angry.
+
+“I'll speak to father about him, Mike,” she answered; “I won't have the
+horses abused.”
+
+“Mark my words, Miss Allis, Diablo'll take it out of his hide some
+day. The b'y'll monkey wit' him once too often, then there'll be no b'y
+left.”
+
+“May we see the horses, Mike--are they having their lie-down, or
+anything?”
+
+“Not yet, Miss; they're gettin' the rub-down now; don't ye hear Diablo
+bastin' the boords av his stall wid that handy off hind-foot av his?”
+
+“There's a filly for yer life,” exclaimed the Trainer, rapturously,
+as he opened gently the door of Lucretia's box stall. “There's the
+straightest filly iver looked through a halter,” he continued, putting
+his arm with the gentleness of a woman over the brown mare's beautiful
+neck. “Come here, ould girl,” he said, coaxingly, as he drew the
+haltered head toward the visitors.
+
+Mortimer looked with interest at the big, comfortable box stall,
+littered a foot deep with bright, clean, yellow straw. How contented and
+at home the mare appeared! It seemed almost a complete recompense, this
+attentive care, for the cruelty he imagined race horses suffered.
+
+“You don't tie her up?” he asked.
+
+“Tie her up!” ejaculated Mike, a fine Celtic scorn in his voice; “I'd
+rather tie up a wife--if I had one,” he added by way of extenuation.
+“No man would tie up a mare worth tin thousand dollars if she's worth a
+cent, an' take chances av her throwin' hersilf in the halter; av coorse
+she's hitched fer a bit after a gallop while she's havin' a rub-down,
+but that's all.”
+
+Lucretia's black nozzle came timidly forward, and the soft, velvety
+upper lip snuggled Allis's cheek.
+
+“She knows ye, Miss,” said Mike. “That's the way wit' horses--they're
+like children; they know friends, an' ye can't fool thim. Now she's
+sizin' ye up, Mister,” as Lucretia sniffed suspiciously at Mortimer's
+chin, keeping a wary eye on him. “She'll know if ye like horses or not,
+an' I'd back her opinion agin fifty min's oaths.”
+
+Allis watched with nervous interest the investigation. She almost felt
+that if Lucretia liked her companion--well, it would be something less
+to dislike in him, at all events. Lucretia seemed turning the thing over
+in her mind, trying to think it out. There was some mystery about this
+new comer. Evidently she did not distrust him entirely, else she would
+have put her ears back a trifle and turned away with a little impatient
+warning shake of her delicate head. She always turned in that cross
+manner from Shandy, the stable boy. She had also discovered that the
+visitor was not completely a horseman; she did not investigate his
+pockets, nor put her head over his shoulder, as she would have done
+with Mr. Porter or Mike, or even with one who was a stranger, as was
+Mortimer, had she felt the unmistakable something which conveyed to her
+mind that he was of the equine brotherhood.
+
+“Lucretia has found you out,” said Allis, presently. “You do like
+horses; she knows it.”
+
+“Oh, I like animals, I don't deny,” Mortimer answered, “but I know very
+little about them--nothing about race horses.”
+
+Mike frowned and looked disparagingly at the visitor. “He must be a
+quare duck,” he muttered to himself. That a man should know nothing of
+thoroughbreds was perfectly inexplicable to Gaynor. He knew many racing
+men whose knowledge of horseflesh was a subject for ridicule, but then
+they never proclaimed their ignorance, rather posed as good judges than
+otherwise.
+
+But with startling inconsistency Mike explained: “There's many like ye,
+sir, only they don't know it, that's all; the woods is full av thim.
+Would ye like to give the filly a carrot, Miss?” he added, turning to
+Allis. “I'll bring some.”
+
+When he returned Allis gave one to Lucretia, then they passed to the
+next stall.
+
+“That's a useful horse,” explained the Trainer; “he's won some races in
+his 'time.”
+
+“What's his name?” asked Mortimer.
+
+“Game Boy. He's by the Juggler. Ye remember him, don't ye?”
+
+Mortimer was forced to confess that he didn't quite remember Juggler.
+
+“That's strange,” commented Mike, turning the big bay about with evident
+pride; “he won the 'Belmont,' at Jerome Park, did the ould Juggler. Ye
+must av heerd av that.”
+
+Mortimer compromised by admitting that he had probably forgotten it.
+
+“Well, I haven't,” declared Mike, reproachfully. “If Game Boy stands a
+prep this summer ye'll hear from him,” he confided to Mortimer, as they
+left the stall. “Jist remember Game Boy; see, ye can't forget--a big bay
+wit' a white nigh fore leg, an' a bit rat-tailed. Yes, Game Boy's all
+right,” monologued Mike; “but here's a better; this is Diablo. He must
+have tabasco in his head, fer he's got the divil's own timper. But he
+can gallop a bit; he can go like a quarterhorse, an' stay till the cows
+come home; but he's like Lauzanne acrost yonder, he's got a bee in his
+bonnet an' it takes a divil to ride him.”
+
+“That's hard on me, Mike,” expostulated Allis. “You see, Lauzanne goes
+better with me in the saddle than any of the boys,” she explained to
+Mortimer.
+
+“The divil or angels, I was going to say, Miss, when ye interrupted me,”
+ gallantly responded Mike.
+
+Diablo's head was tied high in a corner of the stall, for Shandy, the
+boy, was hard at work on him with a double hand of straw, rubbing him
+down. The boy kept up a peculiar whistling noise through his parted lips
+as he rubbed, and Diablo snapped impatiently at the halter-shank with
+his great white teeth as though he resented the operation.
+
+Mortimer gazed with enthusiasm at the shining black skin that glistened
+like satin, or watered silk. Surely there was excuse for people loving
+thoroughbreds. It was an exhilaration even to look at that embodiment
+of physical development. It was an animate statue to the excellence
+of good, clean living. Somehow or other Mortimer felt that though the
+living creature before him was only a horse, yet nature's laws were
+being adhered to, and the result was a reward of physical perfection and
+enjoyment of life. He began to feel that a man, or even a woman--it was
+the subtle presence of the woman at his side that made him involuntarily
+interject this clause into his inaudible thoughts--yes, even a woman
+of high moral attributes might find the most healthy form of interested
+amusement in watching the superb development of horses that were
+destined for no other purpose than to race and beget sons and daughters
+of the same wondrous stamina and courage and speed. His detestation of
+racing had been in reality an untutored prejudice; he had looked upon
+but one phase of the question, and that quite casually, as it introduced
+itself into his life by means of sensational betting incidents in the
+daily papers. To him all forms of betting were highly disastrous--most
+immoral. But here, like a revelation, came to him, in all its
+fascination, the perfect picture of the animal, which he was forced to
+admit stood next to man in its adornment of God's scheme of creation.
+
+As Shandy swept his wisp of straw along the sensitive skin of Diablo's
+stomach, the latter shrunk from the tickling sensation, and lashed out
+impatiently with a powerful hind leg as though he would demolish his
+tormentor.
+
+“He's not cross at all just,” explained Mike; “he's bluffin', that's
+all. Shure a child could handle him if they'd only go the right way
+about it.”
+
+Then he leaned over and whispered in an aside to the visitors--“Bot'
+t'umbs up!” (this was Mike's favorite oath). “Diablo hates that b'y an'
+some day he'll do him up, mark my words.”
+
+“Here, Shandy,” he cried, turning to the rubber, “loose the Black's head
+an' turn him 'round.”
+
+Mortimer almost shrank with apprehension for the boy, for Diablo's ears
+were back on his flat, tapering neck, and his eyes looking back at them,
+were all white, save for the intense blue-shimmered pupil. To Mortimer
+that look was the incarnation of evil hatred. But the boy unsnapped
+the halter-shank without hesitation, and Diablo, more inquisitive than
+angry, came mincingly toward them, nodding his head somewhat defiantly,
+as much as to say that the nature of the interview would depend
+altogether upon their good behavior.
+
+“See that!” ejaculated Mike, a pleasant smile of satisfaction rippling
+the furrows of his face; “see how he picks out the best friend the
+stable's got.”
+
+Diablo had stretched his lean head down, and was trying to nibble with
+gentle lip the carrot Allis held half hidden behind her skirt. There
+was none of Lucretia's timidity in Diablo's approach; it was full of an
+assumption of equality, of trust in the intentions of the stranger who
+had come with the mistress he hart faith in.
+
+“They're all like that when Miss Allis is about,” explained Mike; “there
+never would be a bad horse if the stable-b'ys worked the same way. Tie
+him up, Shandy,” he added. “Even the jockeys spoil their mounts,” Gaynor
+continued in a monotone; “the horse'll gallop better for women any
+time--they treat thim gentler, that's why.”
+
+“Most interesting,” hazarded Mortimer, feeling some acknowledgment of
+Mike's information was due.
+
+“It's the trut'. Miss Allis'd take Lauzanne, or the Black, or the little
+mare, an' get a better race out av thim than any jock I've seen ridin'
+hereabout.”
+
+“Mike,” exclaimed Allis, “you flatter me; you almost make me wish that I
+were a jockey.”
+
+“Well, bot' t'umbs up! Ye'd av made a good un, Miss, an' that's no
+disrespect to ye, I'm sayin'.”
+
+Mortimer smiled condescendingly. Allis's quick eye caught his expression
+of amused discontent; it angered her. Mike's praise had been practically
+honest. To him a good jockey was the embodiment of courage and honesty
+and intelligence; but she knew that to Mortimer it simply meant a
+phase of life he considered quite outside the pale of recognized
+respectability. Somehow she felt that Mike's encomium had lowered her
+perceptibly in the opinion of this man whom she herself affected to look
+upon with but toleration.
+
+They visited all the other stalls, eight of them, and listened to Mike's
+eulogies on the inmates. Coming down the other side of the passage, the
+last occupied box stall contained Lauzanne.
+
+“Miss Porter'll tell ye about this wan,” said Mike, diplomatically.
+“He's shaped like a good horse, an' his sire, old Lazzarone, landed many
+a purse, an' the 'Suburban,' too--won it on three legs, fer he was clean
+gone in his pins, I'll take me oath to that. He was a good horse--whin
+he liked. Perhaps Lauzanne'll do the same some day, fer all I know.”
+
+There was such a tone of doubt in the Trainer's voice that even Mortimer
+noticed it. Neither was there much praise of the big Chestnut; evidently
+Mike did not quite approve of him, though hesitating to say so in the
+presence of his mistress.
+
+“Yes, Lauzanne is my horse,” volunteered Allis. “I even ride him in all
+his work now, since he took to eating the stable-boy.”
+
+“And you're not afraid?” asked Mortimer.
+
+For answer the girl slipped quietly into the stall, and going up beside
+the Chestnut, who was standing sulkily with his head in the corner of
+his box, took him by the ear and turned him gently around.
+
+“He's just a quiet-mannered chap, that's all,” she said. “He's a
+big, lazy, contented old boy,” and she laid her cheek against his
+fawn-colored nozzle. “You see,” she explained, “he's got more brains
+than any of the other horses, and when he's abused he knows it.”
+
+“But he's grateful when he's kindly treated,” commented Mortimer.
+
+“Yes; that's why I like horses better than men.”
+
+“Oh!” the exclamation slipped from Mortimer's lips.
+
+“Most men, I mean,” she explained. “Of course, father, and Alan, and--”
+ she hesitated; “you see,” she went on to explain, “the number of my men
+friends is limited; but except these, and Mike, and Mr. Dixon, I like
+the horses best.”
+
+“I almost believe you're right, Miss Porter,” concurred Mortimer; “I've
+known men myself that I fancy were much worse than even Diablo.”
+
+“Mike thinks Lauzanne is a bad horse,” the girl said, changing the
+subject, “but he'll win a big race this coming season. You just keep
+your eye on Lauzanne. Here's your carrot, old chap,” she said, stroking
+the horse's neck, “and we must go if we're to have that drive. Will you
+hitch the gray to the buggy for us, Mike?” she asked of Gaynor, as they
+came out of the stable, “we'll wait here.”
+
+As Mike started off there came to their ears a sound of turmoil from
+Diablo's box; impatient kicks against the boards from the horse, and
+smothered imprecations from the boy.
+
+“Hear that fiend!” the girl exclaimed, and there was wrath in her voice.
+
+“He does seem a bad horse,” concurred Mortimer.
+
+“I didn't mean Diablo; it's the boy. It's all his evil doing. Oh,
+I've only one glove,” she exclaimed. “I know where it is, though; that
+mischievous rascal, Lauzanne, nibbled it from the front of my jacket; I
+saw him do it, but forgot to pick it up.”
+
+“Allow me, Miss Porter; I'll get it for you.”
+
+“No; please don't!” with emphasis. As he started back, she laid a
+detaining hand on his arm. “I'd much prefer to go myself; Lauzanne
+distrusts strangers and might make trouble.”
+
+As the girl entered the stable, Mortimer sauntered on in the direction
+Mike had gone.
+
+Allis opened the door of Lauzanne's stall, passed in, and searched in
+the straw for the lost glove.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+The noise of strife in Diablo's box had increased. There came the sound
+of blows on the horse's ribs; a muttered oath, and suddenly a scream of
+terror from the boy, drowned in an instant by the ferocious battlecry
+of the enraged stallion. Mortimer, thirty yards away, heard it, and felt
+his heart stand still; he had never heard anything so demoniac in his
+life. He turned in such haste that his foot slipped on the frozen earth,
+and he fell heavily.
+
+At the first sound of blows Allis had started angrily toward Diablo's
+box. She was at the door when Shandy's cry of terror rang out. For an
+instant the girl hesitated; what she saw was enough to make a strong man
+quail. The black stallion was loose; with crunching jaws he had fastened
+on the arm of Shandy, in the corner of the stall, and was trying to pull
+the boy down that he might trample him to death. But for a second she
+faltered; if ever quick action were needed, it was now.
+
+“Back--back, Diablo! back!” she cried, as pushing past the black demon
+she brought her hunting-crop down with full force between his ears.
+
+Whether it was the sound of his mistress's voice, or the staggering
+blow, Diablo dropped the boy like a crushed rat, and, half rearing,
+looked viciously at the brave girl.
+
+“Quick! through the hay window!” commanded Allis, standing between
+Shandy and the horse, and drawing the whip back over her left shoulder,
+ready to give it to Diablo full in the throat should he charge again.
+
+Cowed, the boy clambered through the opening. Enraged at the sight of
+his assailant's escape, the horse gave another scream of defiance and
+sought with striking forefeet and spread jaws to pull down this new
+enemy. Not until then had Allis thought of calling for help; her one
+idea had been for the boy's safety.
+
+Like a flash the full peril of the situation dawned upon her; perhaps
+her life would be given for the boy who well deserved his punishment.
+She had seen two stallions fight, and knew that their ferocious
+natures, once roused, could only be quelled by a force stronger than she
+possessed. Yes, surely she would be killed-her young life trampled
+out by the frenzied animal. Incoherently but altogether these thoughts
+filled her mind; also the knowledge that Mike was beyond hearing.
+
+“Help, Mortimer!” she called.
+
+He heard it as he reached the stable door. Even then he would have been
+too late had not other rescue come more quickly.
+
+In rushing from Lauzanne's stall Allis had left the door swinging on its
+hinges. At the first cry of defiance from the black stallion Lauzanne
+had stretched high his head and sent back, with curled nostril, an
+answering challenge. Then with ears cocked he had waited for a charge
+from his natural enemy. When the mingled call of his mistress and
+Diablo's bugle note came to him he waited no longer, but rushed across
+the passage and seized the black horse by the crest just as he was
+overpowering the girl.
+
+It was at that instant Mortimer reached the scene--in his hand a stable
+fork he had grabbed as he raced down the passage. Even Lauzanne's
+attack, though it gave Allis a respite, would not have saved her life;
+the madly fighting horses would have kicked and trampled her to death.
+
+“My God! Back, back, you devils!” And pushing, crowding, hugging the
+side of the stall, Mortimer fought his way to the girl.
+
+Once Diablo's hoof shot out and the man's left arm, snapping like a
+pistol, dropped useless at his side. His brain reeled with the shock.
+The oddly swinging arm, dangling like a doll's, with the palm turned
+backward, seemed to fascinate him. Why was he there? What was he doing?
+Why was he hammering the horses over the head with a stable fork held
+tightly in his right hand? He hardly knew; his mind was clouded; he
+was fighting by instinct, and always crowding along the wall toward the
+farther corner. The girl had quite faded from his sight. Somehow he felt
+that he must drive the horses back, back, out of the stall.
+
+Allis, too, was fighting; bringing the crop down with cutting force over
+the withers, neck, head, any part of the plunging mass in front of her.
+She could escape now through the opening where the boy had gone; but was
+not Mortimer in the same position she had been? She had seen him drop
+to his knees when Diablo lashed out; he must be sorely hurt; now he was
+reeling like a drunken man as he fought the mad brutes.
+
+“This way,” she panted, catching him by the coat, and pulling him toward
+the window.
+
+Ah, that was it! He saw her now. It steadied his senses. It was the
+girl, and she had called him--“Mortimer!”
+
+“Back,” he yelled irrelevantly, in answer, cutting Diablo across the
+face with the fork. It was pandemonium.
+
+“Get through the window!” the girl screamed in his ear. “Quick! Now!”
+ and she pushed him toward it.
+
+“You--first--back, you devils!” and he pressed away from her, closer to
+the horses, thrusting and striking with the steel-pointed fork.
+
+The horses were giving way; Diablo was fighting half through the door,
+weakening before the onslaught of the powerful chestnut. Even in battle,
+as in a race, the stamina of the Lazzarone blood was telling; the
+bulldog courage of the strain was strong upon Lauzanne, now that he was
+roused.
+
+“Quick! You can get out!” again called the girl.
+
+“You first!”
+
+This drear, repetition was the only expression Mortimer's numbed senses
+were equal to; but he fought with the ferocity of a tiger--his wound but
+enraged him.
+
+They could both escape, Allis knew, if she could bring Mortimer to
+understand; but they must do it quick, if at all. It was useless. He
+seemed conscious of but the one idea that he must drive the fighting
+animals out into the passage to save her. She was not afraid now; the
+man's presence had driven that all away. It was useless to speak to
+him of the window, neither would go first; so, with her riding whip she
+fought side by side with Mortimer; springing back from the swift-cutting
+forefeet; sometimes even hugging close to the side of a horse as he
+lashed out from behind; and once saving her companion from being cut
+down by pulling him swiftly from under a raised foot. In the end the
+stallions were forced out into the passage, just as Mike came rushing
+upon the scene.
+
+But the battle had waned. Twice Diablo had been pulled to his knees,
+forced down by the fierce strength that was Lauzanne's; the Black was
+all but conquered. The Trainer's voice checked Lauzanne's fury; even the
+boy had plucked up courage to return; and between them the Chestnut was
+driven into his stall. All the fight had been taken out of Diablo. He
+struggled to his feet, and stood trembling like a horse that had come
+out of a fierce cutting race. On his neck were the marks of Lauzanne's
+teeth, where they had snapped like the jaws of a trap; from his crest
+trickled a red stream that dripped to the floor like water from a
+running eave. All the fierce fire of hate had gone from his eyes. He
+hung his head dejectedly, and his flanks quivered. Lauzanne, too, bore
+evidence of the vicious strife. On one quarter, where Diablo's sharp
+hoof had ripped, was a cut as though he had been lashed with a sickle,
+and his withers were torn.
+
+Mortimer and Allis had come out of the stall. The man, exhausted by the
+struggle, leaned wearily, with pale, drawn face, against the wall; the
+floor seemed slipping from under him; he felt a sensation of swiftly
+passing off into nothingness. He was sleepy, that was all; but a
+sleepiness to fight against--he must still fight.
+
+“You are badly hurt.” It was the girl's voice. He was almost surprised
+that he recognized it, everything was so confused. He answered heavily,
+“Yes, I'm--I'm--I want--to lie down.”
+
+“Here, lean on my shoulder.” It was Mike's voice this time. “This is bad
+business,” the Trainer was saying; “we must get him out of this; he's
+nearly knocked out. Are ye all right, Miss?” turning to Allis.
+
+The wounded man turned guiltily; he had forgotten the girl. Yes, surely
+she had been in that hell of noises with him--fighting too.
+
+“I'm just frightened, that's all,” answered Allis. “Mr. Mortimer saved
+me.”
+
+Had he? he wondered. How had he come in there, anyway? His mind refused
+to work out the problem; his side was so sore.
+
+“Yer arm's broke,” said Mike, passing to Mortimer's right side. “Come,
+lean on me, sir. Can ye walk? I'll put ye in the buggy and drive ye to
+the house.”
+
+At the first step Mortimer staggered and swayed like a drunken man. In
+his side were many sharp things pulling him down like grappling irons;
+on his head was a great weight that crushed his feet into the hard
+planks; his knees gave under this load, and he would have fallen but for
+Mike's strong arm.
+
+“I'm--afraid;” then he set his teeth hard, his voice had sought to end
+the sentence in a groan of anguish; the thing that was tearing at his
+side had whistled in his lungs.
+
+Allis stepped forward swiftly, and passing her arm about his waist,
+helped Mike lead him to the door. Twice she put her left hand up
+and brushed tears from her eyes; the struggle had unnerved her. Very
+helplessly against her swayed the man she had laughed at half an hour
+before. And he had been crushed saving her! But that was not why the
+tears came--not at all. She was unstrung. “And he's got grit,” she kept
+muttering to herself; “he has never even groaned.”
+
+Together they succeeded in getting him into the buggy; then, gently,
+Mike drove to the house.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Mrs. Porter, reading a book on the veranda, heard the crunch of wheels
+as a buggy, slow-moving, turned into the drive. She raised her eyes
+leisurely, the matter of the story still in her mind; but with a quick
+cry of “John!” she sprang to her feet, the volume, left to itself,
+rustling from her lap to the floor. The mother eyes saw that something
+was wrong, and the mother heart felt that some evil had come to Allis.
+Mrs. Porter had gone white in an instant. Over her hung heavy at all
+times the dread of some terrible accident coming to Allis through the
+horses.
+
+“Did you call, wife?” Porter asked as he came to the door. Then he
+sprang quickly across the veranda at sight of his wife's blanched face,
+and made to catch her in his arms. But she stopped him, pointing down
+the drive. “It's Allis, John; oh, my God!”
+
+“No, no,” he answered, “they're just coming back; here, sit down again,
+I'll see,” and he raced down the steps just as Mike pulled up.
+
+“What's the matter, girl?” he began.
+
+“The young gentleman's got a bit shook up, sir; nothin' bad loike,” Mike
+broke in hastily. The diplomatic rider, “nothin' bad,” was added for
+Mrs. Porter's benefit, his quick eye having seen her white face.
+
+“Miss Allis 's not hurt at all,” he continued. “We'll help the young
+gintleman in, an' I'd best go for the docthor, I'm thinkin.”
+
+Even as he was speaking they had helped Mortimer from the rig. He had
+not uttered a sound; his teeth were set hard against the agony that
+was in his side, and the queer dizziness that was over him left little
+beyond a consciousness that he was being looked after, and that if he
+could only keep going for a little, just use his legs a trifle, he would
+presently be allowed to sleep. Yes, that was what he wanted; he was
+so drowsy. As he went up the steps between the two men, a haggard
+face peered at him over the rail. It was familiar; he felt that some
+recognition was due, for it was a woman's face. He tried to smile. Then
+he was on a bed, and--and--sleep at last.
+
+When the three men with the silence of disaster over them passed
+struggling into the house, Mrs. Porter threw herself on Allis's neck,
+and a passion of tears flooded down and damped the girl's shoulder.
+
+“God be thanked, God be thanked!” gasped the troubled woman, and one
+hand that was over the girl's shoulder patted her with erratic rapidity.
+Then she interrupted herself. “What am I saying--it's wicked, and Mr.
+Mortimer like that. But I can't help it--I can't help it. Oh, Allis!
+my heart was in my mouth; I feel that some day you will come home like
+this.”
+
+At that instant Gaynor dashed by them, leaped into the buggy, and
+called, as he drove off: “I'll have the docthor in a jiffy; the young
+man's all right!” He was still talking as the whirr of swift-rushing
+wheels smothered out his voice, and the dust rose like a steam-cloud,
+almost blotting him from the landscape.
+
+“Oh, girl! I thought you'd been killed.”
+
+“Here, sit down, mother; you're all worked up,” and Allis put a cool
+hand on her mother's hot forehead.
+
+But the shock to her feelings had loosed the good woman's vocabulary.
+At all times smouldered in her heart a hatred of racing, even of the
+horses. “It's the anger of God,” Mrs. Porter denounced vehemently. “This
+gambling and racing is contrary to His law. Never a night passes, Allis,
+that I do not pray to God that He may open your father's eyes to the sin
+of racing. No good can come of it--no good has ever come of it--nothing
+but disaster and trouble. In a day the substance of a year is wasted.
+There never can be prosperity living in sin.”
+
+“Hush, mother,” crooned Allis, softly. This outburst from Mrs. Porter
+startled the girl; it was so passionate, so vehement. When they had
+talked of racing in the home life the mother had nearly always preserved
+a reproachful silence; her attitude was understood and respected.
+
+“I must speak, girl,” she said again; “this sinful life is crushing me.
+Do you think I feel no shame when I sit in meeting and hear our good
+minister denounce gambling and racing? I can feel his eyes on me, and I
+cannot raise my voice in protest, for do not I countenance it? My
+people were all church people,” she continued, almost apologetically,
+“tolerating no sin in the household. Living in sin there can be no hope
+for eternal life.”
+
+“I know, mother,” soothed the girl; “I know just how you feel, but we
+can't desert father. He does not look upon it as a sin, as carrying any
+dishonor; he may be cheated, but he cheats no man. It can't be so sinful
+if there is no evil intent. And listen, mother; no matter what anybody
+may say, even the minister, we must both stick to father if he chooses
+to race horses all his life.”
+
+“Ah, sweetheart!” John Porter cried out in a pleased voice, as he came
+out to them, “looking after mother; that's right. Cynthia has helped
+me fix up Mortimer. He'll be all right as soon as Mike gets back with
+Rathbone. I think we'd better have a cup of tea; these horses are trying
+on the nerves, aren't they, little woman?” and he nestled his wife's
+head against his side. “How did it happen, Allis? Did Mortimer slip into
+Diablo's box, or--”
+
+“It was all over that rascally boy, Shandy. Diablo was just paying him
+back for his ill-treatment, and I went in to rescue him, and Mortimer
+risked his life to save mine.”
+
+“He was plucky; eh, girl?”
+
+“He fought the Black like a hero, father. But, father, you must never
+think bad of Lauzanne again; if he hadn't come Mr. Mortimer would have
+been too late.”
+
+“It's dreadful, dreadful,” moaned the mother.
+
+Allis shot a quick look at her father. He changed the subject, and
+commenced talking about Alan--wondering where he was, and other
+irrelevant matters.
+
+Then there was fresh divertisement as Mike rattled up, and Doctor
+Rathbone, who was of a great size, bustled in to where Mortimer lay.
+
+Three smashed ribs and a broken arm was his inventory of the damage
+inflicted by Diablo's kick, when he came out again with Porter, in an
+hour.
+
+“I'm afraid one of the splintered ribs is tickling his lung,” he added,
+“but the fellow has got such a good nerve that I hardly discovered this
+unpleasant fact. He'll be all right, however; he's young, and healthy as
+a peach. Good nursing is the idea, and he'll get that here, of course.
+He doesn't want much medicine; that we keep for our enemies,--ha! ha!”
+ and he laughed cheerily, as if it were all a joke on the battered man.
+
+“Thim docthers is cold-blooded divils,” was Mike's comment. “Ye'd a
+thought they'd been throwin' dice, an' it was a horse on the other
+gintleman. Bot' t'umbs! it was, too. Still, if ould Saw-bones had been
+in the box yonder wit' Diablo, he wouldn't a-felt so funny.”
+
+“Mortimer behaved well; didn't he, Mike?” asked Porter.
+
+“Behaved well; is it? He was like a live divil; punched thim two big
+stallions till they took water an' backed out. My word! whin first I
+see him come to the stable wit' Miss Allis, thinks I, here's wan av
+thim city chumps; he made me tired. An' whin he talked about Lauzanne's
+knees, m'aning his hocks, I had to hide me head in a grain bag. But if
+ye'd seen him handle that fork, bastin' the Black, ye'd a thought it was
+single sticks he was at, wit' a thousand dollars fer a knock-out.”
+
+“One can't always tell how a colt will shape, can they, Mike?” spoke
+Porter, for Mike's fanciful description was almost bringing a smile to
+Mrs. Porter's troubled face.
+
+“Ye can't, sor, an' yer next the trut' there. I've seen a herrin'-gutted
+weed av a two-year-old--I remember wan now; he was a Lexington. It
+was at Saratoga; an' bot' t'umbs! he just made hacks av iverythin' in
+soight--spread-eagled his field. Ye wouldn't a-give two dollars fer him,
+an' he come out an' cleaned up the Troy Stake, like the great horse he
+was.”
+
+“And you think Mortimer has turned out something like that; eh, Mike?”
+
+“Well, fer a man that knows no more av horses than I know av the
+strology av stars, he's a hot wan, an' that's the God's trut'.”
+
+Mortimer's gallant act had roused the Irishman's admiration. He would
+have done as much himself, but that would have been expected of a
+horseman, constantly encountering danger; that an office man, to be
+pitied in his ignorance, should have fearlessly entered the stall with
+the fighting stallions was quite a different matter.
+
+Even Allis, with her more highly developed sense of character
+analyzation, felt something of this same influence. She had needed some
+such manifestation of Mortimer's integral force, and this had come with
+romantic intensity in the tragic box-stall scene. This drama of the
+stable had aroused no polished rhetoric; Mortimer's declamation had been
+unconventional in the extreme. “Back, you devils!” he had rendered with
+explosive fierceness, oblivious of everything but that he must save the
+girl. The words still rang in the ears of Allis, and also the echo
+of her own cry when in peril, “Mortimer!” There must have been a
+foreshadowing in her soul of the man's reliability, though she knew it
+not.
+
+Even without the doctor's orders, it was patent that Mortimer must
+remain at Ringwood for a few days.
+
+It was as if Philip Crane, playing with all his intense subtlety,
+had met his master in Fate; the grim arbiter of man's ways had pushed
+forward a chessman to occupy a certain square on the board for a time.
+
+Mortimer had been most decisively smashed up, but his immense physique
+had wonderful recuperative powers. The bone-setting and the attendant
+fever were discounted by his vitality, and his progress toward recovery,
+was marvelous.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Crane heard of the accident on one of his visits to Brookfield a couple
+of days later, and of course must hurry to Ringwood to see his employee.
+It happened that the Reverend Mr. Dolman graced the Porter home with his
+presence the same evening that Crane was there.
+
+Naturally the paramount subject of interest was the narrow escape of
+Miss Allis; but the individuality of discussion gradually merged into a
+crusade against racing, led by the zealous clergyman. John Porter viewed
+this trend with no little trepidation of feeling.
+
+It was Mrs. Porter who precipitated matters by piously attributing
+Allis's escape to Providence.
+
+“Undoubtedly, undoubtedly!” Mr. Dolman said, putting the points of his
+fingers together in front of his lean chest. He paused a moment,
+and Porter groaned inwardly; he knew that attitude. The fingers were
+rapiers, stilettos; presently their owner would thrust, with cutting
+phrase, proving that they were all indeed a very bad lot. Perhaps
+John Porter would have resented this angrily had he not felt that the
+Reverend Inquisitor was really honest in his beliefs, albeit intolerably
+narrow in his conclusions.
+
+Dolman broke the temporary silence. “But we shouldn't tempt
+Providence by worshiping false images. Love of animals is
+commendable--commendable”--he emphasized this slight concession--“but
+race horses always appeal to me as instruments of the Evil One.”
+
+“It wasn't the horse's fault at all, Mr. Dolman,” Allis interposed, “but
+just a depraved human's. It was the boy Shandy's fault.”
+
+“I wasn't thinking of one horse,” continued the minister, airily; “I
+meant race horses in general.”
+
+“I think Mr. Dolman is right,” ventured Mrs. Porter, hesitatingly; “it's
+flying in the face of Providence for a girl to go amongst those race
+horses.”
+
+“Bad-tempered men make them vicious, mother,” Allis said; “and I believe
+that Shandy's punishment was the visitation of Providence, if there was
+any.”
+
+The Reverend Dolman's face took on an austere look. It was an insult
+to the divine powers to assert that they had taken the part of a race
+horse. But he turned the point to his own ends. “It's quite wrong to
+abuse the noble animal; and that's one reason why I hold that racing is
+contrary to the Creator's intentions, quite apart from the evil effect
+it has on morals.”
+
+“Are all men immoral who race, Mr. Dolman?” John Porter asked.
+
+His question forced Dolman to define his position. Porter always liked
+things simplified; racing was either wrong in principle or right. Dolman
+found him rather a difficult man to tackle. He had this irritating way
+of brushing aside generalization and forcing the speaker to get back to
+first principles.
+
+The reverend gentleman proceeded cautiously. “I should hardly care to
+go so far as that--to make the rule absolute; a very strong man might
+escape contamination, perhaps.”
+
+Mrs. Porter sighed audibly. The minister was weakening most lamentably,
+giving her husband a loophole to escape.
+
+“I hardly think racing quite so bad as it is generally supposed to be,”
+ interposed Crane, feeling that Porter was being pilloried somewhat. He
+received a reproachful look from Mrs. Porter for his pains.
+
+“I've never seen any good come of it,” retorted Dolman. “A Christian man
+must feel that he is encouraging gambling if he countenances racing, for
+they contend that without betting racing is impossible.”
+
+“Everything in life is pretty much of a gamble,” Porter drawled, lazily;
+“there aren't any such things. The ships that go to sea, the farmer's
+crop--everything is more or less a matter of chance. If a man goes
+straight he has a fairly easy time with his conscience, no matter what
+he's at; but if he doesn't, well, he'd better go hungry.”
+
+“A great many very honorable men are racing today,” added Crane; “men
+who have built up large fortunes through honest dealing, and wouldn't be
+racing if they felt that it was either unchristian or dishonorable.”
+
+“They can't be Christians if they countenance gambling,” asserted the
+minister, doggedly.
+
+It occurred to Mortimer that whenever the discussion took broader lines,
+Dolman drew it back into the narrow cell of his own convictions.
+
+Porter scratched his head perplexedly. They had been discussing the
+moral influence of racing; this seemed more like theology. “It is
+certainly unchristian,” commented Mrs. Porter, severely. “I haven't seen
+much Christian spirit in any business,” said Porter, quietly; “they all
+seem more a matter of written agreements. In fact there's more done
+on honor in racing than in any of the business gambles. A man that's
+crooked in racing is sure to come to grief in the long run.”
+
+Crane shifted in his chair, and Dolman coughed deprecatingly. “For my
+part,” continued Porter, “I've never found it necessary to do anything
+I'm ashamed of in racing.”
+
+His wife saw an opening. “But, John dear, you were treated most
+shamefully last year; a dishonest boy hauled your horse--”
+
+“Pulled, mother,” interposed Allis; “pulled father's horse, you mean.”
+
+“Perhaps, though I fail to see where the difference can be, if the horse
+ran the other way and your father lost.”
+
+Porter smiled indulgently. “The boy was punished, Helen,” he said.
+“Dishonesty is not tolerated on the race course.”
+
+“Yes, but something is always happening,” she continued in lament. “It's
+contrary to the law of the church, John. It seems just like a visitation
+of divine wrath the way things happen. And you're so sanguine, John;
+last year you were going to win a big race with Diablo when he threw his
+leg--”
+
+“Threw a splint, mother,” prompted Allis.
+
+“I thought your father said it was his leg had something the matter with
+it,” argued Mrs. Porter.
+
+“The splint was on his leg, mother dear.”
+
+“Well, I'm not familiar with racing phrases, I must say, though I should
+be, goodness knows; I hear little else. And talk of cruelty to animals!”
+ she turned to Mr. Dolman; “they burned the poor beast's leg with hot
+irons--”
+
+The minister held up his hands in horror.
+
+“It didn't give him as much pain as the doctor gave Mr. Mortimer setting
+his arm,” declared Allis.
+
+“But it was racing injured the horse's leg,” interposed Dolman.
+
+“But your horse has got a ringbone, Mr. Dolman,” said Allis, “and a
+spavin, too. I've been looking at him. That's because you drive him too
+fast on hard roads. And his feet are contracted from neglect in shoeing.
+It's just cruel the way that poor old horse has been neglected. Race
+horses are much better taken care of.”
+
+Allis's sudden onslaught switched Mr. Dolman from the aggressive to the
+defensive with great celerity.
+
+“I confess I know very little about horses,” he was forced to apologize;
+then, with something of asperity, “the spiritual welfare of my
+congregation takes up my entire time.”
+
+This rebuke caused a momentary silence, and Dolman, turning to Mortimer,
+said, “I hope you don't approve of racing, sir.”
+
+Mortimer didn't, but a look from Allis's eyes inexplicably enough caused
+him to hedge very considerably in his reply.
+
+“I know nothing about the race course,” he said, “but from what I see of
+the thoroughbreds I believe a man would have to be of very low order
+if their noble natures did not appeal to him. I think that courage, and
+honesty, and gentleness--they all seem to have it--must always have a
+good influence. Why, sir,” he continued, with a touch of excitement, “I
+think a man would be ashamed to feel that he was making himself lower
+than the horses he had to do with.”
+
+Allis looked grateful. Even Porter turned half about in his chair,
+and gazed with a touch of wonderment at the battered young man who had
+substituted common sense for sophistical reasoning.
+
+The reverend gentleman frowned. “It's not the horses at all,” he said,
+“it's the men who are disreputable.”
+
+Mrs. Porter gave a little warning cough. In his zealousness Mr. Dolman
+might anger her husband, then his logic would avail little.
+
+“The men are like the horses,” commented Porter, “some bad and some
+good. They average about the same as they do in anything else, mostly
+good, I think. Of course, when you get a bad one he stands out and
+everybody sees him.”
+
+“And sometimes horses--and men, too, I suppose--get a bad name when they
+don't deserve it,” added Allis. “Everybody says Lauzanne is bad, but I
+know he's not.”
+
+“That was a case of this dreadful dishonesty,” said Mrs. Porter,
+speaking hastily. She turned in an explanatory way to Crane. “You know,
+Mr. Crane, last summer a rascally man sold my husband a crooked horse.
+Now, John, what are you laughing at?” for her husband was shaking in his
+chair.
+
+“I was wondering what a crooked horse would look like,” he answered, and
+there were sobs in his voice.
+
+“Why, John, when you brought him home you said he was crooked.”
+
+As usual, Allis straightened matters out: “It was the man who was
+crooked. Mother means Lauzanne,” she continued.
+
+“Yes,” proceeded the good woman, “a Mr. Langdon, I remember now, treated
+my husband most shamefully over this horse.”
+
+Crane winced. He would have preferred thumbscrews just then. “John is
+honest himself,” went on Mrs. Porter, “and he believes other men, and
+this horse had some drug given him to make him look nice, so that my
+husband would buy him.”
+
+“Shameful,” protested Dolman. “Are men allowed to give horses drugs?” he
+appealed to Mr. Porter.
+
+“No; the racing law is very strict on that point.”
+
+“But evidently it is done,” contended Dolman.
+
+“I think there's very little of it,” said Porter.
+
+This turn of the conversation made Crane feel very uneasy. “Do you
+think, Mr. Porter,” he asked, “that there was anything of that sort over
+Lauzanne? Do you think Langdon would--” He hesitated.
+
+“Mr. Langdon has a tolerable idea of what I think,” answered Porter.
+“I shouldn't trust that man too much if I were you. He's got cunning
+enough, though, to run straight with a man like yourself, who has a
+horse or two in his stable, and doesn't go in for betting very heavily.”
+
+“I know very little about him,” protested Crane; “and, as you say, he
+will probably act quite straightforward with me, at least.”
+
+“Yes,” continued Porter, half wearily, as though he wished to finish the
+distasteful discussion; “there are black sheep in racing as there are
+in everything else. My own opinion is that the most of the talk we hear
+about crooked racing is simply talk. At least nine out of ten races are
+honestly run--the best horse wins. I would rather cut off my right hand
+than steal a race, and yet last summer it was said that I had pulled
+Lucretia.”
+
+“I never heard of that, John,” cried Mrs. Porter, in astonishment.
+
+“No, you didn't,” dryly answered her husband.
+
+Allis smiled; she had settled that part of it with her father at the
+time.
+
+“If you'll excuse me,” began Crane, rising, “I think Mr. Wortimer is
+getting tired. I believe I'll jog back to Brookfield.”
+
+Reluctantly the Reverend Dolman rose, too. He felt, somehow, that the
+atmosphere of racing had smothered his expostulation--that he had made
+little headway. The intense honesty that was John Porter's shielded him
+about almost as perfectly as, a higher form of belief might have done.
+
+But with almost a worldly cunning it occurred to the clergyman that he
+could turn the drawn battle into a victory for the church; and as they
+stood for a minute in the gentle bustle of leave-taking, he said: “The
+ever-continuing fight that I carry on against the various forms of
+gambling must necessarily take on at times almost a personal aspect--”
+ he was addressing Mr. Porter, ostensibly--“but in reality it is not
+quite so. I think I understand your position, Mr. Porter, and--and--what
+shall I say--personally I feel that the wickedness of racing doesn't
+appeal to you as a great contamination; you withstand it, but you
+will forgive me saying so, thousands have not the same strength of
+character.”
+
+Porter made a deprecatory gesture, but Dolman proceeded. “What I was
+going to say is, that you possibly realize this yourself. You have acted
+so wisely, with what I would call Christian forethought, in placing your
+son, Alan, in a different walk in life, and--” he turned with a grave
+bow in Crane's direction--“and in good hands, too.”
+
+“His mother wished it,” Porter said, simply.
+
+“Yes, John was very good about Alan's future,” the mother concurred.
+“But, husband, you quite agreed that it was much better for Alan to be
+in the bank than possibly drifting into association with--well, such
+dishonorable men as this Mr. Langdon and his friends. He is so much
+better off,” she continued, “with young men such as Mr. Crane would have
+about him.”
+
+The Reverend Dolman smiled meekly, but it was in triumph. He had called
+attention to an act which spoke far louder than Mr. Porter's disclaiming
+words.
+
+Porter was not at all deceived by the minister; in fact, he rather
+admired the other's cleverness in beating him on the post. He gave a
+little laugh as he said: “I should not have succeeded very well in a
+bank. I am more at home with the horses than I am with figures; but I
+expect I would have gone fairly straight, and hope the boy will do the
+same. I fancy one of the great troubles about banking is to keep the men
+honest, the temptation of handling so much money being great. They seem
+to have more chances to steal than men on the race course.”
+
+As usual, Porter seemed to be speaking out of his thoughts and without
+malice; no one took offense. It was simply a straightforward answer to
+Dolman's charge.
+
+Porter had simply summed up the whole business in a very small nutshell.
+That there was temptation everywhere, and that honest men and thieves
+were to be found on race courses, in banks, in every business, but that,
+like the horses, a fair share of them were honest.
+
+“Speaking materially of race horses quite outside of the moral aspect,”
+ said Crane, as he was taking his leave, “you'll have to be mighty
+careful of that Diablo, Mr. Porter, when Miss Allis is about; he seems a
+vindictive brute.”
+
+“Yes, John; you'll have to sell him right away; I'll be frightened to
+death while he's about the place.”
+
+“I shall never be a bit afraid of him,” remonstrated Allis; “Shandy, who
+made all the mischief, has been discharged.”
+
+“Diablo has always been more trouble than he's worth,” said Porter. “I
+thought he was going to be a good horse, but he isn't; and if he has
+taken to eating people I'll give him away some day. I wouldn't sell him
+as a good horse, and nobody'd buy a man-eater.”
+
+“I'll buy him when you make up your mind, Mr. Porter,” exclaimed Crane,
+somewhat eagerly. “I have nobody sweet enough to tempt his appetite. In
+the meantime, Miss Allis, if I were you I should keep away from him.”
+
+Then presently, with good-nights and parting words of warning about
+Diablo, the guests were gone; and Mortimer, having declined
+Porter's proffered help, was somewhat awkwardly--having but one good
+hand--preparing to retire in Alan's room.
+
+His mind worked somewhat faster than his fingers; several new problems
+had been given it to labor over within the compass of a single moon.
+That horse racing should ever become a disturbing interest in his life
+had seemed very improbable; now it was like a gale about his soul, it
+swayed him. He was storm-tossed in the disturbing element; he could come
+to no satisfying conclusion. On the one hand the thoroughbred horses
+were to be admired; they were brave and true, creatures of love. Also
+Porter was an honest man, the one thing he admired above all else.
+
+And Miss Allis! Somehow or other his eyes wandered to a picture that
+rested on a mantelpiece in the room. He took it down, looking furtively
+over his shoulder as he did so, and taking it close under the lamp that
+was on the table sat and gazed steadfastly into the girlish face.
+
+Even in the photograph the big, wondrous eyes seemed to say, “What
+of wrong, if we are not wrong?” That was the atmosphere so thoroughly
+straightforward and honest that wrong failed of contamination.
+
+Still it was unconvincing to Mortimer. The horses might be good, the
+man honest, and the girl pure and sweet, but the life itself was
+distasteful. Reason as one might, it was allied to gambling. Mortimer
+rose with a sigh, the whole thing wearied him. Why should he distress
+his mind over the matter? As he put the photograph back on the mantel he
+held it for an instant, then suddenly; with a nervous, awkward gesture,
+brought it to his lips and kissed the eyes that seemed to command
+tribute.
+
+The movement twisted his broken-ribbed side and an agony of pain came
+to him in quick retribution. It was as though the involuntary kiss had
+lurched him forward into a futurity of misery. The spasm loosed beads
+of perspiration which stood cold on his forehead. Swift taken from the
+stimulant of his thoughts, his nerves overtaxed by the evening, jangled
+discordantly, and he crept into bed, feeling an unutterable depression
+as though the room, was filled with evil, threatening spirits.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+In coincidence the two men, Mortimer and Crane, had similar thoughts
+the day after Mr. Dolman's discussion; and, rather remarkably,
+their deductions were alike, having the same subject of mental
+retrospect--Allis Porter.
+
+It was evident that outside of her family little interested her but
+horses; certainly not a very lofty aspiration. When the conversation had
+dealt with broad principles, men and their shortcomings, the previous
+evening, she had centralized it in Lauzanne, picturing him as symbolical
+of good acts and evil repute. Patently it was difficult to become
+interested in such a young woman; actually she monopolized their
+thoughts. Inconsistently the fair offender felt no recoil of this
+somewhat distressing situation; her mind busied itself chiefly over the
+reclamation of Lauzanne.
+
+By inheritance all the qualities of a good horse had come to him except
+a submissive temper. Allis worked on the theory that his disposition
+had been set awry by injudicious handling; that unlimited patience would
+cause him to forget all that. He could gallop, else he had not won the
+race in which he beat The Dutchman. That he had needed a stimulant that
+day was because he had been soured and would not try with his wits about
+him. From the time of coming back to Ringwood Allis had ridden him in
+all his exercise gallops, and had asked Mike personally to supervise his
+stable education. It had taken all her great patience, all her youthful
+enthusiasm and faith, for the Chestnut had notions beyond all belief. At
+first, missing the abuse, he almost seemed to thirst for it; tried the
+gentle girl in every way--sulked, and loafed, and took little streaks of
+trying to cut the course, and made false breaks as though he were going
+to run with a full vigor; even laid hold of the horses with his teeth
+when opportunity offered. These antics did not break the girl's faith;
+she rode him with the gentle hand a woman knows and a horse soon learns
+to appreciate, and gave him to understand that he was to have fair
+treatment.
+
+Porter viewed this continuous performance with silent skepticism. He did
+not abuse horses himself, neither did he put up with too much nonsense
+from them. To him they were like children, needing a lot of tolerant
+kindness, but, also, at times, to be greatly improved by a sound
+whipping. Once when he suggested something of this sort to Allis,
+saying that Lauzanne was a spoiled child, she admitted he was, but that
+thoughtless cruelty and not indulgence had done the harm, therefore
+kindness was the cure. The first sign of regeneration was the implicit
+faith that Lauzanne began to place in his young mistress. At first when
+she put up a hand to pet him he would jerk his head away in affright;
+now he snuggled her shoulder, or nibbled at her glove in full spirit of
+comradarie. Then one day in a gallop came a stronger manifestation,
+a brief minute of exhilaration, with after-hours of thankfulness, and
+beyond that, alas for the uncertainty of a spoiled temper, an added
+period of wallowing in the Slough of Despond!
+
+It was on a crisp, sparkling morning, and with Shandy--it was before his
+downfall--on Lucretia, another stable lad, Ned Carter, on Game Boy, and
+Allis on Lauzanne, the three swung off for a working gallop of a mile or
+more. Lauzanne was in an inquisitive mood, as the other two raced on
+in front. What was his light-weighted rider up to anyway? Why did she
+always leave it to him to do just as he liked? Was she really deceiving
+him? Did she wish him to lie back there behind the others always? He
+fell to wondering what she would do if he were to take hold of the bit
+and spread his big muscles in one rushing gallop, and go on past the
+others and get home to the feed box first. He rattled the snaffle in his
+mouth with nervous indecision--he had a notion to try it.
+
+“Steady, my boy!” said Allis, as she slipped the reins back through her
+fingers till they stretched tight. A dozen times she had sought in vain
+to make him think she did not wish him to gallop, but something in the
+crisp air this morning threw him off his guard. Why should he be forced
+to lag behind? He stretched the arch of his neck straight till the bit
+held hard in his mouth; the ears pitched forward in eager point; the
+great frame under the girl quivered and sank closer to earth; the roar
+of his beating hoofs came up to her ears, muffled by the drive of the
+wind that was now a gale as the Chestnut raced into it with the speed
+of an express. How her heart sang! Here was speed, and with such
+stride--strong, and straight, and true! Low she crouched, and her call
+to Lauzanne was but a joyous whisper. Her small hands were framed in
+steel, strength to steady the big Chestnut as he swung round the course
+glued to the rail. On Lauzanne sped, and to the rhythm of his big
+heaving quarters the girl's soul sang a song of delight. At last, at
+last was coming her reward.
+
+And then, just when everything had been achieved, when the great
+gallop had brought them half up the stretch, something came to
+Lauzanne--perhaps the memory of the whipping finishes; at any rate, he
+curled up like a dog, threw his ears back--Allis could feel the sudden
+stiff prop of the forelegs as he set himself against the rush of
+speed--and in a dozen strides he was Lauzanne again, Lauzanne the
+Despised.
+
+And so it had gone on for weeks, Allis working out her theory up to the
+time of the trouble over Diablo. There was something in the girl's quiet
+determination that was masterful; perhaps that was why she had always
+had her own way at home. Now this mastery was spreading out wonderfully;
+Lauzanne, and Mike, and her father, and Crane, and Mortimer, all in
+different degrees of subjection, but, as Fate knew, all subject.
+
+Mrs. Porter's continual lament on the subject of racing had given Crane
+a keynote for his line of action. It was the day following her scoring
+of the tolerant husband that Crane revisited Ringwood full of his new
+idea.
+
+He had an impulse to buy back Lauzanne. For almost the first time in
+his life he experienced twinges of remorse; this was because of Allis.
+Porter's affairs were in a bad way, and he would probably accept eagerly
+an offer from Crane to lighten his load. Individually he cared little for
+Porter's financial troubles, but it was a good opportunity to prepare
+the way for a stronger pressing of his suit with the girl. With his
+usual fine discrimination he spoke to Mrs. Porter first, intimating
+never so slightly that her words had won his entire sympathy; that if
+her husband would sell any of the horses he would buy them.
+
+There was a convincing sincerity about Crane at all times; what he did
+he did with the full vigor of a man believing in its truth. One
+might almost have suspected that he deceived himself, that he had no
+conception of the unrighteousness of his acts. At any rate, he imposed
+most successfully upon the mother of Allis. Quite egotistically she
+attributed to herself the trend of his friendship. In racing phrase,
+Crane was out for a killing and playing his cards with consummate skill.
+
+With the master of Ringwood he went very straight to the point. This
+was possible, as Porter could not hesitate to discuss his financial
+condition with his banker. Crane offered to buy Lucretia; this with
+him was purely a speculation, but Porter would not part with his little
+mare. Then the banker spoke of Lauzanne, saying that he felt somewhat
+guilty since learning the previous evening that the horse had been
+doped. Porter failed to see where Crane had anything to do with it. But
+the latter insisted that he had unwittingly helped Langdon by speaking
+of Lauzanne as a good horse. He had known nothing of the matter, beyond
+that his trainer had assured him the horse would win; in fact, he had
+backed him.
+
+Porter laughed at the idea that responsibility could attach to Crane. As
+to the Chestnut, he was not worth a tenth of the three thousand he had
+cost--that was well known; and if Crane or any other man sought to
+buy him at that price it would savor too much of charity. At any rate,
+Lauzanne belonged to Allis, and Crane would have to bargain with her.
+
+Then there was Diablo, Crane said; his presence was a menace to Miss
+Porter.
+
+“I've nursed him for a good while,” Porter replied, “and he's a bad
+betting proposition--he's too uncertain. You don't want such a horse as
+that--nobody does. I'll keep him a bit longer, and put him in a handicap
+or two where the purse will be worth running for, and I won't have to
+back him; he'll get in with a featherweight, and some day may take it
+into his head to gallop, though he's a rank bad one.”
+
+Crane did not press the point; he understood Porter's motives
+throughout. He knew the master of Ringwood was an unchanging man, very
+set in his ways, adhering closely to his plans and opinions. So Crane
+went back to Brookfield without purchasing a horse, saying as he left,
+“I claim first privilege when you wish to sell.”
+
+He had talked to Porter in the stable, and Mike, busy near by, heard
+that part of their conversation referring to the horses.
+
+“They haven't got money enough in the bank to take the little mare from
+us yet, have they, Mike?” Porter said to Gaynor, full of his pride in
+Lucretia.
+
+“That they haven't, sor,” replied Mike, proudly. “But, faith, I wish th'
+gint hadn't come a-tryin' to buy her; it's bad luck to turn down a big
+offer fer any horse.”
+
+Porter smiled indulgently. This stable superstition did not appeal to
+him.
+
+“It would a-broke the bad luck, sor, to have let him took the Black.”
+
+“It would have broken his bank, you mean, Mike.”
+
+“Well, he'll break somewan's back here yet, an' I'm tellin' you that
+sthraight. They say a black cat's full av th! divil, but Diablo's ould
+Nick hisself, though I'm sayin'it was th' b'y Shandy's fault sp'ilin'
+him. An' if it wasn't fer Miss Allis it's a pity you couldn't a-sold
+him the Chestnut. He's a sawhorse--he's as heavy in th' head as a bag of
+salt; he'll never do no good to nobody. Them's the kind as kapes a man
+poor, eatin' their heads off, an' wan horse, or maybe two, in the
+stable earnin' th' oats fer them. It's chaper to cut th' t'roats av such
+cattle.”
+
+“I believe you're right, Mike,” Porter answered, quietly, as he left the
+stable.
+
+Crane, driving back to Brookfield, turned over in his mind the matter
+of his mission. He was satisfied. He had succeeded in the main objective
+point. It would have been a good move to have acquired Lucretia, to have
+tempted her owner to part with her for ready money in sight. The money
+would soon have disappeared; then Porter, with a lot of bad horses on
+his hand, would almost certainly have come more firmly into the grasp
+of Crane. The offer to buy Lauzanne had been a bit of saving grace, a
+faint, generous impulse, begot of Allis's regenerating influence; but
+Crane had discovered that Porter did not at all suspect him of interest
+in the fraud--that was a great something. He had also established
+himself firmly in Mrs. Porter's good graces, he could see. It would be
+indeed strange if in the end he did not succeed completely.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Shandy's escapade with Diablo had brought a new trouble to Mike Gaynor.
+
+The boy had been discharged with a severe reprimand from Mr. Porter, and
+a punctuation mark of disapproval from the Trainer's horn-like hand.
+He had departed from Ringwood inwardly swearing revenge upon everybody
+connected with that place; against Diablo he was particularly virulent.
+
+Mike tried to secure a boy in the Brookfield neighborhood to ride Diablo
+in his work, but Shandy's evil tongue wagged so blatantly about the
+horse's bad temper that no lad could be found to take on in the stables.
+Ned Carter might have ridden Diablo at work, but the big Black was
+indeed a horse of many ideas. He had taken a notion to gallop kindly
+while accompanied by Lucretia and Lauzanne; worked alone he sulked
+and was as awkward as a broncho of the plains. Also he disliked
+Carter--seemed to associate his personality with that of Shandy's.
+
+Mike's discontent over the hitch spread to John Porter. It was too bad;
+the horses had been doing so well. For three days Diablo had no gallop.
+On the fourth Porter determined to ride the horse himself; he would not
+be beaten out by an ungrateful whelp like Shandy. In his day he had been
+a famous gentleman jock, and still light enough to ride work.
+
+“I don't like the idea, sor; it's not good enough,” remonstrated Mike.
+
+But his master was obdurate. If Allis rode Lauzanne, why shouldn't he
+ride Diablo?
+
+Gaynor would have ridden the horse himself rather than have his master
+do so, but he had a bad leg. Once upon a time it had been crushed
+against the rail. Somebody must ride Diablo; the horse, naturally
+highstrung, was becoming wild with nervousness through being knocked out
+of his work.
+
+For three days after his discharge Shandy sat brooding with the low
+cunning of a forest animal over his fancied ill-treatment. More than
+once he had received money from Langdon for touting off to him Porter's
+stable matters; now in his unreasoning bitterness he contrasted Langdon
+and Porter.
+
+“Dick's white, he is, an' I'll go git a job from him. I gits half eat
+by that crazy skate, an' fired without a cent fer it. God drat 'em!”
+ he muttered; “I'll get even, or know why. They'll put Ned up on Diablo,
+will they? The sneak! He split on me fer beltin' the Black, I know, damn
+him! They ain't got another boy an' they won't git one. I'll fix that
+stiff, Carter, too; then they won't have no boy.”
+
+He drank beer, and as it irritated his ferret mind a devilish plot came
+into his being and took possession of him--a plot easy of execution
+because of his familiarity with the Ringwood stables.
+
+That night he slipped through the dark, like a hyena pup, to Ringwood.
+That the stable was locked mattered not. More than once, out of
+laziness, Shandy had shirked going to Mike's quarters for the keys and
+had found ingress by a small window, a foot square, through which the
+soiled straw bedding was thrown into the yard. Standing on the dung
+heap, Shandy worked open the board slide that closed this window, and
+wormed his weasel-form through the small opening. He passed down the
+passage between the stalls and entered a saddle room at the farther end.
+
+“The bloomin' thing used to be on the fourth peg,” he muttered, drawing
+his small figure up on tiptoe and feeling along the wall for something.
+“Blow me!” and he chuckled fiendishly as his fingers encountered the
+cold steel of a bit, “I'd know that snaffle in hell, if I got a feel of
+it.”
+
+There was a patent device of a twist and a loose ring in the center of
+the bit he clutched, which Porter had devised for Diablo's hard mouth.
+
+Shandy gave the bridle a swing, and it clattered to the floor from its
+peg. Diablo snorted and pawed the planks of his stall nervously.
+
+“All right, my buck,” hissed Shandy, “you wait till to-morror; you'll
+git the run of yer life, I'm thinkin', damn their eyes!” and he went
+off into a perfect torrent of imprecation against everybody at Ringwood,
+hushing his voice to a snarling whisper. Then he shut the door of the
+saddle room, sat down on the floor and pulled from his pocket a knife
+and stub of candle. He lighted the latter and held it flame down till
+a few drops of wax formed a tiny lake; into this he stuck the candle
+upright, shielding its flame with his coat. He opened the knife and
+laying it down, inspected minutely the bridle which lay across his leg.
+
+“It's Diablo's right enough,” he said; “I couldn't be mistook on the
+bit, nor them strong lines.”
+
+He picked up the knife, and holding the leather rein across the palm of
+his left hand started to saw it gently with the blade. Almost instantly
+he left off. “Of all the bloomin' ijits! God drat me fer a goat! He'd
+feel that cut the first slip through his fingers the leather took.”
+
+He gathered in the rein until he had it six inches from the bit. There
+he cut, stopping many times, and doubling the leather close to the light
+to see how deep he had penetrated.
+
+“There, Mr. Bloody Ned!” he exclaimed at last, as inspection showed that
+only the outer hard shell of the leather remained intact. “That'll just
+hold till the Black takes one of his cranky spells, an' you give him
+a stiff pull. God help you then!” Even this was a blasphemous cry of
+exultation; not a plea for divine assistance for the man he plotted
+against.
+
+His next move proved that his cunning was of an exceptional order. From
+his coat pocket he brought forth a pill box. In this receptacle Shandy
+dipped a forefinger, and rubbed into the fresh cut of the leather a
+trifle of blackened axle grease which he had taken from a wagon wheel
+before starting out. Then he wiped the rein with his coat tail and
+looked at it admiringly.
+
+“The bloke won't see that, blast him!”
+
+He hung the bridle up in its place, put out the candle, dropped it in
+his pocket and made his way from the stable.
+
+As he passed Diablo's stall the big Black snorted again, and plunged in
+affright.
+
+“You'll get enough of that to-morror,” sneered the boy. “I hope you and
+Ned both break your damn necks. Fer two cents I'd drop somethin' in your
+feed-box that'd settle you right now; but it's the skunk as split on me
+I want to get even with.”
+
+Shandy trudged back to where he nested in Brookfield and soon slept with
+calm restfulness, as though no evil had ever homed in his heart. In the
+first gray of the early morning he rose and went out to the race course.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+The course near Ringwood had formerly been a trotting track, and
+was still used at irregular intervals for the harness horses. In its
+primitive days a small, square, box-like structure had done duty as
+a Judges' Stand. With other improvements a larger structure had been
+erected a hundred yards higher up the stretch.
+
+It was to the little old stand that Shandy took his way. Inside he
+waited for the coming of Gaynor's string of gallopers as supremely happy
+in his unrighteous work as any evil-minded boy might be at the prospect
+of unlimited mischief.
+
+“Ned'll ride Diablo, sure; there's nothin' else to it,” he muttered.
+“I hope he breaks his blasted neck. I'll pay 'em out fer turnin' me off
+like a dog,” he continued, savagely, the small ferret eyes blazing
+with fury. “I'll learn the damn--Hello!” His sharp ears had caught the
+muffled sound of hoofs thudding the turf in a slow, measured walk. He
+peeped between the boards.
+
+“Yes, it's Mike. And the girl, too--blast her! She blamed me fer near
+bein' eat alive by that black devil of a dope horse. Hell!”
+
+This ambiguous exclamation was occasioned by the sight of his former
+master springing into the saddle on Diablo's back.
+
+“That's the game, eh? God strike me dead! I hope you git enough of
+him. My arms ache yet from bein' near pulled out of the sockets by that
+leather-mouthed brute. Gee, if the boss hasn't got spurs on! If he ever
+tickles the Black wit' 'em--say, boys, there'll be a merry hell to pay,
+and no pitch hot.”
+
+The young Arab spoke to the boards as though they were partners in his
+iniquity. Then he chuckled diabolically, as in fancy he saw Porter being
+trampled by the horse.
+
+“The girl's on Lauzanne,” he muttered; “she's the best in the lot, if
+she did run me down. A ridin' that sorrel mut, too, when she ought to be
+in the house washin' dishes. A woman ain't got no more business hangin'
+'round the stable than a man's got in the kitchen. Petticoats is the
+devil; I never could abide 'em.” Shandy sometimes harked back to his
+early English Whitechapel, for he had come from the old country, and had
+brought with him all the depravity he could acquire in the first five
+years of his existence there.
+
+“Ned's got the soft snap in that blasted bunch,” as his eye discovered
+Carter on Lucretia. “He's slipped me this go, but I've nobbled the boss,
+so I don't care. I'm next 'em this trip.”
+
+As the three horses and their riders came on to the course he pulled out
+a cheap stop-watch Langdon had equipped him with for his touting, and
+started and stopped it several times.
+
+“You'll pay fer their feed, you damn ole skinflint,” he was
+apostrophizing Porter, “an' I'll be next the best they can do, an'
+stan' in on the rake-off. Gee! I thought they was out fer a trial,” he
+muttered, looking disconsolately at the three as they cantered the first
+part of the journey. “I'll ketch 'em at the half, on the off chance,” he
+added.
+
+But though the timepiece in his hand clicked impatiently, after he
+pressed the stem with his thumb, as Diablo's black nozzle showed past
+the half-mile post, the three horses still cantered. Lauzanne was loping
+leisurely with the action of a wooden rocking-horse. Lucretia, her long,
+in-tipped ears cocked eagerly forward, was throwing her head impatiently
+into the air as though pleading for just one strong gallop. Diablo's
+neck was arched like the half of a cupid's bow; his head, almost against
+his chest, hung heavy in the reins tight-drawn in Porter's strong hands.
+His eyes, showing full of a suspicious whiteness, stood out from his
+lean, bony head; they were possessed of a fretful, impatient look. Froth
+flecked back from the nervous, quivering lips, and spattered against his
+black satin-skinned chest, where it hung like seafoam on holding sand.
+
+“Whoa! Steady, old boy!” Porter was coaxing soothingly. “Steady, boy!”
+
+“The ease up has put the very deuce into this fellow,” he flung over
+his shoulder to Allis, who was at Diablo's quarter. “He's a hard-mouthed
+brute if ever there was one.”
+
+“He'll be all right, dad,” she called forward, raising her voice, for
+the wind cut her breath; “Shandy rode him with a heavy hand, that's
+why.”
+
+“I'll put a rubber bit in his mouth, to soften it,” he pumped brokenly.
+“Let out a wrap, girl, and we'll breeze them up the stretch; come on.
+Carter, get to the front with the mare.” A quarter of a mile from the
+finish the horses raced into a swinging stride. Diablo was simply mad
+with a desire to gallop; but in the saddle was his master; no horse
+ever did as he wished with John Porter. Battling against the sharps
+his honesty might handicap him out of the strife, but in the saddle the
+elation of movement crept into his sinews, and he was superb, a king.
+As a jockey, he would have been unsurpassed. It filled his heart with
+delight to play with the fierce, imperious animal he rode.
+
+“Steady, my boy--no you don't!” This as Diablo stuck his neck straight
+out like an arrow and sought to hold the bit tight against the bridle
+teeth, that he might race at his own sweet will. Back came the right
+hand, then the left, three vicious saws, and the bit was loose and
+Diablo's head drawn down again close to the martingale. Lucretia and
+Lauzanne were pulling to the front.
+
+“Go on!” called Porter to Ned Carter; “I want to see the little mare in
+her stride. Take them out at three-quarter gallop down the back stretch.
+I'll be treading your heels off.”
+
+By this they were opposite the old stand, where Shandy was hiding. The
+boy, surmising that a gallop was on, and anxious to see them as they
+rounded the turn going down the back, had knocked a board loose to widen
+the crack. As the horses came abreast, Shandy, leaning forward in his
+eagerness, dislodged it at the top, and it fell with a clatter, carrying
+him half through the opening. The wind was blowing fair across the
+little stand, so the scent of the boy came to Diablo's nostrils at the
+same instant the startling noise reached his nervous ears. In a swerve
+he almost stopped, every muscle of his big body trembling in affright.
+Porter was nearly thrown from his seat by this crouching side step;
+the horse seemed to shrink from under him. Just for an instant, but the
+reins had flapped loose against the wet neck and Diablo felt freedom.
+With a snort he plunged forward like a wounded buck, and raced madly
+after Lucretia, who had bolted when the crash came.
+
+Porter had lost a stirrup in the sudden twist, and the reins had slipped
+through his fingers as he grabbed the mane on Diablo's wither to pull
+his weight back into the saddle.
+
+Now the black neck was straight and taut, flatcapped by the slim ears
+that lay close to the throatlatch. The thunder of his pounding hoofs
+reached to the ears of Lucretia and Lauzanne in front, and urged them
+onward. Carter had sat down in the saddle, and taken a steadying pull at
+the brown mare. Even Lauzanne seemed lifted out of his usual lethargy,
+and, widemouthed, was pulling Allis out of the saddle.
+
+“Curse the brute!” gasped Porter, burying his knees in the saddle flaps,
+and searching for the dangling stirrup with the toe of his right foot.
+Once he almost had it, but missed; the iron, swinging viciously, caught
+Diablo in the flank--it made little difference, his terror was complete.
+All the time Porter was kneading the dangling reins back through
+forefinger and thumb, shortening his hold for a strong pull at the
+galloping brute's head.
+
+“Who-o-o-a-h, who-o-o-ah, stead-y!” and, bracing himself against the
+pummel he swung the weight of his shoulders on the reins. As well might
+he have pulled at the rock of Gibraltar. Diablo's head was up, his teeth
+set hard and the man's strength was as nothing against the full-muscled
+neck of the big horse. Diablo was cutting down the lead the other two
+held over him, galloping like a demon. Porter felt that he must loosen
+the bit and throw that set head down to get command of the horse. One
+fierce yank to the right and the black head swayed a trifle; another to
+the left and--God in heaven! the rein snapped, and its loose end came
+back, slashing the rider across the face. He reeled with the recoil,
+nearly bringing Diablo to his knees with the sudden swing of weight on
+the right rein. Porter's brain jerked foolishly for an instant; then he
+was the trained horseman again, and had let the remaining leather slip
+through his fingers a trifle.
+
+“Go on!” he shouted to those in front; “go on--give me a lead! Hang to
+the course!”
+
+He realized now that the crazed brute under him must run himself out.
+All he could do was to sit tight and wait till Diablo had raced himself
+to a standstill. To use the one rein meant a crash into the rail, and
+surely death. Before, he had thought only of the horse's welfare; now
+it was a matter of his own life. All that remained to him was to keep a
+cool head, a steady nerve, and wait.
+
+Freed of restraint, not battled with, the Black's stride lengthened, his
+nostrils spread wider, the hoofs pounded quicker and quicker until the
+earth echoed with their palpitating beat. The other horses heard the
+turmoil, and they, too, became more afraid, and took up the mad rush.
+
+Diablo's reaching nose was at Lauzanne's hip when Allis took one swift
+backward glance. She saw the dangling rein, the set look in her father's
+face, the devil eyes of the horse, and for one breath-gasp her heart
+fluttered in its beat. As quickly she put the fear from her, and
+swinging Lauzanne a shade wide, left Diablo more room next the rail.
+
+“On, Lauzanne!” she called through drawn lips; and hitched encouragingly
+in the saddle.
+
+Lucretia was still in front, her speed mocking at the swift rush of
+Lauzanne and Diablo. But how the Black galloped! Every post saw him
+creeping up on the Chestnut, and Allis riding and nursing him to keep
+the runaway hemmed in at the turns, so that he could not crash through
+the outer rail. No one spoke again. Each knew that nothing was left to
+do but keep Diablo to the course, and ride, ride.
+
+Just in front of Lauzanne, with swinging stride raced the brown mare,
+waiting till the Chestnut should drop back beaten, to take up the
+running with Diablo. That was Carter's good judgment; and he rode as
+though it were the Derby, and he was nursing his mount for the last call
+at the finish.
+
+At the three quarters Lauzanne and Diablo were neck and neck; at the
+half, the Black was lapped on Lucretia; another furlong and she was
+laboring to keep her place, nose and nose with him.
+
+“I'm done,” panted Carter, feeling the mare swerve and falter; “I'm
+done--God help us!”
+
+Still there was no check in the Black's gallop; he was like a devil that
+could go on forever and ever.
+
+They had turned into the straight with Lucretia a neck to the bad, when
+Carter heard the girl's voice faintly calling, “Pull out, Ned!” The
+boy thought it fancy. Lauzanne the Despised couldn't be there at their
+heels. He had thought him beaten off long ago. But again the voice came,
+a little stronger, “Pull out, Ned!”
+
+This time there was no mistake. It might be a miracle, but it was
+his duty to obey. As he galloped, Carter edged Lucretia to the right.
+Without looking back he could feel Lauzanne creeping up between him and
+Diablo. Soon the Chestnut's head showed past his elbow, and they were
+both lapped on the Black. Halfway up the stretch Allis was riding
+stirrup to stirrup with her father. Porter's weight was telling on
+Diablo.
+
+“She's got him. Lauzanne'll hold him if he doesn't quit,” Carter
+muttered, as he dropped back, for Lucretia was blown.
+
+Past the finish post Lauzanne was a head in front, and Diablo was
+galloping like a tired horse.
+
+“He's beat!” ejaculated Carter. “Hello! that's it, eh? My word, what a
+girl!”
+
+He saw Allis reach down for the slack rein running from her father's
+hand to Diablo's mouth. “Missed! She's got it!” he cried, eagerly. “The
+devil!”
+
+As Allis grasped Diablo's rein, the horse, with sudden fury at being
+drawn toward Lauzanne, his old foe, snapped at the Chestnut. As he did
+so, thrown out of his stride, his forelegs crossed and he went down in
+a heap with the rider underneath. The force of his gallop carried the
+Black full over onto his back. He struggled to his feet, and stood,
+shaking like a leaf, with low-stretched neck and fearcocked ears,
+staring at the crushed, silent figure that lay with its face smothered
+in the soft earth. In a dozen jumps Allis stopped Lauzanne, threw
+herself from the saddle, and leaving the horse ran swiftly back to her
+father.
+
+“Oh, my God! he's dead, he's dead!” she cried, piteously, the nerve that
+had stood the strain of the fierce ride utterly shattered and unstrung
+at sight of the senseless form.
+
+“He's not dead,” said Carter, putting his hand over Porter's heart.
+“It's just a bad shake-up. Mike's coming, and we'll soon get him home.
+He'll be all right, Miss Allis--he'll be all right,” he kept muttering
+in a dazed manner, as he raised her father's head to his knee.
+
+“Take Lucretia and gallop for the docthor, Miss 'Allis,” commanded Mike
+coming up on the run. “We'll get yer father home in the buggy.”
+
+“In God's mercy, don't let him die, Mike,” and bending down she pressed
+her lips to the cold forehead that was driven full of sand. “Get him
+home quick, and try not to let mother see. I'll take Lauzanne.”
+
+Lauzanne had followed her and was standing waiting; his big eyes full of
+a curious wonderment. Mike lifted Allis to the saddle. As he drew back
+his hand he looked at it, then up at the girl. “Don't cry, Miss,” he
+said, struggling a little with his voice that was playing him tricks;
+“yer father's just stunned a bit. The dochtor'll brace him up all
+right.”
+
+“It's bad business, this,” he continued, as Allis galloped on her
+errand, and he helped Carter lift the injured man. “There, that's
+roight; jist carry his legs; I'll take him under the back.”
+
+As they moved slowly toward the buggy that stood in the paddock, Diablo
+followed at their heels as though he had done nothing in the world but
+take a mild gallop. “Ye black divil!” muttered Mike, looking over his
+shoulder; “ye've murthered wan av the best min as iver breathed. If I'd
+me way, I'd shoot ye. I'd turn ye into cat meat; that's what ye'r fit
+for!”
+
+“What broke the rein?” he asked of Carter as they neared the buggy;
+“what started thim goin'?”
+
+“Somebody was in the old stand,” Carter replied, as putting his foot on
+the step he raised himself and the dead weight of the limp man.
+
+“There, steady, Ned. Pull the cushion down in the bottom. Now ye've got
+it. Bot' t'umbs! it's as good as an ambulance. I'll hold his head in me
+lap, an' ye drive. Here, Finn,” he continued, turning to the boy who
+had caught and brought up Lucretia, “take the wee filly an' that divil's
+baste back to the barn; put the busted bridle by till I have a good look
+at it after. Go on, Ned; slow; that's it, aisy does it. When we get out
+on the turnpike ye can slip along.”
+
+When they had turned into the road he spoke again to Carter, “Ye were
+sayin', Ned, there was a guy in th' ould stan'.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Carter; “somebody was toutin' us off. A board broke, an'
+that frightened the boss's mount.”
+
+“I t'ought I see a b'y skinnin' off the track,” commented Gaynor. “First
+I t'ought it was Shandy, but what'd he be doin' there? Did ye see his
+face, Ned?”
+
+“I was too busy takin' a wrap on Lucretia; she was gettin' a bit out of
+hand.”
+
+When they came to the gate which gave entrance to Ringwood house Mike
+said to Carter, with rough sympathy in his voice: “Slip in ahead, Ned,
+and tell the Misses that the boss has had a bit av a spill. Say he's
+just stunned; no bones broke. Bot' t'umbs! though, I fear he's mashed to
+a jelly. Ask fer a bottle of brandy till we give him a bracer. Ned!” he
+called, as Carter slipped from the buggy, “see if ye kin kape the Misses
+from seein' the boss till the docthor comes. Git hould of the girl
+Cynthie, an' give her the tip that things is purty bad. Go on now; I'll
+drive slow wid wan hand.”
+
+Mike's kindly precautions were of little avail. Mrs. Porter saw the
+slow-moving conveyance crawling up the broad drive, and instinctively
+knew that again something terrible had occurred. That Allis was not
+there added to her fear.
+
+“He's just bad, ma'am,” Carter was saying, as Mike reached the steps.
+But she didn't hear him; her face was white, and in her eyes was the
+horror of a great fear, but from her lips came no cry; her silence was
+more dreadful than if she had called out.
+
+“We'll carry him, ma'am,” Mike said, as she came down the steps to the
+buggy, and clutching the wheel rim swayed unsteadily. “Jest git a bed
+ready, Misses,” Gaynor continued, softly; “git a bed ready, an' he'll be
+all roight afther a bit. He's just stunned; that's all, just stunned!”
+
+It was curious how the sense of evil had limited each one's vocabulary.
+
+“Let me help,” pleaded Mrs. Porter, speaking for the first time.
+
+“We'll carry him, Misses--he's just stunned,” repeated Mike, in a dreary
+monotone, as feeling each step carefully with his toe he and Carter bore
+the still senseless form into the house. The wife had got one of the
+battered hands between her own, and was walking with wide, dry, staring
+eyes close to her husband.
+
+“O John, John! Speak to me. Open your eyes and look at me. You're not
+dead; O God! you're not dead!” she cried, passionately, breaking down,
+and a pent-up flood of tears coming to the hot, dry eyes as the two men
+laid Porter on the bed that Cynthia had made ready.
+
+“There, Misses, don't take on now,” pleaded Mike. “The boss is jest
+stunned; that's all. I've been that way a dozen toimes meself,” he
+added, by way of assurance. “Where's the brandy? Lift his head, Ned;
+not so much. See!” he cried, exultantly, as the strong liquor caused
+the eyelids to quiver; “see, Misses, he's all roight; he's jest stunned;
+that's all. There's the dochtor now. God bless the little woman! She
+wasn't long!”
+
+The sound of wheels crunching the gravel, with a sudden stop at the
+porch, had come to their ears.
+
+“Come out av the room, Ma'am,” Mike besought Mrs. Porter; “come out av
+the room an' lave the docthor bring the boss 'round.” He signaled to
+Cynthia with his eyes for help in this argument.
+
+“Yes, Mrs. Porter,” seconded Cynthia, “go out to the porch; Miss Allis
+and I will remain here with the doctor to get what's needed.”
+
+“Ah, a fall, eh,” commented Dr. Rathbone, cheerily, coming briskly into
+the room. Then he caught Mike's eye; it closed deliberately, and the
+Irishman's head tipped never so slightly toward Mrs. Porter.
+
+“Now 'clear the room,' as they say in court,” continued the doctor, with
+a smile, understanding Mike's signal. “We mustn't have people about
+to agitate Porter when he comes to his senses. I'll need Cynthia, and
+perhaps you'd better wait, too, Gaynor. Just take care of your mother,
+Miss Allis. I'll have your father about in a jiffy.”
+
+“He's jest stunned; that's all!” added Mike, with his kindly, parrotlike
+repetition.
+
+It seemed a million years to the wife that she waited for the doctor's
+outcoming. Twice she cried in anguish to Allis that she must go in; must
+see her husband.
+
+“He may die,” she pleaded, “and I may never see his eyes again. Oh, let
+me go, Allis, I'll come back, I will.”
+
+“Wait here, mother,” commanded the girl. “Doctor Rathbone will tell us
+if--if--” she could not finish the sentence--could not utter the dread
+words, but clasping her mother's hands firmly in her own, kept her in
+the chair. Once Mike came out and said, “He's jest stunned, Ma'am. The
+docthor says he'll be all roight by an' by.”
+
+“He won't die--”
+
+“He's worth a dozen dead men, Ma'am; he's jest stunned; that's all!”
+
+There was another long wait, then Dr. Rathbone appeared.
+
+“Porter will be all right, Madame; it'll take time; it'll take time--and
+nursing. But you're getting used to that,” he added, with a smile, “but,”
+ and he looked fixedly at Allis, “he must have quiet; excitement will
+do more harm than the fall.”
+
+“Tell me the truth, doctor,” pleaded Mrs. Porter, struggling to her
+feet, and placing both hands on his shoulders, “I can stand it--see, I'm
+brave.”
+
+“I've told you the truth, Mrs. Porter,” the doctor answered. “There's no
+fear for your husband's recovery if he has quiet for a few days.”
+
+She looked into his eyes. Then crying, “I believe you, doctor; thank
+God for his mercy!” swayed, and would have fallen heavily but for Mike's
+ready arm.
+
+“She'll be better after that,” said the doctor, addressing Allis. “It
+has been a hard pull on her nerves. Just bathe her temples, and get her
+to sleep, if you can. I'll come back soon. Your father is not conscious,
+or will he be, I'm thinking, for a day or two. He has heavy concussion.
+Cynthia has full directions what to do.”
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+After Dr. Rathbone had left Mike and Carter went down to the stables.
+
+“I'll jest have a look at that broke rein,” said Gaynor; “that sthrap
+was strong enough to hang Diablo. If there's not some dirty business in
+this, I'll eat me hat. T'umbs up! but it was a gallop, though. The Black
+kin move whin he wants to.”
+
+“But what do you think of old Lauzanne?” exclaimed Carter. “He just wore
+Diablo down, hung to him like a bulldog, an' beat him out.”
+
+“It was the girl's ridin'; an' Lauzanne was feared, too. He's
+chicken-hearted; that's what he is. Some day in a race he'll get away in
+front av his horses, an' beat 'em by the length av a street. He'll be a
+hun'red to wan, an' nobody'll have a penny on.”
+
+When they arrived at the stable Mike headed straight for the harness
+room. The light was dim, coming from a small, high, two-paned window;
+but Mike knew where every bridle and saddle should be. He put his
+hand on Diablo's headgear, and bringing it down carried it through the
+passage to a stable door where he examined it minutely.
+
+“Jest what I tought. Look at that,” and he handed it to Carter for
+inspection. “How do ye size that up, Ned?”
+
+“The rein's been cut near through,” replied Carter. “I wonder it held as
+long as it did.”
+
+“A dirty, low-down trick,” commented Mike. “I'll hang it back on the peg
+just now, but don't use it again fer a bit.”
+
+As he reentered the saddle room briskly his heel slipped on the plank
+floor, bringing him down. “I'd take me oath that was a banana peel,
+if it was on the sidewalk,” he exclaimed, after a gymnastic twist that
+nearly dislocated his neck. “Some of ye fellows is pretty careless wit'
+hoof grease, I'm thinkin'.”
+
+More out of curiosity than anything else he peered down at the cause of
+his sudden slip. “What the divil is it, onyway?” he muttered, kneeling
+and lighting a match, which he held close to the spot. “Bot' t'umbs!” he
+exclaimed, “it's candle grease. Have aither of ye b'ys been in here wit'
+a candle? It's agin the rules.”
+
+“There isn't a candle about the barn, an' you know it, Mike,” cried
+Carter, indignantly.
+
+Mike was prospecting the floor with another light.
+
+“Here's two burnt matches,” he continued, picking them up. “An' they
+were loighted last night, too. See that, they're long, an' that means
+that they wasn't used for lightin' a pipe or a cigar--jes' fer touchin'
+off a candle, that's all. I know they was loighted last night,” he
+said, as though to convince himself, “fer they're fresh, an' ain't been
+tramped on. If they'd been here fer two or three days, roight in front
+of the door, they'd have the black knocked off 'em wid ye boys' feet.
+This wan didn't light at all hardly, an' there's a little wool fuzz
+stickin' to it. Gee! that manes some wan sthruck it on his wool pants.
+Git the lantern, Ned, p'raps we'll fin' out somethin' more. The light
+from that high up winder ain't good enough fer trackin' a bear.”
+
+When the lantern was brought, Mike continued his detective operations,
+nose and eyes close to the floor, like a black tracker.
+
+“What's that, Ned?” he asked, pointing his finger at a dark brown spot
+on the boards.
+
+Carter crouched and scrutinized Mike's find. “Tobacco spit,” and he gave
+a little laugh.
+
+“Roight you are; that's what it is. Now who chaws tobaccie in this
+stable?” he demanded of Carter, with the air of a cross-examining
+counsel.
+
+“I don't.”
+
+“Does Finn?”
+
+“No; I don't think so.”
+
+“Didn't Shandy always have a gob of it in his cheek--the dirty pig?”
+
+“Yes, he did, Mike.”
+
+“I t'ought so; I t'ought it was that blackguard. But how did the swine
+get in here? The stable was locked, an' I had the key in me pocket. I'll
+take me oath to that.”
+
+Carter took his cap off, ran a hand reflectively up and down the crown
+of his head, canvassing every possible entry there might be to the
+stalls. Suddenly he replaced his cap and whistled softly. “I know, Mike;
+he crawled through the dung window. I've seen him do it half a dozen
+times. When he was too lazy to go for the keys, he'd wiggle through that
+hole.”
+
+Mike said nothing, but led the way to the back of the stable. There he
+climbed upon the pile of rotting straw, and examined closely the small,
+square opening, with its board slide, through which Shandy had passed
+the night before.
+
+“God! I t'ought so!” he ejaculated. “Here's more tobacco spit, where the
+cutt'roat divil stood when he opened the winder.”
+
+Looking down, his eye caught the glint of something bright deep in the
+straw. He dug his hand down into the mass and brought up a knife. “Whose
+is that, Ned?” he queried.
+
+Carter looked at it closely. “Shandy's,” he answered; “I'll swear to
+that. I've borrowed it from him more than once to clean out the horses'
+hoofs.”
+
+“Bot' t'umbs up! I'd hang that b'y to a beam if I had him here. He cut
+that rein as sure as God made little apples,” declared Mike, vehemently.
+“An' the gall av him to go an' sit there in the ould stand to watch the
+Black run away wit' somewan an' kill 'em. Now jest kape yer mouth shut,
+Ned, an' we'll put a halter on this rooster. By hivins! when I git him
+I'll make him squale, too!”
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+The seriousness of Porter's accident became clearer to Doctor Rathbone
+the following day. He imparted this information to Allis; told her that
+in all probability it would be weeks before her father would be strong
+again.
+
+“In the meantime, little woman, what are you to do with all these hungry
+horses on your hands?” he asked.
+
+The girl's answer came quickly enough, for she had lain awake through
+all the dreary night, thinking out this problem. Without medical
+knowledge she had felt certain that her father was badly injured, and
+the gloomy future had come to her in the darkness instead of sleep.
+
+“I'll look after them,” she answered the doctor, quite simply.
+
+A smile of skepticism hovered about his full lips, as he raised his eyes
+to the girl's face, but the look of determination, of confidence that he
+met put his doubts to flight. “I believe you can do it, if any man can,”
+ and he put his big hand on her slight shoulders, as much as to say, “I'm
+behind you; I believe in you.”
+
+Of course an inkling of Porter's condition had to be given his wife,
+though the full gravity was masked. This was done by Allis, and Mrs.
+Porter immediately became a prey to abject despair.
+
+The first thing to be done was to get rid of Diablo. She was too gentle
+to ask that he be shot, but he must go, even if he be given away.
+She would willingly have sacrificed all the horses. Always with their
+presence had come financial troubles, spiritual troubles; now the lives
+of those dear to her were in actual peril. No wonder the good woman was
+rendered hysterical by the strong emotions that swayed her.
+
+In her depression she somewhat startled Allis by insisting that they
+must send for Mr. Crane at once. After all, it was not so unreasonable;
+with the master of Ringwood helpless, who else could they consult with
+over their entangled condition? For, the past year Porter had found it
+necessary to keep in constant touch with the bank; so they must become
+familiar with the details of the entanglement.
+
+Mrs. Porter had come to have the utmost confidence in Crane's friendship
+and ability; he was the one above all others to have Diablo taken off
+their hands. So Philip Crane, to his intense delight, was summoned to
+Ringwood. This was his first knowledge of Porter's mishap, for he had
+been in New York.
+
+Crane was supposed to possess a rare magnetism; most certainly men came
+under his influence with a noiseless, cheerful complaisance. It may have
+been that there was a slight fascination in the oblique contour of his
+eyes, but in reality his power lay in his exquisite finesse; people
+delved for him under the impression that they were laboring according to
+the dictates of their own sweet wills. Figuratively speaking, he twisted
+Mrs. Porter round his finger, and so delightfully, that she was filled
+with gratitude because of Crane's kindness in their hour of trouble.
+
+The matter of Diablo was settled in a minute; he would buy the horse
+himself, and the price could be arranged when Mrs. Porter was able to
+discuss the matter--that is, definitely; in the meantime he would pay
+a thousand for him. He understood Porter had bough him for that price.
+With a touch of kindly humor, Crane declared that he would have a small
+bet on the horse for Allis the first time he started.
+
+Beyond parting with Diablo, Allis would not go farther in the matter of
+selling the horses; this was the full extent of her concession to the
+mother. Had she known that her father had entered Diablo in the Brooklyn
+Handicap she might even have refused to part with the horse. As it
+happened, Porter had entered both Lucretia and Diablo in the Brooklyn a
+day or so before his accident, but had not spoken of it.
+
+Crane assured Mrs. Porter that she need not distract her mind over money
+matters, the bank could easily carry their lead until her husband was
+himself again. No matter how things turned out, it was a delicate matter
+to touch upon, the possibility of Porter's condition taking a
+serious turn, but coming from Crane it seemed like an earnest of his
+sincerity--well, Mrs. Porter would find a friend in him, quite willing
+and able to smooth their difficult path.
+
+Crane had meant to defer any protestations of regard for Allis until
+a propitious future, but with his quick perception he saw that the
+psychological moment had been moved forward by the sudden effacement of
+the master of Ringwood. If he spoke now to Mrs. Porter it would give
+her a right to call upon his services. He would appear in the light of
+a debtor; it would break down barriers which might seem to exist because
+of their non-relationship.
+
+Crane had not been without a suspicion that the younger man, Mortimer,
+might prove a rival; heroics such as the Diablo episode were apt to
+give young people a romantic interest in each other; Fate had more than
+evened matters up by giving him the present opportunity. He thought with
+some satisfaction how perfectly helpless Mortimer was in the present
+instance, for he was most undeniably poor. It was an opportunity to be
+grasped; and Crane never let the tide pass its flood in the waters of
+his life.
+
+So the banker spoke to Mrs. Porter of his strong love for Allis; so
+delicately, and with so much sincerity, that she was completely won
+over. It is true, the ground had been prepared for the seed, for the
+mother had long feared that Allis might become attached to some one of
+Porter's racing associates. Though strong in spiritual matters, the
+good woman was not without worldly instinct. She was pleased with Crane
+personally; he was not by any means a racing man; a rich banker, who
+would make a most desirable husband for her daughter. Of course, it
+would rest with the girl herself. Mrs. Porter would not coerce nor
+influence her; but why should not Allis come to care for Crane under the
+influence of his strong love?
+
+Mrs. Porter's mind had rebounded from its dazed condition after her
+husband's accident, and was now acute. All these thoughts came to her
+with rapidity, as Crane talked with masterly judgment.
+
+To the mother's suggestion that he speak to Allis he put forward a plea
+of delicate consideration for the girl; he would rather deny himself; he
+would wait patiently until her mind was in a happier condition. Cleverly
+enough he knew that Mrs. Porter was now his ally, and would plead his
+cause with less chance of failure than if he startled Allis by the
+sudden fronting of life's great problem.
+
+When Crane had gone Allis found her mother calmed by his visit; his
+assurances had driven away distressing clouds of financial worry.
+
+Almost immediately Mrs. Porter transmitted to the girl what had come to
+her of Crane's declaration.
+
+“It seems almost like an answer to my prayer,” she said to Allis; “not,
+of course”--she interrupted herself--“that I've been praying for a
+husband for you, but this wicked racing has warped the whole woof of
+my life; it seemed inevitable in the strength of its contaminating
+atmosphere that you would be wedded into it, though one were better dead
+than willingly choose a path of sin.”
+
+“Then you've settled it, mother!” Allis's big eyes took on a dangerous
+look of rebellion.
+
+“No, daughter; you must choose for yourself; only you will be wise not
+to go contrary to your parent's wishes. I did--”
+
+“But you are not sorry, mother?” there was reproach in the girl's voice.
+
+“Not for having wedded your father, but because of his racing life. I
+should have been firmer, and asked him to give it up before I married
+him. He might have done it then. Mr. Crane is a gentleman, Allis. That
+is a great deal nowadays, and he loves you most sincerely. Words often
+mean very little, but one can tell--at least when they've come to years
+of discretion they can--from a man's voice whether he is in earnest or
+not. I suppose it is very worldly to speak of his riches, but in poverty
+one can do very little, very little good. I had rather that you didn't
+have to look with misgiving into the future, Allis; it has taken much
+joy out of my existence. The dread of poverty is a nightmare; it wears
+one's life threadbare. To the young, buoyed up by confidence in the rosy
+future, this may seem sordid, but this feeling of insecurity mars many
+lives which might otherwise be happy.
+
+“You see, Allis,” her mother continued, “I know you are heart-whole, so
+I can't cause you any misery by my well-meant advice. You've been a good
+girl, and there has been nobody of your class about. Mr. Mortimer is,
+I dare say, a gentleman, and I must confess I was afraid that you might
+mistake a feeling of generosity to him for something stronger; but that
+was only an idle fancy, I see. It would have been unfortunate if it
+were otherwise, for he is very poor indeed. His small salary must be all
+taken up in keeping himself, his widowed mother, and a younger sister.”
+
+Allis gave a sudden start. She had not known these particulars of
+Mortimer's life; but they carried certain explanations of his conduct.
+Quite casually she had formed an impression that he was penurious;
+something he had dropped about not being able to afford certain
+pleasures. That was where the money went--to support his mother and
+sister. Unwittingly her mother was pleading the cause of two men.
+
+The mother's talk depressed Allis greatly. Why should this troublesome
+matter come to her when she had so much to bear, so much to do. It gave
+her quite a shock to find that as her mother talked she was not
+thinking of Crane at all. She could not picture his face, even; just the
+narrow-lidded eyes peeped at her in her thoughts once or twice; it would
+be horrible to look into them forever and ever. The face of Mortimer,
+pale and firm-set as it had been in that day of strife, was always
+obliterating the other visage. Was her mother right? Was she so
+heart-whole? As if her thoughts had bearing on her mother's mind, the
+latter said: “I wouldn't have spoken to you of this matter while your
+father is so ill if it weren't for the fact that our position is
+very precarious. I can't understand just how badly off we are, but if
+anything were to happen your father, I hardly know what would become of
+us.”
+
+“And Mr. Crane has promised to help us if--if--” There was a hard ring
+in the girl's voice as she spoke, getting not past the “if,” refusing to
+put into words the distressing thought.
+
+“There is no 'if' about it, daughter. Mr. Crane is our friend, your
+father's friend, and he is going to help us; and he only spoke of
+his regard for you by way of an excuse--it was delicacy on his part,
+thinking that I would have less compunction in accepting his good
+offices. All I ask, girl, is that you will try to like Mr. Crane; if you
+can't, well, you won't find me making you unhappy. But I can tell you
+this, Allis, unless matters mend, and how the change is to come I can't
+say, your father will lose Ringwood and it will belong to Mr. Crane.
+Even if the horses were sold off, the money would not clear the debts;
+besides, I think that even the horses are encumbered.”
+
+Allis stood in indecision for a little, thinking deeply; then she went
+up to her mother, and, taking her face in her hands, kissed her.
+
+“I understand, mother,” she said, “you are worrying over the dear old
+place, over my future, and over father, and it is nothing but worry,
+worry, worry all the time. But I'll save Ringwood for you, mother.
+I hope father will soon be well again and that luck will change; but
+anyway, mother, I promise you that no matter what effort it costs me you
+sha'nt sacrifice the dear old place.”
+
+Mrs. Porter's eyes were wet with tears of gratitude. She was thinking
+only of the redemption of the place through Crane; but Allis's words
+had meant far more than she had taken from them. They were inspired by a
+faith that she could save their fortunes without sacrificing herself to
+Crane. If not, if she failed, she was brave, she was a Porter, and would
+keep her word and save Ringwood, even at that price.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Journeying back to New York, Crane reviewed in detail his interview
+with Mrs. Porter. He congratulated himself upon his wisdom in having
+instituted his love suit by proxy. With all his masterfulness he was
+very considerably in awe of Miss Allis. There was a not-to-be-daunted
+expression in her extraordinary eyes which made him feel that a love
+tilt with her would be a somewhat serious business. He pictured himself
+as an ardent lover; he would cut a droll figure in that role, he knew;
+emotions were hardly in his line. He might feel such an assertive
+emotion as love quite as strongly as anyone, in fact, did, but could he
+express himself with faultless consistency? He rather doubted it. His
+usual slow-advancing method was certainly ordained of this intricate
+endeavor; and he had made great progress with the mother, the one above
+all others to be placated; adversity, continuous as it promised to
+be, would probably settle Porter's influence in his favor. His plan of
+action plainly was to be often at Ringwood to familiarize the household
+with his presence. The acquiring of Diablo would facilitate that.
+
+Diablo--a skate! He laughed to himself over his purchase. Certainly
+Langdon would laugh at him, too; not openly, of course; Crane wouldn't
+tolerate that. What an influence this girl had over him, to be sure! Any
+man who had endeavored to sell him a bad horse would have had a hopeless
+task; with but a nod of encouragement from Allis he would have bought
+every horse--all the useless crooks they had; the stable was full of
+them, Lauzanne among the rest.
+
+The influence was dividing his nature into a dual one; starting into
+life infantile thoughts of a generous morality; an unrest of great
+vigor was coming to him, retribution; possibly the power to feel the
+difference between an avariciousness, fathering dishonesty, and this new
+recognition of other rights.
+
+On his arrival in New York he sent for his trainer.
+
+“I bought a horse at Ringwood. I want you to look after him, Langdon,”
+ he said. “Their man, Gaynor, will send him direct to your stables.”
+
+The Trainer's face brightened. “Did you get Lucretia after all?”
+
+“No; I bought a big black, Diablo.”
+
+The look of delight faded from Langdon's eyes quickly. “The devil!” he
+exclaimed.
+
+“That's what I said; that's his name.”
+
+“But he's the most uncertain brute that ever wore a set of plates.
+You'll get no good of him, sir; he's bad, clean through. It's come down
+to him from his second sire, Robert the Devil, without a bit of the
+good, either. He'd break a man that would follow him.”
+
+“He won't break me,” answered Crane, quietly; “nor you, either,
+Langdon--you've got too much sense.”
+
+This subtle tribute mollified the Trainer.
+
+Crane proceeded: “I remember the horse quite well. Four thousand was
+paid for him as a yearling; as a two-year-old he was tried out good
+enough to win the Futurity; but when it came to racing he cut it and
+finished in the ruck.”
+
+“That's right,” commented Langdon. “He owes me a good bit, that same
+Johnny; his people thought him a lead-pipe cinch, and I went down the
+line on him to my sorrow.”
+
+“Just so. You know him as well as I do. It's a great way to get
+acquainted with them, isn't it, Langdon; put your money on, and have the
+good thing go down?”
+
+Langdon had the highest possible opinion of his master's astuteness and
+began to waver in his antipathy to Diablo.
+
+“You think he's really good, then, sir; did he show you a fast trial?”
+
+“I didn't even see the horse,” Crane answered, looking dreamily out of
+the window. “I bought him to--”
+
+He paused in reflection; he couldn't tell Langdon why he had bought him,
+and he hardly cared to have his prestige with the Trainer destroyed. He
+continued, shifting the subject--matter a trifle, “You did John Porter
+up over Lauzanne last summer, Langdon--”
+
+“Me?” questioned 'the Trainer. Was Crane forgetting his share in the
+matter?
+
+“Yes, you!” affirmed the other, looking him steadily in the eye. “You
+sold him Lauzanne, and Lauzanne was loaded.”
+
+Langdon said nothing. What the devil was coming?
+
+“Well,” drawled Crane, “Porter's badly hurt; he's out of the race for
+some time to come. They're friends of mine.”
+
+“They're friends,” mused Langdon; “who in thunder are they?”
+
+“They're friends of mine, and I offered to buy Lauzanne back, just to
+help them out; but the old man's daughter has got the Chestnut for a
+hack, and she won't sell him. It was Diablo's fault that Porter got the
+fall, so they were willing to part with him, and I took the brute.”
+
+This was certainly a new role for Crane to play, Langdon thought;
+his employer helping people out when they were in difficulties was
+a revelation. The Trainer felt inclined to laugh. No doubt there was
+something back of it all; some tout must have given Crane information
+of a fast gallop Diablo had done, and he had gone to Ringwood to buy the
+horse, thinking that Porter would be selling some of his racers owing to
+the accident.
+
+Langdon tried to remember what Shandy had said about Diablo, or whether
+the boy had mentioned his name at all.
+
+“I wonder what condition he's in?” the Trainer remarked, questioningly.
+
+“Physically I think he's all right; it seems he galloped something under
+forty miles with Porter before he came a cropper. But I understand they
+had an imp of a boy, Sheedy, or 'Shaney'--”
+
+“Shandy,” corrected Langdon.
+
+“Yes, that's the name,” affirmed Crane, drawing a semicircle in the air
+with his cigar, “and he's a devil on wheels, by all accounts. Diablo's
+no angel, as you've said, Langdon, and this boy made him a heap worse.
+You've handled some bad horses in your time, and know more about it than
+I do; but I'd suggest that you put Westley--he's a patient lad--to look
+after the Black; give him quite a bit of work, and when you've got him
+right, try him out with something, and if he shows any form we'll pick
+out a soft spot for him. Let me see, he's a maiden--fancy that, buying a
+four-year-old maiden!”
+
+Langdon laughed approvingly. Crane was evidently coming back to his view
+of the case.
+
+“Well, as I've said, he's a maiden, and we'll try and graduate him out
+of that class. It will be a great chance for a killing if we can round
+him into his early two-year-old form; and you can do it, Langdon, if
+anybody on earth can.”
+
+“Now I've got him on his reputation,” thought Crane, idly brushing
+specks of cigar ash from the front of his coat.
+
+“Just as I thought,” mused Langdon; “the old man's got a horse after his
+own heart. Everybody thinks Diablo's no good, but the boss has found out
+something, and is on for the biggest kind of a coup.”
+
+“How's The Dutchman coming on?” asked Crane, intimating by the question
+that the subject of Diablo bad been closed out, for the present, at
+least.
+
+“Great. He cleans up his four quarts three times a day, and is as big as
+a cart horse. I never had a better doer in my hands. If he keeps well,
+and I think he will, you have a great chance with him for the Brooklyn
+Derbv.”
+
+“That's encouraging. There are some good horses in it, though, White
+Moth and others. However, I'll back The Dutchman to win fifty thousand,
+and there'll be ten thousand in that for you, Langdon, if it comes off.”
+ The Trainer's mouth watered. Money was his god. Horses were all right as
+a means to an end, but the end itself was gold. He would stop at nothing
+to attain that end; his avaricious mind, stimulated by Crane's promise,
+came at once to the disturbing element in the pleasant prospect,
+Shandy's report of Lucretia's good form.
+
+“Did you find out anything about Porter's mare Lucretia? I know White
+Moth's form; both fit and well. The Dutchman holds him safe over the
+Derby journey.”
+
+“No; I didn't hear anything about Porter's mare.”
+
+“I have,” said Langdon, decisively. “I paid a boy to keep an eye on her,
+and he says she'll be hard to beat.”
+
+Crane frowned. “What boy?” he asked, abruptly.
+
+“Shandy.”
+
+“Well, just drop that; chuck that game. John Porter has his own
+troubles. If he can win, let him. He can't if The Dutchman keeps well;
+but anyway, our own horses will keep us fully occupied.”
+
+Langdon was dumbfounded. If Crane had opened the Bible and read a
+chapter from St. Luke he would not have been more astonished. It had
+occurred to him that he had done a remarkably smart thing; he had
+expected commendation for his adroitness in looking after his master's
+interests. This disapprobation of such a trivial matter as the touting
+off of an opponent's horses was another new discovery in his master's
+character. Where were they at, anyway? Presently Crane would be asking
+him to give the public a fair run for their money each time out.
+
+All at once a light dawned upon Langdon. Crane was doubling on him. He
+saw it like a flash. His employer had a tout on the ground himself; that
+was how he had got next some good performance of Diablo's. My, but it
+was clever; he could appreciate it. Crane rose in his estimation again.
+
+Quite humbly he answered: “Very, well; it's not my funeral; I'll bring
+The Dutchman to the post fit to run the race of his life. If Lucretia
+beats him it won't be my fault. I thought perhaps you might want to
+hedge a bit on Porter's mare.”
+
+“I don't think it. I'll stand The Dutchman; there are too many in
+to start backing them all. Let me know if the Black gives you any
+encouragement, and I'll see about placing him.”
+
+After Langdon had gone Crane lighted a fresh cigar and let his thoughts
+circle about Allis and Diablo. It would be just like the play of Fate
+for the horse to turn out good, now that John Porter had got rid of him.
+When evil fortune set its hard face against a man he could do little
+toward making the wicked god smile, and Porter, even when he was about,
+was a poor hand at compelling success.
+
+   . . . . . . . . . .
+
+Jakey Faust learned of Diablo's transition from Porter's to Langdon's
+stable. This information caused him little interest at first; indeed, he
+marveled somewhat at two such clever men as Crane and Langdon acquiring
+a horse of Diablo's caliber.
+
+Faust's business relationship with Crane was to a certain degree
+tentative. Crane never confided utterly in anybody; if agents obeyed
+his behests, well and good; and each transaction was always completed in
+itself. He had discovered Faust and used him when it suited his purpose.
+
+Some time after the purchase of Diablo, Jakey, reading his Morning
+Telegraph, came with much interest upon the entries for the Brooklyn
+Handicap, published that day. They were all the old campaigning Handicap
+horses, as familiar to Faust as his fellow members of the betting ring.
+As his eye ran down the long list a sudden little pig grunt of surprise
+bubbled up through his fat throat. “Gee, Diablo! Oh, ho, Mr. Crane!”
+
+He tore out the list and put it in his pocket; then he sat for a time,
+thinking. The result was a run down to Gravesend to pay just a friendly
+visit to Langdon.
+
+As far as Crane was concerned, the Trainer and the Bookmaker were like
+two burglars suddenly coming upon each other while robbing the same
+house; they were somewhat in a condition of armed neutrality, toward
+each other.
+
+Faust hoped that Langdon would talk about Diablo; but the Trainer was
+like most of his guild generally, a close-mouthed man, so Jakey had to
+make his own running.
+
+“What's the boss goin' to do with Diablo?” he asked Langdon.
+
+“Must 've bought him for a work horse, I guess,” the Trainer answered.
+
+“Is he any good?”
+
+“He can eat; that's all I see from him yet.”
+
+“What did he buy him for?”
+
+“To help a snoozer that was sittin' in bad luck.”
+
+Faust had an odd habit of causing his fat sides to ripple like troubled
+water when he wished to convey the impression that he was amused; he
+never laughed, just the rib ripple.
+
+“What's funny?” Langdon asked, eying Jakey, with querulous disfavor.
+
+“Crane buying a horse to help a man,” answered the Cherub, wondering if
+Langdon was so devoid of humor as to take it seriously.
+
+“Crane told me so himself,” said the Trainer; “Porter's hurt, an' I
+guess they're in a hole, an' the boss took over Diablo.”
+
+“Say, Dick,” and Faust edged close enough to tap the other man's ribs
+with his thumb, “were you born yesterday? I say,” continued the Cherub,
+for Langdon had turned away somewhat impatiently, “what's the good av
+givin' me that gup; you didn't stand for it yourself--not on yer life.
+Th' old man's pretty slick; buys a bad horse to help a poor mutt, an'
+enters him in the Brooklyn, eh?”
+
+“The Brooklyn!” exclaimed Langdon, thrown off his guard.
+
+With corpulent intensity the Cherub melodramatically drew from his
+pocket the Telegraph clipping and tendered it to Langdon, watching the
+latter's face closely. “That's the pea, Dick, eh?” he asked.
+
+Langdon was thinking. Was Crane doubling on him all around? Why the
+devil hadn't he told him?
+
+“Now you ain't takin' in that fairy tale of Crane's any more'n I am,
+Dick. Why can't we do a bit for ourselves over this; it won't hurt the
+boss none. Won't throw him down. This horse was a good youngster, an'
+Crane didn't get him without seein' him do somethin'. You jest keep me
+posted, an' if he shapes good I can back 'm fer an old-time killin',
+see? I'll divvy up straight.”
+
+Langdon didn't answer at once--not with satisfaction to Faust; he knew
+that Crane held the butter for his bread, even the bread itself; but
+here was a man with cake, and he loved cake. Finally, in the glamour
+of Jakey's talk of untold wealth to be acquired, Langdon, swayed by
+the cupidity of his nature rather than his better judgment, promised
+half-heartedly to cooperate with Faust.
+
+But no sooner had the latter gone than the lode-star of Langdon's
+self-interest flickered clearly in view, and he promised Mr. Jakey,
+mentally, a long trip to a very hot place, indeed, rather than a
+surreptitious partnership over Diablo.
+
+It was some little time after this, while Faust was feeling somewhat
+irritated at the absence of information from Langdon, that he had an
+interview with Crane.
+
+“I want you to back The Dutchman to win fifty thousand for me over the
+Brooklyn Derby,” the latter said.
+
+“But there's no winner book on it,” objected Faust.
+
+“That's just where your cleverness will come in,” suavely answered
+Crane. “There's no hurry, and there are always people looking for
+foolish money. There's one such in Chicago, O'Leary; and I fancy they
+could even be found in New York. But you ought to get fifty to one,
+about it, if you put it on easy.”
+
+“I see you have Diablo entered for the Brooklyn,” Faust put out as a
+feeler. “Don't you want a commission worked on him?”
+
+“I didn't enter him; that was somebody else's foolishness, and I don't
+want to back him.”
+
+“He's a hundred to one.”
+
+“A thousand would be short odds, I should say,” answered Crane. “But
+wait a bit. I bought him just to--well, I took him from some people who
+were tired of his cannibal ways, and promised to have a small bet on him
+the first time he ran, for--for the man.” The equivocation was really a
+touch of delicacy. “You might take the odds to fifty for me; there's not
+one chance in a million of his starting, but I might forget all about
+this little matter of the bet, even if I were foolish enough to pay
+post-money on him.”
+
+“Hadn't I better dribble on more from time to time, if he has a chance?”
+
+“Not of my money, thanks!” The “thanks” clipped like a steel trap, and
+the business was completed.
+
+Faust went away more than ever suspicious of Crane and Diablo. That
+fifty dollars being put on for anybody else was bunkum. What was Crane
+up to anyway? If he really meant to back the horse he would not have
+started with such a trifle. Perhaps Diablo had been stuck in the
+Brooklyn simply to see how the handicapper would rate him.
+
+Faust was convinced that Crane had some big coup in view; he would wait
+a little, and at the first move have a strong play himself.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Langdon was a consummate trainer, a student of horse character. He knew
+that while biniodide of mercury would blister and put right a bowed
+tendon, or the firing iron take the life out of a splint, that a much
+finer knowledge than this was requisite to get fullhearted work out of
+a thoroughbred. Brain must be pitted against brain; so he studied
+his horses; and when Diablo came into his hands, possessed of a mind
+disease, he worked over him with considerable intelligent patience.
+
+This study of horse character was the very thing that had caused him to
+go wrong over Lauzanne. He had not gone quite far enough; had not
+waited for time to demonstrate clearly the horse's temperament, but had
+recourse to a cocaine stimulant. But with him Lauzanne's case had been
+exceptional.
+
+At first there was little encouragement over Diablo, but almost by
+accident Langdon discovered that the Black's bad temper was always
+fanned into a blaze by the sight of the boy Shandy.
+
+Then came a glint of hope. Diablo took a fancy to Westley, the jockey,
+who was experimentally put on his back in the working gallop. After that
+Shandy was kept out of the way; Westley took Diablo under his care, and
+the big horse began to show a surprising improvement.
+
+Crane had been quite honest in his statement that he thought Diablo a
+bad horse. His having been entered by Porter in the “Brooklyn” suggested
+the possiability that his former owner must have seen some merit in the
+horse. At any rate, he advised Langdon to give Diablo a patient trial.
+He really had very little idea that the horse would start in the
+Handicap--it seemed improbable. Langdon was also convinced that Porter
+had discovered something great in Diablo; that Crane knew this, and had
+paid a stiff price for the horse, and to his own ends was keeping it
+dark.
+
+As the winter turned into April he intimated to Crane that it was time
+for them to decide the placing of the horses, and suggested that they
+try them out. Crane had already decided to race The Dutchman this
+year in his own name and not in Langdon's. If The Dutchman came up to
+expectation they could give him a slow preparation up to Derby time;
+they could find out whether Diablo was worth keeping for--well, for
+Morris Park or Gravesend, or they could hurry him on a little, and start
+him at Aqueduct.
+
+Crane agreed with this reasoning, and it was decided to give the two
+horses a home trial.
+
+On the day that Langdon had said he would try Diablo and The Dutchman,
+Crane went down to Gravesend. When he got to the Trainer's house he
+found the latter waiting for him.
+
+“I sent the horses over with the boys,” Langdon said; “if you'll just
+wait a minute, I'll have a buggy hitched up and we'll drive over.”
+
+A stable-boy brought the trap to the door in a few minutes, and Langdon,
+telling Crane to get in, disappeared into the house, returning presently
+with two saddles, which he placed in the buggy.
+
+“A couple of favorite saddles of mine,” he explained, “they're like old
+fiddles that great players carry about under their arms an' sleep with,
+an' never let no one but themselves touch.”
+
+“Are you that particular with these?” asked Crane by way of
+conversation, not feeling at all interested in what he considered a fad
+of the Trainer's.
+
+“Yes; I mostly handle 'em myself. They cost a bit. I had 'em made to
+order. The boys is that careless, they'd smash anything.”
+
+As they jogged along, Langdon kept up a monologue dissertation on the
+merits of the two horses. “It's a good day for a gallop,” and he flicked
+the driving beast's quarter with the whip; “there's not much wind, an'
+the air's a bit sharp. They'll be on their mettle, the both of 'em, more
+'specially Diablo. I had his plates changed. 'Pears to me he hadn't been
+shod in three moons; I'll bet the smith took an inch off his toes.” Then
+he broke off to chuckle awhile.
+
+Crane was not skilled in the anatomy of a horse, beyond as it worked out
+in winning races and money. That a horse had toes had never quite come
+into his knowledge, and Langdon's gurgle of mirth he put down to a
+suspicion that the Trainer was taking a rise out of him in what he had
+said.
+
+“I was thinking of Paddy Caramagh when he shod Diablo the other day. I
+think you've heard Pat swear. He holds the belt for cussin' in this part
+of the country. Well, he let it all out of him before he'd finished with
+the Black. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I can hear him still, with the sweat running
+off his face like oats spilling from a feed bag. I says to Paddy, 'Rub
+his nose a bit,' for I could see it was more nervousness with the horse
+than sheer deviltry. 'With what?' says Paddy, 'the hammer? Be gor!
+You're right, though,' says he, and with that he tries to put a twister
+on Diablo's nose. Holy mother! Diablo reached for him, and lifted the
+shirt clean off his back. Say, there was a scared Irishman, if you ever
+saw one in your life. He threw down the plate, cussin' as only Paddy
+can, and swore the brute could run till he'd wore his hoofs off, for all
+of him. Well, I takes hold of the Black's head, an' kids him a bit, only
+firm-like, and we shod him right enough.”
+
+“He is bad tempered, then?” asked Crane.
+
+“No; just wants a fair deal; that's all. You make him believe you're on
+the square, an' he'll do what's right. But he hasn't got no use for any
+of the guys that gets a cranky play in on him; he won't stand it. I'm
+going to put Westley up on him to-day.”
+
+“What about The Dutchman?”
+
+“Colley'll do. Any kid can ride him, if they sit still. He's just the
+easiest-tempered horse ever looked through a bridle; he knows what's
+doin' all the time. But Colley ain't no good on Diablo, an' if he can
+smell Shandy, that settles it--it's all over. I'll put Westley up; it
+takes a man to ride that horse.”
+
+“What about this gallop?” asked Crane; “there'll be spies about trying
+to find out things, won't there?”
+
+“Bet yer life, there'll be somebody, sir. It's just like when I was
+out in Colorado; you couldn't see a vulture if you traveled forty days,
+perhaps, but plant a dead thing anywhere and in an hour the sky simply
+rained 'em down. These touts is most like vultures of anything I know;
+you've just got to work your stunt to give 'em the go-by, that's all.”
+
+Crane took but an apathetic interest in the matters that held full sway
+over the Trainer's mind; looking after these incidents was Langdon's
+part of the contract.
+
+That was why they were so strong together. Langdon could do it. Just how
+the trial was to benefit them alone, with the inevitable tout at hand,
+Crane knew not, neither did he investigate; that was up to the Trainer.
+
+They drove into the paddock. Westley, Colley, and the two stable lads
+were there.
+
+“Shall we bring out the horses?” asked Westley, as Langdon sat swinging
+a leg loosely over the end of the buggy seat.
+
+“Any of the talent about, Bill?”
+
+“Quite likely, though I haven't seen none.”
+
+“Well, we'll slip 'em now. Just saddle up careless like, and no
+preliminary, mind you. The sharks won't look for a brush till you've
+gone around once. Take your mounts down the stretch to the quarter post,
+an' then come away the first break; if there's anyone toutin' you off,
+they'll think it just a pipe opener, an' won't catch the time. Run out
+the mile-an'-a-quarter, make a race of it, but don't go to the bat.
+Diablo an' The Dutchman don't need no whip to give us about the best
+they've got.”
+
+“All right, sir,” answered Westley. “If I'm a judge, when the Black's
+through pullin', he's done racin', 'cause he's a keen one, so there
+won't be no call to put the bud to him. If any of the rail birds is
+lookin' they'll think we're goin' under a strong wrap, even when we're
+all out.”
+
+Lang don nodded his head. He was a man not given to exuberant
+appreciation. The boys averred that when Dick Langdon didn't curse at
+them they had done pretty well, indeed.
+
+“What's your weight?” he asked of Westley, abruptly.
+
+“I've just tipped the scales at a hundred-and-three in my sweater.”
+
+“One hundred and three,” mused the Trainer, making a mental calculation.
+“What's Colley's weight?”
+
+“He's as near a hundred as you can make it.”
+
+“Did you bring over a saddle?”
+
+“Yes; two of 'em; one apiece for the horses.”
+
+“Tell Colley to take one, and some leads, and weigh out a hundred and
+twelve. That'll be three pounds above the scale for May, weight for age,
+for the three-year-old, The Dutchman. I guess he won't need more'n seven
+pounds dead weight, for it's a five-pound saddle, I think. Let me see,
+you said a hundred and three, you were.”
+
+“Yes, sir; in the sweater; I can take that off--”
+
+“No; never mind. Take this saddle,” and he lifted one from the buggy;
+“it'll just suit Diablo; he's got a herring-bone of a wither, an' this
+is high in the tree, an' won't cut him. Here's the cloth an' some
+leads; weigh out a hundred and twelve too. Weight for age--Diablo's a
+four-year-old; you ought to carry a hundred and twenty-six, but he's not
+The Dutchman's class, an' the ycungster'd lose him before they'd gone
+half the journey. We'll run 'em at level weights, an' he'll get closer
+to The Dutchman, an' the sharks won't have such a fairy tale to tell
+about our horse.”
+
+“A hundred and twelve, you said, sir?” queried Westley, as he put the
+saddle that Langdon handed him over his left arm, slipped the thin
+sheets of lead in his pocket, and stood dangling the linen weight cloth
+in his right hand.
+
+“Yes; level weights--a hundred an' twelve pounds.”
+
+“Westley,” the Trainer called as the little man started off, “just bring
+the saddle back to me here when you've weighed. I'll put it on Diablo
+myself; he's a touchy cuss, and I don't want him ruffled by careless
+handlin'.”
+
+“You take considerable trouble over it,” remarked Crane. “One would
+think it was a big handicap you meant to capture this morning.”
+
+Langdon started visibly. Was Crane thinking of the Brooklyn? Did this
+quiet, clever man sitting at his elbow already know as much as he hoped
+to discover in his present gallop?
+
+He answered: “Handicaps is usually won pretty much like this; they're
+generally settled before the horse goes to the post for the trip itself.
+When he goes through the paddock gate the day of the big race he's
+out of his trainer's hands; the man's got no more to do with the race
+himself than a kid sittin' up in the grand stand. Here's where I come
+in, if we mean to land the Brooklyn,” and he looked searchingly at
+Crane, a misleading grin on his lips. But the latter simply joined in
+the laugh, doubtingly, perhaps.
+
+“A hundred and twelve, neat,” declared Westley, as he returned, throwing
+some loose leads into the buggy. “Colley's gone to saddle The Dutchman.”
+
+“All right,” answered Langdon, getting down from the seat and taking
+the saddle. “Go and tell the boy to bring Diablo out of the stall. I'll
+saddle him in the open. He generally kicks the boards when I cinch him
+up, an' it puts him in a bad humor.”
+
+Langdon started off with the jockey, but turned back, saying, “Oh, Mr.
+Crane, I wanted to ask you--”
+
+By this he had reached the buggy, while Westley continued on his way to
+the stalls.
+
+“It's a fine day, sir,” continued Langdon, finishing his sentence,
+and exchanging the saddle held in his hand for the one that was in the
+buggy.
+
+“Going to put the other on?” asked Crane.
+
+“Yes; I fancy Diablo will like this better. Touchy brutes, these race
+horses; got to humor 'em. Come on over to the stalls--the horse'll
+stand.”
+
+Diablo was being led around in a small circle by his boy. He was a
+magnificent creature, sixteen and a half hands high, and built on the
+same grand scale; perhaps a bit leggy for the huge barrel that topped
+the limbs; that was what caused him to go wrong in his younger days. His
+black skin glistened in the noonday sun.
+
+“That's what I call the mirror of health,” said Langdon, in an unwonted
+burst of poetic eloquence, as he passed his hand across the horse's
+ribs. Then feeling that somehow he had laid himself open to a suspicion
+of gentleness, added, “He's a hell of a fine looker; if he could gallop
+up to his looks he'd make some of the cracks take a back seat.”
+
+Even Diablo had resented either the mellifluous comparison or the rub
+of Langdon's hand, for he lashed out furiously, with a great farreaching
+leg that nearly caught Crane unawares.
+
+“Your polite language seems to be as irritating to him as the
+blacksmith's oaths,” ejaculated Crane, as he came back from the hasty
+retreat he had beaten.
+
+“It's only play. Good horses is of two kinds when you're saddlin' 'em.
+The Dutchman there'll hang his head down, and champ at the bit, even
+if you bury the girt' an inch deep in his belly; he's honest, and knows
+it's all needed. That's one kind; and they're generally the same at the
+post, always there or thereabouts, waitin' for the word 'go.' An' they
+race pretty much the same all the time. If you time 'em a mile in 1:40
+at home, they'll do it when the colors is up, an' the silk a-flappin'
+all about 'em in the race.
+
+“Whoa! Hold still, you brute! Steady, steady! Whoa!” This to Diablo, for
+while talking he had adjusted the weight cloth with the gentleness of a
+cavalier putting a silk wrap about his lady love's neck, and had put a
+fold of soft woolen cloth over the high-boned wither.
+
+“Stand out in front of him and hold his head down a bit;” this to the
+boy. Then as he slipped the saddle into place and reached underneath
+for the girths, he continued his address to Crane on the peculiarity of
+racers.
+
+“Now this is a horse of another color, this one; he ain't takin' things
+easy at no stage of the game. He objects to everything, an' some day
+that'll land him a winner, see? He'll get it into his head that the
+other horses want to beat him out, an' he'll show 'em a clean pair of
+heels; come home on the bit, pullin' double. Whoa, boy! Steady, steady,
+old man!” Then he ceased talking, for he had taken the girth strap
+between his teeth, and was cinching up the big Black with the firm pull
+of a grizzly. Diablo squirmed under the torture of the tightening web on
+his sensitive skin, and crouched as though he would fall on the Trainer.
+
+“Yes, sir;” continued Langdon, as he ran the stirrups up under the
+saddle flap out of the way, and motioned to the boy to lead Diablo
+about. “Yes, sir; this fellow's different. He's too damn sensitive.
+At the post he's like as not to act like a locoed broncho, an' get one
+blamed for having 'juiced' him, but he don't need no dope; what he needs
+is steadying. If he gets away in front, them long legs of his will
+take some catchin'. He's the kind that wins when the books are layin' a
+hundred to one against him. But the worst of it is with his sort, like
+as not the owner hasn't a penny on them; but the public'll howl; they'll
+call it in-an'-out runnin'; an' the scribblers'll get their paper to
+print a notice that the stable ought to be ruled off; an' all the time
+you're breakin' your heart trying to get him to give his true--Hello!
+there's Colley out on The Dutchman; mount your horse, Westley--wait,
+you don't need no spurs; yes, carry a whip, an' give the guys that is
+watchin' a stage play with it; but don't hit the Black. We'll just see
+what he'll do himself, this trip,” he added, addressing Crane.
+
+Taking Westley's small-booted foot in his hand, he lifted the lad to
+Diablo's back, and led the horse out through a gate to the course.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+The two boys cantered their mounts down to the quarter post carelessly,
+as though they were going around to the far side.
+
+“Look at 'em!” cried the Trainer; “isn't he a little gentleman?”
+
+To the uninitiated this might have been taken as a tribute to one of the
+boys, Westley, perhaps; but the Trainer was not even thinking of them.
+They were of no moment. It was the wine-red bay, The Dutchman, cantering
+with gentle, lazy grace, that had drawn forth this encomium. His head,
+somewhat high carried, was held straight and true in front, and his big
+eyes searched the course with gentle inquisitiveness, for others of his
+kind, perhaps.
+
+“He's a lovely horse,” commented Crane, knowing quite well to what
+Langdon referred.
+
+“He's all that, but just look at the other devil.”
+
+Diablo was throwing his nose fretfully up and down, up and down;
+grabbing at the bit; pirouetting from one side the course to the other;
+nearly pulling Westley over his neck one minute, as with lowered head he
+sought to break away, and the next dashing forward for a few yards with
+it stuck foolishly high, like a badmouthed Indian cayuse.
+
+“But Westley'll manage him,” Langdon confided to Crane, after a period
+of silent observation; “he'll get his belly full of runnin' when he's
+gone a mile and a quarter with The Dutchman. Gad! that was neat; here
+they come;” for the two boys had whirled with sudden skill at the
+quarter post, and broke away, with Diablo slightly in the lead. “My God!
+he can move,” muttered Langdon, abstractedly, and quite to himself. The
+man at his side had floated into oblivion. He saw only a great striding
+black horse coming wide-mouthed up the stretch. At the Black's heels,
+with dogged lope, hung the Bay.
+
+“Take him back, take him back, Westley!” yelled Langdon, leaning far out
+over the rail, as the horses raced by, Diablo well in front.
+
+The Trainer's admonition seemed like a cry to a cyclone, as void of
+usefulness. What power could the tiny dot lying close hugged far up on
+the straining black neck have over the galloping fiend?
+
+“Yes, that's the way,” Langdon said, nodding his head to Crane, and
+jerking a thumb out toward the first turn in the course, where the
+two horses were hugging close to the rail; “that's the way he's worked
+here.”
+
+“Which one?” asked his companion.
+
+“The Black, an' if he ever does that in a race--God help the
+others--they'll never catch him; they'll never catch him; they'll never
+catch him,” he kept repeating, dwelling lovingly on the thought, as he
+saw the confirmation of it being enacted before his eyes; for across the
+new green of the grass-sprouted course he could see two open lengths of
+daylight between Diablo and The Dutchman.
+
+“Fifty-one and a half for the half-mile,” he imparted to Crane, looking
+at his watch. “Now The Dutchman is moving up; Colley doesn't mean to get
+left if he can help it. I'm afraid Diablo'll shut up when he's pinched;
+his kind are apt to do that. The Dutchman is game, an' if he ever gets
+to the Black's throat-latch he'll chuck it. But it takes some ridin';
+it takes some ridin', sir.” He was becoming enthusiastic, exuberant.
+The silent man at his side noticed the childish repetition with inward
+amusement. He had thought that Langdon would have been overjoyed to
+see the bay horse smother his opponent. Was not the Trainer to have
+ten thousand dollars if The Dutchman won the Handicap? But here he was
+pinning his satisfaction to the good showing of Diablo. He didn't know
+of the compact between Langdon and the Bookmaker Faust, but he strongly
+suspected from the Trainer's demeanor that the gallop he was witnessing
+foretold some big coup the latter scented.
+
+“He hasn't got him yet, he hasn't got him yet!” cried Langdon, joyfully,
+as the horses swung around the bottom turn, closer locked, but with
+Diablo still a short length in the lead.
+
+Crane saw no great cause for exhilaration. The Dutchman was certainly
+giving the Black twenty pounds the best of it in the weights, for one
+was a three-year-old while the other was four, and they each carried a
+hundred and twelve.
+
+“The mile in 1:42,” chirped Langdon. “That's movin', if you like,
+considerin' the track, the condition of the horses, an' that they're
+runnin' under a double wrap. Now we'll see a ding-dong finish, if the
+Black doesn't show a streak of yellow. Dutchy's got him,” he added, as
+through his glasses he saw them swing into the straight, neck and neck.
+
+“Clever Mr. Westlev!” for Diablo's rider, having the rail and the lead,
+had bored out slightly on the turn, so as not to cramp the uncertain
+horse he rode, and carried The Dutchman wide.
+
+Up the straight they came, the boys helping their mounts with leg and
+arm; the Black holding his own with a dogged persistence that quite
+upset Langdon's prognostication of cowardice.
+
+To the watchers it was as exciting as a stake race. The stamina that
+Langdon had said would stand The Dutchman in good stead over the mile
+and a half Handicap course now showed itself. First he was level with
+the Black, then gradually, stride by stride, he drew away from Diablo,
+and finished a short length in front.
+
+“A great trial,” cried the Trainer, gleefully, holding out his watch for
+Crane's inspection. “See that!” pointing to the hand he had stopped as
+the Bay's brown nozzle flashed by the post; “two-nine on this course!
+Anything that beats that pair, fit and well, a mile and a quarter on a
+fast track'll have to make it in two-five, an' that's the record.”
+
+“It looks good business for the Derby, Langdon.”
+
+“Yes, it does. That's the first showing I've had from the colt as
+a three-year-old; but I knew he had it in him. Hanover was a great
+horse--to my mind we never had his equal in America--but this
+youngster'll be as good as his daddy ever was. I don't think you ought
+to start him, sir, till the Derby, if you're set on winnin' it.”
+
+He had moved up to the gate as he talked, and now opened it, waiting for
+the boys to come back. They had eased down the horses gradually after
+the fierce gallop, turned them about and were trotting toward the
+paddock, where stood the two men. Langdon took Diablo by the bridle rein
+and led him in toward the stalls.
+
+“How did he shape under you, Westley?” he asked, as the boy slipped from
+the saddle.
+
+“I wouldn't ask to ride a better horse. I thought I had the colt beaten,
+sure; but my mount seemed to tire a little at the finish. He didn't toss
+it up, not a bit of it; ran as game as a pebble; he just tired at the
+finish. I think a mile is his journey. He held The Dutchman safe at a
+mile.”
+
+“I guess you're right, Westley; a mile's his limit. At level weights
+with the three-year-old, which means that he had twenty pounds the best
+of it, he should have held his own the whole route to be a stayer, for
+the colt isn't more'n half ready yet.”
+
+“I didn't hustle him none too much, sir; I might a-squeezed a bit more
+out of him. Did we make fair time?”
+
+“Quite a feeler, Mister Jockey,” thought Langdon to himself; “it's news
+you want, eh?” Then he answered aloud, with a diplomacy born of many
+years of turf tuition: “Fairish sort of time; it might have been better,
+perhaps--a shade under two-twelve. I thought they might have bettered
+that a couple of seconds. But they'll come on--they'll come on, both of
+them. If anybody asks you, Westley, The Dutchman was beaten off, see?
+I don't like to discourage the clever owners that has good 'uns in
+the Derby” Then he added as a sort of after thought, and with wondrous
+carelessness:
+
+“It doesn't matter about the Black, you know; he's only a sellin'
+plater, so it doesn't matter. But all the same, Westley, when we find a
+soft spot for him, an over-night sellin' purse or somethin, you'll have
+the leg up, with a bet down for you at a long price, see?”
+
+“I understand, sir.”
+
+By the time Langdon had slipped the saddle from Diablo's back the boy
+had thrown a hooded blanket over him, and he was led away. “Send them
+home, Westley. Now, Mr. Crane, we'll drive back to the house an' have a
+bit of lunch.”
+
+As they drove along Crane brought up the subject of the trial.
+
+“The colt must be extra good, Langdon, or the Black is--well, as he was
+represented to be, not much account.”
+
+“I guess Diablo's about good enough to win a big handicap, if he
+happened to be in one at a light weight.”
+
+“He didn't win to-day.”
+
+“He came pretty near it.”
+
+“But where would he have been carrying his proper weight?”
+
+“About where he was, I guess.”
+
+“You said as a four-year-old he should have had up a hundred and
+twenty-six, and he carried a hundred and twelve; and, besides, had the
+best boy by seven pounds on his back.”
+
+“Just pass me that saddle, Mr. Crane,” said Langdon, by way of answer.
+“No; not that--the one I took off Diablo.”
+
+Crane reached down his hand, but the saddle didn't come quite as freely
+as it should have. “What's it caught in?” he asked, fretfully.
+
+“In itself, I reckon--lift it.” “Gad! it's heavy. Did Diablo carry that?
+What's in it?”
+
+“Lead-built into it; it's my old fiddle, you know. You're the first man
+that's had his hand on that saddle for some time, I can tell you.”
+
+“Then Diablo did carry his full weight,” commented Crane, a light
+breaking in upon him.
+
+“Just about, and carried it like a stake horse, too.”
+
+“And you--”
+
+“Yes; I changed the saddles after Westley weighed. He's a good boy, and
+don't shoot off his mouth much, but all the same things will out while
+ridin' boys have the power of speech.”
+
+“It looks as though Diablo had something in him,” said Crane,
+meditatively.
+
+“He's got the Brooklyn in him. Fancy The Dutchman in at seventy pounds;
+that's what it comes to. Diablo's got ninety to carry, an' he gave the
+other twenty pounds to-day. You've got the greatest thing on earth right
+in your hands now--”
+
+Langdon hesitated for a minute, and then added: “But I guess you knew
+this all before, or you wouldn't have sent him here.”
+
+“I bought him for a bad horse,” answered Crane, quietly; “but if he
+turns out well, that's so much to the good. But it's a bit of luck
+Porter's not having declared him out to save nearly a hundred. He seems
+to have raced pretty loose.”
+
+“I wonder if he thinks I'm taking in that fairy tale?” thought Langdon.
+Aloud, he said: “But you'll back him now, sir, won't you? He must be a
+long price in the winter books.”
+
+“Yes; I'll arrange that,” answered the other, “and I'll take care of
+you, too. I suppose Westley will take the mount?”
+
+“Surely.”
+
+“Well, you can just give him to understand that he'll be looked after if
+the horse wins.”
+
+“It's the Brooklyn, sir, is it?”
+
+“Seems like it.”
+
+“I won't say anything about the race to Westley, though.”
+
+“I'll leave all that to you. I'll attend to getting the money on; you do
+the rest.”
+
+When Crane had gone, Langdon paid further mental tribute to his master's
+astuteness. “Now I see it all,” he muttered; “the old man just thought
+to keep me quiet; throw me of the scent till he duplicated the other
+trial, whenever they pulled it off. Now he's got a sure line on the
+Black, an' he'll make such a killin' that the books'll remember him for
+many a day. But why does he keep throwin' that fairy tale into me
+about buyin' a bad horse to oblige somebody? A man would be a sucker to
+believe that of Crane; he's not the sort. But one sure thing, he said
+he'd look after me, an' he will. He'd break a man quick enough, but when
+he gives his word it stands. Mr. Jakey Faust can look after himself:
+I'm not goin' to take chances of losin' a big stable of bread-winners by
+doublin' on the Boss.”
+
+Langdon's mental analysis of Crane's motives was the outcome of
+considerable experience. The Banker's past life was not compatible with
+generous dealing. His act of buying Diablo had been prompted by newborn
+feelings of regard for the Porters, chiefly Allis; but no man, much less
+Langdon, would have given him credit for other than the most selfish
+motives.
+
+True to his resolve, Langdon utterly refused to share his confidences
+with Jakey Faust.
+
+“We've tried the horses,” he said, “and the Dutchman won, but Crane
+knows more about the whole business than I do. You go to him, Jake, or
+wait till he sends for you, an' you'll find out all about it. My game's
+to run straight with one man, anyway, an' I'm goin' to do it.”
+
+That was all Faust could learn. When an occasion offered he slipped a
+ten-dollar note into Shandy's hand, for he knew the lad was full open to
+a bribe, but Shandy knew no more than did the Bookmaker. The Dutchman,
+had won the trial from the Black quite easily, was the extent of his
+knowledge. As to Diablo himself, Shandy gave him a very bad character
+indeed.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Faust was in a quandary. First Crane had confided in him over Diablo,
+but now his silence seemed to indicate that he meant to have this good
+thing all to himself.
+
+Then Langdon had promised to cooperate, now he, too, had closed up like
+a clam; he was as mute as an oyster.
+
+“Crane is dealin' the cards all the time,” thought Faust; “but there's
+some game on, sure.”
+
+He determined to back Diablo for himself at the long odds, and chance
+it.
+
+Two days later Crane received a very illiterate epistle, evidently from
+a stable-boy; it was unsigned:
+
+“DERE Boss, Yous is gittin it in the neck. de big blak hors he didn't
+carre the sadel you think the blak hors had on his bak. Yous got de
+duble cros that time. Der bokie hes axin me wot de blak is good fer der
+bokie is playin fer to trow yous downe.
+
+“No moar at presen.”
+
+This was the wholly ambiguous communication that Crane had found under
+his door. There was no stamp, neither place nor date written in the
+letter; nothing but an evident warning from some one, who, no doubt,
+hoped to get into his good graces by putting him on his guard.
+
+As it happened, Crane had just made up his mind to make his plunge on
+Diablo while the odds were long enough to make it possible with the
+outlay of very little capital. He smoked a heavy Manuel Garcia over
+this new contingency. It did not matter about the saddles. Langdon had
+confided in him fully. But how had the writer of the ill-spelled missive
+known of that matter?
+
+Yes, he had better make his bet before these whisperings came to other
+ears.
+
+But the bookmaker mentioned? That must be Faust. Why was he prowling
+about among stable lads?
+
+He sent for Faust. When the latter had come, Crane asked Diablo's price
+for the Brooklyn.
+
+“It's thirty to one now,” replied the Bookmaker; “somebody's backin'
+him.”
+
+Faust's small baby eyes were fixed furtively on Crane's pale, sallow
+face, as he imparted this information; but he might as well have studied
+the ingrain paper on the wall; its unfigured surface was not more
+placid, more devoid of indication, than the smooth countenance he was
+searching.
+
+Crane remained tantalizingly silent for a full minute; evidently his
+thoughts had drifted away to some other subject.
+
+“Yes,” said Faust, speaking again to break the trying quiet, “some one's
+nibblin' at Diablo in the books. I wonder if it's Porter; did he think
+him a good horse?”
+
+“It can't be Porter, nor any one else who knows Diablo. It's some
+foolish outsider, tempted by the long odds. I suppose, however, it
+doesn't matter; in fact, it's all the better. You took that five
+thousand to fifty for me, didn't you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, just lay it off. You can do so now at a profit.”
+
+“You don't want to back Diablo, then? Shall I lay against him further?”
+
+“If you like--in your own book. I don't want to have anything to do
+with him, one way or the other. I always thought he was a bad horse,
+and--and--well, never mind, just lay that bet off. I shall probably want
+to back The Dutchman again shortly.”
+
+When Faust had gone, Crane opened the little drawer which held his
+betting book, took it out, and drew a pencil through the entry he had
+made opposite Allis's name.
+
+“That's off for a few days, thanks to Mr. Faust,” he thought. Then
+he ran his eye back over several other entries. “Ah, that's the
+man--Hummel; he'll do.”
+
+Next he consulted his telephone book; tracing his finger down the “H”
+ column he came to “Ike Hummel, commission broker, Madison 71184.”
+
+Over the 'phone he made an appointment for the next day at eleven
+o'clock with Hummel; and the result of that interview was that Crane
+backed Diablo to win him a matter of seventy-five thousand dollars at
+the liberal odds of seventy-five to one; for Jakey Faust, feeling that
+he had made a mistake in backing the Black, had laid off all his own
+bets and sent the horse back in the market to the longer odds. Crane had
+completely thrown him of his guard.
+
+No sooner had Faust congratulated himself upon having slipped out of his
+Diablo bets than he heard that a big commission had been most skillfully
+worked on this outsider for the Brooklyn. In his new dilemma he went to
+Crane, feeling very much at sea.
+
+“They're backin' your horse again, sir,” he said.
+
+“Are they?”
+
+“Yes; heavy.”
+
+“If he's worth backing at all I suppose he's worth backing heavily.”
+
+This aphorism seemed to merit a new cigar on Crane's part, so he lighted
+one.
+
+“He's travelin' up and down in the market,” continues Faust. “He dropped
+to thirty, then went back to seventy-five; now he's at twenty; I can't
+make it out.”
+
+“I shouldn't try,” advised Crane, soothingly. “Too much knowledge is
+even as great a danger as a lesser amount sometimes.”
+
+Faust started guiltily and looked with quick inquiry at the speaker,
+but, as usual, there was nothing in his presence beyond the words to
+hang a conjecture on.
+
+“I thought for your sake that I'd better find out.”
+
+“Oh, don't worry about me; that is, too much, you know. I go down to
+Gravesend once in a while myself, and no doubt know all that's doing.”
+
+A great fear fell upon Faust. Evidently this was an intimation to him
+to keep away from the stables. How did Crane know--who had split on him?
+Was it Langdon, or Shandy, or Colley? Some one had evidently aroused
+Crane's suspicion, and this man of a great cleverness had put him away
+while he worked a big commission through some one else. The thought
+was none the less bitter to Faust that it was all his own fault; his
+super-cleverness.
+
+“An' you don't want me to work a commission for you on Diablo?” he
+asked, desperately.
+
+“No; I sha'n't bet on him at present. And say, Faust, in future when I
+want you to do any betting on my horses, on my account, you know, I'll
+tell you. Understand? You needn't worry, that is--other people. I'll
+tell you myself.”
+
+“I didn't mean--” Faust had started to try a plausible explanation, but
+Crane stopped him.
+
+“Never mind; the matter is closed out now.”
+
+“But, sir,” persisted Faust, “if you've got your money all on, can I
+take a bit now? Is it good business? We've worked together a good deal
+without misunderstanding before.”
+
+“Yes, we have,” commented Crane.
+
+“Yes; an' I'd like to be in on this now. I didn't mean to forestall
+you.”
+
+Crane raised his hand in an attitude of supplication for the other man
+to desist, but Faust was not to be stopped.
+
+“I made a mistake, an' I'm sorry; an' if you will tell me whether
+Diablo's good business for the Brooklyn, I'll back him now at the
+shorter price. There's no use of us bein' bad friends.”
+
+“I think Diablo's a fairly good bet,” said Crane, quietly, entirely
+ignoring the question of friendship.
+
+“It won't be poachin' if I have a bet, then?” asked the Cherub, more
+solicitous than he had appeared at an earlier stage of the game.
+
+“Poachers don't worry me,” remarked Diablo's owner. “I'm my own game
+keeper, and they usually get the worst of it. But you go ahead and have
+your bet.”
+
+“Thank you, there won't be no more bad breaks made by me; but I didn't
+mean to give you none the worst of it. Good day, sir,” and he was gone.
+
+“Faust has had his lesson,” thought Crane, as he took from a drawer the
+stable-boy's ill-favored note.
+
+“I wonder who sent me this scrawl? It gave me a pointer, though. I
+suppose the writer will turn up for his reward; but the devil of it is
+he'll sell information of this sort to anyone who'll buy. Must weed him
+out when I've discovered the imp. At any rate Faust will go straight,
+now he's been scorched. I'll just re-enter that bet to the Little Woman
+while I think of it. 'Three thousand seven hundred and fifty to fifty,
+Diablo for the Brooklyn, laid to Miss Allis Porter.'” Then he dated
+it. “She loses by this transaction, but that won't matter; it will be
+a pretty good win if it comes off. She may even refuse this, though she
+shouldn't, for it's a part of the bargain that I was to have a bet on
+for her, a small bet, of course. Yes, yes; I remember, a small bet.
+But this is a small bet. There was nothing said about the size of the
+winnings. She was probably thinking of gloves. Jingo, she has a lovely
+hand, I've noticed it; long slim fingers, even the palm is long; sinewy
+I'll warrant; nothing pudgy about that hand. Hey, Crane, you're silly!”
+ he cried, half audibly, taking himself to task; “doing business in big
+moneys--a cool seventy-five thousand, if it materializes, perhaps even
+more--and then slipping off into a mooney dream, vaporing about a girl's
+slim hand. I suppose that's the love symptom. But at forty! it's hardly
+my normal condition, I fancy.”
+
+The slim hand beckoned him off into a disjointed reverie. Was he the
+better for it? What would the end be? Before the new emotion he could
+look back upon his past struggles with sordid satisfaction. Men in
+battle were not given to uneasy qualms of compunction, nor questionings
+as to the method that had led to victory. His life had been one
+long-drawn-out battle; the financial soldiers that had fallen by the
+wayside because of his sword play did not interest him; they were
+dead; being dead, their memory harrassed him not at all. If there were
+commercial blood stains upon his hand, they were hidden by the glove
+of success. After a manner he had had peace; now all was disquiet; the
+turmoil of an awakened gentler feeling clashing with the polemics of
+self-satisfying selfishness. And all because of a girl! To him that was
+the peculiar feature of the disturbance in his nature. He, Philip
+Crane, the strong man of strong men, to be shorn of his indifference to
+everything but success by a girl unskilled in managing anything but a
+horse.
+
+“It's all very fine to argue it out with one's self,” he thought, “but
+I simply can't help it.” He was astonished to find that he was pacing up
+and down the floor of his apartment. Undoubtedly he was possessed of a
+tremendous regard for the girl Allis. But why not put it from him; why
+not conquer himself as he had always done? To let it master him meant
+the giving up of things that were almost second nature. He could not
+love the girl as a good woman should be loved, and--and--well, the gray
+eyes that had their strength because of supreme honesty would surely
+bring him disquietude. It would indeed be difficult to change his nature
+much; his habits were almost like leopard's spots; they were grown into
+the woof of his existence. Even if he won her it must be almost entirely
+because of a superior diplomacy. Everything told him that his love was
+not returned. It seemed almost impossible that it should be; there was
+not more disparity in their years than in their two selves. “All very
+fine again,” he muttered, somewhat savagely; “I want her, I want her,
+not because of anything but love. What she is, or what I am counts for
+nothing; love is all compelling; my first master, I salute thee,” this
+in sarcastic sincerity.
+
+In his strength he relied upon his power to bring forth an answering
+love, at least regard, should he win Allis. Yes, it would surely come.
+He had not even a young rival to combat. Yes, he would win, first Allis,
+and afterward her love.
+
+“I'm quite silly,” he ejaculated; “but I can't help it. But I can go out
+and get some fresh air, and I will.”
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+It was the middle of May. Down in the earth the strong heart of
+reawakened nature throbbed with a pulsating force that sent new life
+forth on its errand of rejuvenation. The apple trees had peeped out with
+pink eyes, and seeing the summer maiden stalking through the land, had
+thrown off their timid coyness and shaken loose a drapery of white, all
+rose-tinted and green-shaded, that turned their broad-acred homes into
+fairy ball rooms. And for music the bees, and the birds, and shrill
+fife-playing frogs volunteered out of sheer joyousness of life.
+
+Tiny shavings of green wag, the gentle spring grass, lay strewn about
+the ballroom floor, and glistened in the warm light that was of one
+high-hung chandelier, the sun.
+
+But all the newborn awakening, all the sweet strength of soul and life
+that was borne to the waiting land on the wings of soft winds, brought
+not the hoped-for allotment to John Porter.
+
+At Ringwood they had waited for the springtime. That would work the cure
+the doctor's skill had failed of. A man of outdoors, it was the house
+caging that was killing him, keeping him back.
+
+These things were said; but Doctor Rathbone only shook his wise, old
+head, with its world of good sense, and answered: “It is none of these
+things. The trouble is in his mind; he is fretting. A sensitive man,
+well in body, may be brought to illness by anticipated disaster. That
+could not have been the case with John Porter well, but John Porter ill
+is quite a different matter. It's as I have said before, give him hope,
+win him races.”
+
+So Allis was really glad at the near approach of the time of her trial.
+The day was coming fast, soon, when She was to go forth with her
+little band of horses, as a man almost in everything, to strive for the
+fulfillment of that which had been put upon her.
+
+The nearness of the not-to-be-shirked responsibility drove into her
+veins an unlooked-for exhilaration of strength. She had thought that she
+would look with dread upon the going away from Ringwood; that a feeling
+much akin to stage fright would quite unnerve her at the very last. The
+riding at home, the horse lore, and the almost constant companionship
+with her father, always among horses and horsemen, though it appeared
+somewhat dreadful to the village folks had been as nothing to her. Now
+that she needed strength for the newer, stranger endeavor, it came to
+her, even as the blossoms came to the swaying apple trees, great and
+small.
+
+What wouldn't she do? she asked herself many times, to bring a
+strength-giving peace to her father's troubled mind. Even Mrs. Porter,
+implacably bitter against racing, must condone what was so evidently
+Allis's study, if it tended to their happiness; the mother had softened
+somewhat in the austerity of her opposition.
+
+Evening after evening they had discussed the gloomy outlook, with,
+always from Allis's side, a glimmer of hopeful light. The girl's patient
+resolve had worn down the mother's pessimistic dread of anticipated
+evil.
+
+“You know, Allis,” she had said, “how I look upon this thoroughly
+unchristian pursuit. Nothing can justify it from a true woman's point of
+view, absolutely nothing--not even poverty. I would willingly suffer the
+loss of all we possess--that it is so little is due to this dreadful,
+immoral horse racing--but I would sacrifice even what remains, if
+your father were well and willing to start afresh in some occupation
+befitting his noble character. I would help him, to endure every
+hardship, even deprivation, without a murmur.”
+
+“But, mother,” interrupted Allis, “it's impossible now; I think it
+always was, for, as you know, father knew nothing of other business.
+Nothing would tempt him to be dishonest in racing, and he always enjoyed
+it because of his love for horses. But with all that, mother, if he had
+been in a position to please you, if he had felt that we--you, and Alan,
+and I--would not have suffered, I am sure he would have listened to
+your pleadings and given it up. He might perhaps have gone on breeding
+horses, for you wouldn't have objected to that, would you, mother?”
+
+“No, it's the wicked associations of the race course which I felt
+degraded a man of your father's character. But I'm not going to
+dishearten you, Allis, nor hamper you now in your brave acceptance
+of the task that has come to you, because of wrong done before. It is
+distasteful to me, of course; it would be to any right-minded mother,
+to have her daughter in a position so repellant; but, strange as it may
+seem I'd rather you went with the horses than Alan.”
+
+“Alan couldn't go, mother; he couldn't give up his place in the bank;
+besides, father has purposely kept him from racing.”
+
+“I know it, Allis; I wasn't thinking of that, though. Alan has the
+gambling spirit born in him; it's not his fault; it's the visitation of
+the sins of the father upon the son. It came to your father in just the
+same way. No, I'm not even blaming your father for it; it has come down
+from generation to generation; but there has never been dishonor, thank
+God--there has never been a dishonest Porter in my husband's family,
+and, please God, there never may be. That would be too much! It would
+kill me. And it's better that you go, Allis, for Alan is but a boy,
+and the temptations to a young man at the race course must be almost
+impossible to resist. Besides, your going may bring new life to your
+father; the doctor is so hopeful--he says it will. He was afraid that
+he had shocked me, when he said you were to win races for your father's
+good. It displeased the pastor; I know it did, but perhaps he doesn't
+quite understand how much we have at stake.”
+
+“He's so narrow, mother.”
+
+“The Reverend Mr. Dolman thinks only of our souls, daughter; naturally,
+too, and one can hardly be a Christian and race horses. But we have got
+so much to consider. I hope I am not wrong in feeling glad that you are
+able to look after our interests. I should like to pray for your success
+even, Allis. It might be wrong; I might feel guilty; but if it makes
+your father better, don't you think I'd be forgiven?”
+
+“I'm sure you would, mother, and it would make me stronger. I'm so glad.
+I didn't want to displease you. I wanted you to feel that I was doing
+right. It will be lighter now; I sha'n't mind what anybody says if
+you're with me, mother. Now everything will come out right; I know it
+will. And if it does, if father gets strong, just out of thankfulness,
+I'll coax him to try something else, for your sake, mother.”
+
+“No, for his own, Allis. I think only of him in this matter.” The
+prospective commencement of the racing campaign seemed to foreshadow a
+complete fulfillment of the doctor's prophecy should success smile upon
+this modern Joan of Arc; for the bustle of preparation was music to
+the ears of the stricken man, and he fought the lethargic fever of
+discontent that was over him until his eyes brightened and his face took
+on a hopeful look of interest.
+
+“Brave little woman,” he said to Allis, “it's a shame for a great hulk
+as I am to lie up here, while you fight the sharks that were almost too
+much for your father.”
+
+Then he spoke a little lower, as a man utters unfamiliar words for the
+first time. “Your mother said that Providence would look after you.
+Sounds strange, doesn't it, girl? But I'm glad. Your mother was so
+bitter--I don't blame her--now she's turned right around. And, Allis,
+I believe with a little tempting, a little coaxing, she'd almost have
+a bet on Lucretia in your hands. Funny, isn't it?” And he gave a little
+chuckle.
+
+Allis hadn't heard her father laugh for a long time. It wasn't much of
+a laugh, very dry, and very short lived, hardly lighting up his face at
+all, but still it was the feeble pulsation of humor which showed that
+the old John Porter spirit was not quite broken.
+
+“About the betting, Allis, you must have Dixon come down here to see me,
+for the horses are to go to his stable again, aren't they?”
+
+“Yes, father.”
+
+“That's right. I thought we had arranged it that way, but I seem to
+forget things since that bad tumble.”
+
+“You don't forget much now, father; you're getting stronger in every
+way.”
+
+“Blarney, girl. But I don't mind; your blarney is like the sunshine,
+that comes through the window every day at ten. Ah, I know to the very
+minute when to look for it. But about Dixon. Have him come down, for we
+must arrange to back Lucretia--she's worth it. She's been doing well,
+hasn't she, girl? O God! why can't I go out into the open and see the
+little mare do just one gallop? And then I'd like to sit and look at
+the trees sway back and forth in the wind. Their swing is like the free
+gallop of a good horse.”
+
+He dropped the brief, fretful remonstrance against fate with an
+apologetic turning away of his head, and continued about the Trainer.
+
+“Lucretia's in the Brooklyn, Allis; you know that, of course. If Dixon
+starts her, the stake alone will be about enough to run for, for a
+three-year-old has a tough job ahead in that mob of picked horses.
+But you'll get a line on her there--I think she'll win with ninety-two
+pounds up; but if she shows good form, then she'll have to be backed for
+the Brooklyn Derby. Lucretia's the best three-year-old in the land, I
+know. We'll have to arrange for that money. There will be a couple of
+thousand to be had if it seems safe business. You and Dixon will judge
+of that. You're taking Lauzanne, girl. Is it worth while?”
+
+“Lauzanne is going to do great things for us, father. I'm sure of it.”
+
+“Still young, Allis. I talked like that when I was your age. Fancy and
+horse racing go arm in arm always, and they're like an experienced man
+of forty hobnobbing with the little love god; they're just about as well
+mated.”
+
+Porter's irrelevant simile caused Allis to start, and Crane's relentless
+eyes came and peeped at her through the narrow-slitted lids.
+
+“All right, though, little girl; your faith may make Lauzanne win, and I
+think Lucretia's speed will carry her to the front, so you may strike a
+bit of luck at last.”
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+A few days later Mike Gaynor took the stable up to Gravesend. Dixon had
+a cottage there, which he occupied with his wife, and Allis was to stop
+with them.
+
+On the 20th of May the horses were settled in their racing quarters.
+Only four days remained for introducing Lucretia to the Gravesend track;
+on the 24th she would take up her ninety-two pounds and be tested to the
+utmost in the great Brooklyn Handicap.
+
+Dixon felt that several things were in her favor. She was as quiet as
+an old cow at the post; many false starts would improve rather than
+diminish her chances, for nothing seemed to excite the gallant little
+brown mare. Her great burst of speed would enable the jockey to get out
+of the ruck and steal a good place to lie handy at the leader's heels.
+She could be nursed to the last furlong of the stretch, for the sight of
+horses in front would not daunt her brave spirit.
+
+Against the mare were two or three rather important factors; she was
+slight of build, not overstrong, and the crush of contending horses
+might knock her out of her stride, should they close in. Then there
+was just a suspicion of lack of staying power in the Assassin strain;
+Lucretia might not quite last the mile and a quarter so early in the
+season, being a mare. However, she had a chance.
+
+“But I'd hardly call it a betting chance,” Dixon said, speaking to
+Allis; “there's never been a three-year-old won the Brooklyn yet.
+There'll be openings enough to put down the money later on--in the
+Derby, if the mare pans out well.”
+
+Andy Dixon was first of all 'a careful man. “There are risks enough in
+racin' without lookin' for them,” he said. “When one has got an absolute
+lead-pipe cinch, it's two to one against its coming off.” That was
+another of his conservative aphorisms.
+
+Andy made no big wins, had never been booked as a successful plunger,
+had never skinned the ring; on the other hand, bringing the scales of
+equity to a dead level, he had never been forced to ask any man to pay
+his feed bills for him, nor let an account stand over for a time.
+
+Allis was in good hands, and, what added to the value of the situation,
+she knew it, and would take Dixon's advice. The Trainer's opinion was
+borne out by the betting market; Lucretia stood a long way down in the
+list. Even Diablo, bad horse as he was supposed to be, was at a shorter
+price; the heavy outlay of his owner, and some intangible rumors having
+caused the bookmakers to feel inclined to hold him close up against
+their chests. His work since his trial with The Dutchman had been quite
+satisfactory. He looked upon Westley, the jockey, as a friend, and
+strode along in his gallops as though he had never sulked or shown
+temper in his life.
+
+Favoritism for the Brooklyn was divided between The King, a
+five-year-old that had won it the year before, and White Moth, a
+three-year-old, winner of the last year's Futurity. Jockey Redpath had
+been riding Lucretia in her gallops since she had come to Gravesend.
+At last Dixon had been singularly fortunate in the matter of jockeys.
+Redpath was just making his reputation, making it as all jockey
+reputations are made, by winning races.
+
+This somewhat unstudied factor in racing had loomed large on his
+mental vision. It might be possible to acquire a reputation in other
+professions by good fortune or favor. As a jockey, a light weight might
+possibly make money by dishonest methods, though that itself seemed
+doubtful, but there was no way to rise to the top of the tree except by
+riding winners; verily there was one royal road to fame in the field.
+Knowing all this, Redpath rode to win.
+
+On the 22d Dixon gave Lucretia a good strong three-quarter gallop over
+the handicap course; on the 23d she had a quiet canter; and on the
+morning of the 24th, the eventful day, she poked her mouse-brown nozzle
+over the bar of her stall when Allis came to look at her and seemed to
+say, “I'll do my part to-day.”
+
+Nothing could have been wished for in Lucretia's appearance that wasn't
+there, except just the faint suspicion of a sacrifice of strength to
+speed. But if the frame wasn't there, the good strong heart was; the
+courage and the gentleness, and the wisdom, and the full glow of perfect
+health.
+
+For hours the trains had borne to Long Island crowd after crowd of
+eager, impatient New Yorkers. Lovers of horses, lovers of gambling, pure
+and simple; holiday makers, and those who wished to see the Brooklyn
+run out of sheer curiosity; train after train whirled these atoms of
+humanity to the huge gates of the Gravesend arena, wherein were to
+battle that day the picked thoroughbreds, old and young.
+
+Even like bees, black-coated and buzzing, the eager ones swarmed from
+the cars and rehived in the great stand. Betting ring, and paddock, and
+lawn became alive because of their buzz; tier after tier, from step
+to roof, the serrated line of whitefaced humanity waited for the grand
+struggle.
+
+The first race was but a race, that was all. Horses galloped, but did
+they not gallop other days? It was not the Brooklyn. And also the second
+was but another race. How slow, and of what little interest were the
+horses! Verily, neither was it the Brooklyn, and it was the Brooklyn
+forty thousand pairs of eyes had come to see.
+
+Down in the betting ring men of strong voices bellowed words of money
+odds, and full-muscled shoulders pushed and carried heads about that
+were intent on financial businesses. But what of that? It was not the
+Brooklyn, it was gambling.
+
+Out in the paddock a small brown mare of gentle aspect, with big soft
+eyes, full of a dreamy memory of fresh-shooting grass, walked with easy
+stride an elliptical circle. Her fetlocks fair kissed the short grass in
+an unstable manner, as though the joints were all too supple. Inside
+of the circle stood Allis Porter and a man square of jaw and square of
+shoulder, that was Andy Dixon. Presently to them came Mike Gaynor.
+
+“We're gittin' next it now, Miss Allis; we'll soon know all about it.”
+
+“We're all ready, Mike,” said Dixon, with square solemnity. “When
+they've beat the little mare they'll be catchin' the judge's eye.”
+
+“There's nothing left now, Mike, but just a hope for a little luck,”
+ added the girl.
+
+“Ye'r talking now, Miss Allis. Luck's the trick from this out. The
+little mare'll have a straight run this trip. Here's the b'y comin' now,
+and a good b'y he is.”
+
+A little man in blue jacket and white stars joined them, saluting Miss
+Allis with his riding whip. “Are you going to win, Redpath?” asked the
+girl.
+
+“I'm going to try, Miss. She's a sweet mare to ride, but it's a big
+field. There's some boys riding that ought to be in the stable rubbing
+horses.”
+
+“You'll have to get out in front,” said Dixon, speaking low; “your
+mare's too light to stand crowdin', an' even if you have to take her
+back for a breather after you've gone half the journey, she'll come
+again, for she's game.”
+
+“Them Langdon fellows thinks they've got a great chance wit' our
+cast-off, Diablo,” volunteered Mike. “I had a peep at him in the stall,
+an' he's lookin' purty fit.”
+
+“He never was no class,” objected Dixon.
+
+“If ye'd see him gallop the day he run away, ye'd think he had class,”
+ said Mike. “Bot' tumbs up! ye'd a t'ought it was the flyin' Salvator.”
+
+“Well, we'll soon know all about it,” declared Dixon. “There's the
+saddlin' bell. Have you weighed out, Redpath? Weight all right,
+ninety-two pounds?”
+
+“All right, sir. It was a close call to make it, though; there was a few
+ounces over.”
+
+“All the better; it's a hot day, an' if they're long at the post it'll
+take them spare ounces out of you, I fancy.”
+
+Dixon held up his finger to the boy that was leading Lucretia, and
+nodding his head toward the stall led the way.
+
+“We're number seven, Mike,” said Allis, looking at the leather tag which
+carried the figure on Jockey Redpath's right arm.
+
+“'There's luck in odd numbers, said Rory O'Moore,'” quoted Mike.
+
+“I've a superstitious dread of seven,” the girl said; “it's the one
+number that I always associate with disaster--I don't mind thirteen a
+bit.”
+
+“We'll break the bad luck seven to-day,” asserted little Redpath,
+bravely.
+
+“I hope so,” answered Allis. “Let me put my finger on the number for
+good luck,” and she touched the badge on his arm. “Now I'm going up to
+get a good seat in the stand,” she continued; “I'll leave Lucretia to
+you, Redpath.”
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+As the slight figure, looking slighter still in a long trailing race
+coat, passed through the paddock gate to the stand enclosure, Mike
+Gaynor spoke to the jockey.
+
+“Redpath, me b'y, it's up to ye to put yer best leg for'ard to-day. Ye'r
+ridin' for the greatest little woman in this big country. In all the
+stand up there, wit' their flounces and jewels, there isn't a lady like
+her. Not wan av them judys kin touch her as a rale proper lady. God
+bless me, she's de sweetest--” then he checked himself; he was going to
+say the sweetest filly, but even to his rough-hewn mind, tutored only by
+horse lore, it seemed sacrilege to speak of Miss Porter as anything but
+a lady.
+
+“You're right, Mike,” concurred the little man; “I'd rather ride the
+mare for her than White Moth, or The King, or any of the favorites for
+their owners.”
+
+“An' the ould man lyin' there at home on his back, eh, Redpath? He's as
+good as gold hisself; that's where the girl gets it; not sayin' a word
+ag'in Mrs. Porter; she don't understand, that's all. But ye'll put up
+the ride of your life, me b'y, won't ye?”
+
+“I'll do that, old chap.”
+
+“Mike'll stand by ye,” affirmed Gaynor. “Say, b'y,” and he turned and
+looked squarely into the eyes of the little man, “I know if they beats
+ye to-day, 'twon't be yer fault 'cause why?”--and he put his hand on
+Redpath's shoulder--“'cause ye'r like many another man, sweet on the
+young Missis. Now, now, now stop that!” and he held up his finger
+warningly, as the other raised his voice in mild protest; “it's to
+yer credit. It'll do ye no good in wan way, av coorse, for, as ye
+say, she'll never know it.” Redpath had not made the statement Mike
+attributed to him, but the latter was giving him a kindly pointer. “But
+it'll do ye no harm. The likin' av a good woman will sometimes make
+a man av a scoundrel, but ye'r a long way from bein' that, me b'y; so
+it'll do ye tons av good. There's the bugle; go an' mount, an' I'll
+watch how ye get on; an' good luck to ye.”
+
+Regally, one after another, in stately file, the turf kings, decked out
+with the silken jackets that rested a-top--crimson, and gold, and blue,
+and white, and magpie, passed through the paddock gate to the newly
+smoothed course. Very modest and demure number seven, the little brown
+mare, looked beside the strong-muscled giants, bright bay, golden
+chestnut, and raven-wing black, that overshadowed her in the procession
+that caught the forty thousand pairs of eyes. Something of this thought
+came to Allis, sitting in the stand. What a frail little pair they were,
+both of them, and to be there battling for this rich prize that was
+so hardly fought for, by strong men athirst for gold, and great horses
+a-keen for the gallop!
+
+Ah, there was Diablo, the very number Allis had said carried no dread
+for her, thirteen. What a strange coincidence! What a cruel twist
+of fate it would be if he were to win!--he looked equal to it. A man
+sitting at Allis's elbow suddenly cried in a voice enthused into the
+joyous treble of a boy's: “Look at that big Black; isn't he a beaut?
+Number thirteen. That's a hoodoo number, if you like; it's enough to
+give a backer cold feet.”
+
+“I thought you weren't superstitious, Rex;” this was a woman's voice.
+
+“I'm not, an' I'm going straight down to back that Black, thirteen and
+all.”
+
+On Allis's other side one of the party was ticking off the horses by
+their numbers as they passed; “One, two, that's White Moth; they say
+she'll win; three, Red Rover; four, what's that? that's George L.; five,
+six, seven; just look at that little runt. What is it? Oh, Lucretia.
+Might as well run a big calf, I should think.”
+
+“She's just lovely,” declared a lady in the party. “She's as graceful as
+a deer, and I'm sure she'll run as fast as any of them.”
+
+“Can't live in that mob; they'll smother a little thing like her,”
+ declared the man, emphatically. “Where are we--ten, eleven, The King,
+that's the winner for a hundred. Look at him. He carries my money.
+It's all over now; they can't beat him. That's a fine looker, though,
+thirteen,--Diabo, eh? What's that horse Diablo, George?” turning to one
+of the men.
+
+“No good--a maiden; I looked them all up in the dope book; how they
+expect to win the Brooklyn with a maiden gets beyond me.”
+
+Somewhat tortured, Allis listened to the voluble man on her left, who
+was short and fat, and red of face, as he graded, with egotistical
+self-sufficiency, the thirteen competitors for the big Handicap.
+Lucretia he had passed over in disdain. Crude as his judgment seemed,
+arrogantly insufficient, it affected Allis disagreeably. Now that
+everything had been done, that the last minute of suspense was on, she
+was depressed. The exhilaration of preparation had gone from her, and
+the words of the captious man on her left, “that little runt,” hung with
+persistent heaviness on her soul. All the vast theater of the stand
+was a buzz of eager chatter. Verily it was a race; it was the Brooklyn
+Handicap. Lips that smiled gave a mocking lie to drawn, strained faces,
+and nervous, shifting eyes, that told of the acceptance of too deep a
+hazard. The weeks and months of mental speculation embodied in heavy
+bets would have their fruit ripened and plucked within a brief half
+hour.
+
+Allis's gaze dropped to the grass lawn in front of the stand for a
+minute, her eyes seeking repose from the strain of watching the horses
+as they went down to the starting post. How fretfully erratic were the
+men who dotted its green sward with gray and solemn black! The deeper
+interest Allis had over there on the course where was the little mare,
+seemed to lift her to a great height above them. How like ants they
+were, crossing and recrossing each other's paths, twisting and turning
+without semblance of an objective point, creatures of an impulse almost
+lower than instinct, devoid of this well-directed governing motive.
+Yes, they were like an army of ants that had been suddenly thrown
+into confusion. She saw one of them come hurriedly out of the paddock,
+talking impetuously with bended head--for he was tall--to a short man
+in gray tweed, beyond doubt a trainer. Suddenly the tall man broke away,
+hurried to the rail which separated the lawn from the course, leaned far
+over its top to take a last look at the horses, and then with a queer
+shuffling trot he hurried to the mob that was surging and pushing about
+the bookmakers. Allis noted with minute observance each little act in
+this pantomime of the last-minute plunge. Just beneath where she sat
+two men were having a most energetic duel of words. A slim, darkskinned
+youth, across whose fox-like face was written in large letters the word
+“Tout,” was hammering into his obdurate companion the impossibility of
+some certain horse being defeated. Presently the other man's hand went
+into his pocket, and when it came forth again five ten-dollar bills were
+counted with nervous reluctance and hesitatingly made over to the Tout.
+Tight clutching his prize this pilot of the race course slipped from
+Allis's sight and became lost in the animated mass that heaved and
+swayed like full-topped grain in a harvest breeze.
+
+Within all that enclosure there seemed no one possessed of any calm. To
+the quiet girl it was a strange revelation; no one could have as much at
+stake as she had, and yet over her spirit there was nothing beyond
+the lethargy of depression. No; no one is calm, she thought. Ah, the
+assertion was too sweeping. Coming up the steps, just at her right, was
+a man who might have been walking in a quiet meadow, or a full-leafed
+forest, for all there was of agitation in his presence. A sudden new
+thought came to Allis; she had never seen that face distraught but once.
+The collected man was Philip Crane. A tinge of almost admiration tingled
+the girl's mind. To be possessed of calm where all was nervous strain
+was something.
+
+Suddenly the unimpassioned face lighted up; the narrow-lidded eyes
+gleamed with brightened interest. As eagerly as a boy their owner,
+Crane, came forward and saluted Allis. At that instant the man of many
+words on her left rose from his seat to chase through the interminable
+crowd on the lawn a new victim.
+
+Allis had sought to be alone in this short time of trial; she was hardly
+sure of herself. If Lucretia failed she might break down; for what would
+come to her father should the message home be one of disaster? Even if
+the little mare won her joy might lead her to commit strange pranks; she
+felt that her heart would burst out of sheer joy, if she did not shout
+in exultation, or caper madly, as she had seen others do in the hour of
+victory. She was sorry that Crane had come.
+
+“I was looking for you,” he said; “I want to see you win this race;
+that is, if--I mean, like every other man here, I have harked back to my
+natural instinct of covetous acquisition and had a bet on.”
+
+“Not Lucretia?”
+
+“No--I've bet on Diablo. Langdon thinks he'll win. Do you remember the
+agreement about his purchase?”
+
+“What was that? I've half forgotten it.”
+
+“Just a little bet on your account, you know.”
+
+“Oh, I remember; but that was only in fun, wasn't it?”
+
+“It was part of the bargain, and it's on. You'll take it, won't you, if
+he wins--”
+
+“They're off!” Some one had shouted the magic words from the head of the
+steps. In a second every voice of the thousands was stilled, and there
+was only the noise of shuffling feet, as eager watchers stood up to see
+the horses.
+
+“It's a false start,” said Crane, quietly, turning toward the girl. “It
+would have been well for you, Miss Allis, had the starter let them go.
+Lucretia was well out in the lead; it was Diablo's fault, too, that they
+had to go back--he was left standing.”
+
+Crane's voice was Fate's voice. Would there never be anything but
+Lucretia and Diablo, seven and thirteen, thirteen and seven?
+
+“Diablo's a bad horse at the post, sure,” ejaculated Crane, letting
+his field glass rest for an instant on his knee; “he just backs up and
+shakes his head viciously; evidently he doesn't like the idea of so much
+company.”
+
+“How is Lucretia acting, Mr. Crane?”
+
+“Perfectly. You must have instilled some of your own patience into her.”
+
+The girl hardly heard the implied compliment.
+
+Would the patience be rewarded? Or would thirteen, that was symbolical
+of evil, and its bearer, Diablo, who was an agent of evil, together
+snatch from her this prize that meant so much? It was strange that she
+should not think of the other horses at all. It was as though there
+were but two in the race--Lucretia and Diablo--and yet they were both
+outsiders.
+
+“The Starter is having a bad time of it; that makes six false breaks,”
+ said Allis's companion; “it will end by his losing patience with the
+boys, I fear, and let them go with something off in a long lead. But
+they say this Fitzpatrick is a cool hand, and gives no man the best of
+it. He'll probably fine Diablo's rider a hundred dollars; I believe it's
+customary to do that when a jockey persistently refuses to come up
+with his horses. Just look at that!--the black fiend has lashed out and
+nearly crippled something.”
+
+“Not Lucretia, Mr. Crane!” gasped Allis.
+
+“No, it's a chestnut--there they go! Good boy, Westley. I mean Diablo's
+jockey has done a fiendish clever thing. He came through his horses on
+the jump, carried them off their feet, they all broke--yes, the flag's
+down, and he's out with a clean lead.”
+
+Down in front a bell was clanging viciously; people were rushing with
+frenzied haste from the betting ring, and clambering up the steps of the
+stand; in the stand itself the whole vast mob had risen to its feet, and
+even now the rolling beat of eager hoofs was in the aid, hushed of the
+mob's clamor.
+
+Yes, Crane had spoken truly; a great striding black, along whose neck
+hung close a tiny figure in yellow and red, was leading the oncoming
+horses. Allis strained her eyes trying to discover the little mare, but
+she was swallowed up in the struggling mob that hung at Diablo's heels.
+As they opened a little, swinging around the first turn, Allis caught
+sight of the white-starred blue jacket. Its wearer was quite fifth or
+sixth.
+
+“Lucretia is doing well,” said Crane; “she's holding her own; she's
+lapped on White Moth.”
+
+It seemed strange to Allis that any other thought should come into her
+mind at that time other than just concern for Lucretia, but she caught
+herself wondering at Crane's professional words of description. For
+the time he was changed; the quick brevity of his utterance tokened an
+interested excitement. He was not at all like the Crane she knew, the
+cold, collected banker.
+
+“Lucretia's doing better,” her companion added a few seconds later. “If
+I were given to sentiment, I should say her gallop was the poetry of
+motion. She deserves to win. But honestly, Miss Allis, I think she'll
+never catch the Black; he's running like a good horse.”
+
+Allis could not answer; the strain was too great for words. It would be
+all over in a minute or so; then she would talk.
+
+“Your mare is creeping up, Miss Allis; she's second to the Black now,
+and they've still a good three furlongs to go. You may win yet. It takes
+a good horse to make all his own running for a mile and a quarter and
+then in. His light weight may land him first past the post. There are
+only four in it now, the rest are beaten off, sure. Diablo is still in
+the lead; White Moth and Lucretia are a length back; and The King is
+next, running strong. It's the same into the stretch. Now the boys are
+riding; Lucretia is drawing away from White Moth--she's pressing Diablo.
+You'll win yet!”
+
+His voice was drowned by the clamor that went up from every side.
+“Diablo! White Moth! Lucretia!” What a babel of yells! “He's beat! Come
+on!” It was deafening. All the conjecture of months, all the hopes and
+fears of thousands, compressed into a few brief seconds of struggling
+endeavor.
+
+Allis had sat down. There was less frenzied excitement thus.
+
+“God of Justice!” it was Crane's voice, close to her ear; his hot breath
+was on her cheek; he had leaned down, so that she might hear him. “Your
+jockey has sold you, or else Lucretia quit. I thought I saw him pull her
+off. I'm sorry, Miss Allis, God knows I am, though I've won--for Diablo
+is winning easily.” Then he straightened up for an instant, only to bend
+down again and say, “Yes, Diablo has won, and Lucretia is beaten off.
+Perhaps it wasn't the boy, after all, for it's a long journey for a
+three-year-old mare. Can I do anything for you? Let me see you down to
+the paddock.”
+
+“Thank you,” the girl answered, struggling with her voice. “Yes, I must
+go, for Dixon will be terribly disappointed. I must go and put a brave
+face on, I suppose. It's all over, and it can't be helped. But you've
+won, and I congratulate you.”
+
+“Poor old dad!” she muttered to herself, “to have fairly given away
+Diablo just when he was ready to win a big race.” With a tinge of
+bitterness the girl thought how much her mother's opposition was to
+blame for this narrow missing of a great victory. She was glad to get
+away from the cataract of voices that smothered her like great falling
+waters. There was little exultation. If it had been any solace to her,
+she had much companionship in her dashed hopes; for Diablo, the winner,
+had not been backed by the general public; the favorite, White Moth, had
+been beaten.
+
+After the first outburst a sullen anger took possession of the
+race-goers. They had been wronged, deceived; another coup had been made
+by that trick manipulator, Langdon. How carefully he had kept the
+good thing bottled up. If the mob could have put into execution its
+half-muttered thoughts, every post about the Gravesend track would have
+been decorated with a fragment of Langdon's anatomy.
+
+Even the bookmakers were less jubilant than usual over this winning of
+an outsider, for Crane, and Langdon, and Faust, and two or three others
+who had either received a hint or stumbled upon the good thing, had
+taken out of the ring a tidy amount of lawful currency.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Crane accompanied Allis to the paddock gate; and she continued on to
+the fatal number seven stall. Lucretia had just been brought in, looking
+very distressed after her hard race. For an instant the girl forgot her
+own trouble at sight of the gallant little mare's condition. Two boys
+were busy rubbing the white-crusted perspiration and dust from her
+sides; little dark rivulets of wet trickled down the lean head that hung
+wearily.
+
+“Well, we lost!” It was Dixon's voice at Allis's elbow. “That'll do,” to
+the boys; “here, put this cooler on, and walk her about.”
+
+Then he turned to Allis again. “She was well up with the leaders half
+way in the stretch; I tho't she was goin' to win.”
+
+“Was it too far for her, Dixon?”
+
+The Trainer did not answer at once; with him at all times questions
+were things to be pondered over. His knitted brows and air of hesitating
+abstraction showed plainly that this question of Allis's was one he
+would prefer to answer days later, if he answered it at all.
+
+“Didn't she stop suddenly?” Allis asked, again.
+
+“I couldn't just see from where I was what happened,” he replied,
+evasively; “and I haven't asked the boy yet. She may have got shut in.
+Ah, here he comes now,” as the jockey returned from the weighing scales.
+
+Redpath seemed to think that some explanation was necessary, as he came
+up to Allis and the Trainer, so he said: “The little mare seemed to have
+a chance when I turned into the stretch, an' I thought once I was goin'
+to win; but that big Black just kept galloping, galloping, an' I never
+could get to his head; I'd a been in the money, though, if somethin'
+hadn't bumped me; an' then my mount just died away--she just seemed to
+die away.” He repeated this is a falling decadence, as though it best
+expressed his reason for finishing in the ruck.
+
+“Well, we're beat, an' that's all there is to it,” declared Dixon, half
+savagely; then he added, “an' by a cast-off out of your father's stable,
+too, Miss Allis. If there's any more bad luck owin' John Porter, hanged
+if I wouldn't like to shoulder it myself, an' give him a breather.”
+ Then, with ponderous gentleness for a big, rough-throwntogether man, he
+continued: “Don't you fret, Miss; the little mare's all right; she'll
+pull your father through all this; you just cheer up. I've got to go now
+an' look after her.”
+
+When the Trainer had gone the jockey turned to Allis, hesitatingly,
+and said: “Dixon's correct about the little mare; she's all right. I
+wouldn't speak even afore him, though he's all right too, but” and he
+looked about carefully to see that nobody was within ear-shot. Two men
+were talking a little farther out in the paddock, and Redpath, motioning
+to Allis, stepped close to the stall that was next to the one Lucretia
+had occupied, “I could a-been in the money.”
+
+The girl started. Crane had said that the jockey had stopped riding.
+
+“Yes, Miss; you mustn't blame me, for I took chances of bein' had up
+afore the Stewards.”
+
+“You did wrong if you didn't try to win,” exclaimed Allis, angrily.
+
+“I did try to win, but I couldn't. I saw that I'd never catch that big
+Black; he was going too strong; his long stride was just breaking the
+little mare's heart. She's the gamest piece of horseflesh--say, Miss
+Porter, believe me, it just hurt me to take it out of her, keeping up
+with that long-legged devil. If I could a-headed him once, just got to
+him once--I tried it when we turned into the straight--he'd have quit.
+But it was no use--the mare couldn't do it. With him out of the race I'd
+have won; I could a-been second or third as it was, but it might have
+done the little mare up so she wouldn't be any good all season. I
+thought a bit over this when I was galloping. I knew she was in the
+Brooklyn Derby, an' when I had the others beat at a mile, thinks I, if
+the public don't get onto it, Mr. Porter can get all his losses back in
+the Brooklyn Derby. That's why I eased up on the little mare. You don't
+think I could do anything crooked against you, Miss? Give me the mount
+in the Derby, an' your father can bet his last dollar 'that Lucretia'll
+win.”
+
+As he finished speaking Mike Gaynor shuffled moodily up to them. Usually
+Mike's clothes suggested a general despondency; his wiry body, devoid of
+roundness as a rat trap, seemed inadequate to the proper expression of
+their original design. The habitual air of endeavorless decay had been
+accentuated by the failure of Lucretia to win the Brooklyn. Mike had
+shrunken into his allenveloping coat with pathetic moroseness. The
+look of pity in his eye when it lighted upon Allis gave place to one
+of rebellious accusation as he turned his head slowly and glared at
+Redpath.
+
+“Ye put up a bad ride there, b'y,” he commenced, speaking in a hard,
+dry, defiant tone; “a bad ride, an' no mistake. Mind I'm not sayin' ye
+could a-won, but ye might a-tried,” and he waited for Redpath's defense.
+
+“She was all out, Mike, beat; what was the use of driving her to death
+when she hadn't the ghost of a chance?”
+
+“You're a little too hard on Redpath,” remonstrated Allis; “he's just
+been telling me that he didn't wish to punish the mare unnecessarily.”
+
+“His business was to win if he could, Miss,” answered Mike, not at all
+won over. “It was a big stake, an' he ought to've put up a big finish.
+The Black would've quit if ye'd ever got to his throat-latch; he's soft,
+that's what he is. An' just where ye could have won the race, p'r'aps,
+ye quit ridin' an' let him come home alone. It's queer b'ys that's
+ridin' now, Miss,” Gaynor added, fiercely, nodding his head in great
+decision, and, turning away abruptly, the petulant moroseness showing
+deeper than ever in his wrinkled face.
+
+“You mustn't mind Mike, Redpath,” said Allis; “he's a good friend of our
+family, and is upset over the race, that's all.”
+
+“I don't blame him,” answered the jockey; “he would have rode it out and
+spoiled your chance with the mare--that would have done no good.”
+
+“Still, I hardly like it,” answered the girl. “I know you did it for
+my sake, but it doesn't seem quite right. Don't do anything like this
+again. Of course, I don't want Lucretia pushed beyond her strength, nor
+cut up with the whip, but she ought to get the place if she can. People
+might have backed her for the place, and we've thrown away their money.”
+
+“The bettors will look after their own interests, Miss Porter, and they
+wouldn't help you a little bit if you needed it; they'd be more like to
+do you a bad turn. If I'd driven the mare to death, an' been beaten
+for the place, as I might have, the papers would have slated me for
+cruelty. You must believe that I did it for the best, Miss.”
+
+“I do, and I suppose I must thank you, but don't do it again. I'd rather
+you didn't carry your whip at all on Lucretia; she doesn't need it;
+but don't ease her up if you've got a chance till you pass the winning
+post.”
+
+As the two finished speaking, and moved away, a thin, freckled face
+peered furtively from the door of stall number six. Just the ferret-like
+eyes and a knife-thin nose showed past the woodwork, but there could be
+no mistaking the animal. It was Shandy.
+
+“I've got you again,” he muttered. “Blast the whole tribe of you! I'll
+just pip you on that dirty work, blowed if I don't.”
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+The Brooklyn had been run and won; won by Langdon's stable, and lost by
+John Porter's. That night Allis spent hours trying to put into a letter
+to her mother their defeat and their hopes in such a way as to save
+distress to her father. She wound up by simply asking her mother to get
+Dr. Rathbone to impart as much information as he deemed advisable to his
+patient.
+
+They were a very depressed lot at Dixon's cottage that evening. Dixon
+was never anything else but taciturn, and the disappointment of the day
+was simply revolving in his mind with the monotonous regularity of a
+grindstone. They had lost, and that's all there was about it. Why talk
+it over? It could do no good. He would nurse up Lucretia, and work back
+into her by mile gallops a fitting strength for the Brooklyn Derby. With
+incessant weariness he rocked back and forth, back and forth in the big
+Boston rocker; while Allis, at a little table in a corner of the room,
+sought to compose the letter she wished to send home.
+
+With apathetic indifference the girl heard a constrained knock at the
+cottage door; she barely looked up as Dixon opened to a visitor. It was
+Crane who entered.
+
+At almost any other time his visit would have been unpleasant. In
+his presence even the most trivial conversation seemed shrouded in a
+background of interested intentions; but to-night Dixon's constrained
+depression weighed heavy on her spirits and irritated her.
+
+“Luck was against you to-day, Dixon,” exclaimed the visitor.
+
+“They were too strong for the little mare,” answered the Trainer,
+curtly. “Our cast-off won, of course, but there were a half dozen in the
+race that would have beaten Lucretia, I fancy.”
+
+Allis looked inquiringly at the Trainer; he had not talked that way to
+her. Then a light dawned upon the girl. She had not associated Dixon
+with diplomacy in her mind, she knew that he could maintain a golden
+silence, but here he was, actually throwing out to the caller a
+disparaging estimate of Lucretia's powers. This perpetual atmosphere of
+duplicity was positively distasteful. In the free gallop of the horses
+there was nothing but an inspiration to honest endeavor; but in this
+subtle diplomacy Allis detected the touch of defilement which her
+mother so strongly resented. Perhaps to-night she was more sensitive
+to depressing influences; at any rate she felt a great weariness of
+the whole business. Then the spirit of resolve rose in open rebellion
+against these questionings; almost Jesuitical she became at once. What
+mattered the ways or means, so that she did no wrong? Was not the saving
+of her father's health and spirit, and his and her mother's welfare
+above all these trivial questionings; did not the end justify the means;
+might not her success, if the fates in pity gave her any, save her
+from--from--she did not even formulate in thought the contingency,
+for there stood the living embodiment of it-Crane; everything seemed
+crowding her into the narrow confines of her sacrificial crypt.
+
+Crane had spoken to her on his entry. As she was writing he had
+continued his discussion of the race with Dixon; perhaps, even--it was a
+hopeful thought, born of desire--he had come to see the Trainer. Crane's
+next words dispelled that illusion. It was in answer to an observation
+from Dixon that he was forced to go to the stables, that Crane said:
+“If Miss Porter has no objection I'll remain a little longer; I want to
+discuss a matter concerning her father.”
+
+Allis felt quite like fleeing to the stables with Dixon; she dreaded
+that Crane was going to bring up again the subject of his affection for
+her. But the Trainer had passed out before she could muster sufficient
+moral courage to put in execution her half-formed resolve.
+
+“I wanted to speak about that wager on Diablo,” began Crane. A thrill
+of relief shot through the girl's heart. Why had be troubled himself to
+come to her over such a trifling matter--a pair of gloves, perhaps half
+a dozen pairs even.
+
+“I put the bet on some time ago,” he continued, “when Diablo was at a
+long price. It was only a trifle, as we agreed upon--” Allis noticed
+that he laid particular stress upon “agreed.” “But it has netted you
+quite a nice sum, three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars.”
+
+Crane said this in a quiet voice, without unction; but it startled the
+girl--she stared in blank amazement. Her companion was evidently waiting
+for her to say something; seemed to expect an exclamation of joyous
+approval. She noticed that the gray eyes she so distrusted had taken on
+that distasteful peeping expression, as though he were watching her walk
+into a trap.
+
+“I cannot take it,” answered Allis, decisively, after a pause.
+
+Crane raised his hand in mild protest.
+
+“It was good of you, kind; but how could I accept a large sum of money
+like that when I am not entitled to it?”
+
+“You are--it's yours. The bet was made in your name I entered it at the
+time in my book, and the bookmaker is ready to pay the money over.”
+
+“I can't take it--I won't. No, no, no!”
+
+“Don't be foolishly sensitive, Miss Allis. Think what your father lost
+when he parted with Diablo for a trivial thousand dollars; and it was
+my fault, for I arranged the sale. Your father's needs--pardon me, but I
+know his position, being his banker--yes, he needs this money badly.”
+
+“My father needs a good many things, Mr. Crane, which he would not
+accept as a gift; he would be the last man to do so. We must just go
+on doing the best we can, and if we can't succeed, that's all. We can't
+accept help, just yet, anyway.”
+
+She was bitter; the reference to her father's troubles, though meant
+partly in kindness, angered her. It caused her to feel the meshes of the
+net drawing closer about her, and binding her free will. The fight was
+indeed on. More than ever she determined to struggle to the bitter end.
+Almost indefinably she knew that to accept this money, plausible as the
+offering was, meant an advantage to Crane.
+
+“You can't leave this large sum with the bookmaker,” he objected. “He
+would like nothing better; he would laugh in his sleeve. I can't take
+it; it isn't mine.”
+
+“I won't touch it.”
+
+“Perhaps I had better speak to your father about it,” said Crane,
+tentatively; “he can have no objection to accepting this money that has
+been won.”
+
+“Father won't take it, either,” answered the girl; “I know his ideas
+about such matters. He won't take it.”
+
+Crane brought all his fine reasoning powers to bear on Allis, but failed
+signally in his object. He was unaccustomed to being balked, but the
+girl's firm determination was more than a match for his adaptable
+sophistry. He had made no headway, was quite beaten, when Dixon's
+opportune return prevented absolute discomfiture. Crane left shortly,
+saying to Allis as he bade them good night: “I'm sorry you look upon
+the matter in this light. My object in coming to-night was to give you a
+little hope for brightness in your gloomy hour of bad luck; but perhaps
+I had better speak to your father.”
+
+“I'd rather you didn't,” she answered, somewhat pleadingly. “Dr.
+Rathbone has cautioned us all against worrying father, and this could
+have no other result than but to distress him.”
+
+Allis's letter had been completed, but she now added a postscript,
+telling her mother briefly of Crane's insistence over the bet, and
+beseeching her to devise some plan for keeping this new disturbing
+element from her father.
+
+Crane was remaining over night in Gravesend, and, going back to his
+quarters, he reviewed the evening's campaign. He had expected opposition
+from Allis, but had hoped to overcome the anticipated objections; he had
+failed in this, but it was only a check, not defeat.
+
+He smiled complacently over his power of self-control in having allowed
+no hint of his absorbing passion to escape him.
+
+Acceptance of this money by Allis, the money which was the outcome of
+an isolated generous thought, would have given him a real advantage.
+To have spoken, though never so briefly of his hopes for proprietary
+rights, would have accentuated the girl's sensitive alarm. He was too
+perfect a tactician to indulge in such poor sword play; he had really
+left the question open. A little thought, influenced by the desperate
+condition of Porter's fortunes, might make Allis amenable to what was
+evidently her best interest, should she be approached from a different
+quarter.
+
+Crane had made the first move, and met checkmate; the second move would
+be through Allis's mother; he determined upon that course. All his old
+cunning must have surely departed from him if he could not win this
+girl. Fate was backing him up most strenuously. Diablo had been cast
+into his hands--thrust upon him by the good fortune that so steadily
+befriended him. He was not in the habit of attributing unlooked-for
+success to Providence; he rarely went beyond fate for a deity.
+Unmistakably then it was fate that had cast the horoscope of his and
+Allis's life together. Never mind what means he might use to carry out
+this decree; once accomplished, he would more than make amends to the
+girl.
+
+He drew most delightful pictures of the Utopian existence his wealth
+would make possible for Allis. For the father he would provide a racing
+stable that would bring profit in place of disaster. Crane smiled
+somewhat grimly as he thought that under those changed circumstances
+even Allis's mother might be brought to condone her husband's
+continuance in the nefarious profession. If for no other reason than
+the great success he had made in the Brooklyn Handicap with Diablo,
+his spirits were that evening impossible of the reception of even a
+foreshadowing of failure. A suppressed exhilaration rose-tinted every
+projected scheme. He would win Allis, and he would win the Brooklyn
+Derby with his good colt, The Dutchman.
+
+He went to sleep in this happy glamour of assured success, and, by the
+inevitable contrariness of things, dreamed that he was falling over a
+steep precipice on The Dutchman's back, and that at the bottom Mortimer
+and Allis were holding a blanket to catch him in his fall. Even in his
+imaginative sleep, he was saved from a dependence upon this totally
+inadequate receptacle for a horse and rider, for he woke with a gasp
+after he had traveled with frightful velocity for an age through the
+air.
+
+Crane was a man not given to superstitious enthrallment; his convictions
+were usually founded on basic manifestations rather than fanciful
+visions; but somehow the night's dream fastened upon his mind as he
+lingered over a breakfast of coffee and rolls. Even three cups of
+coffee, ferociously strong, failed to drown the rehearsal of his
+uncomfortable night's gallop. Why had he linked Mortimer and Allis
+together? Had it been fate again, prompting him in his sleep, giving him
+warning of a rival that stood closer to the girl than he?
+
+More than once he had thought of Mortimer as a possible rival. Mortimer
+was not handsome, but he was young, tall, and square-shouldered--even
+his somewhat plain face seemed to reflect a tall, square-shouldered
+character.
+
+Subconsciously Crane turned his head and scanned critically the
+reflection of his own face in a somewhat disconsolate mirror that
+misdecorated a panel of the breakfast room. Old as the glass was,
+somewhat bereaved of its quicksilver lining at the edge, it had not got
+over its habit of telling the truth. Ordinarily little exception
+could have been taken to the mirrored face; it was intellectual; no
+sign-manual of cardinal sin had been placed upon it; it was neither
+low, nor brutal, nor wolfishly cunning in expression. Its pallor rather
+loaned an air of distingue, but--and the examination was being conducted
+for the benefit of a girl of twenty--it was the full-aged visage of a
+man of forty.
+
+More than ever a conviction fixed itself in Crane's mind that, no matter
+how strong or disinterested his love for Allis might be, he would win
+her only by diplomacy. After all, he was better versed in that form of
+love-making, if it might be so called.
+
+Crane was expecting Langdon at ten o'clock. He heard a step in the
+breakfast room, and, turning his head, saw that it was the Trainer.
+Mechanically Crane pulled his watch from his pocket; he had thought it
+earlier; it was ten. Langdon was on time to a minute. Nominally
+what there was to discuss, though of large import, required little
+expression. With matters going so smoothly there was little but
+assurances and congratulations to be exchanged. Diablo's showing in the
+big Handicap confirmed Langdon's opinion that both the Black and The
+Dutchman had given them a great trial; probably they would duplicate
+their success with The Dutchman in the Brooklyn Derby. It was only a
+matter of a few days, and the son of Hanover had steadily improved; he
+was in grand fettle.
+
+Langdon's appreciation of Crane's cleverness had been enhanced by the
+successful termination of what he still believed was a brilliantly
+planned coup. He had never for an instant thought that Crane purchased
+the horse out of kindness to anyone. It was still a matter of mystery to
+him, however, why his principal should wish to keep dark just how he had
+learned Diablo's handicap qualities.
+
+Accustomed to reading Langdon's mind, Crane surmised from the Trainer's
+manner that the latter had something that he had not yet broached. Their
+talk had been somewhat desultory, much like the conversation of men who
+have striven and succeeded and are flushed with the full enjoyment of
+their success. Suddenly the Trainer drew himself together, as if for a
+plunge, and said: “Did you notice Porter's mare in the Brooklyn, sir?”
+
+“Yes; she ran a pretty good race for a three-year-old.”
+
+“She did, an' I suppose they'll start her in the Derby. Do you happen to
+know, sir?”
+
+“I fancy they will,” answered Crane, carelessly.
+
+“She stopped bad yesterday; but I've heard somethin'.”
+
+Crane remembered his own suspicion as to Lucretia's rider, but he only
+said, “Well?”
+
+“After the race yesterday the jockey, Redpath, was talkin'--to the
+Porter gal--”
+
+Crane started. It jarred him to hear this horseman refer to Allis as
+“the Porter gal.”
+
+“Redpath told her,” proceeded Langdon, “that when he saw he couldn't
+quite win he pulled his mount off to keep her dark for the Derby.”
+
+“How do you know this?”
+
+“A boy in my stable happened to be in the stall an' heard 'em.”
+
+“Who's the boy? Can you believe him?”
+
+“It's Shandy. He used to be with the Porters.”
+
+Like a flash it came to Crane that the spy must be the one who had
+written him the note about Faust and the change of saddles.
+
+“Well, that doesn't affect us, that I can see,” commented Crane. “I'm
+not backing their mare.”
+
+“It means,” declared Langdon, with great earnestness, “that if Lucretia
+could have beat all the others but Diablo, she has a rosy chance for the
+Derby; that's what it means. The Black got away with a flyin' start,
+and she wore him down, almost beat him; I doubt if The Dutchman could do
+that much. She was givin' him a little weight, too.”
+
+“Well, we can't help it. I've backed The Dutchman to win a small
+fortune, and I'm going to stand by it. You're in it to the extent of ten
+thousand, as you know, and we've just got to try and beat her with our
+colt; that's all there is to it.”
+
+“I don't like it,” muttered Langdon, surlily. “She's a mighty good
+three-year-old to put up a race like that.”
+
+“She may go off before Derby day,” suggested Crane; “mares are uncertain
+at this time of year.”
+
+“That's just it; if she would go off we'd feel pretty sure then. I think
+the race is between them.”
+
+“Well, we'll know race day; if she goes to the post, judging from what
+you say, it'll be a pretty tight fit.”
+
+“She didn't cut much figure last year when Lauzanne beat her.” Langdon
+said this with a drawling significance; it was a direct intimation that
+if Lucretia's present jockey could be got at, as her last year's rider
+had been--well, an important rival would be removed.
+
+Crane had not been responsible for the bribing of Lucretia's jockey,
+though he was well aware what had occurred; had even profited by it.
+
+“There'll be no crooked work this time,” he said; “nobody will interfere
+with the mare's rider, I hope,” and he looked significantly at Langdon.
+
+“I don't think they will,” and the Trainer gave a disagreeable laugh.
+“From what Shandy tells me, I fancy it would be a bad game. The truth of
+the matter is that gosling Redpath is stuck on the gal.”
+
+Crane's pale face flushed hot.
+
+“I believe that Shandy you speak of is a lying little scoundrel. I have
+an idea that he wrote me a note, a wretched scrawl, once. Wait, I've got
+it in my pocket; I meant to speak to you about it before.”
+
+Crane drew from the inner pocket of his coat a leather case, and after
+a search found Shandy's unsigned letter, and passed it over to the
+Trainer.
+
+“It's dollars to doughnuts Shandy wrote it. Let me keep this, sir.”
+
+“You're welcome to it,” answered Crane; “you can settle with him. But
+about the Derby, I have reasons for wishing to win that race, reasons
+other than the money. I want to win it, bad. Do you understand?”
+
+“I think I do. When you say you want to win a race, you generally want
+to win it.”
+
+“Yes, I do. But see here, Langdon, just leave their jockey to take
+orders from his own master, see?”
+
+“I wasn't goin' to put up no game with him, sir.”
+
+“Of course not, of course not. It wouldn't do. He's a straight boy, I
+think, and just leave him to ride the best he knows how. We've got a
+better jockey in Westley. Besides, the Brooklyn Handicap has taken a lot
+out of their mare; they may find that she'll go back after it. I think
+you'd better get rid of that Shandy serpent; he seems ripe for any
+deviltry. You can't tell but what he might get at The Dutchman if
+somebody paid him. If I'm any judge of outlawed human nature, he'd do
+it. I've got to run down to Brookfield on a matter of business,
+but shall be back again in a day or so. Just keep an eye on The
+Dutchman--but I needn't tell you that, of course.”
+
+“That two-year-old I bought at Morris Park is coughin' an' runnin'
+at the nose; I blistered his throat last night; he's got influenza,”
+ volunteered the Trainer.
+
+“Keep him away from The Dutchman, then.”
+
+“I've got him in another barn; that stuff's as catchin' as measles.”
+
+“If The Dutchman were to get a touch of it, Porter would land the Derby
+with Lucretia, I fancy.”
+
+“Or if they got it in their stable we'd be on Easy Street.”
+
+“I suppose so. But Dixon's pretty sharp; he'll look out if he hears it's
+about. However, we've got to watch our own horse and let them do the
+same.”
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+That evening Langdon and Jakey Faust were closeted together in a room
+of the former's cottage. An A1 piece of villainy was on, and they were
+conversing in low tones.
+
+“It's a cinch for The Dutchman if it wasn't for that damn mare
+Lucretia,” Langdon observed, in an injured tone, as though somehow the
+mare's excellence was an unwarranted interference with his rights.
+
+“What about the jock?” asked Faust.
+
+“No good--can't be done. He's mooney on the gal.”
+
+“Huh!” commented the Cherub. “Did you talk it over with the Boss? He's
+not a bad guy gettin' next a good thing.”
+
+“He gave me the straight tip to give Redpath the go-by.”
+
+“What's his little game? Is he going to hedge on the mare?”
+
+“No; he'll stand his bet flat-footed. Say, he's the slickest! If he
+didn't give me the straight office that the mare might get sick, then
+I'm a Dutchman.”
+
+“We're both Dutchmen.” The Cherub laughed immoderately at his stupid
+joke. “See, we're both standin' for The Dutchman, ain't we?”
+
+Langdon frowned at the other's levity. “You'll laugh out the other side
+your mouth if Lucretia puts up a race in the Derby like she did in the
+Handicap.”
+
+“But ain't she goin' to get sick? We could whip-saw them both ways
+then, that's if we knew it first. I could lay against her an' back your
+horse.”
+
+“I wish the old man wasn't so devilish deep; he makes me tired
+sometimes; gives it to me straight in one breath that he's got reasons
+for wantin' to win the race, an' then he pulls that preacher mug of
+his down a peg an' says, solemn like: 'But don't interfere with their
+jockey.' Then he talks about The Dutchman or Lucretia gettin' the
+influenza, an' that Andy Dixon is pretty fly about watchin' the mare.
+Now what do you make of all that, Jake?”
+
+“Well, you area mug. It don't need no makin' up. That book's all rounded
+to. He wants the mare stopped, an' don't want no muddlin' about with the
+jockey, see? Wasn't there a row over stoppin' Lucretia last year? Wasn't
+the boy set down for the meetin'? You ought to know; you had to pay
+through the nose for shuttin' his mouth. But what made the old man talk
+about the mare gettin' sick?”
+
+Langdon searched his memory; just how was that subject started? “Damn
+it! yes, of course; I told him about the two-year-old havin' the
+influenza.”
+
+“Well, Dick, my boy, you've guessed it, though you weren't trying. Crane
+would like to see the Porter mare coughin'.”
+
+“But you can't take a strange horse into their stable, an' him sick,”
+ objected the Trainer.
+
+“Right you are, Dick. But you could take the sickness there, if you had
+a boy with the sabe.”
+
+“I was thinkin' of that,” said Langdon, reflectively; “I was wonderin'
+if that's what the Boss meant.”
+
+“Sure thing--that's his way; he never wants to stand in for none of the
+blame, but he likes to feel sure that he's goin' to win.”
+
+“It looks a bit like it, damn me if it don't; an' I believe he was
+givin' me a pointer about the proper boy for the job, too. He said
+Shandy would get at a horse quick enough if he was paid for it.”
+
+“There you are; what more do you want? Would you have Crane get out on
+the housetop an' shout to you to go an' cruel Porter's mare? He's slick,
+he is, an' if it can be done you've got a great chance.”
+
+“I'm a poor man,” whined Langdon, “an' I can't take no chances on
+loosin' ten thousand, if it can be helped.”
+
+“It's got to be done right away, 'cause it'll take a couple of days to
+get the mare coughin'.”
+
+“I told Shandy to come here,” said the Trainer; “he ought to be turnin'
+up soon. When you hear him knock, just slip into that other room, an'
+leave the door open a little so that you can hear what takes place. God
+knows what that young imp wouldn't swear if a fellow had no witnesses.
+I think he's comin' here to-night to ask me to pay him to do some dirty
+job, an' I won't do it, see?” and he winked at Faust. “He's a bad boy,”
+ said the Bookmaker, in a tone of mock condemnation.
+
+“There he is now,” declared Langdon. “I hear a step on the gravel.
+Quick, slip into the room; he'll be peepin' through the windows; he's
+like a fox.”
+
+There was a knock at the door. When Langdon opened it Shandy shuffled
+into the room with a peculiar little rocking-horse sort of gait, just
+like the trot of a skunk. His whole appearance somehow suggested this
+despised animal.
+
+“Have you heard anything from the Porter stable?” Langdon asked, when
+the boy had taken a seat.
+
+“The little mare's well,” the boy answered, laconically.
+
+“That's bad luck for us, Shandy. We'll be poorer by the matter of a few
+thousand if they win the Derby.”
+
+“Who's we?” questioned Shandy, with saucy directness.
+
+“The whole stable. A man has played The Dutchman to win a hundred
+thousand, an' he's goin' to give the boys, one or two of them, five
+hundred if it comes off.”
+
+The small imp's weak, red-lidded eyes took on a hungry, famished look.
+“What're you givin' us is that straight goods?” he demanded, doubtingly.
+
+Langdon didn't answer the question direct; he said: “My man's afraid
+somebody'll get at The Dutchman. There's a lot of horse sickness about,
+an' if anyone was to take some of the poison from a sick horse's nose
+and put it in The Dutchman's nostrils at night, why he'd never start in
+the Derby, I reckon.”
+
+A look of deep cunning crept into the boy's thin freckled face; his eyes
+contracted and blinked nervously.
+
+“What th' 'ell's the difference? If the Porter mare starts Redpath
+thinks he's got a lead-pipe cinch.”
+
+“You'd lose your five hundred; that's the difference,” retorted Langdon.
+
+“An' if she doesn't start, an' our horse wins, I get five hundred? Is
+that dead to rights?”
+
+“If The Dutchan wins you get the money,” replied the Trainer,
+circumspectly. “You mustn't come to me, Shandy, with no game about
+takin' the horse sickness from, our two-year-old an' fixin' Porter's
+mare, 'cause I can't stand for that, see?”
+
+The boy would have interrupted, but Langdon motioned him to keep silent,
+and proceeded:
+
+“You see, if it leaked out an' we'd won a lot of money over The
+Dutchman, damn fools would say that I'd been at the bottom of it; an'
+if they had me up in front of the Stewards I couldn't swear that I'd had
+nothing to do with it.”
+
+He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, held it in front of Shandy's
+eyes, and said: “What did you write that letter for?”
+
+The boy stared in blank amazement. He trembled with fear; it was the
+warning note he had sent to Crane.
+
+“Now if I was to show that to Faust he'd put a pug on to do you up, see?
+I wouldn't give three cents for your carcass after they'd finished with
+you.”
+
+“I didn't mean nothin', s' help me God, I didn't,” pleaded the boy;
+“give it back to me, sir.”
+
+“You can take it, only don't play me the double cross no more. If you're
+doin' anything crooked, don't mix me up in it. You couldn't get into
+Porter's stable, anyway, if you tried to fix the mare.”
+
+“I didn't say I was goin' to do no bloomin' job; but I could get in
+right enough.”
+
+“Well, I ain't puttin' you next no dirty work, but if you hear that the
+mare gets this horse sickness that's goin' about, let me know at once,
+see? Come here quick. If Faust got a chance to lay against the mare he
+probably wouldn't say anythin' about that note, if he did know.”
+
+“I'll give you the office, sir, when she's took sick.”
+
+“That's right. You ain't got any too many friends, Shandy, an' you'd
+better stick to them that'll help you.”
+
+“Do I get that five hundred, sure?”
+
+“If Lucretia don't beat The Dutchman, you get it.”
+
+When the boy had gone Faust came forth from his hiding like a badger.
+
+“That's a bad boy--a wicked boy!” he said, pulling a solemn face.
+“You're a good man, Langdon, to steer him in the straight an' narrer
+path. He'll take good care of The Dutchman for that five hundred.”
+
+“Yes, if you don't pay these kids well they'll throw you down; an' I
+ain't takin' no chances, Faust.”
+
+“The Porter mare might catch the influenza, eh, Dick?”
+
+“If she does, I'll let you know at once, Jake. But I ain't in it. I
+threatened to kick that kid out when he hinted at something crooked.”
+
+“I heard you, Langdon, I'll take my oath to that. But I must be off now.
+You know where to find me if there's anything doin'.”
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+The next day, intent on persuading Porter to accept the money won over
+Diablo, Crane took a run down to Ringwood farm.
+
+As Allis had foreshadowed, his visit was of no avail, so far as Porter's
+acceptance of the winnings was concerned.
+
+With natural forethought Crane first talked it over with Mrs. Porter,
+but that good lady would have felt a sort of moral defilement in
+handling any betting money, much less this that seemed obscured in
+uncertainty as to its rightful ownership. She believed very much in
+Crane's bona fides, and had no doubt whatever but his statement of the
+case was absolutely truthful. But Allis had refused to accept the money;
+it would never do for her to go beyond her daughter's judgment. She even
+thought it unadvisable for Crane to discuss the matter with her husband;
+it would only worry him, and she was positive that, in his pride of
+independence, he would refuse to touch a penny that was not actually due
+him.
+
+“But there's a payment on Ringwood due in a few days,” Crane argued,
+“and we must arrange for that at all events. If this money, which is
+rightfully your family's, could be applied on that, it would make a
+difference, don't you think?”
+
+“I suppose John must settle it,” she said, resignedly; “perhaps you had
+better see him. I can't interfere one way or the other. I have no head
+for business,” she added, apologetically; “I'm not sure that any of us
+have except Allis. We just seem to drift, drift, drift.”
+
+Crane stated the facts very plausibly, very seductively, to John Porter.
+Porter almost unreasonably scented charity in Crane's proposal. He
+believed that the bet was a myth; Crane was trying to present him with
+this sum as a compensation for having lost Diablo. It wasn't even
+a loan; it was a gift, pure and simple. His very helplessness, his
+poverty, made him decline the offer with unnecessary fierceness. If
+Allis had refused it, if she were strong enough to stand without this
+charity, surely he, a man, battered though he was, could pass it by. He
+had received a hopeful message from Allis as to Lucretia's chances in
+the Derby; they felt confident of winning. That win would relieve them
+of all obligations.
+
+“I can't take it,” Porter said to Crane. “Allis is more familiar with
+the circumstances of the bet--if there was one--than I. It must just
+rest with her; she's the man now, you know,” he added, plaintively; “I'm
+but a broken wreck, and what she says goes.”
+
+“But there's a payment on Ringwood falling due in a few days,” Crane
+remonstrated, even as he had to Mrs. Porter.
+
+Porter collapsed, fretfully. He could stand out against prospective
+financial stringency, but actual obligations for which he had no means
+quite broke down his weakened energy. He had forgotten about this
+liability, that is, had thought the time of payment more distant.
+He would be forced to recall the money he had given Dixon to bet on
+Lucretia for the Derby, to meet this payment to the bank.
+
+Quite despondently he answered the other man. “I had forgotten all about
+it; this shake-up has tangled my memory. I can pay the money, though,”
+ he added, half defiantly; “it will hamper me, but I can do it.”
+
+A sudden thought came to Crane, an inspiration. “I've got it!” he
+exclaimed.
+
+Porter brightened up; there was such a world of confidence in the
+other's manner.
+
+“We'll just let this Diablo money stand against the payment which is
+about due on Ringwood; put it in the bank to cover it, so to speak;
+later we can settle to whom it belongs. At present it seems to be
+nobody's money; it's seldom one sees a few thousand going abegging for
+an owner,” he added, jocularly. “You say it isn't yours; I know it isn't
+mine; and most certainly it doesn't belong to the bookmaker, for he's
+lost it fair and square. We can't let him keep it; they win enough of
+the public's money.”
+
+Reluctantly, Porter gave a half-hearted acquiescence. He would have
+sacrificed tangible interests to leave the money that was in Dixon's
+hands with him to bet on Lucretia. It would be like not taking the tide
+at its flood to let her run unbacked when her chances of winning were so
+good, and the odds against her great enough to insure a big return.
+
+It was after banking hours, quite toward evening, by the time Crane had
+obtained this concession. He had brought the winnings for John Porter's
+acceptance, should the latter prove amenable to reason. Now it occurred
+to him that he might leave the money with one of the bank staff, who
+could deposit it the next day.
+
+Crane drove back to the village and went at once to the cashier, Mr.
+Lane's house. He was not at home; his wife thought perhaps he was still
+in the bank. Crane went there in search of him. He found only Mortimer,
+who had remained late over his accounts. From the latter Crane learned
+that the cashier had driven over to a neighboring town.
+
+“It doesn't matter,” remarked Crane; “I can leave this money with you.
+It's to meet a payment of three thousand due from John Porter about the
+middle of June. You can put it in a safe place in the vault till the
+note falls due, and then transfer it to Porter's credit.”
+
+“I'll attend to it, sir,” replied Mortimer. “I'll attach the money to
+the note, and put them away together.”
+
+On his way to the station Crane met Alan Porter.
+
+“I suppose you'd like a holiday to see your father's mare run for the
+Derby, wouldn't you, Alan?” he said.
+
+“I should very much, sir; but Mr. Lane is set against racing.”
+
+“Oh, I think he'll let you off that day. I'll tell him he may. But,
+like your mother, I don't approve of young men betting--I know what it
+means.”
+
+He was thinking, with bitterness, of his own youthful indiscretions.
+
+“If you go, don't bet. You might be tempted, naturally, to back your
+father's mare Lucretia, but you would stand a very good chance of
+losing.”
+
+“Don't you think she'll win, sir?” Alan asked, emboldened by his
+employer's freedom of speech.
+
+“I do not. My horse, The Dutchman, is almost certain to win, my trainer
+tells me.” Then he added, apologetic of his confidential mood, “I tell
+you this, lest through loyalty to your own people you should lose your
+money. Racing, I fancy, is very uncertain, even when it seems most
+certain.”
+
+Again Crane had cause to congratulate himself upon the somewhat clever
+manipulation of a difficult situation. He had scored again in his
+diplomatic love endeavor. He knew quite well that Allis's determined
+stand was only made possible by her expectation of gaining financial
+relief for her father through Lucretia's winning the Derby. Should she
+fail, they would be almost forced to turn to him in their difficulties.
+That was what he wanted. He knew that the money won over Diablo, if
+accepted, must always be considered as coming from him. The gradual
+persistent dropping of water would wear away the hardest stone; he would
+attain to his wishes yet.
+
+He was no bungler to attempt other than the most gently delicate
+methods.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Encouraged by Jockey Redpath's explanation of his ride on Lucretia,
+Allis was anxious that Dixon should take the money her father had set
+aside for that purpose and back their mare for the Brooklyn Derby.
+
+“We had better wait a day or two,” Dixon had advised, “until we see the
+effect the hard gallop in the Handicap has had on the little mare. She
+ain't cleanin' up her oats just as well as she might; she's a bit off
+her feed, but it's only natural, though; a gallop like that takes it out
+of them a bit.”
+
+It was the day after Crane's visit to Ringwood that Dixon advised Allis
+that Lucretia seemed none the worse for her exertion.
+
+“Perhaps we'd better put the money on right away,” he said. “She's sure
+to keep well, and we'll be forced to take a much shorter price race
+day.”
+
+“Back the stable,” advised Allis, “then if anything happens Lucretia we
+can start Lauzanne.”
+
+The Trainer laughed in good-natured derision. “That wouldn't do much
+good; we'd be out of the frying pan into the fire; we'd be just that
+much more money out for jockey an' startin' fees; he'd oughter been
+struck out on the first of January to save fifty dollars, but I guess
+you all had your troubles about that time an' wasn't thinkin' of
+declarations.”
+
+“It may have been luck; if Lauzanne would only try, something tells me
+he'd win,” contended the girl.
+
+“And somethin' tells me he wouldn't try a yard,” answered Dixon, in
+good-humored opposition. “But I don't think it'll make no difference in
+the odds we get whether we back the stable or Lucretia alone; they won't
+take no stock in the Chestnut's prospects.”
+
+So Dixon made a little pilgrimage among the pencilers. He was somewhat
+dismayed and greatly astonished that these gentry also had a somewhat
+rosy opinion of Lucretia's chances. Her good gallop in the Brooklyn
+Handicap had been observed by other eyes than Crane's. Ten to one was
+the best offer he could get.
+
+Dixon was remonstrating with a bookmaker, Ulmer, when the latter
+answered, “Ten's the best I'll lay--I'd rather take it myself; in fact,
+I have backed your mare because I think she's got a great chance; she'll
+be at fours race day. But I'll give you a tip--it's my game to see the
+owner's money on,” and he winked at the Trainer as much as to say, “I'll
+feel happier about it if we're both in the same boat.”
+
+“It'll be on, sure thing, if I can get a decent price.”
+
+“Well, you go to Cherub Faust; he'll lay you longer odds. I put my bit
+on with him at twelve, see? If I didn't know that you an' Porter was
+always on the straight I'd a-thought there was somethin' doin', an'
+Faust was next it, stretchin' the odds that way. How's the mare doin--is
+she none the worse?” Ullmer asked, a suspicious thought crossing his
+mind.
+
+“We're backin' her--an' money talks,” said Dixon, with quiet assurance.
+
+“Well, Faust is wise to somethin'--he stands in with Langdon, an' I
+suppose they think they've got a cinch in The Dutchman. Yes, that must
+be it,” he added, reflectively; “they made a killin' over Diablo, an'
+likely they got a good line on The Dutchman through him in a trial.
+But a three-year-old mare that runs as prominent in the big Handicap
+as Lucretia did, will take a lot of beatin. She's good enough for my
+money.”
+
+Thanking him, Dixon found Faust, and asked of him a quotation against
+Porter's stable.
+
+“Twelve is the best I can do,” answered the Cherub.
+
+“I'll take fifteen to one,” declared Dixon.
+
+“Can't lay it; some of the talent--men as doesn't make no mistake, is
+takin' twelve to one in my book fast as I open my mouth.”
+
+“I want fifteen,” replied Dixon, doggedly. “Surely the owner is entitled
+to a shade the best of it.”
+
+“What's the size of your bet?” queried the Cherub.
+
+“If you lay me fifteen, I'll take it to a thousand.”
+
+“But you want it ag'in' the stable, an' you've two in; with two horses
+twelve is a long price.”
+
+“I'm takin' it against the stable just because it's the usual thing
+to couple it in the bettin. It's a million to one against Lauzanne's
+starting if Lucretia keeps well.”
+
+Faust gave a little start and searched Dixon's face, furtively. The
+Trainer's stolid look reassured him, and in a most sudden burst of
+generosity he said: “Well, I'll stretch a point for you, Dixon. Your
+boss is up ag'in' a frost good and hard. I'll lay you fifteen thousand
+to one ag'in' the stable, an' if Lauzanne wins you'll buy me a nice
+tiepin.”
+
+His round, fat sides heaved spasmodically with suppressed merriment at
+the idea of Lauzanne in the Brooklyn Derby.
+
+“They must have a pretty good opinion of The Dutchman,” Dixon thought,
+as he moved away after concluding the bet. “I'm naturally suspicious of
+that gang, when they get frisky with their money. It's a bit like I've
+heard about the Sultan of Turkey always givin' a present to a man before
+cutting his head off.”
+
+The Trainer told Allis what he had done. He even spoke of his distrust
+at finding Faust laying longer odds against their mare than the other
+bookmakers. “But I don't see what they can do,” he said, reflectively,
+studying the grass at his feet, his brow quite wrinkled in deep thought.
+“The mare's well, and we can trust the boy this time, I think.”
+
+“Yes, you can trust Redpath,” affirmed Allis, decisively. “If Faust is
+in with Langdon, as you say, it just means that they're goin' on their
+luck, and think their colt, The Dutchman, can't lose.”
+
+“It must be that,” concurred the Trainer, but in a hesitating tone that
+showed he was not more than half satisfied.
+
+“You backed the stable?” queried Allis, as an afterthought.
+
+“Yes, an' Lauzanne'll have a chance to-day to show whether he's worth
+the pencil that wrote his name beside Lucretia's.”
+
+“You are starting him to-day? I had almost forgotten that he was
+entered.”
+
+“Yes, it'll give him a fair trial--it's a mile, an' there ain't no good
+horses, that is, stake horses, in the race. I'll put Redpath up on
+him, an' you might have a talk with the boy, if you like. You're onto
+Lauzanne's notions better'n I am.”
+
+Allis gave Jockey Redpath the benefit of her knowledge of Lauzanne's
+peculiarities.
+
+“I'm afraid he won't take kindly to you,” she said, regretfully; “he's
+as notional as most of his sire's line. But if he won't try he won't,
+and the more you fight him the sulkier he'll get. I wish I could ride
+him myself,” she added, playfully; then fearing that she had hurt the
+boy's feelings by discounting his ability, added, hastily: “I'm afraid
+I've spoiled Lauzanne; he has taken a liking to me, and I've learned how
+to make him think he's having his own way when he's really doing just
+what I want him to do.”
+
+Redpath's admiration for Allis Porter was limited to his admiration
+for her as a young lady. Being young, and a jockey, he naturally had
+notions; and a very prominent, all-absorbing notion was that he could
+manage his mount in a race much better than most boys. Constrained to
+silent acquiescence by respect for Allis, he assured himself, mentally,
+that, in the race his experience and readiness of judgment would render
+him far better service than orders--perhaps prompted by a sentimental
+regard for Lauzanne.
+
+The Chestnut was a slow beginner; that was a trait which even Allis's
+seductive handling had failed to eradicate.
+
+When the starter sent Lauzanne off trailing behind the other seven
+runners in the race that afternoon, Redpath made a faint essay,
+experimentally, to hold to Allis's orders, by patiently nestling over
+the Chestnut's strong withers in a vain hope that his mount would
+speedily seek to overtake the leaders. But evidently Lauzanne had no
+such intention; he seemed quite satisfied with things as they were. That
+the horses galloping so frantically in front interested him slightly was
+evidenced by his cocked ears; but beyond that he might as well have been
+the starter's hack bringing that gentleman along placidly in the rear.
+
+“Just as I thought,” muttered the boy; “this skate's kiddin' me just as
+he does the gal. He's a lazy brute--it's the bud he wants.”
+
+Convinced that he was right, and that his orders were all wrong,
+the jockey asserted himself. He proceeded to ride Lauzanne most
+energetically.
+
+In the horse's mind this sort of thing was associated with unlimited
+punishment. It had always been that way in his two-year-old days; first,
+the general hustle--small legs and arms working with concentric swing;
+then the impatient admonishment of fierce-jabbing spurs; and finally
+the welt-raising cut of a vicious, unreasoning whip. It was not a
+pleasurable prospect; and at the first shake-up, Lauzanne pictured it
+coming. All thoughts of overtaking the horses in front fled from
+his mind; it was the dreaded punishment that interested him most;
+figuratively, he humped his back against the anticipated onslaught.
+
+Redpath felt the unmistakable sign of his horse sulking; and he promptly
+had recourse to the jockey's usual argument.
+
+Sitting in the stand Allis saw, with a cry of dismay, Redpath's
+whip-hand go up. That Lauzanne had been trailing six lengths behind the
+others had not bothered her in the slightest--it was his true method;
+his work would be done in the stretch when the others were tiring, if at
+all.
+
+“If the boy will only sit still--only have patience,” she had been
+saying to herself, just before she saw the flash of a whip in the
+sunlight; and then she just moaned. “It's all over; we are beaten again.
+Everything is against us--everybody is against us,” she cried, bitterly;
+“will good fortune never come father's way?”
+
+By the time the horses had swung into the stretch, and Lauzanne had not
+in the slightest improved his position, it dawned upon Redpath that his
+efforts were productive of no good, so he desisted. But his move had
+cost the Porters whatever chance they might have had. Left to himself,
+Lauzanne undertook an investigating gallop on his own account. Too much
+ground had been lost to be made up at that late stage, but he came
+up the straight in gallant style, wearing down the leaders until he
+finished close up among the unplaced horses.
+
+Allis allowed no word of reproach to escape her when Redpath spoke of
+Lauzanne's sulky temper. It would do no good--it would be like crying
+over spilt milk. The boy was to ride Lucretia in the Derby; he was on
+good terms with the mare; and to chide him for the ride on Lauzanne
+would but destroy his confidence in himself for the other race.
+
+“I'm afraid the Chestnut's a bad actor,” Dixon said to Allis, after the
+race. “We'll never do no good with him. If he couldn't beat that lot
+he's not worth his feed bill.”
+
+“He would have won had I been on his back,” declared the girl, loyally.
+
+“That's no good, Miss; you can't ride him, you see. We've just got one
+peg to hang our hat on--that's Lucretia.”
+
+Lauzanne's showing in this race was a great disappointment to Allis; she
+had hoped that his confidence in humanity had been restored. Physically
+he had undoubtedly improved; his legs had hardened and smoothed down. In
+fact, his whole condition was perfect.
+
+She still felt that if Redpath had followed her advice and allowed
+Lauzanne to run his own race he would have won. The race did not shake
+her confidence in the horse so much as in the possibility of getting
+any jockey to ride him in a quiescent manner. When it was impossible of
+Redpath, who was eager to please her, whom else could they look to? They
+might experiment, but while they were experimenting Lauzanne would be
+driven back into his old bad habits.
+
+The next morning brought them fresh disaster; all that had gone before
+was as nothing compared with this new development in their run of
+thwarted endeavor.
+
+Ned Carter had given Lucretia a vigorous exercise gallop over the Derby
+course. As Dixon led the mare through the paddock to a stall he suddenly
+bent down his head and took a sharp look at her nostrils; another stride
+and they were in the stall. The Trainer felt Lucretia's throat and ears;
+he put his hand over her heart, a look of anxious dismay on his usually
+stolid face.
+
+“She coughed a little, sir, when I pulled her up,” volunteered Carter,
+seeing Dixon's investigation.
+
+“I'm afraid she's took cold,” muttered Dixon. “Have you had her near
+any horses that's got the influenza?” he asked, looking inquiringly at
+Carter.
+
+“She ain't been near nothing; I kept her away from everything, for fear
+she'd get a kick, or get run into.”
+
+“I hope to God it's nothin',” said the Trainer; and his voice was
+quite different from his usual rough tone. Then a sudden suspicion took
+possession of him. Faust's readiness to lay long odds against the mare
+had haunted him like a foolish nightmare. Had there been foul play? The
+mare couldn't have taken a cold--they had been so careful of her; there
+had been no rain for ten days; she hadn't got wet. No, it couldn't be
+cold. But she undoubtedly had fever. A sickening conviction came that it
+was the dreaded influenza.
+
+That morning was the first time she had coughed, so Faust could not have
+known of her approaching illness, unless he had been the cause of it.
+
+The Trainer pursued his investigation among the stable lads. When he
+asked Finn if he had noticed anything unusual about the mare, the boy
+declared most emphatically that he had not. Then, suddenly remembering
+an incident he had taken at the time to be of little import, he said:
+“Two mornin's ago when I opened her stall and she poked her head out, I
+noticed a little scum in her nose; but I thought it was dust. I wiped it
+out, and there was nuthin' more come that I could see.”
+
+“What's the row?” asked Mike Gaynor, as he joined Dixon.
+
+When the details were explained to him Mike declared, emphatically, that
+some one had got at the mare. Taking Dixon to one side, he said: “It's
+that divil on wheels, Shandy; ye can bet yer sweet loife on that. I've
+been layin' for that crook; he cut Diablo's bridle an' t'rew th' ould
+man; an' he done this job, too.”
+
+“But how could he get at her?” queried the Trainer. “The stable's been
+locked; an' Finn and Carter was sleepin' in the saddle room.”
+
+“That divil could go where a sparrer could. How did he git in to cut th'
+bridle rein--t'rough a manure window no bigger'n your hat. He done that,
+as I know.”
+
+“Well, if the mare's got it we're in the soup. Have you seen Miss Porter
+about, Mike?”
+
+“I did a minute ago; I'll pass the word ye want to see her--here she
+comes now. I'll skip. Damn if I want to see them gray eyes when ye tell
+about the little mare. It'll just break her heart; that's what it'll do.
+An' maybe I wouldn't break the back av the devil as put up this dirty
+job. It isn't Shandy that's as much to blame as the blackguard that
+worked him.”
+
+Dixon ran over in his mind many contorted ways of breaking the news
+to Allis, and finished up by blurting out: “The mare's coughin' this
+mornin', Miss; I hope it ain't nothin', but I'm afraid she's in for a
+sick spell.”
+
+Coming to the course, the girl had allowed rosy hope to tint the gray
+gloom of the many defeats until she had worked herself into a happy
+mood. Lucretia's win would put everything right; even her father,
+relieved of financial worry, would improve. The bright morning seemed
+to whisper of victory; Lucretia would surely win. It was not within the
+laws of fate that they should go on forever and ever having bad luck.
+She had come to have a reassuring look at the grand little mare that was
+to turn the tide of all their evil fortune. The Trainer's words, “The
+mare's coughin',” struck a chill to her heart. She could not speak--the
+misery was too great--but stood dejectedly listening while Dixon spoke
+of his suspicions of foul play.
+
+What villains there were in the world, the girl thought; for a man to
+lay them odds against their horse, knowing that she had been poisoned,
+was a hundred times worse than stealing the money from their Dockets.
+
+“I don't suppose we'll ever be able to prove it,” declared Dixon,
+regretfully; “but that doesn't matter so much as the mare being done
+for; we're out of it now good and strong. If we'd known it two days ago
+we might a-saved the money, but we've burned up a thousand.”
+
+“We'll have to start Lauzanne,” said Allis, taking a brave pull at
+herself, and speaking with decision.
+
+“We might send him to the post, but that's all the good it'll do us, I'm
+feared.”
+
+“I've seen him do a great gallop,” contended Allis.
+
+“He did it for you, but he won't do it for nobody else. There ain't no
+boy ridin' can make him go fast enough for a live funeral. But we'll
+start him, an' I'll speak to Redpath about takin' the mount.”
+
+Allis was thinking very fast; her head, with its great wealth of black
+hair, drooped low in heavy meditation.
+
+“Don't engage him just yet, Dixon,” she said, looking up suddenly, the
+shadow of a new resolve in her gray eyes; “I'll talk it over with you
+when we go back to the house. I'm thinking of something, but I don't
+want to speak of it just now--let me think it over a little.”
+
+Dixon was deep in thought, too, as he went back to his own stables. “We
+haven't got a million to one chance,” he was muttering; “the money's
+burned up, an' the race is dead to the world, as far as we're
+concerned.”
+
+That Allis could evolve any plan to lift them out of their Slough of
+Despond he felt was quite impossible; but at any rate he got a distinct
+shock when, a little later, a slight-formed girl, with gray eyes, set
+large and full in a dark face, declared to him that she was going to
+ride Lauzanne in the Derby herself.
+
+“My God, Miss!” the Trainer exclaimed, “you can't do it. What would
+people say--what would your mother say?”
+
+“People will say the race was well ridden if I'm any judge, and mother
+won't be interested enough to know whether Lucretia was hitched to a
+buggy in the Derby or not.”
+
+“But the Judge would never allow a girl--”
+
+“There'll be no girl in it;”. and Allis explained, in minute detail the
+result of her deep cogitation.
+
+“It won't work; you never could do it,” objected Dixon, with despondent
+conviction. “That big head of hair would give you dead away.”
+
+“The head of hair won't be in evidence; it will be lying in my trunk,
+waiting to be made up into a wig after we've won.”
+
+“No, no; it won't do,” the Trainer reiterated; “everybody'd know you,
+an' there'd be a fine shindy. I believe you could ride the horse right
+enough, an' if he has a chance on earth you'd get it out of him. But
+give up the idea, everybody'd know you.”
+
+The girl pleaded, but Dixon was obdurate. He did not contend for an
+instant that she was not capable of riding the horse,--only in a race
+with many jockeys she would find it different from riding a trial
+gallop,--but his main objection was that she'd be known. Allis closed
+the discussion by saying that she was going home to encourage her father
+a little over the mare's defeat in the Handicap, and made Dixon promise
+not to engage Redpath for Lauzanne till her return next morning.
+
+“He can't take another mount,” she said, “because he's retained for
+Lucretia, and we haven't declared her out yet.”
+
+“I'm hopin' we may not have to,” remarked Dixon. “Anyway, there's no
+hurry about switchin' the boy onto Lauzanne, so we'll settle that when
+you come back.”
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Allis's visit to Ringwood was a flying one. Filial devotion to her
+father had been one motive, but not the only one. Her brother Alan's
+wardrobe received a visitation from hands not too well acquainted with
+the intricacies of its make-up.
+
+John Porter was undoubtedly brightened by the daughter's visit.
+Lucretia's defeat in the Handicap had increased his despondency. To
+prepare him gradually for further reverses Allis intimated, rather than
+asserted, that Lucretia might possibly have a slight cold--Digon wasn't
+sure; but they were going to run Lauzanne also. Like the Trainer, her
+father had but a very poor opinion of the Chestnut's powers in any other
+hands but in that of the girl's.
+
+“Who'll ride him?” he asked, petulantly. “It seems you can't trust any
+of the boys now-a-days. If they're not pin-headed, they're crooked as a
+corkscrew. Crane tells me that Redpath didn't ride Lucretia out in
+the Handicap, and whether he rides the mare or Lauzanne it seems all
+one--we'll get beat anyway.”
+
+“Another boy will have the mount on Lauzanne,” Allis answered.
+
+“What difference will that make? You can't trust him.”
+
+“You can trust this boy, father, as you might your own son, Alan.”
+
+“I don't know about that. Alan in the bank is all right, but Alan as a
+jockey would be a different thing.”
+
+“Father, you would trust me, wouldn't you?”
+
+“I guess I would, in the tightest corner ever was chiseled out.”
+
+“Well, you can trust the jockey that's going to ride Lauzanne just as
+much. I know him, and he's all right. He's been riding Lauzanne some,
+and the horse likes him.”
+
+“It's all Lauzanne,” objected Porter, the discussion having thrown him
+into a petulant mood. “Is Lucretia that bad--is she sick?”
+
+“She galloped to-day,” answered the girl, evasively. “But if anything
+happens her we're going to win with the horse. Just think of that,
+father, and cheer up. Dixon has backed the stable to win a lot of money,
+enough to-enough to--well, to wipe out all these little things that are
+bothering you, dad.”
+
+She leaned over and kissed her father in a hopeful, pretty way. The
+contact of her brave lips drove a magnetic flow of confidence into the
+man. “You're a brick, little woman, if ever there was one. Just a tiny
+bunch of pluck, ain't you, girl? And, Allis,” he continued, “if you
+don't win the Derby, come and tell me about it yourself, won't you?
+You're sure to have some other scheme for bracing me up. I'm just a
+worthless hulk, sitting here in the house a cripple while you fight the
+battles. Perhaps Providence, as your mother says, will see you through
+your hard task.”
+
+“I won't come and tell you that we've lost, dad; I'll come and tell you
+that we've won; and then we'll all have the biggest kind of a blow-out
+right here in the house. We'll have a champagne supper, with cider for
+champagne, eh, dad? Alan, and Dixon, and old Mike, and perhaps we'll
+even bring Lauzanne in for the nuts and raisins at desert.”
+
+“And the Rev. Dolman,--you've left him out,” added the father.
+
+They were both laughing. Just a tiny little ray of sunshine had
+dispelled all the gloom for a minute.
+
+“Now I must go back to my horses,” declared Allis, with another kiss.
+“Good-bye, dad--cheer up;” and as she went up to her room the smile of
+hope vanished from her lips, and in its place came one of firm, dogged
+resolve. Allis needed much determination before she had accomplished the
+task she had set herself--before she stood in front of a mirror, arrayed
+in the purple and fine linen of her brother. She had thought Alan
+small, and he was for a boy, but his clothes bore a terribly suggestive
+impression of misfit--they hung loose.
+
+Mentally thanking the fashion which condoned it, she turned the trousers
+up at the bottom. “I'll use my scissors and needle on them to-night,”
+ she said, ruthlessly. Thank goodness, the jockeys are all little chaps,
+and the racing clothes will fit better.
+
+The coat was of summer wear, therefore somewhat close-fitting for Alan;
+but why did it hang so loosely on her? She was sure her brother was
+not so much bigger. A little thought given to this question of foreign
+apparel brought a possible solution. The undergarments she had tumbled
+about in her search were much heavier than her own. Her crusade had its
+side of comedy; she chuckled as, muttering, “In for a penny, in for a
+pound,” she reincarnated herself completely, so far as outward adornment
+was concerned. Then she examined herself critically in the glass. The
+mirror declared she was a passable counterfeit of her brother; all but
+the glorious crown of luxuriant hair. Perhaps she had better leave it
+as it was until she had met with the approval of Dixon--the terrible
+sacrifice might be for nothing. She wavered only for an instant--no
+half measure would do. “In for a penny, in for a pound.” The slightest
+weakness in carrying out her bold plan might cause it to fail.
+
+Twice she took up a pair of scissors, and each time laid them down
+again, wondering if it were little short of a madcap freak; then,
+shrinking from the grinding hiss of the cutting blades, she clipped
+with feverish haste the hair that had been her pride. It was a difficult
+task, and but a rough job at best when finished, but the change in
+her appearance was marvelous; the metamorphosis, so successful, almost
+drowned the lingering regret. She drew a cap over her shorn head, packed
+her own garments and a few of her brother's in a large bag, buttoned her
+newmarket coat tight up to her throat, and once more surveyed herself
+in the glass. From head to foot she was ready. Ah, the truthful glass
+betrayed the weak point in her armor--the boots. In an instant she
+had exchanged them for a pair of Alan's. Now she was ready to pass her
+mother as Allis in her own long cloak, and appear before Dixon without
+it as a boy. That was her clever little scheme.
+
+Before going up to her room she had asked that the stableman might be
+at the door with a buggy when she came down, to take her to the station.
+When she descended he was waiting.
+
+“I'm taking some clothes back with me, mother,” she said. “Let Thomas
+bring the bag down, please.”
+
+“You're getting dreadfully mannish in your appearance, daughter; it's
+that cap.”
+
+“I have to wear something like this about in the open;” answered Allis.
+
+“But for traveling, girl, it seems out of place. Let me put a hat on
+you. I declare I thought it was Alan when you came into the room.”
+
+“I can't wait; this will do. I must be off to catch my train. Goodbye,
+mother; wish me good luck,” and she hurried out and took her seat in the
+buggy.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+Some hours later Dixon, sitting in his cottage, oppressed by the
+misfortune that had come to his stable, heard a knock at the door. When
+he opened it a neatly dressed, slim youth stepped into the uncertain
+light that stretched out reluctantly from a rather unfit lamp on the
+center table.
+
+“Is this Mr. Dixon?” the boy's voice piped modestly.
+
+“Yes, lad, it is. Will you sit down?”
+
+The boy removed his cap, took the proffered chair, and said somewhat
+hesitatingly, “I heard you wanted a riding boy.”
+
+“Well, I do, an' I don't. I don't know as I said I did, but,”--and he
+scanned the little figure closely, “if I could get a decent lightweight
+that hadn't the hands of a blacksmith, an' the morals of a burglar, I
+might give him a trial. Did you ever do any ridin'--what stable was you
+in?”
+
+“I've rode a good deal,” answered the little visitor, ignoring the
+second half of the question.
+
+“What's your name?”
+
+“Mayne.”
+
+“Main what?”
+
+“Al Mayne,” the other replied.
+
+“Well, s'posin' you show up at the course paddocks to-morrow mornin'
+early, an' I'll see you shape on a horse. D'you live about here--can
+you bring your father, so if I like your style we can have things fixed
+proper?”
+
+The boy's face appealed to Dixon as being an honest one. Evidently the
+lad was not a street gamin, a tough. If he had hands--the head promised
+well--and could sit a horse, he might be a find. A good boy was rarer
+than a good horse, and of more actual value.
+
+“I guess I'll stay here to-night so as to be ready for the mornin',”
+ said the caller, to Dixon's astonishment; and then the little fellow
+broke into a silvery laugh.
+
+“By Jimminy! If it isn't--well, I give in, Miss Allis, you fooled me.”
+
+“Can I ride Lauzanne now?” the girl asked, and her voice choked a
+little--it might have been the nervous excitement, or thankfulness at
+the success of her plan in this its first stage.
+
+“Do they know at home?” the Trainer asked.
+
+“No, nobody is to know but you, Mr. Dixon--you and Mrs. Dixon.”
+
+This suggested a thought to the Trainer. “The good wife's at work in the
+kitchen; I'll bring her in. Perhaps she'd like to hire a help,” and he
+chuckled as he opened a door and called, “Come here for a minute. This
+is a boy”--he turned his head away--“I'm takin' on for Lauzanne.”
+
+“Oh,” said Mrs. Dixon. Then, with severe politeness, “Good evenin',
+young man.”
+
+The two figures in male attire broke into a laugh simultaneously. The
+good lady, oblivious to the humorous side of her greeting, flushed in
+anger. “Appears to be mighty funny,” she said. “What's the joke?”
+
+“Oh, nuthin',” replied the husband, speaking hastily. “Can you give the
+lad a bed? He wants to bunk here.”
+
+“Why, Andy, you know I can't. There's only Miss Allis's room.”
+
+“Give her--him that.”
+
+“Are you crazy, Andy?”
+
+“It's too bad, Mrs. Dixon; I sha'n't let your husband tease you any
+more. I am Allis; but I'm glad you didn't know.”
+
+“Oh, Miss Allis, where's your beautiful hair gone? Surely you didn't cut
+that off just for a joke?”
+
+Then she was taken fully into their confidence; and before Allis retired
+Dixon had been quite won over to the plan of Allis's endeavor.
+
+In the morning the Trainer asked the girl whether she would ride
+Lauzanne a working gallop to get accustomed to the new order of things,
+or would she just wait until race day and take her place in the saddle
+then.
+
+“I'm afraid Mike'll spot you,” he said--“even Carter may.”
+
+“I'll ride to-day,” declared Allis; “I musn't take any chances of losing
+this race through my inexperience. Even Lauzanne will hardly know me,
+I'm afraid. Mike and Carter needn't see much of me--I can slip away as
+soon as I've ridden the gallop.”
+
+“Here's a boy's sweater, then,” said Dixon; “the collar'll half hide
+your face. I'll get a pair of ridin' breeches an' boots for you by
+tomorrow. The little mare's in for it sure,” he added; “her legs are
+swellin', an' she's off her feed--just nibbles at a carrot. I feel as
+bad as if it was a child that was sick, she's that gentle. She can't
+start, an' I'll just tell Redpath that he can take another mount if he
+gets it. You're still bound to ride the Chestnut?” he asked, by way of
+assurance.
+
+“Yes, I am.”
+
+“Well, we'll get five pounds off the weight for 'prentice
+allowance--that's somethin'. I'll arrange about a permit for you. What
+did you say your name was, mister?”
+
+“Al Mayne, please, sir,” this in the humble tone of a stable-boy.
+
+“Well, Miss--Al, I mean--you can carry Lauzanne around the course at
+nine o'clock sharp; then you'd better come back here an' rest up all
+day--lay low.”
+
+“A new boy, I'm tryin',” Dixon explained to Gaynor, after he lifted
+a little lad to Lauzanne's back at the paddock gate, and they stood
+watching the big Chestnut swing along with his usual sluggish stride.
+
+“He's got good hands,” said Mike, critically, “though he seems a bit
+awkward in the saddle. Ye couldn't have a better trial horse fer a new
+b'y. If Lauzanne's satisfied with him he can roide onythin'.”
+
+When Allis, who was now Al Mayne, the boy, came around and back to the
+paddock, she slipped quietly from the horse, loitered carelessly about
+for a few minutes, and then made her way back to Dixon's quarters.
+Nobody had paid any attention to the modest little boy. Riding lads were
+as plentiful as sparrows; one more or less called for no comment, no
+investigation. Even Mike lost interest in the new boy in wondering why
+Miss Allis had not made her usual appearance.
+
+“How did the horse like it?” Dixon asked of the girl when he returned
+home.
+
+“Oh, he knew. I whispered in his ear as we cantered along, and he'll be
+all right--he'll keep my secret.”
+
+“Well, I think he's due for a pipe opener to-morrow. It's just three
+days till the Derby, an' we've got to give him a strong workout.
+Besides, it'll put you next what you've got to do in the race. To-morrow
+mornin' you had better canter him just slow around once, an' then send
+him a full mile-an'-aquarter as though there was money hung up for it.
+I'll catch his time, an' we'll get wise to what he can do.”
+
+This programme was carried out; and as Dixon looked thrice at his watch
+after the gallop to make sure that he was not mistaken in the time,
+2:11, he began to wonder if, after all, the girl was not nearly right
+in her prophetic hope that the despised Lauzanne would win the Brooklyn
+Derby.
+
+“He can move; he surprised me,” the Trainer said to Allis as she
+dismounted. “He's not blown, either; he's as fresh as a daisy. Gad!
+we'll do those blackguards up yet, I believe.”
+
+The gallop had attracted Mike's attention also. As Allis moved away
+he called after her, “I say, b'y, hould on a minute. What's yer name,
+ennyway?”
+
+“Al,” answered the small voice.
+
+“Well, by me faith, ye didn't put up no bad roide. Ye handled that horse
+foine. Don't run away, lad,” he added, hurrying after the retreating
+Allis.
+
+Before she could escape him, he had her by the arm, and turned about
+face to face. Even then he didn't recognize her, for Allis had taken a
+most subtle precaution in her make-up. The delicate olive of her cheeks
+was hidden under a more than liberal allowance of good agricultural
+cosmetique. It had been well rubbed in, too, made of a plastic adherence
+by the addition of mucilage.
+
+“Lord, what a doirty face!” exclaimed Mike. “But ye kin ride, b'y; so
+dirt don't count; clean ridin's the thing.”
+
+If Allis hadn't laughed in his face, being full of the happiness of
+hope, Mike would not have recognized her--even then he didn't hit it off
+quite right.
+
+“Alan Porter!” he gasped. “Bot' t'umbs up! Is it ye, b'y?”
+
+“Hush!” and a small warning finger was held up.
+
+“Don't fear, b'y, that I'll give it away. Mum's the word wit' me. But
+I'm dahmned if I t'ought ye could roide like that. It's jus' in the
+breed, that's what it is; ye take to it as natural as ducks--” Mike had
+a habit of springing half-finished sentences on his friends. “Yer father
+could roide afore ye; none better, an' Miss Allis can sit a horse foiner
+nor any b'y as isn't a top-notcher. But this beats me, t'umbs up, if it
+doesn't. I onderstand,” he continued, as Allis showed an inclination
+to travel, “ye don't want the push to get on to ye. They won't,
+nayther--what did ye say yer name was, sonny?”
+
+“Al Mayne.”
+
+“Ye'r a good b'y, Al. I hope Dixon lets ye roide the Chestnut in the
+Derby. I'd give wan av me legs--an' I needs 'em bot'--to see ye beat out
+that gang av highway robbers that got at the mare. They'll not git at
+the Chestnut, for I'll slape in the stall me self.”
+
+As Allis moved away, Mike stood watching the neat figure.
+
+“That's the game, eh?” he muttered to himself; “the gal don't trust
+Redpath no more'n I do; palaver don't cut no ice wit' her. The b'y
+didn't finish on Lucretia, an' that's all there is to it. But how's Alan
+goin' to turn the trick in a big field of rough ridin' b'ys? If it was
+the gurl herself” a sudden brilliant idea threw its strong light through
+Mike's brain pan. He took a dozen quick shuffling steps after Allis, then
+stopped as suddenly as he had started. “Mother a' Moses! but I believe
+it's the gurl; that's why the Chestnut galloped as if he had her on
+his back. Jasus! he had. Ph-e-e-w-w!” he whistled, a look of intense
+admiration sweeping over his leather-like face. “Bot' t'umbs! if that
+isn't pluck. There isn't a soul but meself'll git ontil it, an' she all
+but fooled me.”
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+The news that Lucretia was sick had got about. The Porter's stable
+traveled out in the betting for the Brooklyn Derby until a backer--if
+there had been one--could have written his own price, and got it.
+
+Langdon had informed Crane of this change in their favor, though he said
+nothing about the deal with Shandy which had brought about the poisoning
+of the mare.
+
+“I'm sorry that Porter's mare has gone wrong,” Crane said. “I think we
+would have won anyway, but it'll just about ruin them.”
+
+Figuratively, Langdon closed one eye and winked to himself. Crane must
+know that it was his implied desires that had led up to the stopping of
+Lucretia. Langdon thought Crane just about the most complete hypocrite
+he'd ever met; that preacher face of his could look honorably pious
+while its owner raked in a cool forty thousand over the Trainer's dirty
+work. However, that cut no figure, it was his ten thousand dollars
+Langdon was after.
+
+Just as they thought they had destroyed the chances of their strongest
+opponent, came a new disturbing feature. Other eyes than Dixon's has
+seen Lauzanne's strong gallop; other watchers than his had ticked of the
+extraordinary good time, 2:11 for the mile and a quarter, with the
+horse seemingly running well within himself, never urged a foot of
+the journey, and finishing strong, was certainly almost good enough to
+warrant his winning.
+
+This information had been brought to Langdon, but he also had observed
+the gallop. And the same boy was to ride Lauzanne in the race, he
+understood, for Redpath had been released, and was looking for another
+mount. It wasn't in the natural order of things that one small stable
+would have in it two horses good enough to win the Derby, especially
+when one of them was a cast-off; but there was the gallop; time, like
+figures, didn't lie, not often; and as he thought of it Langdon admitted
+that he had never seen such an improvement in a horse as had been made
+in Lauzanne. Shandy had told him that it was Miss Porter's doing, that
+she had cured him of his sulky moods; the gallop Langdon had witnessed
+seemed to bear out the truth of this. What was he to do? They couldn't
+repeat the trick they had played on Lucretia. The Dutchman might win; he
+had worked the full Derby distance, a mile and a half, in 2:45, nearly
+all out at the finish. Lauzanne's gallop was only a mile and a quarter;
+he might not be able to stay the additional quarter. But there was
+ten thousand dollars at stake--for Langdon. He sought to discover the
+identity of Lauzanne's rider; but nobody knew him--Dixon had picked him
+up somewhere. Perhaps he could be got at; that would simplify matters
+greatly.
+
+The morning after her fast work on Lauzanne, Allis, draped as she was
+into the personification of Al Mayne, arrived at the course before their
+horses. As she was leaning over the paddock rail waiting for Lauzanne
+to come, Langdon, who had evidently determined upon a course of action,
+sauntered up carelessly to the girl and commenced to talk. After a free
+preliminary observation he said, “You're the boy that's ridin' for Andy
+Dixon, ain't you?”
+
+The small figure nodded its head.
+
+“I seen you gallop that Chestnut yesterday. Where you been ridin--you're
+a stranger here, I reckon?”
+
+“Out West,” answered Allis, at a hazard.
+
+“Oh, San Francisco, eh? Are you engaged to Dixon?”
+
+“I'm just on trial.”
+
+“Goin' to ride the Chestnut in the race?”
+
+Again the boy nodded; under the circumstances it wasn't wise to trust
+too much to speech.
+
+“He ain't no good--he's a bad horse. I guess I've got the winner of that
+race in my stable. If he wins, I'd like to sign you for a year. I like
+the way you ride. I ain't got no good lightweight. I might give you a
+thousand for a contract, an' losin' and winnin' mounts when you had a
+leg up. How do you like ridin' for Dixon?” he continued, the little chap
+not answering his observations.
+
+“I ain't goin' to ride no more for him after this race,” answered the
+other, quite truthfully enough, but possessed of a curiosity to discover
+the extent of the other's villainy.
+
+“I don't blame you. He's no good; he don't never give his boys a chance.
+If you win on the Chestnut, like as not they'll just give you the
+winnin' mount. That ain't no good to a boy. They ain't got no money,
+that's why. The owner of my candidate, The Dutchman, he's a rich man,
+an' won't think nothin' of givin' a retainer of a thousand if we won
+this race. That'll mean The Dutchman's a good horse, and we'll want a
+good light boy to ride him, see?”
+
+Allis did see. Langdon was diplomatically giving her as A1 Mayne to
+understand that if she threw the race on Lauzanne, she would get a place
+in their stable at a retainer of a thousand dollars.
+
+“We can afford it if we win the race,” he continued, “for we stand a big
+stake. Come and see me any time you like to talk this over.”
+
+After he had gone, just as Allis was leaving the rail, she was again
+accosted; this time by Shandy. She trembled an instant, fearing that the
+small red-lidded ferret eyes would discover her identity. But the boy
+was too intent on trying to secure his ill-earned five hundred dollars
+to think of anything else.
+
+“Good mornin', boy,” he said, cheerily. “I used to be in Dixon's stable.
+It's hell; and he's a swipe. I see my boss talkin' to you just now. Did
+he put you next a good thing?”
+
+Allis nodded her head, knowingly.
+
+“He's all right. So's the other one--the guy as has got the mun; he's
+got a bank full of it. I'm on to him; his name's Crane--”
+
+Allis started.
+
+“You don't know him,” continued the imp; “he's too slick to go messin'
+about. But if the old man promised you anything, see, God blast me,
+you'll git it. Not like that other skin-flint hole where you don't git
+nothin'. I stand in five hundred if our horse wins the Derby.”
+
+“Do you ride him?” asked Al Mayne.
+
+“Ride nothin'. I don't have to. I've did my job already.”
+
+“I don't believe they'll give you five hundred for nothin',” said Allis,
+doubtingly, knowing that the boy's obstinate nature, if he were crossed,
+would probably drive him into further explanation.
+
+“Say, you're a stiff. What'd the ole man want you to do--pull Lauzanne?”
+
+Allis nodded.
+
+“I knowed it. What was the use of stoppin' the mare an' let the Chestnut
+spoil the job?”
+
+“Is that what you get the five hundred for?” asked Allis, a sudden
+suspicion forcing itself upon her.
+
+“Say, what d' you take me fer, a flat car? But she's sick, ain't she?
+An' you jes' take care of the Chestnut now, an' I'll give you a hundred
+out of my five, God bli' me if I don't.”
+
+As he spoke Shandy looked hastily about to see that no one was
+listening, then he continued: “If you give me the double cross an'
+peach, I'll split yer head open.” His small eyes blazed with venomous
+fury. “Besides, it won't do no good, my word's as good as yours. But
+I'll give you the hundred, s'help me God! I will, if you don't ride the
+Chestnut out. Mum's the word,” he added, bolting suddenly, for Dixon had
+entered the paddock with his horses.
+
+With the horses also came Mike Gaynor. While their blankets were being
+taken off and saddles adjusted, he came over to Allis. There was a
+suppressed twinkle of subverted knowledge in his weatherbeaten eyes.
+
+“Good mornin', Al,” he said, nodding in a very dignified manner, and
+putting a strong accent on the name.
+
+Now Mike had determined to keep from the girl the fact that he had
+penetrated her disguise. With proper Irish gallantry, crude as it might
+be in its expression, but delicate enough in its motive, he reasoned
+that his knowledge might make her uncomfortable.
+
+“I see that fly-by-night divil Shandy talkin' to ye as I come in. What
+new mischief is he up to now?”
+
+“He wants me to pull Lauzanne.”
+
+“He ain't got no gall, has he? That come from headquarters; it's Langdon
+put him up to that.”
+
+“He was talkin' to me, too.”
+
+“I t'ought he would be. But he didn't know ye, Miss Allis--”
+
+Heavens! It was out. Mike's sun-tanned face turned brick-red; he
+could have bitten off his unruly Irish tongue. The girl stared at him
+helplessly, her cheeks, that were scarlet, tingling under the hot rush
+of blood.
+
+“There ye are, an' believe me, I didn't mean it. I was goin' to keep me
+mouth shut, but I never could do that.”
+
+“You knew then, yesterday?”
+
+“Indade I didn't, an' that's a good sign to ye nobody'll know. But whin
+I t'ought wit' meself I knowed that Alan couldn't ride Lauzanne the way
+ye did; an' ye didn't deny ye was him, an' if ye wasn't him ye must be
+yerself, see?” which more or less lucid explanation seemed to relieve
+Mike's mind mightily. “I think ye're Jes doin' roight, Miss--Al, I mean;
+I must get used to that name; s'help me, I believe ye'll win on the
+Chestnut--that gallop was good enough.”
+
+“Do you think I can do it, Mike, among all those jockeys?”
+
+“Sure thing, ye can, A--Al, me b'y; he won't need no ridin' in yer
+hands; all ye'll have to do is sit still an' keep him straight.
+He'll win the race in the stretch, an' there won't be many there to
+bother--they'll all be beat off. Now, it's a good thing that I do know
+about this, for I'll just kape close to ye an' kape any wan that's
+likely to spot ye away, if I have to knock him down.”
+
+Mike had worked himself up to a fine frenzy of projected endeavor; he
+cast about for further services he could render his admired mistress.
+
+“An' ye know Carson the starter; he's jes the loveliest Irishman; there
+isn't a b'y on earth could git an inch the best av it from him on a
+start, not if they was to give him gold enough to weigh a horse down.
+But I'll jes' tip him the wink that ye'r a gurl, and--”
+
+“Mike, what are you saying? Do you mean to ruin everything?”
+
+The rosy hue of eager joyousness that had crept into Gaynor's suntanned
+face vanished; his jaw drooped, and a pathetic look of sheepish apology
+followed.
+
+“That's so,” he ejaculated, mournfully; “bot' tumbs up! but it's a pity.
+Carson's an Irish gintleman, an' if I could till him ye was a gurl, he'd
+knock the head plumb off any b'y that 'ud bother ye. Ye'd git away well,
+too.”
+
+Then the girl told Mike all that Shandy and Langdon had said. It only
+confirmed Mike's opinion that between them they had poisoned Lucretia.
+He felt that with a little more evidence he would be able to prove both
+crimes--the one with Diablo and the one with Lucretia.
+
+The Brooklyn Derby was to be run the next day. Allis was glad that it
+was so near; she dreaded discovery. She was like a hunted hare, dodging
+everyone she fancied might discover her identity. She would have to run
+the gauntlet of many eyes while weighing for the race, and at the time
+of going out; even when she returned, especially if she won. But in
+the excitement over the race, people would not have time to devote to a
+strange jockey's visage. She could quite smear her face with dirt, for
+that seemed a natural condition where boys were riding perhaps several
+races in one afternoon. The jockey cap with its big peak well pulled
+down over her head would add materially to her disguise. Mike would
+fetch and carry for her, so that she would be in evidence for very
+few minutes at most. Dixon even, opposed to the idea as he had been at
+first, now assured her quite confidently that nobody would make her out.
+
+“It's the horses they look at,” he said, “and the colors. An apprentice
+boy doesn't cut much ice, I can tell you. Why, I've been racin' for
+years,” he went on with the intent of giving her confidence, “an' many a
+time I see a boy up on a horse that must have rode on the tracks over a
+hundred times, an' I can't name him to save my neck.”
+
+At any rate there was nothing more to do until she made the great
+endeavor, until she went to the track at the time set for the Brooklyn
+Derby, dressed in the blue jacket with the white stars of her father's
+racing colors; that was the plan adopted. A buggy, with Mike driving,
+would take her straight to the paddock quite in time for the race.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+After Crane left the money for Porter's note with Mortimer the latter
+took the three one-thousand-dollar bills, pinned them to the note,
+placed them in a cigar box and put the box away carefully in the bank
+safe, to remain there until the 14th of June, when it became due.
+Incidentally Mortimer mentioned this matter to Alan Porter.
+
+Crane in writing to the cashier about other affairs of the bank touched
+upon the subject of Porter's obligation, stating that he had left the
+money with Mr. Mortimer to meet the note when it matured.
+
+The day before the Derby, the 12th of the month, Alan asked his day's
+leave and got it. The cashier more readily granted Alan's request, as
+Crane had intimated in his letter that it would please him if the lad
+were to have a holiday.
+
+Alan went up to New York that evening. Earlier in the day he somewhat
+hesitatingly confided to Mortimer that he had backed Lucretia when she
+was well and looked to have a good chance to win her race; now she was
+scratched, and his money was lost. Bearing in mind what Crane had said
+about The Dutchman's chances of winning, even with Lucretia in the race,
+he felt now that it appeared almost like a certainty for Crane's horse.
+If he could have a bet on The Dutchman he would surely recoup his
+losses. Alan explained all these racing matters very minutely and with
+great earnestness to Mortimer, for the latter was quite unfamiliar
+with the science of race gambling. Having stated his predicament and
+hoped-for relief, as an excuse for so doing, he wound up by asking his
+companion for a loan of two hundred dollars.
+
+Mortimer had little less horror of betting and its evil influence than
+Mrs. Porter, but under the circumstances he would perhaps have complied
+with the boy's request had he been provided with sufficient funds. As it
+was, he said: “I don't like the idea of lending you money to bet with,
+Alan; your mother wouldn't thank me for doing so; besides, if you lost
+it you'd feel uncomfortable owing me the money. At any rate, I haven't
+got it. I couldn't lend you two hundred, or half of it. I suppose I
+haven't got a hundred to my credit.”
+
+“Oh, never mind then,” answered Alan, angrily, stiffening up, because of
+Mortimer's lecture.
+
+“I'll lend you what I've got.”
+
+“I don't want it. I can get it some other place.”
+
+“You'd better take--”
+
+“Take nothing--I don't want it.”
+
+“Very well, I'm sorry I can't oblige you. But take my advice and don't
+bet at all; it'll only get you into trouble.”
+
+“Thanks; I don't need your advice. I was a fool to ask you for the
+money.”
+
+“I say, Alan,” began Mortimer, in a coaxing tone.
+
+“Please don't 'Alan' me any more. I can get along without your money and
+without your friendship; I don't want either.”
+
+Mortimer remained silent. What was the use of angering the boy further?
+He would come to see that he had meant it in good part, and would be all
+right in a day or two.
+
+During the rest of the day Alan preserved a surly distance of manner,
+speaking to Mortimer only once--a constrained request for a bunch of
+keys in the latter's possession which unlocked some private drawers in
+the vault.
+
+The next morning it suddenly occurred to Mortimer that Porter's note
+fell due that day--either that day or the next, he wasn't sure. The
+easiest way to settle the question was to look at the date on the note.
+
+He stepped into the vault, took out the little cigar box, opened it, and
+as he handled the crisp papers a sudden shock of horror ran through
+his frame. One of the bills was gone; there were only two
+one-thousand-dollar notes left.
+
+The discovery paralyzed him for an instant. He was responsible; the
+money had been left in his charge. Then he looked at the note; it
+matured the next day. All the money had been in the box the morning
+before, for he had looked at it. Only the cashier and Alan Porter knew
+that it was in the vault.
+
+The whole dreadful truth came clearly to Mortimer's mind with absolute
+conviction. Alan, infatuated with the prospect of winning a large sum
+over The Dutchman, and failing to borrow from him, had taken the money.
+
+The gravity of the situation calmed Mortimer, and his mind worked with
+a cool method that surprised him. Bit by bit he pieced it out. The boy,
+inconsistently enough, had reasoned that the money was his father's, and
+that he was only borrowing family property. No doubt he had felt sure
+of winning, and that he would be back in time to replace the thousand
+before it was needed. This sophistical reasoning had, without doubt,
+tempted the lad to commit this--this--Mortimer felt a reluctance to
+bestow the proper name upon Alan's act, but undoubtedly it was stealing.
+
+And if the boy lost the money, what would happen? He couldn't repay it;
+the shortage would be discovered and Allis's brother would be ruined,
+branded as a 'thief.
+
+Mortimer would willingly put the money back himself for Allis's sake;
+but he hadn't it. What was he to do? If he could find Alan and force him
+to give up the stolen money he could yet save the boy. But Alan had gone
+to Gravesend.
+
+Like an inspiration the thought came to Mortimer that he must go after
+him and get the money before it was lost. He shoved the box back in its
+place, and came out into the office.
+
+It was half past ten by the clock. Luckily the cashier had not come yet.
+Mortimer's mind worked rapidly. He must make some excuse and get away;
+anything; he must even lie; if he saved the boy it would be justifiable.
+Why did not the cashier come, now that he was ready for him? Each minute
+seemed an age, with the honor of Allis's brother hanging in the balance.
+He would need money. He drew a check for a hundred dollars. A hasty
+inspection showed that he still had a trifle more than this amount to
+his credit. Why he took a hundred he hardly knew; fate seemed writing
+the check. He had barely finished when the cashier appeared. At once
+Mortimer spoke to him.
+
+“I want leave of absence to-day, sir,” he said, speaking hurriedly.
+
+The cashier frowned in astonishment. “Impossible We are short-handed
+with young Porter away.”
+
+“I'll be back in the morning,” pleaded Mortimer. “My mother is very ill.
+I've opened up, and Mr. Cass can manage, I'm sure, if you'll let me go.
+I wouldn't ask it, but it's a matter of almost life and death.” He had
+nearly said of honor.
+
+Unwillingly the cashier consented. It probably meant extra work for him;
+he would certainly have to take a hand in the office routine. Theirs was
+not a busy bank, and that day was not likely to be a very pressing one,
+but still he would have to shoulder some of the labor.
+
+Full of the terrible situation, Mortimer cared not who worked, so that
+he got away in time to save Allis's brother from himself. At last he was
+free. He almost ran to the station.
+
+Looking from the window of the bank, the cashier seeing Mortimer's rapid
+pace, muttered: “I guess the poor man's mother is pretty bad; I'm glad I
+let him go. He's a good son to that mother of his.”
+
+At eleven o'clock Mortimer got a train for New York. During the wait at
+the station he had paced up and down the platform with nervous stride. A
+dozen times he looked at his watch--would he be too late? He had no idea
+how long it would take to reach Gravesend; he knew nothing of the race
+track's location. As the train whirled him through Emerson, where
+his mother lived, he could see the little drab cottage, and wondered
+pathetically what the good woman would say if she knew her son was going
+to a race meeting. At twelve he was in New York.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+Mortimer found that he could take an “L” train to the Bridge, and
+transfer there to another taking him direct to the course. At the Bridge
+he was thrust into a motley crowd, eager, expectant, full of joyous
+anticipation of assured good luck. He was but a tiny unit of this
+many-voiced throng; he drifted a speck on the bosom of the flood that
+poured into the waiting race train. He was tossed into a seat by
+the swirling tide, and as the train moved he looked at his
+fellow-passengers. There was a pleasant air of opulence all about him.
+Gold chains of fair prominence, diamonds of lustrous hue, decorated the
+always rotund figures. He fell to wondering why the men were all of a
+gross physique; why did the ladies wear dresses of such interminable
+variety of color; from whence came the money for this plethora of rich
+apparel?
+
+The race literature that had come Mortimer's way had generally dealt
+with the unfortunate part of racing. Somehow he had got the impression
+that everybody lost money at it. He was sure Alan Porter had, also the
+father.
+
+True, on the train were some bearing undeniable evidences of poverty;
+but not many. One man of this latter unfortunate aspect sat next him.
+His whole appearance was suggestive of the shady side of life. With the
+industry of a student he pored over a disheveled sporting paper for half
+an hour, then throwing it under the seat he cast a furtive look at his
+neighbor, and presently said, “Dere'll be big fields to-day.”
+
+“That's too bad,” Mortimer answered, through ignorance, thinking that
+the other referred to perhaps a considerable walk across country to
+reach the course.
+
+“I like it,” declared the man of sad drapery; “it means long odds if
+you're next somethin' good.”
+
+Mortimer confined his remarks to a brief “Oh!” for the other man might
+as well have been speaking Choctaw.
+
+“Have you doped 'em out for de Derby?” asked the stranger.
+
+Mortimer shook his head. Whatever it was it was connected with horse
+racing, and he felt sure that he hadn't done it.
+
+“Well, I'll tell you somethin'--will you put down a good bet if I steer
+you straight?”
+
+Mortimer was growing weary; his mind, troubled by the frightful disaster
+that threatened Allis's family, wanted to draw within itself and ponder
+deeply over a proper course of action; so he answered: “My dear sir, I'm
+afraid you're mistaken. I never bet on races. But I thank you for your
+kind offer.”
+
+The unwashed face looked at him in blank amazement, then it wrinkled in
+a mirthful laugh of derision. “What d' 'ell you goin' to Gravesend
+for, den? Blamed if I don't believe you dough--you look it. Say, is dat
+straight goods--did you never have a bet in your life?”
+
+“Never did.”
+
+“Well, I'm damned! Say, I believe you've got de best of it, dough. Wish
+I'd never bucked ag'in' de bookies.”
+
+“Why don't you stop it now, then?”
+
+“Say, pard, do you drink?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Smoke?”
+
+“No.”
+
+A hopeless air of utter defeat came into the thin, sharp face. Its
+owner had been searching for a simile. He wanted to point a moral and
+he couldn't find it. The young man at his elbow was too immaculate.
+He tried to explain: “Racin's like any other locoed t'ing--it's like
+tobacco, or drink, or stealin' money out of a bank--”
+
+Mortimer shivered. He had felt a moral superiority in denying the
+implied bad habits.
+
+“It's like any of 'em,” continued the ragged philosopher; “a guy
+starts simply as a kid, an' he gets de t'row-down. He takes a bracer at
+himself, and swears he'll give it de go-by, but he can't--not on your
+life.”
+
+Mortimer had read much about confidence men, and half expected that
+his self-imposed acquaintance would try to borrow money, but he was
+disillusionized presently.
+
+“But de ring ain't broke Ole Bill yet. I'll clean up a t'ousand
+to-day--say, I like your mug; you ain't no stiff, or I miss my guess,
+an' I'll put you, next a good t'ing, damme if I don't, an' you don't
+need to divvy up, neither. Dere's a chestnut runnin' in de Derby what
+dey call Larcen, an' I'm goin' to plank down a hun'red chicks on him.”
+
+He detected a look of incredulous unbelief in Mortimer's face,
+evidently, for he added, “You t'ink I ain't got no dough, eh?” He dug
+down into the folds of his somewhat voluminous “pants” and drew forth a
+fair-sized roll. “See? That wad goes to Larcen straight. I see him do
+a gallop good enough for my stuf; but dey got a stable-boy on him, an'
+dat's why he'll be ten to one. But dat don't cut no ice wit' me. He'll
+be out for de goods; it's a gal owns him, an' dere'll be nut'in' doin'.
+Gal's name's Porter.”
+
+Again Mortimer started. What a little world it was, to be sure! Even
+here on the ferry boat, crowded with men of unchristian aspect, he heard
+the name of the woman he loved, and standing symbolical of honesty.
+
+“What's the name of this--this horse?” he asked.
+
+“Larcen.”
+
+“Do you mean Lauzanne?”
+
+“Yes, dat's it. I jes' heered it, an' I t'ought it was Larcen. You've
+got it straight, stranger. Say, are you wise to anyt'in'?”
+
+“Not about the horse; but I know the people--the young lady; and they'll
+win if they can--that's sure.”
+
+“Dere won't be many dead 'uns in de Derby. First money's good enough fer
+most of de owners. First horse, I see him gallop like a good 'un. An'
+I'm a piker; I like a bit of odds fer my stuff.”
+
+Mortimer saw the other occupants of the train moving toward the front
+end.
+
+“I guess we're dere,” said his companion; “perhaps I'll see you on
+de course. If you make a break to-day, play Larcen; he'll win. Say, I
+didn't catch your name.”
+
+“Mortimer.”
+
+“Well, take care of yourself, Mr. Morton. See you later.”
+
+* * * * * * * * * *
+
+In his ignorance of a race meet Mortimer had felt sure he would be able
+to find Alan Porter without trouble. The true difficulty of his quest
+soon dawned upon him. Wedged into the pushing, shoving, hurrying crowd,
+in three minutes he had completely lost himself. A dozen times he
+rearranged his bearings, taking a certain flight of steps leading up
+to the grand stand as the base of his peregrinations; a dozen times
+he returned to this point, having accomplished nothing but complete
+bewilderment.
+
+He asked questions, but the men he addressed were too busy to bother
+with him; some did not hear, others stared at him in distrust, and many
+tendered flippant remarks, such as “Ask a policeman;” “You'll find him
+in the bar;” “He's gone to Europe.”
+
+Even Mortimer's unpracticed mind realized speedily that it would be
+nothing short of a miracle if he were to find anyone in all those
+inpatient thousands who even knew the person he was seeking. One young
+man he spoke to declared that he knew Alan Porter quite well; he was a
+great friend of his; he'd find him in a minute. This obliging stranger's
+quest led them into the long race track bar room, which somehow or other
+suggested to Mortimer a cattle shambles.
+
+Behind the bar young men in white coats, even some in their shirt
+sleeves, were setting forth on its top, with feverish haste, clinking
+glasses that foamed and fretted much like the thirsty souls who called
+vociferously for liquid refreshment. Everybody seemed on fire--burnt up
+by the thirst of a consuming fever, the fever of speculation.
+
+Mortimer's new friend suggested that they indulge in beer while waiting
+for the sought one's appearance, and waxing confidential he assured his
+quarry that he had a leadpipe cinch for the next race--it couldn't
+lose. The trainer was a bosom friend of his; a sort of hybrid brother in
+friendship. He himself was no tipster, he was an owner; he even went
+the length of flashing a bright yellow badge, as occult evidence of his
+standing.
+
+These matters did not interest the searcher in the slightest; they only
+wasted his precious time. If he did not find Alan Porter soon the stolen
+money would be lost, he felt sure.
+
+“I must find my friend,” he said, cutting the garrulous man short.
+“Excuse me, I'll go and look for him.”
+
+But the other was insistent; ferret-like, he had unearthed good meat--a
+rare green one--and he felt indisposed to let his prey escape. His
+insistence matured into insolence as Mortimer spoke somewhat sharply to
+him. Ignorant of racing as the latter was, he was hardly a man to take
+liberties with once he recognized the infringement. The enormity of
+his mission and the possibility that it might be frustrated by his
+undesirable tormentor, made him savage. Raised to quick fury by a
+vicious remark of the tout who held him in leash, he suddenly stretched
+out a strong hand, and, seizing his insulter by the collar, gave him
+a quick twist that laid him on his back. Mortimer held him there,
+squirming for a full minute, while men gathered so close that the air
+became stifling.
+
+Presently a heavy hand was laid on Mortimer's shoulder and a gruff
+policeman's voice asked, “What's the matter here?”
+
+“Nothing much,” Mortimer replied, releasing his hold and straightening
+up; “this blackguard wanted me to bet on some horse, and when I refused,
+insulted me; that's all.”
+
+The other man had risen, his face purple from the twist at his throat.
+The officer looked at him.
+
+“At it again, Mr. Bunco. I'll take care of him,” he continued, turning
+to Mortimer. “He's a tout. Out you go,” this to the other man. Then,
+tickled in the ribs by the end of the policeman's baton, the tout was
+driven from the enclosure; the spectators merged into a larger crowd,
+and Mortimer was left once more to pursue his fruitless search.
+
+As he emerged into the open of the lawn he saw a gentleman standing
+somewhat listlessly, self-absorbed, as though he were not a party to the
+incessant turmoil of the others, who were as men mad.
+
+With a faith born of limited experience, Mortimer risked another
+hazard. He would ask this complacent one for guidance. What he had to do
+justified all chances of rebuke.
+
+“Pardon me, sir,” he began, “I am looking for a young friend of mine
+whose people own race horses. Where would I be likely to find him?”
+
+“If he's an owner he'll probably be in the paddock,” replied the
+composed one.
+
+“Could you tell me where the paddock is?”
+
+“To the right,” and sweeping his arm in that direction the stranger sank
+back into his inner consciousness, and blinked his eyes languidly, as
+though the unusual exertion of answering his inquisitor's questions had
+decidedly bored him.
+
+“That man is one in a thousand; yea, forty thousand, for he is a
+stranger to excitement,” Mortimer said to himself, as he strode rapidly
+across the grass to a gate which opened in the direction the other had
+indicated. His eagerness had almost carried him through the gateway
+when a strong arm thrown across his chest, none too gently, barred his
+further progress.
+
+“Show your badge, please,” cried a voice.
+
+Mortimer exposed the pasteboard he had acquired on his entry to the
+stand.
+
+“You can't pass in here,” said the guardian; “that's only good for the
+stand.”
+
+“But,” began Mortimer.
+
+“Stand aside--make room, please!” from the gatekeeper, cut short his
+conversation.
+
+Others were waiting to pass through. In despair he gave up his untenable
+place, and once more was swallowed in the maelstrom of humanity that
+eddied about the stand enclosure.
+
+As he was heading for his rock of locality, the stairway, hurrying
+somewhat recklessly, he ran with disturbing violence full tilt into a
+man who had erratically turned to his left, when according to all laws
+of the road he should have kept straight on.
+
+“I beg pardon--” began Mortimer; then stared in blank amazement, cutting
+short his apology. The victim of his assault was Mr. Crane. The latter's
+close-lidded eyes had rounded open perceptibly in a look of surprise.
+
+“Mr. Mortimer!” he exclaimed, “You here? May I ask who's running the
+bank?”
+
+Anxious about the stolen money the sudden advent of Crane on his
+immediate horizon threw the young man into momentary confusion. “My
+mother was ill--I got leave--I had to see Alan Porter--I've come here to
+find him. They'll manage all right at the bank without me.”
+
+He fired his volley of explanation at his employer with the rapidity of
+a Maxim gun. Truth and what he considered excusable falsehood came forth
+with equal volubility. Crane, somewhat mollified, and feeling that at
+first he had spoken rather sharply, became more gracious. At sight of
+Mortimer he had concluded that it was to see Allis the young man had
+come, perhaps at her instigation.
+
+“Have you seen Alan Porter, sir?” Mortimer asked, anxiously.
+
+“I did, but that was about an hour ago. You will probably find him”--he
+was going to say--“in the paddock with his sister,” but for reasons he
+refrained; “let me see, most likely sitting up in the grand stand.”
+
+As Mortimer stood scanning the sea of faces that rose wave on wave above
+him, Mr. Crane said, “I hope you found your mother better. If I see Alan
+I'll tell him you are looking for him.”
+
+When Mortimer turned around Crane had gone. He had meant to ask about
+the race Porter's horse Lauzanne was in, but had hesitated for fear he
+should say something which might give rise to a suspicion of his errand.
+He heard the rolling thunder of hoof beats in the air. From where he
+stood, over the heads of many people he could see gaudy colored silk
+jackets coming swiftly up the broad straight boulevard of the race
+course; even as he looked they passed by with a peculiar bobbing
+up-and-down motion. The effect was grotesque, for he could not see the
+horses, could not see the motive power which carried the bright-colored
+riders at such a terrific pace.
+
+A thought flashed through his mind that it might be the Derby.
+
+“What race is that?” he asked of one who stood at his elbow.
+
+The man's face wore a sullen, discontented look, and no wonder, for he
+had, with misplaced confidence, wagered many dollars on a horse that was
+even then prancing gaily in many yards behind the winner.
+
+“Do you know what race that was?” Mortimer repeated, thinking the silent
+one had not heard him.
+
+“Why don't you look at your race card?” retorted the jaundiced
+loser, transporting himself and his troubles to the haven of liquid
+consolation.
+
+His answer, curt as it was, gave Mortimer an inspiration. He looked
+about and saw many men consulting small paper pamphlets; they were like
+people in an art gallery, catalogue in hand.
+
+By chance, Mortimer observed a young man selling these race catalogues,
+as he innocently named them. He procured one, and the seller in answer
+to a question told him it was the third race he had just seen, and the
+next would be the Brooklyn Derby.
+
+There it was, all set forth in the programme he had just purchased.
+Seven horses to start, all with names unfamiliar except The Dutchman
+and Lauzanne. He had almost given up looking for Alan; it seemed so
+hopeless. At any rate he had tried his best to save the boy's honor;
+told deliberate lies to do it. Now it was pretty much in the hands of
+fate. He remembered what Alan had said about The Dutchman's certain
+chance of winning the coming race. He felt that if the horse won, Alan
+would put back the stolen thousand dollars; if not, where would the boy
+get money to cover up his theft?
+
+It had seemed to Mortimer a foolish, desperate thing to risk money on
+anything so uncertain as a horse race; but here was at stake the honor
+of a bright, splendid young man--even the happiness of his parents,
+which the poor, deluded boy had wagered on one horse's chance of winning
+against six others. It was terrible. Mortimer shuddered, and closed his
+eyes when he thought of the misery, the shame, that would come to Allis
+and her mother when they knew, as they must, if Crane's horse were
+beaten, that the son was a thief. Oh, God! why couldn't he find the boy
+and save him before it was too late? Probably Alan had already betted
+the money; but even if that were so, he had vain visions of forcing the
+man who had received the stolen thousand to disgorge. No one had a right
+to receive stolen money; and if necessary, Mortimer would give him to
+understand that he was making himself a party to the crime.
+
+But the mere fact that he couldn't find Alan Porter rendered him as
+helpless as a babe; he might as well have remained in the bank that day.
+How willingly he would have hastened back and replaced the money if he
+but had it. For Allis's sake he would have beggared himself, would have
+sacrificed a hundred times that sum to save her from the unutterable
+misery that must come if her brother were denounced as a felon. The love
+that was in him was overmastering him.
+
+He was roused from his despondent train of thought by speech that struck
+with familiar jar upon his ear. It was the voice of the man who had
+descanted on the pleasures of betting during their journey from New
+York.
+
+“What dye t'ink of it, pard?” was the first salutation.
+
+Mortimer stammered the weak information that he didn't know what to
+think of it.
+
+“Dere ain't no flies on us to-day--I'm knockin' 'em out in great shape.
+Can't pick a loser, blamed if I can. I've lined up for a cash-in tree
+times, an' I'll make it four straight, sure. Larcen'll come home all
+alone; you see if he don't.”
+
+“I hope so,” rejoined Mortimer.
+
+“I say, Mister Morton, put down a bet on him--he's good business; put a
+'V' on, an' rake down fifty--dat'll pay your ex's. De talent's goin' for
+De Dutchman, but don't make no mistake about de other, he'll win.”
+
+In an instant the young man knew why this persistent worrier of a
+tortured spirit had been sent him. Fate gave him the cue; it whispered
+in his ear, “Put down a hundred--you have it--and win a thousand; then
+you can save Alan Porter--can keep this misery from the girl that is to
+you as your own life.”
+
+Mortimer listened eagerly; to the babbler at his side; to the whisper in
+his ear; to himself, that spoke within himself. Even if it were not
+all true, if Lauzanne were beaten, what of it? He would lose a hundred
+dollars, but that would not ruin him; it would cause him to save and
+pinch a little, but he was accustomed to self-denial.
+
+“Will the betting men take a hundred dollars from me on this horse,
+Lauzanne?” he asked, after the minute's pause, during which these
+thoughts had flashed through his mind.
+
+“Will dey take a hundred? Will dey take a t'ousand! Say, what you givin'
+me?”
+
+“If Lauzanne won, I'd win a thousand, would I?”
+
+“If you put it down straight; but you might play safe--split de hundred,
+fifty each way, win an' show; Larcen'll be one, two, tree, sure.”
+
+“I want to win a thousand,” declared Mortimer.
+
+“Den you've got to plump fer a win; he's ten to one.”
+
+Mortimer could hardly understand himself; he was falling in with the
+betting idea. It was an age since he stood at his desk in that bank,
+abhorrent of all gambling methods, to the present moment, when he was
+actually drawing from his pocket a roll of bills with which to bet on a
+horse.
+
+He took a despairing look through the thicket of human beings that made
+a living forest all about, in a last endeavor to discover Alan Porter.
+Not three paces away a uniquely familiar figure was threading in and out
+the changing maze-it was Mike Gaynor.
+
+Mortimer broke from his friend, and with quick steps reached the
+trainer's side.
+
+“I want to find Alan Porter,” he said, in answer to Gaynor's surprised
+salutation.
+
+“He was in the paddock a bit ago,” answered Mike; “he moight be there
+still.”
+
+Almost involuntarily Mortimer, as he talked, had edged back toward his
+friend of disconsolate raggedness.
+
+“I wanted to go in there--I'd like to go now to find him, but they won't
+let me through the gate.”
+
+“No more they will,” answered Mike, with untruthful readiness, for all
+at once it occurred to him that if Mortimer got to the paddock he might
+run up against Allis and recognize her.
+
+“De gent could buy a badge and get in,” volunteered Old Bill.
+
+The lid of Mike's right eye drooped like the slide of a lantern, as he
+answered: “He couldn't get wan now--it's too late; just wait ye here,
+sir, and if the b'y's there wit' the nags, I'll sind him out.”
+
+Old Bill made no comment upon Mike's diplomatic misstatement anent the
+badge, for he had observed the wink, and held true to the masonry which
+exists between race-course regulars.
+
+“Yes, please send him out then, Mr. Gaynor; it's important.”
+
+“I'm in a hurry meself,” said Mike; “I just come out fer a minute; see
+here,” and he nodded his head sideways to Mortimer. The latter walked by
+his side for a few steps.
+
+“Who's that guy?” asked the Trainer.
+
+“I don't know; he calls himself Old Bill.”
+
+“Well, ye best look out--he looks purty tough. What's he playin' ye
+fer?”
+
+“He advised me to bet money on Lauzanne.”
+
+“The divil he did! What th' yellow moon does he know about the Chestnut;
+did ye back him?”
+
+“Not yet.”
+
+“Are ye goin' to?”
+
+“I don't know. Do you think Lauzanne might come in first?”
+
+A slight smile relaxed the habitually drawn muscles of Mike's grim
+visage; it was moons since he had heard anybody talk of a horse “coming
+in first;” he was indeed a green bettor, this, young man of the counting
+house. What was he doing there betting at all, Mike wondered. It must be
+because of his interest in the girl, his reason answered.
+
+“I tink he'll win if he does his best for her.”
+
+“Does his best for who?”
+
+Mike got to cover; his ungoverned tongue was always playing him tricks.
+
+“Miss Allis is managin' the horses,” he explained, very deliberately,
+“an' there's a new b'y up on Lauzanne's back, d'ye onderstand; an' if
+the Chestnut doesn't sulk, does his best fer the young misthress that'll
+be watchin' him here in the stand wit' tears in her eyes, he moight
+win--d'ye onderstand?”
+
+Yes, Mortimer understood; it seemed quite clear, for Mike had been to
+some pains to cover up the slip he had made.
+
+“Now I must go,” he continued; “an' ye needn't come in the paddock--if
+the b'y is there, I'll sind him out.”
+
+When Alan's seeker returned to Old Bill, he said, “Mr. Gaynor thinks
+your choice might come in first.”
+
+“Why was Irish steerin' you clear of de paddock?” asked the other.
+
+“I suppose it was to save me the expense of buying a ticket for it.”
+
+The other man said nothing further, but the remembrance of Mike's wink
+convinced him that this was not the sole reason.
+
+They waited for young Porter's appearance, but he did not come. “The
+geezer yer waitin' fer is not in dere or he'd a-showed up,” said Old
+Bill; “an' if yer goin' to take de tip, we'd better skip to de ring an'
+see what's doin'.”
+
+Mortimer had once visited the stock exchange in New York. He could not
+help but think how like unto it was the betting ring with its horde of
+pushing, struggling humans, as he wormed his way in, following close on
+Old Bill's heels. There was a sort of mechanical aptness in his leader's
+way of displacing men in his path. Mortimer realized that but for his
+guide he never would have penetrated beyond the outer shell of the
+buzzing hive. Even then he hoped that he might, by the direction of
+chance, see Alan Porter. The issue at stake, and the prospect of its
+solution through his unwonted betting endeavor, was dispelling his
+inherent antipathy to gambling; he was becoming like one drunken with
+the glamour of a new delight; his continued desire to discover young
+Porter was more a rendering of tithes to his former god of chastity
+which he was about to shatter.
+
+Two days before betting on horse races was a crime of indecent enormity;
+now it seemed absolutely excusable, justified, almost something to be
+eagerly approved of. Their ingress, though strenuous, was devoid of
+rapidity; so, beyond much bracing of muscles, there was little to take
+cognizance of except his own mental transformation. Once he had known a
+minister, a very good man indeed, who had been forced into a fight. The
+clergyman had acted his unwilling part with such muscular enthusiasm
+that his brutish opponent had been reduced to the lethargic condition of
+inanimate pulp. Mortimer compared his present exploit with that of his
+friend, the clergyman; he felt that he was very much in the same boat.
+He was eager to have the bet made and get out into the less congested
+air; his companions of the betting ring were not men to tarry among in
+the way of moral recreation.
+
+The mob agitated itself in waves; sometimes he and Old Bill were carried
+almost across the building by the wash of the living tide as it set in
+that direction; then an undertow would sweep them back again close
+to their starting point. The individual members of the throng were
+certainly possessed of innumerable elbows, and large jointed knees, and
+boots that were forever raking at his heels or his corns. They seemed
+taller, too, than men in the open; strive as he might he could see
+nothing--nothing but heads that topped him in every direction. Once the
+proud possessor of a dreadful cigar of unrivaled odor became sandwiched
+between him and his fellow-pilgrim; he was down wind from the weed and
+its worker, and the result was all but asphyxiation.
+
+At last they reached some sort of a harbor; it was evidently an inlet
+for which his pilot had been sailing. A much composed man in a tweed
+suit, across which screamed lines of gaudy color, sat on a camp stool,
+with a weary, tolerant look on his browned face; in his hand was a
+card on which was penciled the names of the Derby runners with their
+commercial standing in the betting mart.
+
+Old Bill craned his neck over the shoulder of the sitting man, scanned
+the book, and turning to Mortimer said, “Larcen's nine to one now;
+dey're cuttin' him--wish I'd took tens; let's go down de line.”
+
+They pushed out into the sea again, and were buffeted of the human
+waves; from time to time Old Bill anchored for a few seconds in the tiny
+harbor which surrounded each bookmaker; but it was as though they were
+all in league--the same odds on every list.
+
+“It's same as a 'sociation book,” he grunted; “de cut holds in every
+blasted one of 'em. Here's Jakey Faust,” he added, suddenly; “let's try
+him.”
+
+“What price's Laxcen?” he asked of the fat bookmaker.
+
+“What race is he in?” questioned the penciler.
+
+“Din race; what you givin' me!”
+
+“Don't know the horse.”
+
+Mortimer interposed. “The gentleman means Lauzanne,” he explained.
+
+Faust glared in the speaker's face. “Why th' 'll don't he talk English
+then; I'm no Chinaman, or a mind reader, to guess what he wants.
+Lauzanne is nine to one; how much dye want?”
+
+“Lay me ten?” asked Old Bill of the bookmaker.
+
+“To how much?”
+
+“A hun'red; an' me frien' wants a hun'red on, too.”
+
+“I'll do it,” declared Faust, impatiently. “Ten hundred to one,
+Lauzanne!” he called over his shoulder to his clerk, taking the bettor's
+money; “an' the number is--?”
+
+“Twenty-five, tree-four-six!” answered Old Bill. “Pass him yer dust,” he
+continued, turning to his companion.
+
+The latter handed his money to Faust.
+
+“Lauzanne!” advised Old Bill.
+
+“A thousand-to-hundred-Lauzanne, win; an' the number is” he stretched
+out his hand, and turning over Mortimer's dangling badge, read aloud,
+“Twenty-five, three-five-seven.”
+
+He took a sharp look at the two men; his practised eye told him they
+were not plungers, more of the class that usually bet ten dollars at
+the outside; they were evidently betting on information; two
+one-hundred-dollar bets coming together on Lauzanne probably meant
+stable money.
+
+“Let's git out, mister,” cried Old Bill, clutching Mortimer's arm.
+
+“Don't I get anything--a receipt, or--”
+
+Faust heard this and laughed derisively. “You won't need nothin' to show
+for this money,” he said.
+
+“We'll be roun' at de back in a few minutes fer a couple of t'ou',”
+ retorted Old Bill. “Let's cut trough here,” he added to his companion,
+making a passage between the bookmakers.
+
+Bill's knowledge of the local geography was good, and skirting the crowd
+they were soon out on the lawn.
+
+“Let's watch de parade,” Mortimer's adjutant suggested, and he led the
+way down to the course, where they stood against the rail, waiting.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+During this time there was a bustle of much interest in the paddock.
+Allis, ready dressed in the Porter colors, had been driven to the
+course half an hour before the time set for the Derby. Her face was as
+satisfactorily disguised with dust as though she had ridden three races.
+
+Mike assiduously attended to every detail; even the weighing, thanks to
+his officious care, was a matter of not more than one minute. The girl's
+weight was one hundred and ten pounds, the saddle brought it up to
+one hundred and thirteen. She would have to ride at least two pounds
+overweight, for the horse's impost was one hundred and eleven. Lauzanne
+was being led in a circle by a boy, so Allis shielded herself from the
+general gaze in his empty stall. She felt quite sure that nobody there
+would recognize her, unless, perhaps, Philip Crane. He was rarely seen
+in the paddock, but might this day come out to view The Dutchman. The
+latter horse came in for a great deal of attention, for he had been
+steadily backed down to the position of equal favorite with White Moth.
+
+At last there was the summons to saddle, and Lauzanne was brought into
+the stall by Dixon. Then the door was shrouded by an ever-changing
+semicircle of curious observers. Allis gave a little start and turned
+her head away as Crane, pushing through the others, stood just inside
+the stall and spoke to Dixon.
+
+“Your horse looks very well; I hope you win, if I don't.”
+
+“He's as good as we could make him,” answered the Trainer, as he
+adjusted the weight cloth.
+
+“Is Miss Porter here?” were Crane's next words, quite in the tone of a
+casually interested friend.
+
+“She may be in the stand,” Dixon answered, without turning his head.
+Mike had deliberately interposed his body between Allis and the doorway.
+To the girl's relief, without further comment, Crane quietly moved away.
+
+“Excuse me, Al, fer standin' in front av ye,” said Mike, “but these
+outsiders is enough to make a b'y narvous the way they stare at him.
+Alan Porter was in the paddock a minute ago askin' fer his sister, but I
+hustled him out, telling him ye--I mean she--was in the stand.”
+
+“Thank you, Mike; you're a good friend,” replied the girl, gratefully.
+
+Dixon had never taken so much care over the preparation of a horse for a
+race in all his life; and at last everything was as perfect as it could
+possibly be made. Lauzanne's behavior gladdened the girl's heart; he was
+as supremely indifferent to the saddling, to the staring of the people,
+to the scent of battle that was in the soft summer air, as though he
+were in his own stable at home. Not a muscle of his huge flank trembled.
+Once, as the bridle rein was loosened for an instant, he half turned in
+the stall, curved his neck and stretched his golden nozzle toward the
+small figure in blue silk, as though he fain would make sure by scent
+that one of his natural enemies, a man jockey, had not been thrust upon
+him. Allis understood this questioning movement, and reaching out her
+hand rubbed the gray velvet of his nose. But for the restraining rein,
+tightened quickly by the boy who held him, Lauzanne would have snuggled
+his head against his little mistress.
+
+“They understand each other,” said Dixon to Mike, in an undertone;
+“we'll get all that's in him this trip.”
+
+“Bot' t'umbs up! if he doesn't come home alone I'll eat me hat. The
+sharks'll get a knock this journey, that'll make 'em take a tumble to
+themselves.”
+
+Dixon stepped back to the corner where Allis was and said: “I guess I
+can't give you no orders. He's a bit sluggish at the post, an' a few
+false breaks won't hurt him none. Just don't be afraid, that's all. A
+mile an' a half's a long journey, an' you'll have plenty of time to
+take their measure. He's sure to get away last, but that won't matter;
+there'll be plenty of openin's to get through after you've gone a mile.
+Just keep your eye on The Dutchman--he's a stayer from 'way back; an'
+Westley may kid you that he's beat comin' up the stretch, for he's slick
+as they make them, an' then come with a rattle at the finish an' nose
+you out on the post. Don't never let up once you're into the stretch;
+if you're ten lengths ahead don't let the Chestnut down, but keep a good
+holt on him, an' finish as though they was all lapped on your quarter.
+There's a horse in the race I don't understand; he can no more get a
+mile an' a half than I could; it's the Indian, an' why they're puttin'
+up the startin' price beats me, unless”--and he lowered his voice to a
+whisper--“there's a job to carry Lauzanne, or White Moth, or somethin'
+off their feet. Just watch the Indian, an' don't let him shut you in on
+the rail if you can help it. They've put up Redpath, an' that beats
+me, too, for I think he's straight. But the Indian hasn't a ghost of a
+chance to win. You'd better take a whip.”
+
+“I don't want either whip or spurs,” answered the girl. “Lauzanne will
+do better without them.”
+
+“I know that, but take a whip--something else in the race might need it;
+an' if you have to use it, use it good an' strong. If Langdon lodges an
+objection I can make him quit.”
+
+Over at The Dutchman's stall there was a very confident party. Their
+horse would go to the post as fit as any thoroughbred had ever stripped.
+Langdon was a great trainer--there was no doubt about that; if there had
+been Crane would have discovered it and changed his executive officer.
+The tall son of Hanover was lean of flesh, but gross in muscle. He was
+as though an Angelo had chiseled with sure hand from his neck, and ribs,
+and buttocks all the marble of useless waste, and left untouched
+in sinewy beauty layer on layer, each muscle, and thew, and cord.
+Flat-boned and wide the black-glossed legs, and over the corded form
+a silken skin of dull fire-red. From the big eyes gleamed an expectant
+delight of the struggle; not sluggishly indifferent, as was Lauzanne's,
+but knowing of the fray and joyous in its welcome.
+
+“He'll win on a tight rein,” confided Langdon to Jockey Westley; “he's
+the greatest Hanover in the land. There's a dozen races bottled up in
+that carcass”--and he slapped the big Bay lovingly on the rump”--but if
+you're put to it, Bill, you can call on him fer the full dozen today.
+There's nothin' to it but yourself and White Moth.”
+
+Carelessly he stepped to the back of the stall, touching Westley as he
+passed. Kicking the loose dirt with his toes, and bending his head to
+bury his voice, Langdon continued in a subdued tone: “The Indian'll cut
+out the pace so fast that it'll choke off Lauzanne. The Chestnut's a
+plugger an' ain't no good when it comes to gallopin'. If you was to all
+loaf aroun' he might hang on an' finish in front; but the pace'll kill
+him--it'll break his heart; the fast goin'll lay out White Moth, too,
+for she'll go to the front an' die away after a mile an' a quarter. Just
+nurse the Bay, an' let the others fight the Indian. But don't loaf an'
+let Lauzanne get near you, fer he can keep up a puddlin' gait all day.
+There ain't nothin' else in the race I'm afraid of; there ain't one of
+them can last a mile an' a half.” Then he added, with a disagreeable
+chuckle--it was like the slobbering laugh of a hyena--“I miss my guess
+if the boy on Lauzanne kills himself tryin' to win anyway. He seems a
+fair lad, but you can ride rings 'round him, Bill.”
+
+“I'll put up a good ride on The Dutchman, an' I think we'll ketch the
+Judge's eye,” replied Westley. “It doesn't seem to stand for it that a
+stable-boy on a bad horse like Lauzanne is goin' to beat me out.”
+
+“The boss says you're to have two thousand fer winnin', Westley, so
+don't make no mistake. I wasn't goin' to tell you this afore you went
+out, fer fear it'd make you too eager. Many a race's been thrown away
+by a boy bein' too keen, an' makin' his run too early in the game; but
+you've a good head and might as well know what you're to have. There's
+the bugle; get up.”
+
+Eager hands stripped the blanket that had been thrown over The Dutchman;
+Westley was lifted into the saddle, and the gallant Bay led out by
+Langdon.
+
+In front strode White Moth; one by one the others, and last, seventh,
+Allis's fatal number, lagged Lauzanne, lazily loafing along as though he
+regretted leaving the stall.
+
+As the horses passed to the course, Crane, who had followed The Dutchman
+to the gate, raised his eyes from scanning Lauzanne to the rider on his
+back. It was just a look of languid interest in the apprentice boy Dixon
+had put up instead of such a good jockey as Redpath. The face rivetted
+his attention; something in the line of the cheek recalled a face he had
+constantly in view.
+
+“For an instant I thought that was Alan Porter on Lauzanne,” he said
+to Langdon, who was at his elbow. “A strange fancy--I'm going up to the
+stand to watch the race:”
+
+“It's all roight but the win now,” said Mike to Dixon. “I'm goin' in be
+the Judges' box to watch the finish. You'll be helpin' the b'y pass the
+scales, Andy.”
+
+As Allis passed the Judges' Stand in the parade she cast a quick,
+furtive look toward the people on the lawn. She seemed pilloried on an
+eminence, lifted up in pitiless prominence; would anyone detect her at
+the last moment? Hanging over the rail in the very front she saw a pale
+face that struck a chill of fear to her heart--it was Mortimer's.
+She had not even thought of his being there. She had eluded the close
+scrutiny of all the others who were likely to recognize her, but there,
+within ten yards were eyes almost certain to penetrate her disguise. The
+girl turned her face away; she knew Mortimer well enough to think that
+if he did recognize her he would make no sign.
+
+“That's our horse,” declared Old Bill, as Lauzanne passed. “He's all
+right, bet yer life; he's fit ter go all day. De geezer as trains him
+ain't no mug. Let's go up in de stand, where we can see de whole show;
+den we'll come down an' cash in. Say, pard, if dis goes through I'll
+blow you off to a bottle of de best; wine ain't none too good fer dis
+coop.”
+
+Altogether it was as though Destiny had found pleasant domicile in the
+ancient clothing of Old Bill, and was using their unique wearer as a
+protective agent to ward off evil from both Mortimer and the girl. As
+they jogged toward the starting post Allis allowed Lauzanne to lag;
+she wished to avoid Redpath. But the Indian was a horse of uncertain
+temperament, and presently, with a foolish side rush, he cannoned fair
+into Lauzanne. In the melee Redpath looked full into Allis's eyes at
+short range. His face went white in an instant.
+
+“You!” he cried, pulling hard at his horse's mouth; “it's you, Miss--”
+ He stopped suddenly. “God! I'm glad I know this,” he jerked between set
+teeth, as he fought the Indian, who was nearly pulling him out of the
+saddle.
+
+“It's because he'll gallop for you, isn't it? You didn't think I was a
+wrong one--it wasn't because you couldn't trust me you took the mount
+away, was it?”
+
+The Indian, quieted by the sleepy Chestnut, was going steadier. “No;
+it's because Lauzanne won't give his running for anyone but me,” the
+girl answered.
+
+The boy remained silent, thinking over why he was on the Indian. There
+was a moral obliquity about his present position; the new light of his
+discovery showed him this strongly. His feelings had been played upon by
+the owner of the Indian, at Langdon's instigation.
+
+He had been told that the Porters had not given him the mount on
+Lauzanne because they distrusted him. He had been put on the horse
+to make running for The Dutchman. There was nothing really patently
+dishonest about this arrangement, and Redpath's mind had been dulled to
+fine discrimination by the idea that he was falsely distrusted.
+
+Presently the boy spoke with sharp decision, in quick broken sentences,
+for they were nearing the Starter. “I'm in to make the running; this
+crock's got no license to win. Don't you bother about him--he'll come
+back to the others fast enough when he's done. When you want an opening
+to get through just come bang into me--I'll be next the rail; yell
+'Lauzanne,' an' I'll pull out. I'll give them blasted crooks something
+to stare at. Don't gallop your mount's head off chasing this sprinter;
+he'll be beat when we swing into the stretch. Don't go wide at the turn;
+you can have my place; I'll make it wide for something else though.”
+
+They were at the post. Allis had not spoken; she had listened gratefully
+to Redpath's string of kindly directions. The presence of a friend
+in the race cheered her; the discovery she had dreaded had come as a
+blessing.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+Crane's words had started a train of thought in Langdon's mind. All at
+once he remembered that the face of Lauzanne's rider had a dream-like
+familiarity. He had not given it much thought before; but his owner's
+suggestion that the boy was like Alan Porter echoed in his ears. He had
+wondered where Dixon had got this new boy; why he was putting him up on
+Lauzanne instead of Redpath; it seemed a foolish thing to give the mount
+to an apprentice when a good jockey was to be had. Could it be that it
+really was Alan. The whole family were natural-born jockeys, father and
+son, even the girl, Allis.
+
+Langdon knew nothing of Alan Porter's movements--had not been interested
+enough to know. He had heard derogatory remarks about Redpath's
+riding of Lucretia in the Brooklyn Handicap; the Porters, no doubt
+dissatisfied--suspicious of the jockey--had put up Alan to insure an
+honest ride.
+
+Langdon had thought these thoughts as he passed swiftly from the paddock
+to the stand inclosure, where he stood not far from the rail, trying
+to get a good look at the lad on Lauzanne. Allis's persistently averted
+face thwarted this. The boy was inscribed on the jockey board “Al
+Mayne;” the permit to ride must be under that name. If it were really
+Alan Porter, why had he been called Mayne? But the boy had retained the
+name “Al”--that was a contraction of Alan, no doubt.
+
+While Langdon labored over the problem of Mayne's Identity he had
+watched the horses at the post through his glasses. The Dutchman was
+behaving well, his trifle of eagerness to break away was even better
+than Lauzanne's indolent indifference. The other five were acting as
+three-year-olds are wont to act--with erratic indecision; one minute
+violent desire, and the next obstinate reluctance characterizing their
+interminable twistings, backings, and plungings. It was not for long;
+a neck or a length at the start meant little when a mile and a half
+stretched its tiring length between them and the finish post.
+
+Langdon's perplexity was cut short by the cry, “They're off!” the jingle
+of a bell, and the scurrying of many feet, as eager men rushed for
+higher points of observation in the stand.
+
+As the seven horses came thundering by, pulling double in eager
+ignorance of the long journey that lay before them, Langdon saw with
+evil satisfaction that the Indian was well out in the lead.
+
+The Dutchman was sixth, and behind, with a short awkward strength in his
+gallop, loafed Lauzanne.
+
+There was smoothness in the stride of Hanover's big son, The Dutchman;
+and his trainer, as he watched him swing with strong grace around
+the first turn, mentally fingered the ten thousand dollars that would
+shortly be his.
+
+“That skate win!” he sneered, as Lauzanne followed; “he gallops like a
+fat pig. He can't live the pace--he can't live the pace,” he repeated,
+and his voice was mellow with a cheerful exultation.
+
+His observations seemed eminently truthful; Allis's horse trailed
+farther and farther behind the others. Out in front galloped with
+unseeming haste the Indian--a brown blotch of swift-gliding color. Two
+lengths from his glinting heels raced four horses in a bunch--two bays,
+a gray, and a black; so close together that they formed a small mosaic
+of mottled hue against the drab-gray background of the course stables
+beyond. Then The Dutchman, with his powerful stride, full of easy
+motion--a tireless gallop that would surely land him the winner, Langdon
+thought, as he hung with breathless interest on every move of Westley's
+body.
+
+Up in the stand Old Bill was expressing in florid racetrack speech to
+Mortimer his deductions.
+
+“Days a good kid on Larcen. See what he's doin'; he's trailin' 'em.
+Dat's where our horse gits it; he's a stretch runner, he is. Dey'll have
+bellows to mend when he tackles 'em.”
+
+To Mortimer it appeared very much as though the other horses were too
+fast for Lauzanne. “Isn't he losing?” he asked of his exuberant friend.
+
+“Losin' nut'in'! De kid ain't moved on him yet. De others is gallopin'
+der heads off; dey're chasm' de crazy skate in front. Dere's only two
+jocks in de race worth a damn--Bill Westley an' de kid on our horse.
+He knows he's got to beat Dutchy, an' he's lyin' handy by. When you see
+Dutchy move up Larcen'll come away, or I'm a goat.”
+
+Mike Gaynor had taken his place on the little platform at the top of
+the steps leading to the stand. He was watching the race with intense
+interest. Would Lauzanne do his best for the girl--or would he sulk?
+He saw the terrific pace that the Indian had set the others. Would it
+discourage their horse. His judgment told him that this fast pace could
+not last, and that Lauzanne could gallop as he was going from end to
+end of the mile and a half; even faster if he so wished. Would his rider
+have the patient steadiness of nerve to wait for this fulfillment of the
+inevitable or would she become rattled and urge the horse. Mike set
+his teeth, and his nails were driven hard into his rough palms as he
+strained in sympathy with the girl's quietude.
+
+How long the Indian held on in his mad lead! Perhaps even he might upset
+all clever calculation and last long enough to win. Already the gray,
+White Moth, had drawn out from the bunch and was second; the other three
+were dropping back in straggling order to The Dutchman, who was still
+running as he had been, strong. That was at the mile. At the mile and an
+eighth, White Moth was at the Indian's heels; The Dutchman had moved up
+into third place, two lengths away; and Lauzanne had become merged in
+the three that were already beaten. At the mile and a quarter a half
+thrill of hope came to Mike, for Lauzanne was clear of the ruck, and
+surely gaining on the leaders. And still his rider was lying low on the
+withers, just a blue blur on the dark gold of the Chestnut.
+
+“Bot' t'umbs! but they're a pair,” muttered the Irishman; “be me soul, I
+t'ink they'll win.”
+
+At the bottom turn into the stretch Mike could see that White Moth and
+The Dutchman had closed up on the Indian, so that they swung around the
+corner as one horse.
+
+“Gad, she's shut off!” he muttered. It was a living wall, and through
+little chinks in its quivering face he could see specks of blue close up
+where raced Lauzanne.
+
+“Poor gurl!” he gasped, “they've got her in a pocket. Damn them b'ys.
+Why did she hug the rail--she's fair t'rowed away the last chance.”
+
+Halfway up the steps stood Langdon, and his coarse, evil face took on a
+look of unholy joy as Lauzanne was blotted into oblivion by the horses
+in front.
+
+“Pocketed, by God! Clever Mister Dixon to put up a kid like that ag'in
+Westley an' the others,” he sneered.
+
+Then a deafening roar went up from the stand. Somebody thrust a pair
+of broad shoulders in front of Mike's face; he leaned out far past the
+intruder, and saw the Indian sway drunkenly in his stride away from the
+rail, carrying White Moth and The Dutchman out; and into the opening he
+had left, glued to the rail, crept the chestnut form of Lauzanne.
+
+A wild yell of Irish joy escaped Mike; then he waited. Now it would be a
+race; but Lauzanne was trying, trying all by himself, for the rider was
+as still as death. Already the clamor of many voices was splitting the
+air; all over the stand it was, “The favorite wins! The Dutchman wins!”
+ Even yet there was no beckoning call for Lauzanne; but Mike knew. He had
+said to Allis before she went out, “If ye ever get level wit' 'em in the
+straight, ye can win.”
+
+And now Lauzanne's yellow head was even with the others; and soon it
+was in front. And then there were only two battling--Lauzanne and The
+Dutchman; and on the Bay, Westley was riding with whip and spur.
+
+“In a walk--in a walk, I tell you!” fairly screamed Old Bill, clutching
+at Mortimer's arm; “didn't I tell you? We're a tousand to de good. Look
+at him, look at him!” He had climbed halfway up Mortimer's strong back
+in his excitement. “Look at de kid! Never moved--in a walk, in a walk!
+Larcen all the way for a million!”
+
+His voice generally weak and tattered like his clothes; had risen to a
+shrill scream of exultation.
+
+It was past all doubt. Lauzanne, a length in front of The Dutchman, was
+opposite the stand; in two seconds they had flashed by the Judges' box,
+and Lauzanne had won.
+
+The wave of humanity that swept down the steps carried Mike in its front
+wash. He took his stand close to the Judges' box; there he would be
+handy for whatever might be needed. He saw Langdon with a face dark and
+lowering, full of an evil discontent, standing there too. Back the seven
+runners cantered. Lauzanne's rider saluted the judge with whip, and
+slipping from the horse stripped him of the saddle with deft fingers,
+and passed quickly into the scales. The weight was right. One after
+another the boys weighed.
+
+Watching, Mike saw Langdon pass up to the Stewards. There was a short
+consultation, the hush of something wrong, and a murmur of an objection.
+
+“What's the matter?” a voice questioned in Mike's ear. It was Alan
+Porter that had spoken.
+
+Mike pushed his way to the small gate, even through it, that led up to
+the Stewards' Stand. As he did so Langdon came back down the steps. One
+of the Stewards, following him with quick eyes, saw Mike and beckoned
+with a finger.
+
+“There's an objection to the rider of Lauzanne,” said the official;
+“Trainer Langdon says Alan Porter rode the horse under a permit
+belonging to a boy named Mayne.”
+
+“He's mistook, sir.” answered Mike, respectfully; “there's Alan Porter
+standin' down there in the crowd. I'll sind him up, sir, an' ye can ask
+him yerself.”
+
+Gaynor passed hurriedly down the steps, seized Porter by the arm, and
+whispered in his ear, “Tell the judge yer name--that a b'y named Mayne
+rode Lauzanne. Quick now.”
+
+Then he stepped up to Langdon. The latter had seen Alan Porter go up
+the steps, and realized he had made a mistake. Mike drew him inside the
+little enclosure that surrounded the stand.
+
+“There's Alan Porter wit' the Stewards,” Gaynor whispered close to the
+man's face; “an' ye'll withdraw the objection at once. If ye don't ye'll
+have to settle wit' the Stewards fer tryin' to bribe the b'y Mayne to
+pull Lauzanne. And Shandy has owned up that he was to get five hundred
+dollars fer dosin' Lucretia. Ye'll withdraw now, or get ruled off fer
+life; besides, p'isinin' a horse is jail business; an' I'll take me oath
+before God I can prove this, too. Now go an' withdraw quick. Ye're a
+damn blackguard.”
+
+Mike had meant to restrict himself to diplomatic pressure, but his Irish
+was up like a flash, and he couldn't resist the final expression of
+wrath.
+
+A crowd of silent men had gathered about the box in a breathless wait.
+Fortunes depended upon the brief consultation that was being held
+between the Stewards.
+
+As Alan Porter came down Langdon went up the steps with nervous haste.
+“I've made a mistake, gentlemen,” he said to the Stewards, “with your
+permission I'll withdraw the objection.”
+
+“Yes, it's better that way,” returned one of the Stewards; “the best
+horse won, and that's what racing's for. It would be a pity to spoil
+such a grand race on a technicality.”
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+After his first burst of aboriginal glee, ecstatically uncouth as it
+was, Old Bill's joy over the victory of Lauzanne took on a milder form
+of expression.
+
+“Let's line up fer a cash-in,” he exclaimed to Mortimer, making a break
+down the steps to the lawn. On the ground he stopped, his mind working
+at fever heat, changing its methods quickly.
+
+“Let's wait till de kid's passed de scales; dere's no hurry. Dere won't
+be many drawin' down money over Larcen; he's an outsider.”
+
+They were still waiting when the rumor of an objection floated like an
+impalpable shadow of evil through the enclosure. Old Bill's seamed face
+shed its mask of juvenile hilarity, and furrowed back into its normal
+condition of disgruntled bitterness. He had seen the slight mix-up when
+the Indian swerved in the straight. The objection must have to do with
+that, he thought. “What th' 'ell's th, difference,” he said in fierce,
+imprecating anger; “de kid on Larcen didn't do no interferin', he jes
+come t'rough de openin' an' won-dey can't disqualify him.”
+
+“What does it mean?” asked Mortimer; “what's wrong?”
+
+“De push's tryin' to steal de race; de favorite's beat, an' it's win,
+tie, or wrangle wit' 'em. If dey take de race away from Larcen we don't
+get de goods, see? Our t'ou's up de spout. Dere he goes, dere he goes;
+look at de knocker,” as Langdon came down from the Stewards.
+
+Mortimer's heart sank. An exultation such as he had never experienced in
+his life had flushed his breast hot; the back of his scalp had tickled
+in a creepy way as Lauzanne flashed first past the winning post. He had
+felt pride in the horse, in the boy on his back, in himself at having
+overcome his scruples; he would be able to save Alan Porter from
+dishonor. His heart had warmed to the tattered outcast at his side,
+who had been the means to this glorious end. It had been all over,
+accomplished; now it was again thrust back into the scales, where it
+dangled as insecure as ever. It wasn't the money alone that teetered in
+the balance, but the honor of Allis Porter's brother.
+
+He gave a sharp cry of astonishment, for going up the steps in front of
+them was the boy himself, Alan. Presently he came down again, his face
+looking drawn and perplexed. In his ignorance of everything pertaining
+to racing Mortimer feared for an instant the theft of the thousand
+dollars had been discovered, and the present inquiry had something to do
+with that, else why was Alan mixed up in it.
+
+As the boy came through the little gate Mortimer accosted him. “Hello,
+Alan!” he exclaimed, very gently, “what's the trouble?”
+
+“Just a silly mistake,” answered Porter, a weak laugh following his
+words; “Langdon has claimed that I rode Lauzanne.”
+
+“Is dat it?” interposed Old Bill; “an' did you tell dem dey was wrong-de
+stiffs! Dere's cutt'roat Langdon up again; here he comes back, looking
+as tough he'd been fired fer splint--de crook! Hello! it's all right
+Hoo-ray! Lauzanne gits de race!” For already the cry of “All right!”
+ was ringing through the betting ring. “Come on, pard,” called Old Bill,
+eagerly, to Mortimer; “let's go an' rake down de dough.”
+
+“In a minute,” the other answered; and turning to Alan Porter, took
+him by the arm and led him to one side. “I suppose you lost over The
+Dutchman,” he said.
+
+“Yes, I'm broke,” answered the boy, with a plaintive smile.
+
+“Well, I've won.”
+
+“You betting!” exclaimed Alan, in astonishment.
+
+“Yes--strange, isn't it? But I'm going to put that money of your
+father's back.”
+
+The boy said nothing, and Mortimer fancied that his face flushed
+guiltily.
+
+“Yes, I can put it back now that Lauzanne's won,” continued Mortimer;
+“but don't say a word to a soul about it, I don't want anybody to know I
+was betting.”
+
+“But what money?” began Alan.
+
+“I've won a thousand dollars on Lauzanne--”
+
+“Come on, pard,” said Old Bill, impatiently interrupting them, “let's
+get our rake off, an' den you kin buck to yer chum after.”
+
+Mortimer yielded to the tattered one's command, for without his guidance
+he never would be able to find the man that held the money.
+
+“I'll be back in a little while,” he said to young Porter; “don't go
+away.”
+
+There was delay over the cashing in; being late, they found a line of
+Lauzanne men in front of them at the bookmaker's stand.
+
+When Mortimer returned to the lawn with eleven hundred dollars in his
+pocket Alan Porter had gone. He had dreaded that perhaps the boy might
+do something desperate, fearing discovery of the theft; he had thought
+even of taking Alan back to Brookfield with him; however, he had told
+him that the money would be replaced, the boy would understand that
+nothing could happen him and would go back, Mortimer felt sure. He spent
+a short time searching for Alan, but his former fruitless quest had
+shown him the hopelessness of trying to find a person in that immense
+throng. He thought kindly of the enveloping mob that had kept him hidden
+from Allis, as he thought. He had feared to meet her--something in his
+presence might cause her to suspect that something was wrong. The whole
+episode was like a fairy dream. It was a queer twist of Fate's web,
+his winning enough over Lauzanne--he, a man who had never betted in his
+life--to replace the money the brother had stolen.
+
+All at once it occurred to him that some reward was due the instigator
+of his success. The thousand he must keep intact. He had a few loose
+dollars in his pocket beyond his original hundred, quite sufficient
+to take him back to Brookfield. Taking the hundred from his pocket and
+turning to Old Bill, who was still with him, he said: “I'm going
+home, I've had enough horse racing for one day; you've done me a great
+kindness--will you take this hundred--I need the thousand badly, so
+can't spare more than this.”
+
+“Not on yer life, pard. I give you de tip first, but you got de office
+straight from Irish, an' we're quits, see? I wasn't playin' you fer
+a sucker, an' yer straight goods. Jes' shove de boodle in yer breast
+pocket, an' don't show it to no one. Dere's some here as would take it
+off you quick enough.”
+
+“But--”
+
+“Dere ain't no buts in dis game--it's a straight deal, an' we've split
+even. If you'd been a crook, well, God knows how we'd a-panned out. But
+you ain't no geezer of dat sort--yer square, an' Old Bill wishes you
+good luck till de robins nest again. Yer goin', eh? Say, pard, I'd
+a-been wearin' diamon's if I could quit when I was 'head of de game. Yer
+dead onto it. Here's my hand, Mr. Morton.”
+
+“Mortimer--George Mortimer.”
+
+“Well, shake, George. Where do you hang out?”
+
+“Brookfield.”
+
+“My address is New York. Dat's as close a fit as I knows at present.
+If de run o' luck keeps up p'r'aps I'll write you from de Waldorf.
+Good-bye, of man.”
+
+With a light heart Mortimer hastened from Gravesend, not waiting for
+the other races, and took his way to Brookfield. A genuine admiration of
+buffeted Old Bill filled his mind.
+
+In the morning he would be at the bank bright and early, and replace the
+stolen thousand dollars; nobody would know that it had been taken. The
+narrow escape that had come to Alan Porter might prove his salvation.
+Surely it would cure him of his desire to bet. Out of all this evil
+positive good would accrue.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+After winning on Lauzanne Allis had dodged the admiring crowd of paddock
+regulars that followed her. As Lauzanne was being blanketed she had
+kissed the horse's cheek and given him a mighty squeeze of thankfulness.
+How nobly he had done his part; good, dear old despised, misjudged
+Lauzanne. He had veritably saved her father from disaster; had saved her
+from--from many things.
+
+She had slipped into her long coat and stood waiting for Mike to drive
+her to Dixon's cottage when the rumor came of an objection. Then there
+had been the misery of terrible suspense, a wait of uncertainty. Was her
+sacrifice of womanly instinct to go for nothing? Dixon had hurried to
+the scene of investigation; then he had come back after a little with
+Mike, and the good news that they had been given the race. If it had not
+been for prying eyes she would have knelt there at Lauzanne's feet and
+offered up a prayer of thankfulness. She had done all a woman could do,
+almost more; Providence had not forsaken her and her stricken father.
+
+Then Mike had hurried her to the buggy just as Crane, leaving the beaten
+Dutchman and Langdon, had come, asking Dixon where Miss Porter was,
+that he might tender congratulations. He wanted to see the boy that had
+ridden Lauzanne, also--wanted to take his hand and tell him what a grand
+race he had ridden. But Dixon had been ready with excuses; the boy was
+dead beat after the race--he was only a kid--and had gone to Dixon's
+home. Miss Porter was perhaps in the stand, or perhaps she had gone home
+also. Crane knew of Langdon's objection. It was a silly thing, he said,
+due to overeagerness. He had taken no part in it, he assured Dixon. Alan
+Porter, too, came into the paddock, asking for his sister; but fared
+pretty much as Crane had. He would certainly find her at the cottage,
+Dixon assured him.
+
+That night Allis wired the joyful tidings to her father, and that she
+would be home in the morning.
+
+Dr. Rathbone's prophecy as to the proper medication for John Porter
+stood a chance of being fulfilled in one day. Allis's telegram proved
+that the doctor had understood the pathology of Porter's treatment, for
+he became as a cripple who had touched the garment of a magic healer.
+
+It was thus that Allis found him when she reached Ringwood. Oh, but she
+was glad; and small wonder. What she had done was as nothing; it shrank
+into insignificance under the glamourous light of the change that had
+come over the home. What a magic wand was deserved success; how it
+touched with fairy aspect all that drooped with the fearsome blight of
+anticipated decay! And even then they did not know the full extent of
+her endeavor. Mingled with her mother's gentle welcome, and her father's
+full-throated thanks, was praise for the, to him unknown, boy that had
+ridden Lauzanne so gallantly.
+
+The girl found tears of thankfulness glistening in her eyes as she
+listened to the praise that was wholly hers, though given in part to the
+jockey. They had not even heard his name--it had not mattered before;
+and now when her father asked for it, she answered that Mike called him
+Al something. Her father, generous in his salvation, was most solicitous
+as to a fitting present; a thousand dollars, or perhaps two, or even
+more, if Dixon advised so. What had he promised the lad? But there
+were so many things to talk over and settle, and laugh about, and
+congratulate each other upon. Good fortune was a generous dame. They
+were all like children in their happiness. \ “Yes, Alan had been there,”
+ the girl answered to a question from her father. Also it was a strange
+happening, a distortion of fate that Crane had beaten them in the
+Brooklyn with Diablo, and now they had beaten his horse, The Dutchman,
+with Lauzanne the Despised. All was content after the turmoil of
+endeavor. And of the horses, Lauzanne, who would gallop for no one but
+Allis, would be brought back to Ringwood, to be petted and spoiled
+of his young mistress for the good he had done. Lucretia, when
+convalescent, would also come to the farm to rest and get strong.
+
+In the midst of it all Dr. Rathbone came in, and of course, man-like and
+doctor-like, with pretended pomposity, said: “I told you so. What did
+I say? Now Mrs. Porter, no more scolding over the ways of horses, a good
+horse is a delight, and a good daughter a joy forever.”
+
+Dear old Dr. Rathbone, wise in his generation and big of heart!
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+At the bank down in the village--well, at nine o'clock Mortimer, feeling
+the virtue of early effort, with the money of redemption in his pocket,
+entered into the resumption of his duties. At the earliest moment after
+the vault was opened he made his way to the box that contained
+the Porter payment. One thing troubled him slightly. It was a
+thousand-dollar bill that had been taken; the money he had to replace
+was in hundreds and fifties. As he slipped them quietly into the box he
+thought it wouldn't really matter; he would transfer the three thousand
+to the account himself, and nobody would know of the change. Leaving the
+box where it was for a little, in the way of subtle strategy, he came
+out and busied himself over other matters.
+
+To Mortimer's slight astonishment, presently the cashier, Mr. Lane,
+came out from his office, and speaking somewhat carelessly, said: “Mr.
+Mortimer, you have that Porter note and money in charge. It is due
+today, isn't it?”
+
+Looking up, Mortimer saw Lane's eye fixed upon his face with piercing
+intensity. He flushed out of sheer nervousness.
+
+“Yes, sir,” he stammered, “it is. I'll attend to it at once.”
+
+“Ah!” there was a peculiar drawl in the cashier's voice as he spoke;
+“ah, I had a communication from Mr. Porter yesterday, asking if the note
+had been paid.”
+
+Mortimer felt his knees shake-something was choking hire. Had the
+devil of mischance taken the salvation of Alan's good name out of his
+hands--had his work been for nothing.
+
+“I couldn't understand it,” went on the cashier. His voice sounded like
+the clang of a fire bell to the listening man, though it was evenly
+modulated, cold and steady in its methodical precision. “I thought
+Porter knew the money was here to meet the note,” said Lane, still
+speaking, “but my attention being called to the matter, I looked up the
+papers. I found one thousand dollars missing!” He was looking steadily
+at Mortimer; his eyes were searching the young man's very soul. There
+was accusation, denunciation, abhorrence in the cashier's gaze.
+
+Mortimer did not speak. He was trying to think. His brain worked in
+erratic futility. The slangy babble of Old Bill thrust itself upon him;
+the roar of the race course was in his ears, deadening his senses; not
+a sane, relevant word rose to his lips. He was like a child stricken by
+fear. In an indistinct way he felt the dishonor that was Alan Porter's
+being given to him. The cashier waited for Mortimer to say something;
+then he spoke again, with reproach in his voice.
+
+“I at once sent a messenger to ask you to return from your home at
+Emerson to clear up this matter; he discovered that you had not
+been there; that your mother was not ill. May I ask where you were
+yesterday?”
+
+“I was at Gravesend, sir--at the races,” answered Mortimer, defiantly.
+
+This speech broke the lethargy that was over him; his mind cleared--he
+commenced to think sanely.
+
+“Can you tell me,” proceeded Lane, “where the balance of Mr. Porter's
+three thousand dollars is?”
+
+“It's in the box.”
+
+“That's a--it is not.”
+
+“It's in the box,” repeated Mortimer, firmly.
+
+“We can soon settle that point,” declared the cashier, going hurriedly
+into the vault and reappearing instantly with the box in his hand.
+
+He opened it and stared at the package of bills that rose up when
+freed from the pressure of the lid. With nervous fingers he counted the
+contents.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” he exclaimed in a quick, jerky way. “The three
+thousand dollars is here, but these bills have been put in the box this
+morning; they were not there last night. It is not the money that was
+taken away, either. That was one bill, a thousand-dollar note; and
+here are”--he counted them again--“six one hundreds and eight fifties,
+besides the original two of one thousand. You put those notes back, Mr.
+Mortimer,” he said, tapping the desk with two fingers of the right hand.
+
+“I did.”
+
+“And you took the money yesterday or the day before?”
+
+“I did not.”
+
+“Ah!” Lane repeated in a drier, more severe tone than he had used
+before. This “Ah” of the cashier's, with its many gradations of tone,
+had been a most useful weapon in his innumerable financial battles. It
+could be made to mean anything--everything; flung out at haphazard it
+always caught his opponent off guard; it was a subtle thrust, and while
+one pondered over its possible meaning, Lane could formulate in his mind
+more decisive expressions.
+
+“Ah,” he repeated, adding, “if you did not steal the money, who did? And
+if you did not take it, why did you put it back?”
+
+With an expressive sweep of the hand outward the cashier stood waiting,
+his tall, narrow head, topped by carefully brushed gray hair, thrust
+forward in the attitude of a parrot about to strike with its beak.
+
+“I can't answer those questions,” answered the man he was grilling. “The
+money to pay Mr. Porter's note is here; and I fancy that is all the
+bank needs to concern itself about. It was entrusted to me, and now I am
+prepared to turn it over.”
+
+“Quite true; ah, yes, quite true; but it might have been vastly
+different. That is the point that most concerns the bank. Whoever took
+the money”--and he bowed, deprecatingly, with ironical consideration
+to Mortimer--“must have needed a thousand dollars for--well, some
+speculative purpose, perhaps. Good fortune has enabled the some one to
+make good, and the money has been replaced.”
+
+The cashier straightened up, threw his head back, and actually smiled.
+He had scored linguistically--by a clever manipulation of the sentence
+he had made the some one who had stolen the money the some one who who
+had replaced it. That was accusation by inference, if you like. As the
+other did not speak, Lane added: “I will wire for Mr. Crane to come at
+once; this is a matter for investigation.”
+
+Mortimer bowed his head in acquiesence; what could he say--what other
+stand could the bank take?
+
+“You might remain at your desk,” the cashier said, “if there is any
+mistake we'll discover it, no doubt.”
+
+Mortimer felt like one dead, indeed as a dishonored man he were better
+dead. The bank was like a mausoleum, and he a lost spirit haunting
+its precincts in quest of the undefiled body that had been his but
+yesterday. Cass, the teller, certainly shunned him as he would a leper.
+Lane, vindictively pleased that he had unearthed the villain, drew his
+small soul into a shell of cold, studious politeness; much as a sea
+spider might house his unpleasant body in a discarded castle of pink and
+white.
+
+Alan Porter was late--he had not come yet. Mortimer waited in suffering
+suspense for his appearance. What would come of it all. Now that the
+money was replaced, if the boy admitted his guilt to Crane, probably no
+further action would be taken, but he would be dishonored in the sight
+of his employer. Mortimer had sought to avert this; had not denounced
+Alan in the first instance; by good fortune had been able to replace
+the money; even now had refused to divulge the name of the thief. He was
+well aware of the mass of circumstantial evidence, the outcome of his
+own hurried actions, that pointed to himself as the guilty one. Better
+this than that he should denounce the boy. Dishonor to the lad might
+kill his father; for Mortimer was well aware of the doctor's edict. And
+Allis, the girl he loved as his life, would hang her head in shame for
+evermore. He was anxious to see Alan before the cashier did; he did not
+want the boy to deny taking the money at first, as he might do if he
+were unaware of the circumstances; it would place him in a wrong light.
+
+Just before twelve Alan Porter came hurriedly in. He had missed his
+train the night before, he explained in a general way to all. Mortimer
+stepped up to him almost at once, speaking with low, earnest rapidity;
+the cashier was in his own office and Mr. Cass was not within earshot.
+
+“I put the money back, but its loss had been discovered yesterday. I
+have been accused of taking it, but have denied it, accusing no one. I
+want you to say that you borrowed it, thinking it no great harm, as it
+was your father's money.”
+
+Alan would have interrupted him, but Mortimer said, “Wait till I
+finish;” and then continued: “There will be nothing done to you, I feel
+sure, if you will take this stand, because of your father's connection
+with Crane. It will save me from dishonor--”
+
+“Mr. Porter.”
+
+It was the cashier's voice of Damascus steel cutting in on Mortimer's
+low, pleading tones.
+
+Alan turned his head, and Mr. Lane, beckoning, said, “Will you step into
+my office for a minute?”
+
+The cashier's one minute drew its weary length into thirty; and when
+Alan Porter came out again, Mortimer saw the boy sought to avoid him.
+Had he denied taking the money? My God! the full horror of Mortimer's
+hopeless position flashed upon him like the lurid light of a destroying
+forest fire. He could read in every line of the boy's face an accusation
+of himself. He had trembled when it was a question of Alan's dishonor;
+now that the ignominy was being thrust upon him, the bravery that he
+possessed in great part made him a hero. If through his endeavor to
+save the boy he was to shoulder the guilt, not of his own volition, but
+without hope of escape, he would stand to it like a man. What would it
+profit him to denounce the boy.
+
+Harking back with rapidity over his actions, and Alan's, he saw that
+everything implicated him. Once he thought of his mother and wavered;
+but she would believe him if he said he had not committed this dreadful
+crime. But all the world of Brookfield would despise the name of her
+son if it were thought that he had sought to testify falsely against his
+friend. And was not Alan the brother of Allis?
+
+Mentally his argument, his analysis of the proper course to pursue was
+tortuous, not definable, or to be explained in concise phraseology; but
+the one thought that rose paramount over all others was, that he must
+take his iniquitous punishment like a man. He had fought so strongly
+to shield the brother of the girl he loved that the cause in all its
+degradation had accrued to him.
+
+At one o'clock the president, Crane, arrived from New York, and in him
+was bitterness because of his yesterday's defeat. He had sat nearly the
+whole night through mentally submerged in the double happening that had
+swept many men from the chess board. Lauzanne, the despised, had kept
+from his hand a small fortune, even when his fingers seemed tightening
+on the coin, too. That was one happening. John Porter had gained over
+twenty thousand dollars. This made him quite independent of Crane's
+financial bolstering. The Banker's diplomacy of love had been weakened.
+That was the other happening.
+
+Crane was closeted with the cashier not more than ten minutes when
+Mortimer was asked to join the two men who had so suddenly become deeply
+interested in his affairs.
+
+The cashier's hand had been strengthened by Crane's contribution of
+evidence. Mortimer had told the same falsehood about his mother being
+ill to him at the race course. From Alan the cashier had learned that
+Mortimer had been betting heavily; he had admitted to the boy that he
+had won enough to replace the thousand dollars he had stolen. Mortimer's
+words had been contorted into that reading in their journey through
+two personalities. He had even begged young Porter not to speak of
+his betting transactions. He had denied taking the money--that was but
+natural; he had been forced to admit replacing it--that was conclusive.
+Indeed it seemed a waste of time to investigate further; it was utterly
+impossible to doubt his guilt. Mesh by mesh, like an enthralling net,
+all the different threads of convicting circumstances were drawn about
+the accused man.
+
+“Let us question him?” said Crane; and in his heart was not sorrow,
+nor hate, nor compassion, nor anything but just joy. Greater than the
+influence of money in his love ambition would be this degradation, this
+reducing to a felon a man he felt stood between him and Allis Porter.
+
+Yesterday they had won; to-day victory, almost, to him had come. Yes,
+bring the deliverer in; he would feast his eyes, the narrow-lidded
+eyes, upon the man whose young love might have conquered over all his
+diplomacy, and who would go forth from his hands branded as a felon.
+
+The probing of the already condemned man elicited nothing beyond a
+repeated denial of theft. With the precision of Mam'selle Guillotine,
+Cashier Lane lopped off everything that could possibly stand in
+Mortimer's defense, grafting into the cleaved places individual facts
+which confirmed his guilt. Mortimer contended nothing, threw suspicion
+upon no one. Was it Alan Porter? Was it Cass?--but that was impossible.
+Was it the cashier himself? Still more impossible. Mortimer answered
+nothing. He had not taken the money. Yes, he had replaced it--because he
+was responsible for its custody.
+
+“Can't you see,” cried Crane, impatiently, “that this simple denial
+of yours is of no value as against so much that points to your--” he
+hesitated--“your implication?”
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+While Mortimer was still in the cashier's improvised inquisition room,
+Allis Porter came into the bank to arrange the payment of her father's
+note.
+
+The sunshine seemed to come with her into the counting house that was
+all gloom. Her glorious success, the consequent improvement in her
+father, the power to pay off his indebtedness--all these had turned that
+day into a day of thankfulness. The happiness that was in her rippled
+her face into smiles. When the door creaked on its hinges as it swung
+open, she laughed. It was a thriftless old door, such as bachelors kept,
+she murmured. Her brother's face, gloomy behind the iron screen, tickled
+her fancy. “You're like a caged bear, Alan,” she cried, with a smile of
+impertinence; “I should hate to be shut up a day like this--no wonder
+you're cross, brother.”
+
+“I'm busy,” he answered, curtly. “I'll see you after bank hours, Sis; I
+want to see you.”
+
+“I've come to pay father's note, busy-man-of-importance,” she flung
+back, with the swagger of a capitalist.
+
+“It's paid, Allis.”
+
+“Paid! I thought--”
+
+“Wait, I'll come out;” and opening a door in the rail, he passed around
+to the girl.
+
+“Father's note is paid,” he resumed, “but there's fierce trouble over
+it. Crane left the money, three thousand dollars, with Mortimer, and he
+stole”--the boy's voice lowered to a hoarse whisper--“a thousand of it
+to bet at Gravesend.”
+
+“That's not true, Alan; God knows it's not true. Mortimer wouldn't
+steal.”
+
+“Yes, he did,” persisted the brother, “and he begged of me to take the
+blame. He said it would ruin him, but that Crane wouldn't do anything to
+me. He's a vile, sneaking thief, Allis!”
+
+“Hush, Alan; don't say that. It's all some dreadful mistake. The money
+will be found somewhere.”
+
+“It has been found; Mortimer put it back. Why should he replace the
+money if he had not stolen it?”
+
+“Where is Mr. Mortimer, Alan?”
+
+The boy pointed with his thumb to the door of the cashier's office.
+“Crane's in there, too. I hope Mortimer owns up. He can't do anything
+else; they caught him putting the money back.”
+
+Allis remembered that she had seen Mortimer on the race course.
+
+“Mr. Mortimer doesn't bet,” she said.
+
+“Yes, he does; he did yesterday, anyway; and when he saw that I knew
+about it, he begged me to say nothing--practically admitted that he had
+taken the money, and was going to put it back.”
+
+“Why should he tell you that, Alan?”
+
+“I don't know, unless he feared it might be found out while he was away;
+or, perhaps he was so excited over winning a thousand dollars that he
+didn't know what he was saying. At any rate, he took it right enough,
+Allis, and you ought to cut him.”
+
+“I shan't do that. He's innocent, I know he is--I don't care what they
+say. If he replaced the money, it was to shield the man who took it.”
+ She was looking searchingly into her brother's eyes--not that she was
+accusing him of the theft, she was just searching for the truth.
+
+“Do you mean it was to shield me--that I took it? No one could have
+taken the money except Mortimer or myself.”
+
+“I don't know,” answered the girl, wearily; “it's all so terribly new; I
+only know that Mortimer did not steal it.”
+
+While she was still speaking, the accused man came from the cashier's
+office, holding his head as erect as an Indian, not at all as a
+half-convicted felon should have slunk through the door; yet withal in
+his face was a look of troubled gravity.
+
+When Mortimer saw Allis his face flushed, then went pale in an instant.
+He felt that she knew; he had seen her talking earnestly to her brother.
+Probably she, too, would think him a thief. He admitted to himself that
+the evidence was sufficient to destroy anyone's faith in his innocence,
+and he was helpless, quite helpless; he was limited to simple denial,
+unless he accused her brother; even had he been so disposed, there was
+nothing to back up a denunciation of the boy. He felt a twinge of pain
+over Alan's ingratitude; the latter must know that he had put his neck
+in a noose to save him. Now that one of them needs be dishonored, why
+did not Alan prove himself a man, a Porter--they were a hero breed--and
+accept the gage of equity. Even worse, Alan was shielding himself behind
+this terrible bulwark of circumstantial evidence which topped him, the
+innocent one, on every side.
+
+As he resumed his place at his desk close to the brother and sister,
+Alan looked defiantly at him. He could see in the boy's eyes malignant
+detestation, a glimmer of triumph, as though he felt that Mortimer
+was irrevocably in the toils. The lad was like a strippling Judas; his
+attitude filled Mortimer with loathing. He stole a look into the girl's
+face. Would she, too, say with her, eyes, “Behold, here is Barabbas!”
+
+A thrill of ecstatic comfort warmed his being. In Allis's eyes was the
+first touch of kindness he had known in this hour of trial; faith, and
+sorrow, and cheer, and love were all there, striving for mastery;
+no furtive weakening, no uncertain questioning, no remonstrance of
+reproval--nothing but just unlimited faith and love. If the boy's look
+had angered him, had caused him to waver, had made the self-sacrifice
+seem too great when repaid with ingratitude, all these thoughts vanished
+in an instant, obliterated by that one look of unalterable love. In the
+hour of darkness the girl stood by him, and he would also stand firm.
+She would believe in him, and his sacrifice would be as nothing. He had
+undertaken to avert the sorrow of dishonor from her, from her brother,
+from her parents, and he would continue to the end. He would tell no
+one on earth but his mother the full truth; she must know. Then with the
+faith of the two women he loved, still his, he could brave the judgment
+of all others. Perhaps not willingly in the first place would he have
+taken upon himself the brand of Barrabas, but out of good motive he had
+incurred it.
+
+Mortimer heard the brother say, “I think you had better not,” then the
+girl's voice, clear and decisive, answering, “I will, I must.”
+
+In anger Alan left his sister's side, and she, stepping up to the
+wicket, said, “Will you please come out for a minute, Mr. Mortimer, I
+want to speak with you.”
+
+He passed around to her side. Crane and the cashier were still closeted
+in the latter's office.
+
+“Let us go out into the sunshine,” Allis said. “Can you--will it make
+any difference?”
+
+“I don't think it matters much,” he answered, despondently; “things are
+as bad as they can be, I suppose.”
+
+He took it for granted that she knew everything; but he was possessed of
+no shame, no diffidence, no reserve; he was innocent, and her eyes had
+assured him that she knew it. As they passed through the door it
+creaked again on its dry hinges. Before she had laughed at the weird
+complaining; now it sounded like a moan of misery. Outside the village
+street was deserted; there was no one to listen.
+
+“What is this dreadful thing all about?” and she laid her hand on his
+arm in a gesture of amity, of association. Her touch thrilled him; she
+had never gone that length in friendly demonstration before. He marveled
+at her generous faith. All but dishonored, the small, strong hand lifted
+him to a pedestal-her eyes deified him.
+
+“A thousand dollars was stolen from the bank, and I am accused of taking
+it,” he answered, bitterly.
+
+“You didn't, did you? I know you didn't, but I want to hear you say so.”
+
+He looked full into the girl's eye, and answered with deliberate
+earnestness, “I did not steal the money.”
+
+“Some one took it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And you know who it was?”
+
+“I do not.”
+
+“But you suspect some one?”
+
+He did not answer.
+
+“Did you put the money back?”
+
+He nodded his head.
+
+“To protect somebody's good name?”
+
+“Because it had been in my charge. I can't talk about it,” he broke in,
+vehemently; “all I can say is, that I am innocent. If you believe that
+I don't care what they do. They'll be able to prove by circumstantial
+evidence that I took it,” he added, bitterly, “and nothing that I can
+say will make any difference. My mother won't believe me guilty, and,
+thank God, you don't; and I am not; God knows I am not. Beyond that
+I will say nothing; it is useless--worse than useless; it would be
+criminal--would only cast suspicion on others, perhaps innocent. I
+don't know what they'll do about it; the money has been repaid. They may
+arrest me as a felon--at any rate I shall be forced to leave the bank
+and go away. It won't make much difference.--I am as I was before, an
+honest man, and I shall find other openings. It's not half so hard as I
+thought it would be; I feared perhaps that you--”
+
+She stopped him with an imploring gesture.
+
+“Let me finish,” he said. “I must go back to the office. I thought that
+you might believe me a thief, and that would have been too much.”
+
+“You cared for my poor opinion?” she asked. The quiver in her voice
+caused him to look into her face; he saw the gray eyes shrouded in
+tears. He was a queer thief, trembling with joy because of his sin.
+
+“Yes, I care,” he answered; “and it seemed all so dark before you
+brought the sunlight in with you; now I'm glad that they've accused me;
+somebody else might have suffered and had no one to believe in him. But
+I must go back to--my prison it seems like now--when I leave you;” this
+with a weary attempt at brave mockery.
+
+Allis laid a detaining hand on his arm, the small gloved hand that
+had guided Lauzanne to victory. “If anything happens, if you are going
+away--I think you are right to go if they distrust you--you will see me
+before you leave, won't you?”
+
+“Will you care to see me if I stand branded as a thief?” The word came
+very hard, but in his acridity he felt like not sparing himself; he
+wanted to get accustomed to the full obloquy.
+
+“Promise me to come to Ringwood before going away,” she answered.
+
+“Yes, I will; and I thank you. No matter how dark the shadow may make my
+life your kindness will be a hope light. No man is utterly lost when a
+good woman believes in him.”
+
+The creaking bank door wailed tremulously, irritably; somebody was
+pushing it open from the inside. With a whine of remonstrance it swung
+wider, and Crane stepped out on the sidewalk. He stared in astonishment
+at Mortimer and Allis, his brow wrinkled in anger. Only for an instant;
+the forehead smoothed back into its normal placidity and his voice,
+well in hand, said, in even tones: “Good afternoon, Miss Porter. Are you
+going back to Ringwood?” and he nodded toward Allis's buggy.
+
+“Yes, I am. I'm going now. Good day, Mr. Mortimer,” and she held out her
+hand.
+
+Mortimer hesitated, and then, flushing, took the gloved fingers in his
+own. Without speaking, he turned and passed into the bank.
+
+“May I go with you?” asked Crane; “I want to see your father.”
+
+“Yes, I shall be glad to drive you over,” the girl answered.
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+When they had passed the edge of the village the Banker said: “I doubt
+if you would have shaken hands with Mr. Mortimer if you knew--I mean,
+he is under strong suspicion, more than strong suspicion, for he is
+practically self-accused of having stolen a sum of money from the bank.
+In fact, I'm not sure that it wasn't from your father he really stole
+it.”
+
+“I do know of this terrible thing,” she answered. “I shook hands with
+him because I believe him innocent.”
+
+“You know more than we do?” It was not a sneer; if so, too delicately
+veiled for detection; the words were uttered in a tone of hopeful
+inquiry.
+
+“Mr. Mortimer could not steal--it is impossible.”
+
+“Have you sufficient grounds for your faith--do you happen to know who
+took the money, for it was stolen?”
+
+The girl did not answer at once. At first her stand had simply been one
+of implicit faith in the man she had conjured into a hero of all that
+was good and noble. She had not cast about for extenuating evidence; she
+had not asked herself who the guilty man was; her faith told her it
+was morally impossible for Mortimer to become a thief. Now Crane's
+questions, more material than the first deadening effects of Alan's
+accusation, started her mind on a train of thought dealing with motive
+possibilities.
+
+She knitted her small brows, and tapping the jogging horse's quarter
+with the whip sat for many minutes silently absorbed.
+
+Her companion waited for an answer with his usual well-bred patience.
+Perhaps the girl had not heard him. Perhaps she did not wish to answer a
+question so unanswerable. He waited.
+
+Mortimer, being innocent, replaced the stolen money, Allis's mind
+tabulated--she tickled this thought off on the horse with her whip--it
+was to shield some one. Her heart told her, his eyes had told her, that
+he would have taken upon himself this great risk but for one person,
+her brother. Yes, Mortimer was a hero! The horse, lazily going, jumped
+a little in the traces; she had struck him a harder tap with the whip.
+Allis continued her mental summing up. Why did Mortimer go to Gravesend?
+It must have been to see Alan--the boy was there. If he had discovered
+that the money was missing, and thought Alan had taken it, he would
+do this; if he had suspected some other person he would have made the
+matter known to the cashier. He did not replace the money at once,
+because he hadn't it. She knew that Mortimer was poor. He had failed to
+find Alan until after Lauzanne's victory; her brother had told her this
+much, and that Mortimer had won a lot of money over the horse. Why he
+had bet on Lauzanne she knew not; perhaps Providence had guided, had
+helped him that much. But surely that was the money, his winnings, with
+which he had replaced the thousand dollars.
+
+The girl's mind had worked methodically, following sequence of action
+to sequence, until finally the conviction that Mortimer had sought to
+shield her brother, and chance or Providence working through herself
+and Lauzanne had placed in his hands the necessary funds, came to her as
+fixedly as though the whole past panorama of events lay pictured before
+her eyes.
+
+She saw all this mentally; but would it avail anything in actuality? If
+the boy disclaimed guilt, as he had; if Mortimer limited his defense to
+a simple denial, refusing to implicate her brother, what could she do
+except give her moral support? To her it seemed such a small reward for
+his heroism; her faith would not save him from the brand of felony, and
+to follow out her convictions publicly she must denounce her brother,
+cast upon him the odium of theft. Truly her position was one of extreme
+hopelessness. Two men she loved stood before her mentally, one accused
+of others as a thief, and one--her own brother--charged by her reason
+with the crime.
+
+Under the continued silence Crane grew restless; the girl, almost
+oblivious of his presence, deep in the intricacies of the crime, gave no
+sign of a desire to pursue the discussion.
+
+“Of course I am anxious to clear the young man if he is innocent,”
+ hazarded the banker, to draw her gently back into the influence that he
+felt must be of profit to himself. This assertion of Crane's was only
+assimilatively truthful. As president of the bank, naturally he should
+wish to punish none other than the guilty man; as a rival to Mortimer
+for the girl's affection, he could not but be pleased to see the younger
+man removed from his path, and in a way which would forever preclude his
+aspiring to Allis's hand. Believe in Mortimer as she might, he felt sure
+that she would not run counter to the inevitable wishes of her mother
+and marry a man who stood publicly branded as a thief.
+
+Allis answered his observation--he distinctly felt the vibration of pain
+in her voice--with a startling depth of analytical discernment:--
+
+“While I believe in Mortimer's innocence, and will always believe in
+it, I am afraid that he has drawn such a web of circumstantial evidence
+about him, trying to shield some one else, that--that--it is too
+terrible!” she broke off, passionately--“he is innocent. For God's sake,
+Mr. Crane”--she took the reins in her whip hand, and put her left on his
+arm, pleadingly--“for God's sake, for his mother's sake, save him. You
+can do it--you can believe that he is innocent, and stop everything. The
+money has been paid back.”
+
+“It isn't that, Miss Allis”--his voice was so cuttingly even after
+the erratic pump of her own--“in a bank one must not have a dishonest
+person. We must investigate to the end, and if Mortimer can clear
+himself by fastening the crime upon the perpetrator--”
+
+“He will never do that; he cannot if he would.”
+
+“What can I do then, Miss Allis? But why shouldn't he?”
+
+“Can't you see--don't you understand the man? He commenced by shielding
+some one, and he will carry it through to the bitter end.”
+
+“I am afraid there was no one to shield but himself--everything points
+to this conclusion. The money was locked up, he had the keys, no one
+touched them--except your brother, and that but for a minute--but if
+any suspicion could attach to your brother it is all dissipated by
+Mortimer's subsequent actions. It's unpleasant to even hint at such a
+contingency, but if Mortimer is innocent, then your brother must be the
+guilty one.”
+
+He expected the girl to denounce indignantly such a possibility; he was
+surprised that she remained silent. Her non-refutation of this deduction
+told him as conclusively as though she had uttered the accusation that
+she thought Alan had taken the money and Mortimer was shielding him. It
+was but a phase of blind love; it was the faith women place in men they
+love, of which he had read and scoffed at.
+
+Against all evidence she was holding this man honest, believing her
+brother the thief.
+
+Surely a love like that was worth winning; no price was too great to
+pay. Her very faith in Mortimer, through which she sought to save him
+by inspiring Crane, determined the latter to crush utterly the man who
+stood between him and this great love. Intensity of hate, or love, or
+cupidity, never drew Crane out of his inherent diplomacy; he took refuge
+behind the brother of Allis.
+
+“You see,” he said, and his voice was modulated with kindness, “I can't
+save Mortimer except at the expense of Alan; you would not have me
+do that. Besides, it is impossible--the evidence shines as clear as
+noonday.”
+
+“If you bring this home to Mr. Mortimer you will punish him, arrest
+him?”
+
+“That would be the usual course.”
+
+She had taken her hand off his arm; now she replaced it, and he could
+feel the strong fingers press as though she would hold him to her
+wishes.
+
+“You will not do this,” she said, “for my sake you will not.”
+
+“You ask this of me, and it is for your sake?”
+
+“Yes, if there is no other way; if Mr. Mortimer, innocent, must take
+upon himself this crime, then for my sake you will not punish him.”
+
+The gray eyes were violet-black in their intensity.
+
+“If I promise--” He had been going to ask for reward, but she broke in,
+saying: “You will keep your word, and I will bless you.”
+
+“Nothing more--is that all?”
+
+The magnetism of the intense eyes broke down his reserve; he slipped
+back twenty years in a second. Love touched him with a fire-wand, and
+his soul ignited. Cold, passionless Philip Crane spoke in a tongue,
+unfamiliar as it was to him, that carried conviction to the girl--just
+the conviction that he was in earnest, that he was possessed of a
+humanizing love. She listened patiently while he pleaded his cause with
+much mastery. It was beyond her understanding, that, though Mortimer
+through all time had spoken not at all of love to her--at least not in
+the passionate words that came from this man's lips--yet she now
+heard as though it were his voice and not Crane's. Love was a glorious
+thing--with Mortimer.
+
+Crane's intensity availed nothing. When he asked why she held faith to a
+man who must be known for all time as a thief, her soul answered, “It is
+nothing--because he is innocent.”
+
+Because of her Crane would do anything; the matter should be dropped as
+though it were all a hideous mistake. Mortimer might remain in the bank;
+his employer would even try to believe him innocent, taking the girl's
+protestation m conclusive proof. Her mother, her father, everyone
+would demand of her, however, that she give the dishonest one up as a
+possibility. Even in his vehemence he lost no delicacy of touch. Why
+should she chain herself to an impossibility? It would but ruin the man
+she professed to regard.
+
+The banker made no threat, but Allis shuddered. She knew. The
+narrow-lidded eyes had closed perceptibly when their owner talked of the
+alternative. He, Crane, loved her--she felt that was true. He was rich;
+for her father, for her brother, for herself, even for Mortimer, he
+would use his wealth. He pleaded his cause like a strong man, and when
+he spoke of failure because of her preference for Mortimer, an acridity
+crept into his voice that meant relentless prosecution.
+
+She could not hold this full power over Crane without feeling its value.
+To pledge herself to him as wife was impossible; she could not do it;
+she would not. Fate played into his hands without doubt, but Fate was
+not Providence. A decree of this sort, iniquitous, was not a higher
+command, else she would not feel utter abhorrence of the alliance.
+Paradoxically the more vehemently Crane's love obtruded itself the more
+obnoxious it became; it was something quite distinct from the man's own
+personality. She did not detest him individually, for the honesty of
+his love impressed her; mentally she separated Crane from his affection,
+anal while rejecting his love absolutely as a compelling factor,
+appealed to him as a man having regard for her, a woman he believed in.
+
+It was a most delicate cleavage, yet unerringly she attained to its
+utmost point of discrimination. Perhaps it was the strength of her
+love for Mortimer that enabled her to view so calmly this passionate
+declaration. A year before, unsophisticated as she had been, it would
+have thrown her into an agitated confusion, but she was developing
+rapidly; responsibility had tempered fine the great will power which was
+hers in such a marked degree.
+
+“I am sorry, Mr. Crane,” she began, conventionally enough, “I am, sorry;
+I couldn't marry a man without loving him. What you have just told me
+must win regard for you, because I know that you feel strongly, and I
+think any woman should take an offer of honest love as the greatest of
+all compliments.”
+
+“But I don't even ask for your love now,” he interrupted.
+
+“Ah, but you should. You shouldn't marry a woman unless she loves you.
+At any rate I feel that way about it. Of course, if there were a chance
+of my coming to care for you in that way we could wait, but it would be
+deceiving you to give hope.”
+
+“Is it because you care for--Mortimer?” he asked.
+
+“I think it is. I suppose if I am to help him I must be quite honest
+with you. I do not want to talk about it--it seems too sacred. I have
+even spoken less to Mr. Mortimer of love,” she added, with a painful
+attempt at a smile. “You have said that you care for me, Mr. Crane, and
+I believe you; you have been generous to my father, also. Now won't you
+promise me something, just for the sake of this regard? I suppose it
+is impossible to prove Mr. Mortimer's innocence”--she felt her own
+helplessness, and who else could or would care to accomplish it “but it
+is in your power to lessen the evil. Won't you take my word that he
+is innocent and stop everything? As you say, either he or Alan must be
+suspected, and if it were brought home to my brother it would crush me,
+and my mother and father.”
+
+“What can I do?--”
+
+“Just nothing. I know Mr. Mortimer has determined to accept the
+disgrace, and he will go away. You can make his load as light as
+possible, for my sake.”
+
+The small hand on his arm was drawing him to acquiesence. He did not
+answer at once, but sat moodily diagnosing his position. If he refused
+and prosecuted Mortimer, the girl, more determined than many men, would
+change from a state of possibility, from simply not loving him, to a
+vigorous hate. If he hushed the matter up Mortimer would go away under a
+cloud, and his removal from the presence of Allis might effect a change
+in her regard. He would accelerate this wished-for elision of love by
+procuring absolutely indisputable proof of Mortimer's dishonesty. He saw
+his opening to that end; he could do it under the guise of clearing the
+innocent one of the suspected two; for Allis alone this would be. To
+him there was not the slightest ground for supposing Alan had taken the
+money, but blinded by her love, evidently Allis thought Mortimer was
+shielding her brother. Though it was to Crane's best interests, he
+pretended to consent out of pure chivalry. “What you ask,” he said, “is
+very little; I would do a thousand times more for you. There is nothing
+you could ask of me that would not give me more pleasure than anything
+else in my barren life. But I could not bear to see you wedded to
+Mortimer; he is not worthy--you are too good for him. I don't say this
+because he is more fortunate, but I love you and want to see you happy.”
+
+The girl was like a slim poplar. The strong wind of Crane's clever
+pleading and seeming generosity swayed her from her rigid attitude only
+to spring back again, to stand straight and beautiful, true to her love
+and faith in Mortimer.
+
+“You are kind to me,” she said, simply; “I wish I could repay you.”
+
+“Perhaps some day I may get a reward out of all proportion to this small
+service.”
+
+She looked fair into his eyes, and on her lips hovered a weak,
+plaintive, wistful smile, as though she were wishing he could accept the
+inevitable and take her regard, her gratitude, her good opinion of him
+and not wed himself to a chimera which would bring only weariness of
+spirit in return for his goodness.
+
+“You will be repaid some day,” she answered, “for I feel that Mr.
+Mortimer's name will be cleared, and you will be glad that you acted
+generously.”
+
+“Well, this will give him a better chance,” he said, evasively; “it's
+not good to crush a man when he's down. I will see that no one connected
+with the bank shows him the slightest disrespect. Of course he'll have
+to go, he couldn't remain under the circumstances--he wouldn't.”
+
+The horse had jogged slowly. Allis had purposely allowed the old Bay to
+take his time. Unused to such a tolerance he had scandalously abused the
+privilege; once or twice he had even cast longing glances at a succulent
+bunch of grass growing by the roadside, as though it were a pure waste
+of opportunity to neglect the delicacy for work when he had to do with
+such indifferent overseers. But now Ringwood was in sight, and there was
+still the matter of the money that had been paid on her father's note to
+speak of. She asked Crane where it had come from.
+
+“You won it over Diablo in the Brooklyn Handicap,” he answered, bluntly.
+
+“You won it,” she corrected him; “I refused to accept it.”
+
+“I remember that eccentricity,” he replied. “I'm a busy man, and
+having the money thrown back on my hands, as it was not mine, caused me
+considerable inconvenience. I deposited three thousand of it against the
+note to save both your father and myself needless worry. There are still
+some hundreds due you, and I wish you would please tell me what I am to
+do with it.”
+
+“I'd rather pay you back the three thousand now.”
+
+“I can't accept it. I have enough money of my own to worry along on.”
+
+“Well, I wash my hands of the whole affair. When father gets stronger he
+must settle it.”
+
+They had turned into the drive to Ringwood House.
+
+“We are home now,” she added, “and I want to say again that I'll never
+forget your kind promise. I know you will not repent of your goodness.”
+
+Mrs. Porter saw Allis and Crane together in the buggy; it pleased the
+good woman vastly. Allis's success with Lauzanne had taken a load from
+her spirits. She was not mercenary, but there had been so much at stake.
+Now in one day Providence had averted disaster, and she had awakened
+from a terrible nightmare of debt. The sunshine of success had warmed
+her husband's being into hopeful activity, a brightness was over his
+spirits that had not been there for months. It was like an augury of
+completed desire that Crane should come the day of their good fortune
+with Allis. If she would but marry him there would be little left to
+worry about. So it was that Crane, perplexed by his recent love check,
+and Allis, mired in gloom over her hero's misfortune, stepped into a
+radiancy of exotic cheerfulness.
+
+The girl bravely sought to shake off her gloom, chiding her heavy
+heart for its unfilial lack of response. Crane, accustomed to mental
+athletics, tutored his mind into a seeming exuberance, and playfully
+alluded to his own defeat at the hands of Allis and the erratic
+Lausanne. There was no word of the bank episode, nothing but a paean of
+victory.
+
+Crane's statement to Allis that he was going out to Ringwood to see
+her father was only an excuse. He soon took his departure, a stableboy
+driving him back to the village. There he had a talk with the cashier.
+Mortimer was to be asked to resign his position as soon as his place in
+the bank could be filled. No further prosecution was to be taken against
+him unless Crane decided upon such a course, “In the meantime you can
+investigate cautiously,” he said, “and keep quite to yourself any new
+evidence that may turn up. So far as Mr. Mortimer is concerned, the
+matter is quite closed.”
+
+The cashier had always considered his employer a hard man, and, in
+truth, who hadn't? He could scarcely understand this leniency; he had
+expected a vigorous prosecution of Mortimer; had almost dreaded its
+severity. Personally he had no taste for it; still, he would feel
+insecure if the suspected man, undeniably guilty, were to remain
+permanently in the bank. His dismissal from the staff was a wise move,
+tempered by unexpected clemency. If there were not something behind
+it all--this contingency always attached itself to Crane's acts--his
+employer had acted with fine, wise discrimination.
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+Crane returned to New York, his mind working smoothly to the hum of the
+busy wheels beneath his coach.
+
+This degrading humiliation of his rival must certainly be turned to
+account. With Allis Porter still believing in Mortimer's innocence the
+gain to him was very little; he must bring the crime absolutely home to
+the accused man, but in a manner not savoring of persecution, else
+the girl's present friendly regard would be turned into abhorrence. In
+addition to this motive he felt an inclination to probe the matter
+to its utmost depths. It was not his nature to leave anything
+to conjecture; in all his transactions each link in the chain of
+preparation for execution was welded whole. He felt that it would be
+but a matter of manipulation to environ Mortimer completely with the
+elements of his folly. He firmly believed him guilty; Allis, misled by
+her infatuation, mentally attributed the peculation to her brother.
+
+The Banker would go quietly to work and settle this point beyond
+dispute. He might have hesitated, leaving well enough alone, had he been
+possessed of any doubts as to the ultimate results of his investigation,
+but he wasn't. He reasoned that Mortimer had taken the thousand-dollar
+note thinking to win three or four thousand at least over his horse, The
+Dutchman, and then replace the abstracted money. Crane was aware that
+Alan Porter had told Mortimer of The Dutchman's almost certain prospect
+of winning; in fact, the boy had suggested that Mortimer had taken it
+for this purpose. Mortimer would not have changed the note; would have
+taken it straight to the race course. He must have lost it to some
+bookmaker over The Dutchman. Crane knew the number of the stolen note.
+The three one-thousand-dollar bills were new, running in consecutive
+numbers, B 67,482-83-84; he had noticed that quite by chance at the
+time; it was the middle one, B 67,483, that was missing. So he had a
+possible means of identifying the man who had taken the money. Mentally
+he followed Mortimer during the day at Gravesend. From Alan he knew of
+his winnings over Lauzanne.
+
+Crane reasoned that Mortimer, having risked the thousand on his horse,
+had been told that Lauzanne might win. This had perhaps frightened him,
+and being unfamiliar with the folly of such a course had backed two
+horses in the same race--had put a hundred on Lauzanne at ten to one to
+cover his risk on The Dutchman, feeling this made him more secure. He
+would either win a considerable stake or have sufficient in hand to
+cover up his defalcation. The first thing to do was to find the note if
+possible. Faust would be the man for this commission.
+
+Immediately upon his arrival in New York, Crane telephoned for Faust,
+asking him to bring his betting sheet for the second last day of the
+Brooklyn Meet. When Faust arrived at Crane's quarters the latter said,
+“I want to trace a thousand-dollar note, number B 67,483. I think it was
+betted on the Brooklyn Derby, probably on my horse.”
+
+Faust consulted his betting sheet, Crane looking over his shoulder. “I
+didn't have no thousand in one bet on that race,” he said.
+
+“What are those flgures,” asked the other, pointing to two consecutive
+numbers of one thousand each.
+
+“That was the other way about,” answered the Bookmaker; “that was pay.
+A thousand to one hundred twice over Lauzanne. I think it must have been
+stable money, for one of the guys was like a big kid; he didn't know
+'nough to pick a winner in a thousand years.”
+
+The coincidence of this amount with the win attributed to Mortimer,
+appealed to Crane's fancy. “You remember the man who made this bet,
+then?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, sure thing. There was two of 'em, as you see. I remember him
+because it took some explainin' to get the bet through his noddle. He
+was a soft mark for a bunco steerer. I've seen some fresh kids playin'
+the horses, but he had 'em all beat to a standstill. It must abeen
+first-time luck with him, for he cashed.”
+
+“Can you describe him?”
+
+The Cherub drew an ornate verbal picture, florid in its descriptive
+phraseology, but cognate enough to convince Crane it was Mortimer who
+had made one of the bets. His preconceived plan of the suspected man's
+operations was working out.
+
+“Now find this thousand-dollar note for me,” he said; “take trouble over
+it; get help if necessary; go to every bookmaker that was in line that
+day. If you find the note, exchange other money for it and bring it to
+me.”
+
+“There may be a chance,” commented Faust, scratching his fat poll
+meditatively; “the fellows like to keep these big bills, they're
+easier in the pocket than a whole bundle of flimsies. The next day was
+getaway-day, an' they wouldn't be payin' out much. I'll make a play fer
+it.”
+
+The next afternoon Faust reported at Crane's rooms with the rescued
+note in his possession. He had been successful. “I give a dozen of 'em a
+turn,” he said, “before I run again' Jimmie Farrell. He had it snuggled
+away next his chest among a lot of yellow-backs, good Dutchman money.”
+
+“Does he know who bet it?”
+
+“Not his name--some stranger; he'd know him if he saw him, he says.”
+
+Crane grasped this new idea with avidity, the scent was indeed getting
+hot. Why not take Farrell down to Brookfield to identify Mortimer. He
+had expected the searching for evidence would be a tedious matter; his
+fortunate star was guiding him straight and with rapidity to the goal he
+sought.
+
+“I'm much obliged to you,” he said to Faust. “I won't trouble you
+further; I'll see Farrell myself. Give me his address.”
+
+That evening the Banker saw Farrell. “There was a little crooked work
+over that thousand Faust got from you,” he said, “an' if you could find
+time to go with me for an hour's run into the country, I think you could
+identify the guilty party.”
+
+“I can go with you,” Farrell answered, “but it's just a chance in a
+thousand. I should be on the block down at Sheepshead, but, to tell you
+the truth, the hot pace the backers set me at Brooklyn knocked me out a
+bit. I'm goin' to take a breather for a few days an' lay again' 'em next
+week. Yes, I'll go with you, Mr. Crane.”
+
+In the morning the two journeyed to Brookfield.
+
+“I won't go to the bank with you,” Crane said; “I wish you would go in
+alone. You may make any excuse you like, or none at all. Just see if the
+man you got this note from is behind the rail. I'll wait at the hotel.”
+
+In fifteen minutes he was rejoined by Farrell.
+
+“Well?” he asked.
+
+“He's there, right enough.”
+
+“A short dark little chap?” questioned Crane, hesitatingly, putting Alan
+Porter forward as a feeler.
+
+“No. A tall fellow with a mustache.”
+
+“You are sure?”
+
+“Dead sure, unless he's got a double, or a twin brother.”
+
+Crane felt that at last he had got indisputable proof; evidence that
+would satisfy even Allis Porter. He experienced little exhilaration over
+the discovery--he had been so sure before--yet his hand was strengthened
+vastly. Whatever might be the result of his suit with Allis, this must
+convince her that Mortimer was guilty, and unworthy of her love. There
+was also satisfaction in the thought that it quite cleared Alan of his
+sister's suspicion.
+
+How he would use this confirmation Crane hardly knew; it would come up
+in its own proper place at the right time, no doubt.
+
+“We can go back now,” he said to Farrell; “we may as well walk leisurely
+to the station; we can get a train”--he pulled out his watch--“in twenty
+minutes.”
+
+Crane had made up his mind not to show himself at the bank that day. He
+wished to bold his discovery quite close within himself--plan his
+course of action with habitual caution. It meant no increased aggression
+against Mortimer's liberty; it was of value only in his pursuit of Allis
+Porter.
+
+As they walked slowly toward the station Crane met abruptly the girl
+who was just then so much in his thoughts. Her sudden appearance quite
+startled him, though it was quite accidental. She had gone in to do some
+shopping, she explained, after Crane's greeting.
+
+Farrell continued on when his companion stopped. A sudden determination
+to tell the girl what he had unearthed took quick possession of Crane.
+His fine sense of reasoning told him that though she professed positive
+faith in Mortimer, she must have moments of wavering; it seemed only
+human. Perhaps his presiding deity had put this new weapon in his hands
+to turn the battle. He began by assuring her that he had prosecuted the
+inquiry simply through a desire to establish the innocence of either
+Mortimer or her brother, or, if possible, both.
+
+“You understand,” he said, quite simply, “that Alan is like a brother--”
+ he was going to say “son,” but it struck him as being unadvisable,
+it aged him. He related how he had traced the stolen note, how he had
+discovered it, how he had brought the bookmaker down, and how, without
+guidance from him, Farrell had gone into the bank and identified
+Mortimer as the man who had betted the money.
+
+“It clears Alan,” he said, seeking furtively for a look into the
+drooping face.
+
+The bright sun struck a sparkle of light from something that shot
+downward and splashed in the dust. The girl was crying.
+
+“I'm sorry,” he offered as atonement. “Perhaps I shouldn't have told
+you; it's too brutal.”
+
+The head drooped still lower.
+
+“I shouldn't have spoken had it not been for your brother's sake. I
+didn't mean to. It was chance drew you across my path just now. Though
+it is cruel, it is better that you should know. No man has a right to
+deceive you, you are too good. It is this very constancy and goodness
+that has taught me to love you.”
+
+“Don't,” she pleaded; “I can't bear it just now. Please don't talk of
+love, don't talk of anything. Can't you see--can't you understand?”
+
+“Yes, I know--you are suffering, but it is unjust; you are not fair to
+yourself. If this man would steal money, what difference would your
+love make to him? He would be as unfaithful to you as he has been to his
+trust in the bank. You must consider yourself--you must give him up; you
+can't link your young, beautiful life to a man who is only saved from
+the penitentiary because of your influence.”
+
+“Don't talk that way, Mr. Crane, please don't. I know you think that
+what you say is right, but what difference does it all make to me? You
+know what love is like, you say it has come to you now. My heart tells
+me that Mortimer is guiltless. The time has been so short that he has
+had no chance to clear himself. If I didn't believe in him I wouldn't
+love him; but I still love him, and so I believe in him. I can't help
+it--I don't want to help it; I simply go on having faith in him, and my
+love doesn't falter. Can't you understand what a terrible thing it would
+be even if I were to consent to become your wife? I know it would please
+my mother. But if afterward this other man was found to be innocent,
+wouldn't your life be embittered--wouldn't it be terrible for you to be
+tied to a woman who loved another man?”
+
+“But it is impossible that he is innocent, or will ever be thought so.”
+
+“And I know that he is innocent.”
+
+“Your judgment must tell you that this is only fancy.”
+
+“My heart tells me that he is not guilty of this crime. My heart is
+still true to him; so, shall I decide against myself? Don't--don't stab
+me to death with words of Mortimer's guilt; it has no effect, and only
+gives me pain. I must wait--we must all wait, just wait. There is no
+harm in waiting, the truth will come out at last. But you will keep your
+promise?” she said, lifting her eyes to his face.
+
+“Yes, I meant no harm to Mortimer in searching for this evidence; it was
+only to clear your brother.”
+
+They had come to the station by now.
+
+“Would you like to speak to Mr. Farrell?” Crane asked. “You are taking
+my word.”
+
+“No, it is useless. I can do nothing but wait; that I can and will do.”
+
+“Don't think me cruel,” Crane said, “but the wait will be so long.”
+
+“It may be forever, but I will wait. And I thank you again for your--for
+your goodness to me. I'm sorry that I've given you trouble. If you
+can--if you can--make it easier for Mortimer--I know he'll feel it
+if you could make him think that you didn't altogether believe him
+as--dishonest--will you, for my sake?”
+
+It was generally supposed that Crane's heart had been mislaid at his
+inception and the void filled with a piece of chiseled marble; for years
+he was a convert to this belief himself; but as he stood on the platform
+of the primitive little station and looked into the soft luminous gray
+eyes, swimming moist in the hard-restrained tears of the pleading girl,
+he became a child. What a wondrous thing love was! Mountains were as
+mole-hills before such faith. In the unlimited power of her magnetism,
+what a trifle she had asked of him! With an influence so great she had
+simply said, “Spare of censure this man for my sake.” In thankfulness
+rather than in condescension he promised.
+
+Even in disgrace--a felon--how Mortimer was to be envied! Above all else
+was such abiding love. In his, Crane's, victory was the bitterness of
+defeat; the other, beaten down, triumphed in the gain of this priceless
+love.
+
+A sharp material whistle, screeching through its brass dome on the
+incoming train, cut short these fantastically chaotic thoughts.
+
+“Good-bye, and thank you,” said the girl, holding out her hand to Crane.
+
+“Good-bye,” he repeated, mechanically.
+
+What had he accomplished? He had beaten lower his rival and wedded
+firmer to the beaten man the love he prized above all else. In his ears
+rang the girl's words, “Wait, wait, wait.” Irresponsibly he repeated to
+himself, “All things come to them that wait.”
+
+Seated in the car swift whirled toward the city, he was almost surprised
+to find Farrell by his side. He was like a man in a dream. A vision
+of gray eyes, blurred in tears of regret, had obliterated all that was
+material. In defeat his adversary had the victory. He, Philip Crane, the
+man of calculation, was but a creature of emotion. Bah! At forty if a
+man chooses to assume the role of Orlando he does it to perfection.
+
+With an effort he swept away the cobweb of dreams and sat
+upright--Philip Crane, the careful planner.
+
+“You nearly missed the train,” said Farrell.
+
+“Did I?” questioned Crane, perplexedly. “I thought I got on in plenty of
+time.”
+
+Farrell smiled knowingly, as befitted a man of his occupation--a
+New Yorker, up to snuff. The veiled insinuation disgusted Crane.
+Was everything in the world vile? He had left a young life swimming
+hopelessly in the breakers of disaster, buoyed only by faith and love;
+and at his side sat a man who winked complacently, and beamed upon him
+with senile admiration because of his supposed gallantry.
+
+Perhaps a year before this moral angularity would not have affected
+him; it would not have appealed to him as being either clever or
+objectionable; he would simply not have noticed it at all. But Allis
+Porter had originated a revolution in his manner of thought. He even
+fought against the softer awakening; it was like destroying the lifelong
+habits of a man. His callousness had been a shield that had saved him
+troublous misgivings; behind this shield, even in rapacity, he had
+experienced peace of mind, absence of remorse. If he could have put
+away from him his love for the girl he would have done so willingly. Why
+should he battle and strive for an unattainable something as intangible
+as a dream? It was so paradoxical that Allis's love for Mortimer seemed
+hopeless because of the latter's defeat, while his, Crane's love, was
+equally hopeless in his hour of victory.
+
+Farrell's voice drew him from this psychological muddle in tones that
+sounded harsh as the cawing of homing ravens at eventime.
+
+“Will it be a court case?” he queried.
+
+“What?” asked Crane, from his tangled elysium.
+
+“That high roller in the bank.”
+
+“Oh! I can't say yet what it will lead to.” Crane's caution always
+asserted itself first.
+
+“Well, I've been thinking it over. That's the guy, right enough, but
+when it comes to swearing to a man's identity in court, it's just a bit
+ticklish.”
+
+Crane frowned. He disliked men who hedged. He always planned first,
+then plunged; evidently his companion had plunged first, and was now
+verifying his plans.
+
+Farrell continued, “You see what I mean?”
+
+“I don't,” answered Crane, shortly.
+
+“You will if you wait,” advised Farrell, a tinge of asperity in his
+tone. “I'm makin' a book, say. All the blazin' idiots in Christendom is
+climbin' over me wantin' to know what I'll lay this and what I'll lay
+that. They're like a lot of blasted mosquitos. A rounder comes up an'
+makes a bet; if it's small p'r'aps I don't twig his mug at all, just
+grabs the dough an' calls his number. He may be Rockefeller, or a tough
+from the Bowery, it don't make no difference to me; all I want is his
+goods an' his number, see? But a bettor of the right sort slips in an'
+taps me for odds to a thousand. Nat'rally I'm interested, because he
+parts with the thousand as though it was his heart's blood. I size him
+up. There ain't no time fer the writin' down of earmarks, though most
+like I could point him out in a crowd, an' say, 'That's the rooster.'
+But sposin' a judge stood up another man that looked pretty much like
+him, an' asked me to swear one of the guys into ten years in Sing Sing,
+pr'aps I'd weaken. Mistaken identity is like grabbin' up two kings an' a
+jack, an' playin' 'em fer threes.”
+
+“Which means, if I understand it, that you're guessing at the man--that
+I've given you all this trouble for nothing.”
+
+Crane wished that Farrell had kept his doubts to himself; the case had
+been made strong by his first decision, and now the devil of uncertainty
+would destroy the value of identification.
+
+“Not by a jugful!” ejaculated Farrell. “I'm just tellin' you this to
+show you that we've got to make it complete--we've got to get collateral
+to back up my pickin'.”
+
+“You mean some one else to identify him also?”
+
+“No, not just that; but that's not a bad thought. My clerk, Ned Hagen,
+must have noticed him too. I mean that the bettor's badge number will be
+in line with that bet, an' you can probably find out the number of the
+badge this rooster wore.”
+
+An inspiration came with Farrell's words--came to Crane. Why had he
+not thought of that before? Still it didn't matter. The badge number,
+Mortimer's number, would be in Faust's book where had been entered the
+hundred dollars Mortimer put on Lauzanne. He could compare this with the
+number in Farrell's book; no doubt they would agree; then, indeed,
+the chain would be completed to the last link. No man on earth could
+question that evidence.
+
+“It's a good idea, Farrell,” he said.
+
+“Bet yer life, it's clear Pinkerton. You'd better come round to my place
+to-morrow about ten, an' we'll look it up.”
+
+“I will,” Crane answered.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+
+The old bay horse that crawled back to Ringwood with Allis Porter after
+her interview with Crane must have thought that the millennium for
+driving horses had surely come. Even the ambition to urge the patriarch
+beyond his complacent, irritating dog trot was crushed out of her by the
+terrible new evidence the banker had brought in testimony against her
+lover.
+
+“I didn't need this,” the girl moaned to herself. In her intensity of
+grief her thoughts became audible in expressed words. “Oh, God!” she
+pleaded to the fields that lay in the silent rapture of summer content,
+“strengthen me against all this falseness. You didn't do it, George--you
+couldn't--you couldn't! And Alan! my poor, weak brother; why can't you
+have courage and clear your friend?”
+
+Her heart rose in angry rebellion against her brother, against Crane,
+against Providence, even against the man she loved. Why should he
+sacrifice both their lives, become an outcast himself to shield a boy,
+who in a moment of weakness had committed an act which might surely be
+forgiven if he would but admit his mistake? yes, it might even be called
+a mistake. The punishment accepted in heroic silence by Mortimer was
+out of all proportion to the wrong-doing. It meant the utter ruin of two
+lives. Firmly as she believed in his innocence, a conviction was forced
+upon her that unless Alan stood forth and boldly proclaimed the truth
+the accumulated guilt--proof would cloud Mortimer's name, perhaps until
+his death. Even after that his memory might linger as that of a thief.
+
+The evening before Alan had been at Ringwood and Allis had made a final
+endeavor to get him to clear the other's name by confessing the truth
+to Crane. On her knees she had pleaded with her brother. The boy had
+fiercely disclaimed all complicity, protested his own innocence with
+vehemence, and denounced Mortimer as worse than a thief in having
+poisoned her mind against him.
+
+In anger Alan had disclosed Mortimer's treachery--as he called it--and
+crime to their mother. Small wonder that Allis's hour of trial was a
+dark one. The courage that had enabled her to carry Lauzanne to victory
+was now tried a thousandfold more severely. It seemed all that was left
+her, just her courage and faith; they had stood out successfully against
+all denunciation of Lauzanne, and, with God's help, they would hold her
+true to the man she loved.
+
+Even the pace of a snail lands him somewhere finally, and the unassailed
+Bay, with a premonition of supper hovering obscurely in his lazy mind,
+at last consented to arrive at Ringwood.
+
+Allis crept to her father like a fearsome child avoiding goblins.
+Providentially he had not been initiated into the moral crusade against
+the iniquitous Mortimer, so the girl clung to him as a drowning person
+might to a plank of salvation. She longed to tell him everything--of her
+love for Mortimer, perhaps he had guessed it, for he spoke brave words
+often of the sturdy young man who had saved her from Diablo. Perhaps she
+would tell him if she felt her spirit giving way--it was cruel to stand
+quite alone--and beseech him, as he had faith in her, to believe in her
+lover.
+
+Allis went to the tea table by her father's side, fearing to get beyond
+his hearing; she dreaded her mother's questioning eyes. What could be
+said in the accused man's defense, or in her own? Nothing; she could
+only wait.
+
+A square old-fashioned wooden clock on the mantelpiece of the sitting
+room had just droned off seven mellow hours, when the faint echo of its
+music was drowned by the crunch of gravel; there was the quick step of
+somebody coming up the drive; then the wooden steps gave hollow notice.
+The visitor's advent was announced again by the brass knocker on the
+front door.
+
+“I'll go,” said Allis, as her mother rose. The girl knew who it was
+that knocked, not because of any sane reason; she simply knew it was
+Mortimer.
+
+When she opened the door he stepped back hesitatingly. Was he not a
+criminal--was he not about to leave his position because of theft?
+
+“Come in,” she said, quietly; “I am glad you have come.”
+
+“Shall I? I just want to speak to you for a minute. I said I would come.
+But I can't see anybody--just you, alone.”
+
+“I understand,” she answered. “Come inside.”
+
+“I am going away,” he began; “I can't stand it here.”
+
+“You have done nothing--nothing to clear yourself?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“And you won't?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Is this wise?”
+
+“It is the inevitable.”
+
+They were silent for a little; they were both standing. The girl broke
+the stillness.
+
+“I am glad you have come, because I can tell you again that I know you
+are innocent. I know it, because my heart repeats it a thousand times a
+day. I listen to the small voice and I hear nothing else.”
+
+“You never waver--you never doubt?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“You never will?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Then I care not. Other men have had misfortune thrust upon them and
+have borne it without complaint, have had less to solace them than you
+have given me now, and I should be a coward if I faltered. Some day
+perhaps, you will know that I am worthy of your faith: God grant that
+the knowledge brings you no fresh misery--there, forgive me, I have said
+too much; I am even now a coward. If you will say good-bye I'll go.”
+
+“Good-bye, my hero.” She raised her eyes, blurred with tears, and
+held out her hand gropingly, as one searches in the dark, for the room
+whirled like a storm cloud, and just faintly she could see the man's
+strong face coming to her out of the gloom like the face of a god. He
+took her hand. “Good-bye,” his voice vibrated brokenly; “if--if Justice
+wills that my innocence be known some day, may I come back? Will you
+wait, believing in me for a little?”
+
+“Forever.”
+
+He drew her to him by the hand he still clasped, and put his strong arms
+about her. What mattered it now that he had been falsely accused--what
+mattered it to either of them that he must accept the grim penalty of
+his endeavor? With them in the soft gloom was nothing but love, and
+faith, and innocence; and within the strong arms a sense of absolute
+security, as though the false accusing world had been baffled, beaten
+down, and the victory theirs--love.
+
+He raised the girl's face and kissed her. “Let God witness that I press
+your brave lips in innocence,” he said; “and in this pledge I love you
+forever and ever.”
+
+“Amen,” came from Allis involuntarily; it sounded to them both like the
+benediction of a high priest.
+
+“Amen,--” he responded. To speak again would have been sacrilege.
+
+He put her from him gently, turned away and walked quickly from the
+house.
+
+The girl sat for a long time a gray shadow in the gathering darkness.
+He was gone from her. It seemed as though she had scarce spoken the
+encouragement she wished to give him. It had been a meeting almost
+without words; but she felt strangely satisfied. The accusing revelation
+that had come from Crane in the afternoon had been a crushing blow. It
+was a mistake, of course; it wasn't true--somehow it wasn't true, but
+still it had stunned. Now in the gloaming she sat with an angel of
+peace; big, steadfast, honest eyes, full of thankfulness, looked
+lovingly at her from where he had stood. If she could sit there forever,
+with the echo of his deep “Amen” to their love lingering in her ears,
+she would ask no further gift of the gods.
+
+Mortimer, as with swinging stride he hurried toward the village, let his
+mind flit back to the room of gray shadows. How little he had said!
+Had there been aught spoken at all? The strong arms still tingled with
+tender warmth where the impress of an angel had set them thrilling
+ecstatically. Yes, what mattered their speech? There had been little
+of the future--no promise to send word of his well-being--but let the
+future look to itself. In the present he was king of a love realm that
+was greater than all the world.
+
+Field after field flitted by, studded here and there by square, gray
+specters of ghost-like houses that blinked at him with red dragon eyes.
+Sub-consciously he knew the eyes were searching out the secret that made
+him in all his misery of misfortune so happy. And he would answer to the
+eyes, dragon or human, without fear and without shame--because he was
+innocent--that it was love, the greatest thing in all the world, the
+love and faith sublime of a good, true woman. Woman had he said?--an
+angel!
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+As Farrell had suggested, Crane sought him at the office the next day at
+ten o'clock.
+
+Farrell and his clerk were busy planning an enterprising campaign
+against men who had faith in fast horses for the coming week at
+Sheepshead Bay.
+
+“Ah!” the Bookmaker exclaimed when Crane entered, “you want that
+badge number. Hagen, get the betting sheet for the second last day at
+Gravesend, and look up a bet of one thousand dollars we roped in over
+Mr. Crane's horse. I want the number to locate the man that parted--I
+wish there'd been more like him.”
+
+“Do you mean Billy Cass?” queried the clerk.
+
+“Who the devil's Billy Cass?”
+
+“Why the stiff that played The Dutchman for a thou'.”
+
+“You know him?” This query from Farrell.
+
+“I should say! He's a reg'lar. Used to bet in Mullen's book last year
+when I penciled for him.”
+
+The clerk brought the betting sheet and ran his finger down a long row
+of figures.
+
+“That's the bet. A thousand calls three on The Dutchman. His badge
+number was 11,785. Yes, that's the bet; I remember Billy Cass takin' it.
+You see,” he continued, explanatory of his vivid memory, “he's gen'rally
+a piker--plays a long shot--an' his limit's twenty dollars; so, when he
+comes next a favorite that day with a cool thou' it give me stoppage
+of the heart. Damn'd if I didn't get cold feet. Bet yer life it wasn't
+Billy's money--not a plunk of it; he had worked an angel, an' was
+playin' the farmer's stuff for him.”
+
+“Are you sure, Mr. Hagen--did you know the man?” Crane asked.
+
+“Know him? All the way--tall, slim, blue eyes, light mustache, hand like
+a woman.”
+
+“That's the man,” affirmed Farrell; “that's the man--I saw him yesterday
+in your place.”
+
+Crane stared. For once in his life the confusion of an unexpected event
+momentarily unsettled him.
+
+“I thought you identified--which man in the bank did you mean?”
+
+“I saw three: a short, dark, hairless kid”--Alan Porter, mentally ticked
+off Crane; “a tall, dark, heavy-shouldered chap, that, judged by his
+mug, would have made a fair record with the gloves--”
+
+“Was not that the man you identified as having made the bet?”
+ interrupted Crane, taking a step forward in his intense eagerness.
+
+“Not on your life; it was the slippery-looking cove with fishy eyes.”
+
+“Cass,” muttered Crane to himself; “but that's impossible--he never left
+the bank that day; there's some devilish queer mistake here.” Farrell
+had identified David Cass in the bank as the man who had bet with him,
+while the clerk asserted that one “Billy” Cass had made the same wager.
+Hagen's description of “Billy” Cass fitted David Cass in a general way.
+Again the badge number--11,785--was not Mortimer's, as registered in
+Faust's book.
+
+Crane stood pondering over the complication. He saw that until further
+investigation disproved it there could be but one solution of this
+intricate riddle. Billy Cass, the maker of the bet, was a race track
+frequenter; David Cass was not. They must be separate personalities;
+but they resembled each other; they were of the same name--they might be
+brothers. Billy Cass had been in possession of the stolen note; he must
+have got it from some one having access to it in the bank--Mortimer,
+Alan Porter, or Cass--the cashier was quite out of the question.
+
+The next move was to trace back through Billy Cass the man who had
+delivered to him the stolen money. There was still a chance that
+Mortimer, unfamiliar with betting and possibly knowing of Billy Cass
+through his brother in the bank--if they were brothers--had used this
+practical racing man as a commission agent. This seemed a plausible
+deduction. It was practically impossible that David Cass could have
+got possession of the bill, for it was locked in a compartment of which
+Mortimer had the key; the latter had admitted that the keys were not out
+of his possession.
+
+This far in his hurried mental retrospect Crane spoke to Farrell: “I
+think this is all we can do at present. I may find it necessary to ask
+you to identify this Cass, but I hope not to trouble you any further in
+the matter.”
+
+“Hang the trouble!” energetically responded Farrell, with huge
+disclaiming of obligation; “I'll spend time and money to down a crook
+any day; I've no use for 'em; a few of that kidney gives the racin' game
+a black eye. If you need me or Hagen, just squeak, an' we'll hop onto
+the chap if he's a wrong one with both feet.”
+
+Crane said nothing about the other number he had culled from Faust's
+book; he said nothing about his suspicions of a brotherhood; he wanted
+to go back to his quarters and think this new problem out.
+
+What if in seeking for conclusive evidence against Mortimer he should
+prove him innocent? He was treading upon dangerous ground, pushing out
+of his path with a firebrand a fuse closely attached to a mine that
+might explode and shatter the carefully constructed fabric.
+
+Sitting in his own chamber he once more went over the whole
+extraordinary entanglement. Mistaken as it was, Farrell's identification
+at Brookfield must have strongly affected the mind of Allis Porter. At
+the time Crane had played an honest part in recounting it to the girl.
+He had firmly believed that Farrell, owing to his ambiguous report, had
+meant Mortimer; in fact, Cass had not entered his mind at all. Even yet
+Mortimer might be the guilty man--probably was. Why should he, Crane,
+pursue this investigation that might turn, boomerang-like, and act
+disastrously. Mortimer was either a thief or a hero; there could be no
+question about that. As a hero, in this case, he was pretty much of a
+fool in Crane's eyes; but Allis Porter would not look upon it in that
+light--she would deify him. Crane would commit diplomatic suicide in
+developing Mortimer's innocence. Again he asked himself why he should
+proceed. Mortimer was guilty in the strong, convicting light of the
+apparent evidence; better let it rest that happy way--happy for Crane.
+But still would he rest satisfied himself? He was not accustomed to
+doing things by halves. If Cass had stolen the money it would never
+do to retain him in a position of trust. Then the devil of subtle
+diplomacy, familiar at all times to Crane, whispered in his ear that he
+need not blazen to the world the result of his further investigation; he
+might satisfy himself, and then if Mortimer were found still deeper in
+the toils it might be spoken of; but if he were found innocent--well,
+was Crane his brother's keeper? He could adopt one of two plans to get
+at the truth; he could trace out Billy Cass and extort from him the name
+of his principal; but if startled, the latter might refuse to
+divulge anything. Police pressure meant publicity. There was a better
+plan--Crane always found a better plan in everything. If David Cass had
+stolen the money he must have sent it to his brother; if that fact were
+established it would show a connection between the two.
+
+That afternoon Crane took a train to Brookfield. A visit to the village
+post office disclosed a hidden jewel. As far as Crane was concerned the
+fate of the two men was held in the hollow of the postmaster's hand.
+The latter, with little hesitation, allowed him to delve into official
+secrets.
+
+He learned that David Cass had sent a letter, with a quick-delivery
+stamp on it, to William Cass, at A B C, East Fourteenth Street, New
+York, at 3:30 p.m., on June 12. So far as guilt or innocence was
+concerned there was nothing left to discover; the connection between
+these two men was demonstrated. Farrell's misidentification established
+another truth--they were brothers. The letter, hastening to its
+destination, had contained the stolen money. Mortimer would not give it
+to Cass to send away; even if he had done so he would not then have gone
+to Gravesend. Alan Porter had also gone to Gravesend; if he had stolen
+the money he would have taken it with him.
+
+David Cass, the unsuspected, was the thief. Mortimer, condemned,
+having restored the money--having taken upon himself with almost silent
+resignation the disgrace--was innocent. And all this knowledge was in
+Crane's possession alone, to use as he wished. The fate of his rival was
+given into his hands; and if he turned down his thumb, so, better for
+Mortimer that he had been torn of wild beasts in a Roman arena than to
+be cast, good name and all, to the wolves of righteous humanity.
+
+As a dog carries home a bone too large for immediate consumption, Crane
+took back this new finding to his den of solitude in New York. At eight
+o'clock he turned the key in his door, and arm in arm with his now
+constant companion walked fitfully up and down, up and down, the floor.
+Sometimes he sat in a big chair that beckoned to him to rest; sometimes
+he raced with swift speed; once he threw himself upon his bed, and lay
+staring wide-eyed at the ceiling for hours. What mockery--hours! on the
+mantelpiece the clock told him that he had ceased his strides for a bare
+five minutes.
+
+Then he thrust himself back into a chair, and across the table opposite
+sat Wrong, huge--grinning with a devilish temptation; not gold, but a
+perfume of lilacs, and the music of soft laughter like the tinkle of
+silver bells, the bejeweled light of sweet eyes that were gray, and all
+the temptation that Wrong held in itself was the possession of Allis
+Porter.
+
+And Crane need commit no crime, unless inaction were a crime--just leave
+things as they were. In the eyes of the world Mortimer was a thief; he
+would never claim Allis so branded.
+
+Crane with a word could clear the accused man; he could go to David Cass
+and force him to confess. But why should he do it--sacrifice all he held
+dear in life? Everything that he had valued before became obliterated
+by the blindness of his love for the girl. Yet still the love seemed to
+soften him. Into his life had come new, strange emotions. The sensuous
+odor of stephanotis, that had not repelled in the old life, had come to
+suggest a pestilence in his nostrils, made clean by the purity of lilac.
+As he swayed in contention, the face of Wrong fronting him became the
+face of Sin--repellent, abhorrent; how could he ruin her life, and by a
+criminal act?
+
+Hour by hour the struggle went on, until, exhausted, Crane flung himself
+upon his bed to rest a few minutes, and sleep, unsought, came and hushed
+the turmoil of his heart.
+
+Without decision he had cast himself down; his mind, tortured in its
+perplexity, was unequal to the task of guiding him. So wearied he should
+have slept for hours, but, as the first glint of sunlight came through
+the uncurtained window, he sprang from his couch with the call of an
+uncompleted something in his ears.
+
+But calm had come to him in his sleep; the question of right or wrong
+had been settled. He tried to remember how he had come to the conclusion
+that was alone in his rested mind. It must have been before he slept,
+though his memory failed him, for as he slumbered Allis Porter had come
+with the big gray eyes full of tears and asked him once again to
+spare Mortimer humiliation for her sake. And he had answered, “He is
+innocent.” God! he remembered it, even now it thrilled through his
+frame--she had bent over and kissed him on the forehead. Yes, that was
+what had wakened him. What foolish things dreams were. He had won just a
+kiss and had paid the price of his love; and now waking, and in the calm
+of a conflict passed, he had won over the demon that had tempted him
+with the perfume of lilacs. He had striven to the point when further
+strife became a crime. He had lost; but he would prove himself a good
+loser.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+That day Crane went to Brookfield.
+
+In spirit he was like a man that had been cast into an angry sea, and
+had battled his way through hungry waves to shore. Saved, the utter
+weariness of fierce strife hung heavy over his soul, and exhaustion
+deadened his joy of escape. Just saved, bereft of everything, he looked
+back over the dark waters and shuddered. And before him a dreary waste
+of desert shore-land stretched out interminably, and he must wander
+alone over its vast expanse forever.
+
+Crane in all things was strong. It was strength drawn to right by the
+influence of the woman he loved that had saved him from the waters that
+were worse than the broad sands of a desolate life. But he still had
+something to do, the final act made possible by his redemption.
+
+At Brookfield he went to the hotel, secured an isolated sitting room
+upstairs, and with this as a hall of justice, followed out with his
+usual carefulness a plan he had conceived. First he wrote a brief note
+to Allis Porter asking her to come and see him at once. One line
+he wrote made certain the girl's coming, “I have important news to
+communicate concerning Mr. Mortimer.” Then he sent the note off with a
+man. Next he despatched a messenger for David Cass. He pulled out his
+watch and looked at it. It was three o'clock. “I think five will do,” he
+muttered; “it should be all over by that time.” Another note addressed
+to Mortimer, asking him to call at the hotel at five o'clock, went
+forth.
+
+The village hotel throbbed with the pressure of unwonted business.
+The proprietor surmised that a financial matter of huge magnitude was
+afloat--another farm was being mortgaged, most like; more money for
+Ringwood probably, for had not a buggy gone out there to bring some one
+in to the great financier. Those race horses were the devil to put a man
+in a hole.
+
+David Cass came, treading on the heels of a much-whiskied howler who had
+summoned him.
+
+“You sent for me, sir?” he asked of Crane. It may have been the
+stairs--for he had come up hurriedly--that put a waver in his voice; or
+it may have been a premonition of trouble.
+
+“Take a seat, Mr. Cass,” Crane answered, arranging a chair so that a
+strong light from the one window fell across the visitor's face.
+
+The hostler who had shown Cass to where the big man awaited him
+lingered, a jagged wobble of humanity, leaning against the door jamb. He
+expected an order for “Red Eye,” as he had baptized strong drink since
+it had grown familiarly into his being. “Oh!” exclaimed Crane, “I'd
+forgotten; here's a quarter; much obliged. That's all.”
+
+The hostler's unjointed legs, unstable because of recurrent debauchery,
+carried him disconsolately to lower levels. The Banker must be sure
+of his business, must have it well in hand, when he ignored the usual
+diplomatic mollifying preparation of a drink.
+
+The hostler had left the sitting-room door open; Crane closed it
+carefully, and, sitting with his back to the window, said to the bank
+clerk: “Mr. Cass, I am going to be very candid with you; I am going to
+tell you that I have discovered you stole the thousand dollars Mortimer
+has been accused of taking.”
+
+Cass's face blanched a bluish white; his jaw dropped loosely like the
+jaw of a man who had been suddenly struck a savage blow. His weak,
+watery, blue eyes opened wide in terror; he gasped for breath; he
+essayed to speak--to give even a cry of pain, but the muscles of his
+tongue were paralyzed. His right hand resting on the arm of his chair,
+as Crane ceased speaking, fell hopelessly by his side, where it dangled
+like the cloth limb of a dummy.
+
+Crane saw all this with fierce satisfaction. He had planned this sudden
+accusation with subtle forethought. It even gave him relief to feel
+his suffering shifted to another; he was no longer the assailed by evil
+fortune, he was the assailant. Already the sustaining force of right was
+on his side; what a dreadful thing it was to squirm and shrink in the
+toils of crime. A thought that he might have been like this had he
+allowed Mortimer to stand accused flashed through his mind. He waited
+for his victim to speak.
+
+At last Cass found strength to say: “Mr. Crane, this is a terrible
+accusation; there is some dreadful mistake--I did not--”
+
+The other interrupted him. The man's defense must be so abjectly
+hopeless, such a cowardly weak string of lies, that out of pity, as he
+might have ceased to beat a hound, Crane continued, speaking rapidly,
+holding the guilty man tight in the grasp of his fierce denunciation.
+
+“You stole that note. You sent it, with a quick-delivery stamp to your
+brother, Billy Cass, in New York, and he bet it for you on my horse, The
+Dutchman, on the 13th, and lost it. Mortimer, thinking that Alan Porter
+had taken the money, replaced it, and you nearly committed a greater
+crime than stealing when you allowed him to be dishonored, allowed him
+to be accused and all but convicted of your foolish sin. It is useless
+to deny it, all this can be proved in court. I have weighed the matter
+carefully, and if you confess you will not be prosecuted; if you do not,
+you will be sent to the penitentiary.”
+
+Cass, stricken beyond the hope of defense, rose from his chair,
+steadying himself with his hands on the table, leaned far over it, as
+though he were drawn physically by the fierce magnetism of his accuser,
+and spoke in a voice scarce stronger than the treble of a child's: “My
+God! Mr. Crane! Do you mean it, that you won't prosecute me? Did you say
+that?”
+
+“Not if you confess.”
+
+“Thank God--thank you, sir. I'm glad, I'm glad; I've been in hell for
+days. I haven't slept. Mortimer's eyes have stared at me all through the
+night, for I liked him--everybody liked him--he was good to me. Oh, God!
+I should have gone out of my mind with more of it. I didn't steal the
+money--no, no! I didn't mean to steal it; the Devil put it into my
+hands. Before God, I never stole a dollar in my life. But it wasn't
+that--it wasn't the money--it was to think that an innocent man was to
+suffer--to have his life wrecked because of my folly.”
+
+How it was coming home to Crane. Had he not dabbled his hands in the
+same sin, almost committed it?
+
+“You have never known what it is to suffer in that way. But let me tell
+you all. I must. Then perhaps you will understand how I was tempted. For
+years I have been ground in poverty. My mother and my sister, even my
+brother have all looked to me. My brother should have supported them,
+but all his money went on the race course, gambling. When I heard Alan
+Porter tell Mortimer that your horse was sure to win, for the first time
+in my life I felt a desire to get money that way. But I had no money to
+bet. That day as I went into the vault I saw under a lower shelf--the
+Devil drew my eyes that way--a bank note. I hardly knew it was a bank
+note, for I saw but a piece of paper indistinctly in the dim light. I
+picked it up. Oh, God! if I hadn't touched it! I looked at it. My heart
+jumped in my throat and choked me; my head swam. In my ears were strange
+voices, saying: 'Take it! Put it in your pocket!' Perhaps it was because
+it was so large--a thousand dollars--perhaps it was because it seemed
+lost, out of place, I don't know. I had handled thousands and thousands
+before, and never felt that way.
+
+“The devil voices that were in my ears said: 'This is your chance. Take
+it, borrow it, no one will know. Bet it on the horse that will surely
+win, and you will get many thousands; then you can replace it, and for
+once in your life you will know what it is to have something of your
+own.'”
+
+“I tried to put it back. I couldn't. The voices called me a fool, a
+coward. I thought of my mother, my sister, what I could do if I had the
+courage. I tried to take it in to Mr. Lane and say that I had found it.
+I couldn't. Oh, my God! you don't know what it is to be tempted! You
+have been successful, and don't know how miserably weak ill-fortune
+makes a man. I yielded--I took it; then when its loss was discovered,
+and Mortimer was accused, I tried to confess--I couldn't; I was a
+coward, a traitor, a Judas. Oh, God!”
+
+The overwrought man threw himself face down on the table in front of his
+grim accuser, like a child's broken doll, and wept with great sobs that
+shook his frame as the wind lashes the waters into turmoil.
+
+An exultation of righteous victory swept through Crane's soul. He might
+have been like that; he had been saved from it by his love for a good
+woman. He could not despise the poor broken creature who confessed so
+abjectly, because all but in deed he also had sinned. The deepest cry
+of despair from Cass was because of the sin he had committed against his
+friend--against Mortimer.
+
+Crane waited until Cass's misery had exhausted itself a little, and when
+he spoke his voice was soft in pity.
+
+“I understand. Sit in your chair there and be a man. Half an hour ago I
+thought you a thief--I don't now. You had your time of weakness, perhaps
+all men have that; you fell by the wayside. I don't think you'll do it
+again.”
+
+“No, no, no! I wouldn't go through the hell I've lived in again for
+all the money in the world. And I'm so glad that it is known; I feel
+relief.”
+
+“Well, it is better that the truth has come out, because everything can
+be put right. I was going to make you pay back the thousand dollars to
+Mortimer--I was going to drive you from the bank--I was going to let it
+be known that you had stolen the money, but now, I must think. You must
+have another chance. It's a dangerous thing to wreck lives--”
+
+“My God! it is; that's what haunted me night and day. I felt as though
+I had murdered a man who had been my friend. I knew he thought young
+Porter had taken it and was shielding him. The memory of the misery in
+Mortimer's face at being counted a thief would have stuck to me if I had
+lived a hundred years.”
+
+Cass had interrupted Crane. When he ceased again out of exhaustion,
+Crane proceeded, “Mortimer must be paid back the money.”
+
+“I'll save and work my fingers off till I do it.”
+
+“You can't. Those dependent upon you would starve. I'll attend to that
+myself.”
+
+“And you will let me go without--”
+
+“No, you can't go.”
+
+“My God! I'm to be prosecuted?”
+
+“No, you can stay in the bank. I don't think you'll ever listen to the
+voices again; it's bad business.”
+
+Cass sat and stared at the strange man who said these things out of
+silly expressionless eyes that were blurred full of tears.
+
+“Yes, you can go right on as you have been. It will be understood
+that the money was found, had been mislaid; I'll think that out. It's
+nobody's business just now; I run the bank and you take orders from me.
+Go back to your desk and stay there. I've got to tell Mortimer and Miss
+Porter that you made this mistake, and Lane, too, I suppose, but nobody
+else will ever know of it. I was going to make you sign a confession,
+but it's not needed. You may go now.”
+
+Cass rose, his thin legs seeming hopelessly inadequate to the task of
+carrying his body, and said, “Will you take my hand, sir?”
+
+“Of course I will. Just do right from this on, and forget-no, better not
+forget; remember that there is no crime like weakness; all crime comes
+from weakness. Be strong, and listen to no more voices. But I needn't
+tell you. I know from this out I can trust you further than a man who
+has never been tried.”
+
+At the door Cass turned and looked back at the man who had reached down
+into the abyss, pulled him up, and stood him on his feet. The man was
+sitting quite still, his back to the light, his head drooped, and Cass
+could not see his face. He strove futilely for some adequate expression
+of gratitude, but his senses were numb from the shock of what he had
+escaped; he simply nodded twice toward the sitting figure, turned, and
+passed out into the street, where the sunlight baptized him with warmth
+as though he had been born again.
+
+“Poor, weak devil!” muttered Crane; then he shivered. Had the imbecile's
+talk of voices got on to his nerves? Surely a voice had whispered
+derisively in his ear, “Which one is the poor, weak devil?” And
+in answer within his soul Crane knew that the margin was indeed of
+infinitesimal narrowness. Cass, hastened in his temptation, yielding
+to the first insane impulse, not knowing that the damnation of a friend
+hung on his act, had fallen. He, Crane, in full knowledge that two
+innocent lives might be wrecked by his doing, had been kept to the
+right only after hours of struggle, and by the supporting influence of
+a supreme love. To have gained Allis Porter by the strategy of a villain
+could not be the method of holy passion. To sacrifice his desire and
+give her back her lover was love, love worthy of the girl.
+
+For an hour he waited; then there was turmoil on the stairway;
+horses were surely coming up. At the door a thick voice explained the
+diversion. The hostler had again arrived, with an hour of increased
+drunkenness pulling mercilessly at his erratic legs.
+
+“John Porter's gal 'sh here, an'--an'--” the hostler wrestled with the
+mental exercise that had been entrusted to his muddled brain. He'd swear
+that she was there, for his eyes had seen her, two of her; and also he
+had a hazy idea that when he essayed the stairs she had entrusted to
+him some message. He groped fitfully among the wheels that buzzed in his
+skull for the elusive something connected with her advent. The heredity
+of habit came to his assistance.
+
+“D'ye want a drink?” he asked, with a sudden brightening.
+
+“Drink!” a voice cried. “I don't want any drink” A strong hand had him
+by the collar, and the house was rocking violently to and fro; he could
+scarcely keep his feet.
+
+“Wake up, you're drunk. Is Miss Porter down stairs?”
+
+“Porter, Porter, yesh, Portersh gal; thatsh what I said. Whatsh matter
+with you?--leg-go. Keep cool, don't get excited.”
+
+“Here, get out--go down stairs!” And he did, hurriedly.
+
+Crane had followed him down. Allis was standing just within the hall
+door.
+
+“Good afternoon, Miss Porter,” he said. “It was good of you to come.
+I've got something very important to tell you, and it's better that we
+have quiet--it doesn't seem quite the usual order of things here.
+Should you mind coming upstairs to the sitting room, where we shall be
+undisturbed?”
+
+“I don't mind,” answered the girl, simply.
+
+“Have a chair,” he said, motioning to the one Cass had lately sat in.
+
+Crane did not take the other seat, but paced restlessly up and down the
+room; it cooled the fever of his mind.
+
+“I hope it isn't more bad news, Mr. Crane,” Allis said; for her
+companion seemed indisposed to break the silence.
+
+“It is--” the girl started--“for me,” Crane added, after a little pause;
+“and yet I am glad.”
+
+“That sounds strange,” Allis commented, wonderingly.
+
+“What I am going to say to you means the destruction of the dearest hope
+I have in life, but it can't be helped. Now I wouldn't have it any other
+way.”
+
+Suddenly he stopped in his swift pace, faced the girl, and asked, “You
+are quite sure you can't love me?” He was waiting for an answer.
+
+“No, I can't--I hate to cause you misery, but I must speak the truth;
+you have asked for it.”
+
+“And you've answered honestly. I know it was foolish in me to ask
+the impossible. Just one more question and then I will tell you why I
+brought you here. Do you still believe in Mortimer's innocence--do you
+love Mortimer?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“If I were to tell you that he is innocent, that I have discovered the
+guilty one.”
+
+“Oh, my God!” It was a cry of sudden joy, incapable of exact expression,
+irrelevant in its naming of the Deity, but full in its exultation of
+soul. Then, in quick transformation, the girl collapsed, as Cass had
+done, and huddled in her chair, stricken by the sudden conviction that
+the crime had been brought home to her brother. Her lover was guiltless;
+but to joy over it was a sin, inhuman, for was not Alan the thief, if
+Mortimer were innocent?
+
+Crane understood. He had forgotten. He stepped quickly to the girl's
+side, put his hand tenderly on her head; her big gray eyes stared up at
+him full of a shrinking horror.
+
+“Poor little woman!” he said, “your big, tender heart will be the death
+of you yet. But I've got only good news for you this time. Neither
+Mortimer nor Alan took the money--it was Cass.”
+
+“They are both innocent?”
+
+“Yes, both.”
+
+“Oh, my God, I thank Thee.” She pulled herself up from the chair,
+holding to Crane's arm, and looking in his face, said, “You did this;
+you found the guilty man for me?”
+
+Crane nodded his head; and it came to the girl as she looked, that
+the eyes she had thought narrow in evil grew big and round and full of
+honesty, and soft with gentleness for her.
+
+“How can I thank you--what can I do or say to repay you?” She knew what
+it must have cost the man to clear his rival's name.
+
+“It was your doing, Miss Allis; it is I who must thank you. You made a
+man of me, brought more good into my life than had been there for forty
+years. I will be honest. I did not do this of myself, my own free will.
+In my love for you, and desire to have you with me always, I almost
+committed a crime. I was tempted to conceal the discovery I had made;
+I knew that if I cleared Mortimer you were lost to me. I struggled
+with temptation and fell asleep still not conquering it. In my sleep I
+dreamed--I don't think it was a dream--it was like a vision--you came
+to me, and when I said that Mortimer was innocent, you kissed me on the
+forehead. I woke then, and the struggle had ceased--the temptation
+had passed. I came down here, and Cass has confessed that he took the
+money.”
+
+“Would you like it--would you think it wrong--it seems so little for me
+to do--may I kiss you now, as I did in your dream, and thank you from
+the bottom of my heart for making me so happy? It all seems like a dream
+to me now.”
+
+For answer Crane inclined his head, and Allis, putting her hand upon his
+shoulder, kissed him on the forehead, and through him went a thrill of
+great thankfulness, of joy such as he knew would never have come to him
+had he gained through treachery even this small token of conquest.
+
+“There,” he said, taking Allis by the arm, and gently drawing her back
+to the chair; “now I am repaid a thousandfold for not doing a great
+wrong. You have beaten me twice within a few days. I fancy I should
+almost be afraid to be your husband, you master me so easily.”
+
+“That's Mortimer coming,” Crane said, suddenly, as a step with more
+consistency in its endeavor than pertained to the hostler's, sounded,
+coming up the stairs. “I sent for him,” he added, seeing the look of
+happy confusion in Allis's face.
+
+“Come in,” he called cheerily, in answer to a knock on the door.
+
+“You sent for me--” Then Mortimer stopped suddenly, and stood staring
+first at Allis, then at Crane, alternately, back and forth from one to
+the other.
+
+Crane turned his back upon the younger man and busied himself wondrously
+over the manipulation of a chair. A strange dread crept into Mortimer's
+heart; it smothered him; he felt dizzy. Why did Allis look so happy--why
+were there smiles on her lips when she must know there were ashes
+of gloom in his soul? Why was she alone there with Crane? Was it but
+another devilish trick of the misfortune that pursued him?
+
+“Good afternoon, Miss” the words stuck in Mortimer's throat, and he
+completed his greeting with a most dreadfully formal bow.
+
+The girl laughed outright; how droll it was to see a man trying to
+make himself unhappy when there was nothing but happiness in the world.
+Through the open window she could hear the birds singing, and through
+it came the perfume of clover-buried fields; across the floor streamed
+warm, bright sunlight from a blue sky in which was no cloud. And from
+their lives, Mortimer's and her own, had been swept the dark cloud--and
+here, in the midst of all this joy was her lover with a long, sad face,
+trying to reproach her with a stiff, awkward bow.
+
+Her laugh twirled Crane about like a top. He saw the odd situation;
+there was something incongruous in Mortimer's stiff attitude. Crane
+had a big cloud of his own not quite driven from his sky, but a smile
+hovered on his thin lips. This happiness was worth catching.
+
+Mortimer noticed the distasteful mirth reflected in the other man's
+face, and he repeated with asperity, “You sent for me, sir--may I ask--”
+
+“Will you take a chair,” said Crane, and he pushed the one he had been
+toying with toward Mortimer. The latter remained standing.
+
+Allis sprang forward and caught him by the arm--Crane turned away,
+suddenly discovering that from the window the main street of Brookfield
+was a most absorbing study.
+
+“I'm so happy,” began Allis. Mortimer shivered in apprehension. Why had
+Crane turned his face away--what was coming? How could she be happy, how
+could anyone in the world be happy? But evidently she was. She stole
+a quick look at Crane--to be exact, Crane's back, for his head and
+shoulders were through the window.
+
+Then the girl--she had to raise on her tiptoes--kissed the sad man on
+the cheek. I'm ashamed to say that he stared. Were they all mad--was he
+not standing with one foot in the penitentiary?
+
+She drew him toward the chair, calling to Crane: “Will you please tell
+Mr. Mortimer the good news. I am too happy; I can't.”
+
+A fierce anger surged in Mortimer's heart; it was true, then--his
+disgrace had been too much for Allis. The other had won; but it was too
+cruel to kiss him.
+
+Crane faced about, and coming forward, held out his hand to the man of
+distrust. “I hope you'll forgive me.”
+
+Mortimer sprang to his feet, shoving back his chair violently, and stood
+erect, drawn to his full height, his right hand clenched fiercely at his
+side. “Shake hands? No, a thousand times no!” he muttered to himself.
+
+Crane saw the action, and his own hand dropped. “Perhaps I ask too
+much,” he said, quietly; “I wronged you--”
+
+Mortimer set his teeth and waited. There were great beads of
+perspiration on his forehead, and his broad chest set his breath
+whistling through contracted nostrils. A pretty misdirected passion was
+playing him. This was why they had sent for him--the girl he would have
+staked his life on had been brought to believe in his guilt, and had
+been won over to his rival. Ah--a new thought; his mind, almost diseased
+by unjust accusation, prompted it--perhaps it was to save him from
+punishment that Allis had consented to become Crane's wife.
+
+“But I believed you guilty--” Mortimer started as Crane said this “now I
+know that you are innocent, I ask--”
+
+Mortimer staggered back a step and caught at the chair to steady
+himself. He repeated mechanically the other's words: “You know I'm
+innocent?”
+
+“Yes, I've found the guilty man.”
+
+“Then Alan--oh, the poor lad! It's a mistake--you are wrong. The boy
+didn't take the money--I took it.”
+
+Crane looked at him in admiration, an indulgent smile on his lips.
+
+“Nonsense, my dear sir!” he exclaimed, dryly; “Alan did not take the
+money--neither did you. Cass took it, and you wasted a day of the bank's
+time covering the crime for him.”
+
+“Cass took it?” asked Mortimer in a dazed way, looking from Crane to
+Allis.
+
+“Yes; he has confessed, so you see he's ahead of you in that line”
+ He went on, speaking hurriedly: “I ask you to forgive me now for my
+suspicions. Your innocence is completely established. You acted like a
+hero in trying to shield Alan Porter, and I like men of that stamp. The
+thousand dollars you paid in will be restored to you; it is yours. We
+will devise some scheme for clearing up the matter as far as your good
+name is concerned that will shield poor Cass from people who have no
+business in this affair.”
+
+“But how did Cass manage to get the note?”
+
+“Found it on the floor of the vault, he says.”
+
+“I don't see how it could have fallen out of the box, because the three
+bills were pinned to the note.”
+
+Crane drew forth a pocket book, and opening it took out the bill that
+had been stolen. He examined it closely, holding it up in front of the
+window.
+
+“I think you are mistaken,” he said, “there are no pin holes in this
+bill; I see,” he continued, “the pin had not gone through this one;
+being detached, in handling the box, it has slipped out.”
+
+“It must have,” concurred Mortimer. “I remember in putting the box in
+the compartment once I had to turn it on its edge; the bill being loose,
+as you say, has slipped to the floor, and as the vault was dark I did
+not notice it.”
+
+“It doesn't matter,” added Crane. “I must go now. Good-bye, Miss Allis.”
+
+Turning to Mortimer he held out his hand.
+
+“Good-bye, and long happiness to you both,” he said; “I trust you will
+think kindly of me and poor Cass. I am sure we are sorry for what has
+been done.”
+
+As Crane went down the stairs he wondered why he had coupled himself
+with Cass. Was the difference so slight--had they been together in the
+same boat up to the point of that silly, fantastic dream. Perhaps they
+had.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+With the going of Crane an awkward restraint came over the two who were
+left; the man who had suffered so much for the woman's sake, and the
+girl who had endeavored so much.
+
+He was like a man suddenly thrust into a new world of freedom; he
+indulged in a physical manifestation of its exhilaration, drinking in
+a long, deep draught of the clover-scented air, until his great lungs
+sighed with the plethora. It seemed a lifetime that he had lived in the
+noisome atmosphere of a felon's cell. But now the crime had dropped from
+him; a free man in every sense of the word, he could straighten himself
+up and drink of the air that was without taint.
+
+Allis watched Mortimer curiously; she was too happy to speak--just to
+look upon him standing there, her undefiled god, her hero, with his
+heroism known and applauded, was a suffusing ecstasy. He was so
+great, so noble, that anything she might say would be inane, tawdry,
+inconsequent; so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time,
+nor the sunshine, nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of
+conventionality in the unsupervised tete-a-tete.
+
+The ecstatic magnetism of congenial silence has always a potency, and
+its spell crept into Mortimer's soul and laid embargo on his tongue. He
+crossed over to Allis, and taking her slender hand in his own, crouched
+down on the floor beside her chair, and looked up into her face, just
+as a great St. Bernard might have done, incapable of articulating the
+wealth of love and gratitude and faithfulness that was in his heart.
+
+Even then the girl did not speak. She drew the man's strong rugged head
+close up to her face, and nestled her cheek against his. Love without
+words; love greater than words. It was like a fairy dream; if either
+spoke the gentle gossamer web of it would float away like mist, and of
+needs they must talk of the misery that had passed.
+
+In the end the girl spoke first, saying like a child having a range of
+but few words, “You are happy now, my hero?”
+
+“Too happy--I almost fear to wake and find that I've been dreaming.”
+
+She kissed him.
+
+“Yes, it's real,” he answered; “in dreams happiness is not so positive
+as this. You did not doubt?” he queried.
+
+“Never.”
+
+“You would have waited?”
+
+“Forever.”
+
+“And now--and now, we must still wait.”
+
+“Not forever.”
+
+They talked of the wonderful necromancy the gods had used to set their
+lives to the sweet music of happiness. How Lauzanne the Despised had
+saved Ringwood to her father; how he had won Alan's supposed price of
+redemption for Mortimer; how he had stood sturdy and true to the girl
+of much faith and all gentleness. And the room became a crypt of
+confessional when she, in penitence, told of her ride on the gallant
+Chestnut.
+
+Just a span of Fate's hand from these two happy mortals, and twice
+the sand had sifted through the hour glass, sat a man all alone in his
+chamber. On his table was the dust of solitariness; and with his finger
+he wrote in it “Forever.” But he looked fearlessly across the board, for
+there sat no grinning demon of temptation, nor remorse, nor fear. But a
+fragrance as of lilacs and of sweet clover coming through an open window
+was in his nostrils; and in his memory was the picture of a face he
+loved, made like unto an angel's with gratitude, and on his forehead
+still burned, like a purifying fire, a kiss that reached down into his
+soul and filled him with the joy of thankfulness.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Thoroughbreds, by W. A. Fraser
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Thoroughbreds, by W. A. Fraser
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thoroughbreds, by W. A. Fraser
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Thoroughbreds
+
+Author: W. A. Fraser
+
+Release Date: July 23, 2009 [EBook #9088]
+Last Updated: March 15, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOROUGHBREDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      THOROUGHBREDS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      by W. A. Fraser
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      Dedicated to a THOROUGHBRED MY WIFE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> IV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> V </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> VI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> IX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> X </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> XI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> XV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> XVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> XVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> XVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0019"> XIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> XX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> XXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> XXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> XXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> XXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> XXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> XXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> XXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> XXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0029"> XXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0030"> XXX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0031"> XXXI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0032"> XXXII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0033"> XXXIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0034"> XXXIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0035"> XXXV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0036"> XXXVI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0037"> XXXVII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0038"> XXXVIII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0039"> XXXIX </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0040"> XL </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0041"> XLI </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link42"> XLII </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0042"> XLIII. </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0043"> XLIV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0044"> XLV </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0045"> XLVI </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Less than a hundred miles from the city of Gotham, across broad green
+      fields, dotted into squares and oblong valleys by full-leafed maple, and
+      elm, and mulberry, was the village of Brookfield. A hundred years of
+      expansion in the surrounding land had acted inversely with the little
+      hamlet, and had pinched it into a hermitical isolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brookfieldians had discovered a huge beetle in the amber of their
+      serene existence; it was really the Reverend Dolman who had unearthed the
+      monster. The beetle in the amber was horse racing, and the prime offender,
+      practically the sole culprit, was John Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By an inconsistent twist of fate he was known as Honest John. His father
+      before him had raced in old Kentucky to considerable purpose, and with the
+      full vigor of a man who races for sport; and so to the son John, in
+      consequence, had come little beyond a not-to-be-eradicated love of
+      thoroughbreds. To race squarely, honestly, and to the glory of
+      high-couraged horses was to him as much a matter of religion as the
+      consistent guardianship of parish morals was to the Reverend George
+      Dolman. Therefore, two men of strong beliefs were set on opposite sides of
+      the fence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in the Porter household, which was at Ringwood Farm, was divided
+      allegiance. Mrs. Porter was possessed of an abhorrent detestation of horse
+      racing; also an assertive Christianity. The daughter, Allison, had
+      inherited the horse taint. The swinging gallop of a striving horse was to
+      her the obliteration of everything but sunshine, and the smile of fields,
+      and the blur of swift-gliding hedges, and the driving perfume of
+      clover-laden winds that passed strong into spread nostrils. For Alan
+      Porter, the son, there were columns of figures and musty-smelling bundles
+      of tattered paper money where he clerked in the bank. There had been great
+      unison in the Porter household over the placing of Alan. In addition to
+      horse lore, John Porter was a fair judge of human nature, and, beyond
+      doubt, there was a streak of velvet in Alan which would have twisted
+      easily in the compressive grip of the race course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Porter family were not the only dwellers of Brookfield who took part
+      in racing. Philip Crane, the banker, wandering from the respectable
+      highway of finance, had allowed himself to become interested in race
+      horses. But this fact was all but unknown in Brookfield, so the full
+      resentment of the place was effusively tendered to John Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his younger days some money had come to Philip Crane. The gambler
+      spirit, that was his of inheritance, had an instinctive truth as allied to
+      finance; but, unfortunately for Philip Crane, chance and a speculative
+      restlessness led him amongst men who commenced with the sport of kings.
+      With acute precipitancy he was separated from the currency that had come
+      to him. The process was so rapid that his racing experience was of little
+      avail as an asset, so he committed the first great wise act of his
+      life-turned his back upon the race course and marched into finance, so
+      strongly, so persistently, that at forty he was wealthy and the banker of
+      Brookfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twenty years of deliberate reminiscence convinced him that he could
+      gratify the desire that had been his in those immature days, and possibly
+      work out a paying revenge. Thus it was that he had got together a small
+      stable of useful horses; and, of far greater moment, secured a clever
+      trainer, Dick Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane's latter-day racing had been successful&mdash;he made money at it.
+      No man was ever more naturally endowed to succeed on the turf than was
+      Banker Philip Crane. Cold, passionless, more given to deep concentrated
+      thought than expression, holding silence as a golden gift&mdash;even as a
+      gift of rare rubies&mdash;nothing drew from him an unguarded word, no
+      sudden turmoil quivered his nerve. It was characteristic of the man that
+      he had waited nearly twenty years to resume racing, which really came as
+      near to being a passion with him as was possible for anything to be. There
+      is a saying in England that it takes two years of preparation to win a big
+      handicap; and these were the lines upon which Philip Crane, by instinctive
+      adaptation, worked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite by chance Dick Langdon had come into his hands over a matter of
+      borrowed money. It ended by the banker virtually owning every horse that
+      raced in the trainer's name. In addition, two or three horses ran in
+      Philip Crane's own name. If there had been any distinctive project in the
+      scheme of creation that gave Dick Langdon to the world, it probably was
+      that he might serve as the useful tool of a subtle thinker. Now it did
+      seem that Langdon had come into his own&mdash;that he had found his
+      predestined master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Porter had not been successful; ill fortune had set in, and there was
+      always something going wrong. Horses would break down, or get beaten by
+      accident&mdash;there was always something. The steady financial drain had
+      progressed even to an encumbrance on Ringwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ringwood was simply a training farm, located close to an old disused race
+      course, for there had been no racing in Brookfield for years.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      *         *         *         *         *         *
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Inadvertently the Reverend Mr. Dolman had intensified the strained
+      relationship that existed between the good people who frowned upon all
+      racing endeavor and those who saw but little sinfulness in John Porter's
+      way of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The church was in debt&mdash;everything in Brookfield was, except the town
+      pump. The pastor was a nervous, zealous worker, and it occurred to him
+      that a concert might lighten the financial load. The idea was not
+      alarmingly original, and the carrying out of it was on conventional lines:
+      local volunteer talent, and a strong appeal to the people of Brookfield
+      for their patronage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The concert in the little old clap-boarded church, it's sides faded and
+      blistered by many seasons of tempest and scorching sun, was an unqualified
+      success up to the fifth number. Nothing could have been more successful,
+      or even evoked greater applause, than the fourth effort, &ldquo;Anchored,&rdquo; as
+      rendered by the village pride in the matter of baritone singing; even De
+      Reszke never experienced a more genuine triumph. The applause gradually
+      fell away, and programmes were consulted preparatory to a correct
+      readiness for the fifth offering. The programmes confided that &ldquo;The Death
+      of Crusader,&rdquo; by Miss Allis Porter, was the next item.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the front row of seats a prim little body, full of a severe quaintness
+      in every quirk of dress, tilted her head toward a neighbor, and whispered,
+      &ldquo;It's that racin' gal of John Porter's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The neighbor answered in a creak meant for a whisper: &ldquo;I'm right glad
+      she's took to religion for onct, an' is givin' us somethin' about them
+      Crusaders. They was in Palestine, you know. She's been away to boardin'
+      school all winter, an' I guess it'll be a high-falutin' account of the
+      war.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The quaint little old lady jerked her head up and down with decisive
+      bobbiness. On the third upward bob her eyes opened wide in astonishment&mdash;a
+      small, slim figure in a glaring red coat stood in the center of the
+      improvised platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From beneath the coat fell away in long graceful lines a black riding
+      skirt; a dark oval face, set with large wondrous gray eyes&mdash;the
+      Porter eyes&mdash;confronted the quaint little old lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the Porter gal,&rdquo; her neighbor squeaked; &ldquo;I've seen her a-top them
+      race horses more'n a hundred times. My! you'd think butter wouldn't melt
+      in her mouth, she's that prim now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The coat would melt it,&rdquo; commented the quaint one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a clear, soft girlish voice, with just a tremble of apprehensive
+      nervousness, giving it a lilt like a robin's, said:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                   THE RUN OF CRUSADER
+
+                              I
+
+    Full weight they had given the gallant big Black&mdash;a hundred
+        and sixty he carried;
+    And the run for the &ldquo;Hunt Cup&rdquo; was over three miles, with
+      mud-wall and water-jump studded.
+    The best racing days of the old horse were past&mdash;there'd
+          never been better nor braver
+    But now once again he must carry the silk I was needing the
+       help of Crusader.
+    Could he win at the weight, I whisperingly asked, as I
+       cinched up the saddle girt' tight;
+    He snuggled my hand as I gathered the rein, and I laughed
+       when they talked of defeat.
+    To the call of the bugle I swung to his back&mdash;like a rock was
+        the strength of his quarters.
+    At sight of the people he arched his lean neck, and they,
+        cheered for my King of all Hunters.
+
+                              II
+
+    Ten horses would strive for the prize&mdash;a big field, and the
+        pace would be killing.
+    From the West came Sweet Silver, a gray, gallant, and
+        fearless in jumping.
+    A rakish old nag who walked over the sticks, had been sent
+        for the Cup from Kentucky;
+    On a bay, Little Jack, who was fast, they had put but a
+        hundred and thirty.
+    But I knew that North Star, a big brown&mdash;even the Black was
+        no gamer-
+    With a pull of ten pounds in the weight, was almost a match
+        for Crusader.
+    We made a brave troop, long-striding and strong, with the
+        pick of cross-country riders,
+    As we filed past the Stand in stately parade, with its
+        thousands of eager admirers,
+    And down to the turn on the lower far side, where a red flag
+        was flicking the sunlight;
+    For twice we must circle the green-swarded field, and finish
+        close under the paddock.
+
+                              III
+
+    Just once we lined up; then down cut the flag, and &ldquo;Go!&rdquo;
+         hoarse-voiced the Starter;
+    And the thunder of hoofs, and the clanking of bits, made
+        music to me on Crusader.
+    Quick to the front, like a deer, sped a mare, a chestnut,
+        making the running;
+    But I steadied my mount, and took him far back&mdash;with his
+        weight he would need all my nursing.
+    They took the first hedge like sheep in a bunch, bit to bit,
+        and stirrups a-jingle;
+    And so past the Stand to the broad water-jump, where three
+        went down, in a tangle.
+    I trailed at the heels of the Silver Gray&mdash;but Crusader was
+        begging for halter
+    And flew the wide ditch with the swoop of a bird, and on
+        again, lapped on his quarter.
+    Then over the Liverpool, racing like mad,&mdash;where Sweet
+        Silver fell fighting for lead,
+    And his rider lay crushed, white-faced to the sky; and to
+        miss him Crusader jumped wide.
+
+                              IV
+
+    At the bank something struck, and a cloud of white dust hid
+        the wall as though it were shrouded;
+    But the big gallant Black took off with a swing&mdash;full thirty
+        feet ere we had landed.
+    As we rounded the turn I could see Little Jack go up to the
+         mare that was leading;
+    Then I let out a wrap, and quickened my pace, to work clear
+         of those that were tiring.
+    Once again past the Stand we drove at the ditch that some
+         would never get over;
+    And a cheer shook the air as the Bay landed safe; with the
+         mare on her back in the water.
+    Then over went North Star&mdash;though he pecked, and nearly
+         emptied his saddle.
+    As I lifted the Black at his heels, he frothed the Brown's
+         flank with his nozzle.
+
+                              V
+
+    Then down the back stretch, o'er hedge and o'er bank, we
+         three were racing together;
+    Till at the next rail the Bay jostled the Brown, and
+         riderless crashed through the timber.
+    So we rounded the turn, and into the straight&mdash;North Star's
+         lean flank we were lapping
+    But we shot to the front when I gave the Black head, and I
+         saw that the other was stopping.
+    We raced as one horse at the very last hedge&mdash;just a nose in
+         front was Crusader;
+    I felt the big Brown bump twice at my side, and knew he was
+         ready to blunder.
+    With stirrups a-ding, empty-saddled the Bay, stride for
+         stride, galloped and floundered.
+    Just missing his swerve, I called on the Black, and drew out
+         as he bravely responded.
+
+                              VI
+
+    Just the last jump! and Crusader took off twenty feet from
+         the brush-covered timber.
+    Then the Bay jumped&mdash;too short for his stride&mdash;and fell,
+         with his head on my wither.
+    Down, down! almost to earth,&mdash;brought to his knees in the
+         struggle,
+    The Black lost a length, the Brown forged ahead, and I was
+         half out of the saddle.
+    How I sat down and rode! how the old horse strove! and the
+         Brown rolling tired in his gallop.
+    On, gallant Black! on, my brave pet!  We were almost under
+         the paddock.
+    Then we nosed the Brown's dank; then we reached to his girt';
+         neck and neck I rode at his shoulder.
+    As we flashed past the post I had won by a head. How they
+         cheered, &ldquo;Bravo, Crusader!&rdquo;
+
+                              VII
+
+    But Crusader stopped short; gave a sigh and fell dead; I
+         stood all alone in the winning.
+    And a hush came over the clamorous mob; like a babe on his
+         neck I was sobbing.
+    He had run his last race; game to the end, his brave heart
+         broke in the striving.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The girl's voice faltered and died away to a broken whisper as she told of
+      the death of Crusader. For a full minute there was a noiseless hush. The
+      full pathos of the gallant horse's striving had crept into the hearts that
+      were flesh and blood; and, carried away by their feelings, the people had
+      forgotten all about their tortured convictions of the sinfulness of making
+      a horse go faster than a sharp trot. Gradually into their awakening senses
+      stole a conviction that somehow they were countenancing the sin of racing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the complete horror of the situation had mastered the audience, a
+      strong pair of hands, far back in the church, came together with an
+      explosive clap. Like the rat-rat-tat of a quick-firing gun was the
+      appreciative volley of recognition from the solitary applauder. It went
+      rolling and crackling through the church defiantly, derisively,
+      appreciatively. Halfway up the aisle a softer pair of hands touched the
+      rattle with what sounded like a faint echo; then there was sudden silence.
+      The entire audience turned and looked disparagingly, discouragingly, at
+      the man who had figuratively risen as a champion of the scandalous
+      recitation. Resentment had taken hold of the good Christians. That
+      Crusader had enlisted their sympathies for a few minutes showed the
+      dangerous subtlety of this &ldquo;horseracin' business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rest of the programme might just as well have been eliminated; the
+      concert, as a concert, would be discussed for all time to come as having
+      projected &ldquo;The Death of Crusader.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The people flowed from the church full of an expressive contentiousness,
+      seeking by exuberant condemnation of the sacrilege to square themselves
+      somehow with their consciences for the brief backsliding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where the church path turned into the road a group of men had drawn
+      together, attracted by the magnet of discussion. They quite blocked the
+      pathway, oblivious to everything but their outraged feelings. Like a great
+      dark blotch in the night the group stood; and presently two slight gray
+      shadows slipping up the path, coming to the human barricade, stopped,
+      wavered, and circled out on the grass to pass. The shadows were Allis
+      Porter and her brother Alan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the men, overfilled with his exceeding wrath, seeing the girl, gave
+      expression to a most unchristian opinion of her modesty. The sharp ears of
+      the boy heard the words of the man of harsh instinct, and his face flushed
+      hot with resentment. He half turned, bitter reproach rising to his lips.
+      How could men be so brutish? How could they be so base? To speak ill of
+      his sister Allis, who was just the purest, sweetest little woman that ever
+      lived&mdash;too brave and true to be anything else but good!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he turned he saw something that checked his futile anger. A tall shadow
+      that had come up the path behind them stretched out an arm, and he heard
+      the vilifier's words gurgle and die away, as one of the strong hands that
+      had beat the tattoo of approbation clutched him by the throat. The boy
+      would have rushed to the assistance of this executive friend if the girl
+      had not clasped his arm in detention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Mortimer!&rdquo; he cried, as a voice from the strong-armed figure cut the
+      night air with sharp decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the shadowy forms twisted up grotesquely, weaving in and out. There
+      were voices of expostulation and strong words of anger; but the new
+      serious business that had materialized had most effectually put a stop to
+      reflections upon the innocent girl who had so unwittingly offended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's George Mortimer&mdash;he's in our bank,&rdquo; Alan confided to his
+      sister, as they moved away. &ldquo;He's all right&mdash;he's strong as a horse;
+      and I bet Crandal'll have a kink in his neck to-morrow, where George
+      pinched him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was it about?&rdquo; the girl asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crandal was jawing about people who own race horses,&rdquo; the boy answered,
+      evasively. &ldquo;It's Crandal, the butcher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was the May meeting at Morris Park, and Morris Park is the most
+      beautiful race course in all America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Porter, walking up the steps of the Grand Stand, heard some one call
+      him by name. Turning his head, he saw it was James Danby, an owner,
+      sitting in his private box. Porter turned into the box, and taking the
+      chair the other pushed toward him, sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about Lucretia?&rdquo; asked Danby, with the air of an established
+      friendship which permitted the asking of such questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's ready to the minute,&rdquo; replied Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can she get the five furlongs?&rdquo; queried Danby. &ldquo;She's by Assassin, and
+      some of them were quitters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll quit if she falls dead,&rdquo; replied the other man, quietly. &ldquo;I've
+      worked her good enough to win, and I'm backing her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll do for me,&rdquo; declared Danby. &ldquo;To tell you the truth, John, I like
+      the little mare myself; but I hear that Langdon, who trained Lauzanne,
+      expects to win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mare'll be there, or thereabouts,&rdquo; asserted her owner; &ldquo;I never knew
+      a Lazzarone yet much good as a two-year-old. They're sulky brutes, like
+      the old horse; and if Lucretia's beat, it won't be Lauzanne that'll turn
+      the trick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bell clanged imperiously at the Judges' Stand. Porter pulled out his
+      watch and looked at it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's saddling,&rdquo; he remarked, laconically; &ldquo;I must go and have a bit on
+      the mare, and then take a look at her before she goes out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Porter went down the steps his companion leaned over the rail and
+      crooked his fingers at a thin-faced man with a blond mustache who had been
+      keeping a corner of his eye on the box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are they making favorite, Lewis?&rdquo; queried Danby, as the thin-faced
+      man stood beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucretia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's her price?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two to one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's second favorite?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lauzanne&mdash;five to two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Porter tells me Lucretia is good business,&rdquo; said Danby, in a tentative
+      tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Langdon thinks it's all over bar the shouting; he says Lauzanne
+      outclasses his field,&rdquo; retorted Lewis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Langdon's a betting man; Porter's an owner, and a good judge,&rdquo; objected
+      Danby; &ldquo;and he's got a good boy up, too, McKay,&rdquo; he added, slowly focusing
+      his field glasses on the jockey board opposite the Stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crooked as a dog's hind legs,&rdquo; snarled Lewis, biting viciously at his
+      cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bob, it's damned hard to find a straight-legged dog,&rdquo; laughed Danby. &ldquo;And
+      when John Porter starts a horse, there's never anything doing. Here's six
+      hundred; put' it on the mare&mdash;straight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Lewis pushed his way into the shoving, seething, elbowing crowd in the
+      betting ring, he was suddenly struck in the chest by something which
+      apparently had the momentum of an eight-inch shell; but it was only John
+      Porter, who, in breaking through the outer crust of the living mass, had
+      been ejected with more speed than was of his own volition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who the
+      unwitting offender was, and asked, &ldquo;What are they doin' to the mare in the
+      ring?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much,&rdquo; answered his assailant, catching his breath; &ldquo;there's a strong
+      play on Langdon's horse, and if I didn't know my boy pretty well, and
+      Lucretia better, I'd have weakened a bit. But she can't lose, she can't
+      lose!&rdquo; he repeated in the tone of a man who is reassuring himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lewis battled his way along till he stood in front of a bookmaker with a
+      face cast very much on the lines of a Rubens' cherub; but the cherub-type
+      ended abruptly with the plump frontispiece of &ldquo;Jakey&rdquo; Faust, the
+      bookmaker. Lewis knew that. &ldquo;If there's anythin' doin', I'm up against it
+      here,&rdquo; he muttered to himself. &ldquo;What's Lauzanne's price?&rdquo; he asked, in an
+      indifferent voice, for the bookmaker's assistant was busy changing the
+      figures on his list.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust pretended not to hear him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure thing!&rdquo; whispered Lewis to himself. Then aloud he repeated the
+      question, touching the bookmaker on the elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cherub smiled blandly. &ldquo;Not takin' any,&rdquo; he answered, nodding his head
+      in the pleasant manner of a man who knows when he's got a good thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's Lucretia?&rdquo; persisted Lewis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! that's it, is it? I'll lay you two to one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The questioner edged away, shaking his head solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here! five to two&mdash;how much&mdash;&rdquo; but Lewis was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He burrowed like a mole most industriously, regardless of people's toes,
+      their ribs, their dark looks, and even angry expressions of strong
+      disapproval, and when he gained the green sward of the lawn, hurried to
+      his friend's box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you get it on?&rdquo; queried the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I don't like the look of it. Faust is holding out Lauzanne, and
+      stretched me half a point about the mare. He and Langdon are in the same
+      boat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that won't win the race,&rdquo; remonstrated Danby. &ldquo;Lauzanne is a maiden,
+      and Porter doesn't often make a mistake about any of his own stock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought I'd come back and tell you,&rdquo; said Bob Lewis, apologetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you did right; but if the mare wins, and I'm not on, after getting it
+      straight from Porter, I'd want to go out and kick myself good and hard.
+      But put it on straight and place; then if Lauzanne's the goods we'll
+      save.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lewis was gone about four minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're on,&rdquo; he said, when he returned; &ldquo;I've two hundred on the Chestnut
+      for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lauzanne?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's booked that way; but I'm backin' the Trainer, Langdon. I went on my
+      uppers two years ago backing horses; I'm following men now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bad business,&rdquo; objected his stout friend; &ldquo;it's bad business to back
+      anything that talks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When John Porter reached the saddling paddock, his brown mare, Lucretia,
+      was being led around in a circle in the lower corner. As he walked down
+      toward her his trainer, Andy Dixon, came forward a few paces to meet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they hammerin' Crane's horse in the ring, sir?&rdquo; he asked, smoothing
+      down the grass with the toe of one foot, watching this physical process
+      with extreme interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just what you'd notice,&rdquo; replied Porter. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't like the look of it a little bit. Here's this Lauzanne runs
+      like a dog the last time out&mdash;last by the length of a street&mdash;and
+      now I've got it pretty straight they're out for the stuff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They'd a stable-boy up on him that time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just it,&rdquo; cried Dixon. &ldquo;Grant comes to me that day&mdash;you know
+      Grant, he works the commission for Dick Langdon&mdash;and tells me to
+      leave the horse alone; and to-day he comes and&mdash;&rdquo; he hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tells me to go light on our mare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't Grant broke?&rdquo; asked Porter, with seeming irrelevance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's close next it,&rdquo; answered the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't his friends that follow him all broke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A good many of them have their address in Queer Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Andy,&rdquo; said the owner, &ldquo;there isn't a man with a horse in this
+      stake that doesn't think he's going to win; and when it's all over we'll
+      see Lucretia's number go up. Grant's a fool,&rdquo; he added, viciously. &ldquo;Didn't
+      he break Fisher-didn't he break every other man that ever stuck to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not Grant at all,&rdquo; replied Dixon, rubbing the palms of his hands
+      together thoughtfully&mdash;a way he had when he wished to concentrate in
+      concrete form the result of some deep cogitation&mdash;&ldquo;it's Langdon, an'
+      he's several blocks away from an asylum.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Langdon makes mistakes too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He cashes in often when he's credited with a mistake,&rdquo; retorted the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I've played the little mare,&rdquo; asserted Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much, sir?&rdquo; asked Dixon, solicitously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All I can stand&mdash;and a little more,&rdquo; he added, falteringly; &ldquo;I
+      needed a win, a good win,&rdquo; he offered, in an explanatory voice. &ldquo;I want to
+      clear Ringwood&mdash;but never mind about that, Andy. The mare's well&mdash;ain't
+      she? There can't be anything doing with McKay&mdash;we've only put him up
+      a few times, but he seems all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think we'll win,&rdquo; answered the Trainer; &ldquo;I didn't get anythin' straight&mdash;just
+      that there seemed a deuced strong tip on Lauzanne, considerin' that he'd
+      never showed any form to warrant it. Yonder he is, sir, in number five&mdash;go
+      and have a look at him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As John Porter walked across the paddock a horseman touched the fingers of
+      his right hand to his cap. There was a half-concealed look of interest in
+      the man's eye that Porter knew from experience meant something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you know, Mike?&rdquo; he asked, carelessly, only half halting in his
+      stride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nottin' sir; but dere's somebody in de know dis trip. Yer mare's a good
+      little filly, w'en she's right, but ye'r up against it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter stopped and looked at the horseman. He was Mike Gaynor, a trainer,
+      and more than once Porter had stood his friend. Mike always had on hand
+      three or four horses of inconceivable slowness, and uncertainty of wind
+      and limb; consequently there was an ever-recurring inability to pay feed
+      bills, so he had every chance to know just who was his friend and who was
+      not, for he tried them most sorely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter knew all this quite well; also that in spite of Mike's chronic
+      impecuniosity he was honest, and true as steel to a benefactor. He waited,
+      feeling sure that Gaynor had something to tell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a strong play on Lauzanne, ain't there, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure t'ing! That Langdon's a crook. I knowed him when he was ridin' on
+      freight cars; now he's a swell, though he's a long sprint from bein' a
+      gentleman. I got de tip dat dere was a killin' on, an' I axed Dick Langdon
+      if dere was anyt'ing doin'; an' Dick says to me, says he, puttin' hot'
+      t'umbs up&rdquo;&mdash;and Mike held both hands out horizontally with the thumbs
+      stiff and vertical to illustrate this form of oath&mdash;&ldquo;'there's nottin'
+      doin', Mike,' says he. What d'ye t'ink of that, sir, an' me knowin' there
+      was?&rdquo; asked Mike, tragically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the biggest tip that always falls down, Gaynor; and they've got to
+      be pretty swift to beat Lucretia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That filly's all right; she's worked out well enough to do up that field
+      of stiffs. I ain't no rail bird, but I've hed me eye on her. But I ain't
+      doin' no stunt about horses, Mister Porter; I'm talkin' about men. Th'
+      filly's honest, and ye'r honest sir, but ye don't roide th' mare yerself,
+      do ye?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think, Mike&mdash;&rdquo; began Mr. Porter, questioningly; but Gaynor
+      interrupted him with: &ldquo;I don't think nothin', sir, an' I ain't sayin'
+      nothin. I ain't never been before the Stewards yet for crooked work, or
+      crooked talk; but there's a boy ridin' in dat bunch to-day w'at got six
+      hundred for t'rowing me down once, see? S'elp me God! he pulled Blue Smoke
+      to a standstill on me, knowin' that it would break me. That was at Coney
+      Island, two years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don't remember his name, I suppose, Mike?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't remember not'in' but that I got it in th' neck. But ye keep yer
+      eye open, sir. Ye t'ink that none of the b'ys would t'row ye down cause
+      ye've been good to 'em; but some of 'em are that mean they'd steal th'
+      sugar from a fly. I know 'em. I hears 'em talk, cause they don't mind me&mdash;t'ink
+      I'm one of th' gang.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you very much, Gaynor; I appreciate your kindly warning; but I hope
+      you're mistaken, all the same,&rdquo; said Porter. Then he proceeded on his way
+      toward stall five, in which was Lauzanne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How are you, Mr. Porter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Philip Crane, standing just outside of the stall, who thus
+      addressed him. &ldquo;Got something running today?&rdquo; he continued, with vague
+      innocence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon, just inside the box, chuckled softly. Surely Crane was a past
+      master in duplicity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm starting Lucretia in this race,&rdquo; replied Honest John.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Then Crane took Porter gently by the sleeve and drew him half within
+      the stall. &ldquo;Mr. Langdon, who trains a horse or two for me, says this
+      one'll win;&rdquo; and he indicated the big chestnut colt that the Trainer was
+      binding tight to a light racing saddle. &ldquo;You'd better have a bit on, Mr.
+      Porter,&rdquo; Crane added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucretia carries my money,&rdquo; answered Porter in loyalty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon looked up, having cinched the girth tight, and took a step toward
+      the two men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we both can't win,&rdquo; he said, half insolently; &ldquo;an' I don't think
+      there's anything out to-day'll beat Lauzanne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That mare'll beat him,&rdquo; retorted Porter, curtly, nettled by the other's
+      cocksureness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll bet you one horse against the other, the winner to take both,&rdquo; cried
+      Langdon in a sneering, defiant tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've made my bets,&rdquo; said Lucretia's owner, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hear you had an offer of five thousand for your filly, Mr. Porter,&rdquo;
+       half queried Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did, and I refused it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And here's the one that'll beat her to-day, an' I'll sell him for half
+      that,&rdquo; asserted the Trainer, putting his hand on Lauzanne's neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Exasperated by the persistent boastfulness of Langdon, Porter was angered
+      into saying, &ldquo;If he beats my mare, I'll give you that for him myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done!&rdquo; snapped Langdon. &ldquo;I've said it, an' I'll stick to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want the horse&mdash;&rdquo; began Porter; but Langdon interrupted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you want to crawl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never crawl,&rdquo; said Porter fiercely. &ldquo;I don't want your horse, but just
+      to show you what I think of your chance of winning, I'll give you two
+      thousand and a half if you beat my mare, no matter what wins the race.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you'd better call this bargain off, Mr. Porter,&rdquo; remonstrated
+      Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the bargain will be off,&rdquo; answered John Porter; &ldquo;if I'm any judge,
+      Lauzanne's running his race right here in the stall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His practiced eye had summed up Lauzanne as chicken-hearted; the sweat was
+      running in little streams down the big Chestnut's legs, and dripping from
+      his belly into the drinking earth spit-spit, drip-drip; his head was high
+      held in nervous apprehension; his lips twitched, his flanks trembled like
+      wind-distressed water, and the white of his eye was showing ominously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon cast a quick, significant, cautioning look at Crane as Porter
+      spoke of the horse; then he said, &ldquo;You're a fair judge, an' if you're
+      right you get all the stuff an' no horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I stand to my bargain whatever happens,&rdquo; Porter retorted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant the bugle sounded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up, Westley,&rdquo; Langdon said to his jockey, &ldquo;they're going out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he lifted the boy to the saddle, the Trainer whispered a few concise
+      directions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold him steady at the post,&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;I've got him a bit on edge
+      to-day. Get off in front and stay there; he's feelin' good enough to leave
+      the earth. This'll be a matter of a couple of hundred to you if you win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All out! all out!&rdquo; called the voice, of the paddock offcial. &ldquo;Number
+      one!&rdquo; then, &ldquo;Come on you, Wesltey! they're all out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The ten starters passed in stately procession from the green-swarded
+      paddock through an open gate to the soft harrowed earth, gleaming
+      pink-brown in the sunlight, of the course. How consciously beautiful the
+      thoroughbreds looked! The long sweeping step; the supple bend of the
+      fetlock as it gave like a wire spring under the weight of great broad
+      quarters, all sinewy strength and tapered perfection; the stretch of
+      gentle-curved neck, sweet-lined as a greyhound's, bearing a lean, bony
+      head, set with two great jewels of eyes, in which were honesty and
+      courage, and eager longing for the battle of strength and stamina, and
+      stoutness of heart; even the nostrils, with a red transparency as of silk,
+      spread and drank eagerly the warm summer air that was full of the perfume
+      of new-growing clover and green pasture-land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surely the spectacle of these lovely creatures, nearest to man in their
+      thoughts and their desires, and superior in their honesty and truth, was a
+      sight to gladden the hearts of kings. Of a great certainty it was a sport
+      of kings; and also most certainly had it at times come into the hands of
+      highway robbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some such bitter thought as this came into the heart of John Porter as he
+      stood and watched his beautiful brown mare, Lucretia, trailing with
+      stately step behind the others. He loved good horses with all the fervor
+      of his own strong, simple, honest nature. Their walk was a delight to him,
+      their roaring gallop a frenzy of eager sensation. There was nothing in the
+      world he loved so well. Yes&mdash;his daughter Allis. But just now he was
+      thinking of Lucretia&mdash;Lucretia and her rival, the golden-haired
+      chestnut, Lauzanne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed through the narrow gate leading from the paddock to the Grand
+      Stand. The gate keeper nodded pleasantly to him and said: &ldquo;Hope you'll do
+      the trick with the little mare, sir. I'm twenty years at the business, and
+      I haven't got over my likin' for an honest horse and an honest owner yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was covert insinuation of suspicion, albeit a kindly one, in the
+      man's voice. The very air was full of the taint of crookedness; else why
+      should the official speak of honesty at all? Everyone knew that John
+      Porter raced to win.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He crossed the lawn and leaned against the course fence, to take a
+      deciding look at the mare and the Chestnut as they circled past the stand
+      in the little view-promenade which preceded the race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His trained eye told him that Lauzanne was a grand-looking horse; big,
+      well-developed shoulders reached back toward the huge quarters until the
+      small racing saddle almost covered the short back. What great promise of
+      weight-carrying was there!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He laughed a little at the irrelevance of this thought, for it was not a
+      question of weight-carrying at all; two-year-olds at a hundred pounds in a
+      sprint of only five furlongs. Speed was the great factor to be considered,
+      and surely Lucretia outclassed the other in that way. The long,
+      well-ribbed-up body, with just a trace of gauntness in the flank; the slim
+      neck; the deep chest; the broad, flat canon bones, and the well-let-down
+      hocks, giving a length of thigh like a greyhound's&mdash;and the thighs
+      themselves, as John Porter looked at them under the tucked-up belly of the
+      gentle mare, big, and strong, and full of a driving force that should make
+      the others break a record to beat her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the inquisition of the owner's study Lucretia stood forth triumphant;
+      neither the Chestnut nor anything else in the race could beat her. And
+      Jockey McKay&mdash;Porter raised his eyes involuntarily, seeking for some
+      occult refutation of the implied dishonesty of the boy he had trusted. He
+      found himself gazing straight into the small shifty eyes of Lucretia's
+      midget rider, and such a hungry, wolfish look of mingled cunning and
+      cupidity was there that Porter almost shuddered. The insinuations of Mike
+      Gaynor, and the other things that pointed at a job being on, hadn't half
+      the force of the dishonesty that was so apparent in the tell-tale look of
+      the morally, irresponsible boy in whose hands he was so completely
+      helpless. All the careful preparation of the mare, the economical saving,
+      even to the self-denial of almost necessary things to the end that he
+      might have funds to back her heavily when she ran; and the high trials she
+      had given him when asked the question, and which had gladdened his heart
+      and brought an exclamation of satisfaction from his phlegmatic trainer;
+      the girlish interest of his daughter in the expected triumph&mdash;all
+      these contingencies were as less than nothing should the boy, with the
+      look of a demon in his eyes, not ride straight and honest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even then it was not too late to ask the Stewards to set McKay down, but
+      what proof had he to offer that there was anything wrong? The boy's good
+      name would be blasted should he, John Porter, say at the last minute that
+      he did not trust him; and perhaps the lad was innocent. Race people were
+      ready to cry out that a jockey was fixed-that there was something wrong,
+      when their own judgment was at fault and they lost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Porter gave a cry of astonishment. &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; he muttered, &ldquo;the
+      boy has got spurs on. That'll set the mare clean crazy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned to Dixon, who was at his elbow: &ldquo;Why did you let McKay put on
+      the steels?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him not to.&rdquo; &ldquo;He's got them on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've got to come off,&rdquo; and the Trainer dashed up the steps to the
+      Stewards. In two minutes he returned, a heavy frown on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; queried Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've made a mess of it,&rdquo; answered Dixon, sullenly. &ldquo;It seems there's
+      hints of a job on, an' the Stewards have got the wrong end of the stick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They refused to let the mare go back to the paddock?&rdquo; queried Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; an' one of them said that if trainers would stick closer to their
+      horses, an' keep out of the bettin' ring, that the public'd get a better
+      run for their money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry, Andy,&rdquo; said Porter, consolingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's pretty tough on me, but it's worse on you, sir. That boy hadn't
+      spurs when he weighed, an' there's the rankest kind of a job on, I'll take
+      me oath.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got to stand to it, Andy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That we have; we've just got to take our medicine like little men. Even
+      if we make a break an' take McKay off there isn't another good boy left.
+      If he jabs the little mare with them steels she'll go clean crazy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's my fault, Andy. I guess I've saved and petted her a bit too much.
+      But she never needed spurs&mdash;she'd break her heart trying without
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By God!&rdquo; muttered Dixon as he went back to the paddock, &ldquo;if the boy stops
+      the mare he'll never get another mount, if I can help it. It's this sort
+      of thing that kills the whole business of racing. Here's a stable that's
+      straight from owner to exercise boy, and now likely to throw down the
+      public and stand a chance of getting ruled off ourselves because of a
+      gambling little thief that can spend the income of a prince. But after all
+      it isn't his fault. I know who ought to be warned off if this race is
+      fixed; but they won't be able to touch a hair of him; he's too damn slick.
+      But his time'll come&mdash;God knows how many men he'll break in the
+      meantime, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As John Porter passed Danby's box going up into the stand, the latter
+      leaned over in his chair, touched him on the arm and said, &ldquo;Come in and
+      take a seat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't,&rdquo; replied the other man, &ldquo;my daughter is up there somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've played the mare,&rdquo; declared Danby, showing Porter a memo written in a
+      small betting book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter started and a frown crossed his brown face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry&mdash;I'm afraid it's no cinch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five to two never is,&rdquo; laughed his friend. &ldquo;But she's a right smart
+      filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a
+      fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him over to
+      me, John.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mare's good enough,&rdquo; said Porter, &ldquo;and I've played her myself&mdash;a
+      stiffish bit, too; but all the same, if you asked me now, I'd tell you to
+      keep your money in your pocket. I must go,&rdquo; he added, his eye catching the
+      flutter of a race card which was waving to him three seats up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's a seat, Dad,&rdquo; cried the girl, cheeringly, lifting her coat from a
+      chair she had kept for her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant John Porter forgot all about Lucretia and her troubles. The
+      winsome little woman had the faculty of always making him forget his
+      trials; she had to the fullest extent that power so often found in plain
+      faces. Strictly speaking, she wasn't beautiful&mdash;any man would have
+      passed that opinion if suddenly asked the question upon first seeing her.
+      Doubt of the excellence of this judgment might have crept into his mind
+      after he had felt the converting influence of the blue-gray eyes that were
+      so much like her father's; in them was the most beautiful thing in the
+      world, an undoubted evidence of truth and honesty and sympathy. She was
+      small and slender, but no one had ever likened her to a flower. There was
+      apparent sinewy strength and vigor in the small form. Her life, claimed by
+      the open air, had its reward&mdash;the saddle is no cradle for weaklings.
+      Bred in an atmosphere of racing, and surrounded as she had always been by
+      thoroughbreds, Allis had grown up full of admiration for their honesty,
+      and courage, and sweet temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In John Porter's home horse racing had no debasing effect. If a man
+      couldn't race squarely&mdash;run to win every time&mdash;he had better
+      quit the game, Porter had always asserted. He raced honestly and bet
+      openly, without cant and without hypocrisy; just as a financier might have
+      traded in stocks in Wall Street; or a farmer might plant his crops and
+      trust to the future and fair weather to yield him a harvest in return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much of the racing life was on honor&mdash;so much of the working out
+      of it was in the open, where purple-clovered fields gave rest, and health,
+      and strength, that the home atmosphere was impregnated with moral truth,
+      and courage, and frankness, in its influence on the girl's development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every twist of her sinewy figure bore mute testimony to this; every glance
+      from her wondrous eyes was an eloquent substantiating argument in favor of
+      the life she affected. John Porter looked down at the small, rather dark,
+      upturned face, and a half-amused smile of content came to his lips. &ldquo;Did
+      you see Lucretia?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Isn't she a beauty? Hasn't Dixon got her in
+      the pink of condition?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw nothing else, father.&rdquo; She beckoned to him with her eyes, tipped
+      her head forward, and whispered: &ldquo;Those people behind us have backed
+      Lauzanne. I think they're racing folks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The father smiled as an uncultured woman's voice from one row back jarred
+      on his ear. Allis noticed the smile and its provocation, and said,
+      speaking hastily, &ldquo;I don't mean like you, father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like us,&rdquo; he corrected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, perhaps; they're more like betting or training people, though.&rdquo; She
+      put her hand on his arm warningly, as a high-pitched falsetto penetrated
+      the drone of their half-whispered words, saying, &ldquo;I tell you Dick knows
+      all about this Porter mare, Lucretia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I like her,&rdquo; a baritone voice answered. &ldquo;She looks a rattlin' filly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll dine off zwieback and by your lonely, Ned, if you play horses on
+      their looks&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or women either,&rdquo; the baritone cut in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a fair judge, Ned. But Dick told me to go the limit on Lauzanne,
+      and to leave the filly alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On form Lucretia ought to win,&rdquo; the man persisted; &ldquo;an' there's never
+      anythin' doin' with Porter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps not;&rdquo; the unpleasant feminine voice sneered mockingly, with an
+      ill-conditioned drawl on the &ldquo;perhaps&rdquo;; &ldquo;but he doesn't ride his own mare,
+      does he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Porter started. Again that distasteful expression fraught with
+      distrust and insinuation. There was a strong evil odor of stephanotis
+      wafted to his nostrils as the speaker shook her fan with impatient
+      decision. The perfume affected him disagreeably; it was like the
+      exhalation of some noisome drug; quite in keeping with the covert
+      insinuation of her words that Dick, as she called him&mdash;it must be
+      Dick Langdon, the trainer of Lauzanne, Porter mused&mdash;had given her
+      advice based on a knowledge quite irrespective of the galloping powers of
+      the two horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you hear that, father?&rdquo; Allis whispered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it all mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means, girl,&rdquo; he said, slowly, &ldquo;that all the trouble and pains I have
+      taken over Lucretia since she was foaled, two years ago, and her dam, the
+      old mare, Maid of Rome, died, even to raising the little filly on a
+      bottle, and watching over her temper that it should not be ruined by
+      brutal savages of stable-boys, whose one idea of a horse is that he must
+      be clubbed into submission&mdash;that all the care taken in her training,
+      and the money spent for her keep and entries goes for nothing in this
+      race, if Jockey McKay is the rascal I fear he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think some one has got at him, Dad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father nodded again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I'd been a boy, so that I could have ridden Lucretia for you
+      to-day,&rdquo; Allis exclaimed with sudden emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I almost wish you had, Little Woman; you'd have ridden straight anyway&mdash;there
+      never was a crooked one of our blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see why a jockey or anybody else should be dishonest&mdash;I'm
+      sure it must take too much valuable time to cover up crooked ways.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you'd have made a great jock, Little Woman;&rdquo; the father went on,
+      musingly, as he watched the horses lining up for the start. &ldquo;Men think if
+      a boy is a featherweight, and tough as a Bowery loafer, he's sure to be a
+      success in the saddle. That's what beats me&mdash;a boy of that sort
+      wouldn't be trusted to carry a letter with ten dollars in it, and on the
+      back of a good horse he's, piloting thousands. Unless a jockey has the
+      instincts of a gentleman, naturally, he's almost certain to turn out a
+      blackguard sooner or later, and throw down his owner. He'll have more
+      temptations in a week to violate his trust than a bank clerk would have in
+      a lifetime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that why you put Alan in the bank, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter went on as though he had not heard the daughter's query. &ldquo;To make a
+      first-class jock, a boy must have nerves of steel, the courage of a
+      bulldog, the self-controlling honesty of a monk. You've got all these
+      right enough, Allis, only you're a girl, don't you see&mdash;just a good
+      little woman,&rdquo; and he patted her hand affectionately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're off!&rdquo; exclaimed the baritone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not this trip,&rdquo; objected the falsetto.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The spurs&mdash;the young fiend!&rdquo; fiercely ejaculated John Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The boy on Lucretia is jabbing her with the spurs, and she's cutting up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the fourth false start,&rdquo; said Ned, the baritone. &ldquo;I don't think
+      much of your Lauzanne, he's like a crazy horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis heard the woman's shrill voice, smothered to a hissing whisper,
+      answer something. Two distinct words, &ldquo;the hop,&rdquo; carried to her ears.
+      There was a long-drawnout baritone, &ldquo;Oh-h!&rdquo; then, in the same key, &ldquo;I knew
+      Lauzanne was a sluggard, and couldn't make out why he was so frisky
+      to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dick's got it down fine&rdquo;&mdash;just audibly from the woman; &ldquo;Lauzanne'll
+      try right enough this time out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mare's actin' as if she'd a cup of tea, too,&rdquo; muttered her companion,
+      Ned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This elicited a dry chuckle from the woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis pinched her father's arm again, and looked up in his face
+      inquiringly, as from the seat behind them the jumbled conversation came to
+      their ears. Porter nodded his head understandingly, and frowned. The
+      stephanotis was choking his nostrils, and an occasional word was filling
+      his heart with confirmation of his suspicions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like it,&rdquo; he muttered to Allis. &ldquo;They've had four breaks, and the
+      mare's been left each time. The Chestnut's the worst actor I ever saw at
+      the post. But I'm thinking he'll leave the race right there, the way he's
+      cutting up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; he exclaimed in the next breath. He had startled the girl with
+      the fierce emphasis he threw into the words; she sprang to her feet in
+      excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A bell had clanged noisily, there was the shuffle of thousands of eager
+      feet; a hoarse cry, &ldquo;They're off!&rdquo; went rolling from tier to tier, from
+      seat to seat, to the topmost row of the huge stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lauzanne is off with a flying lead of three lengths, and the mare is left
+      absolutely-absolutely last. The boy whipped her about just as the flag
+      fell.&rdquo; There was the dreary monotone of crushed hope in Porter's voice as
+      he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we're out of it, Little Woman,&rdquo; he continued; and there was almost a
+      tone of relief, of resignation. Suspense was gone; realization of the
+      disaster seemed to have steadied his nerves again. Allis attempted to
+      speak, but her low voice was hushed to a whisper by the exultant cries
+      that were all about them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't I tell you&mdash;Lauzanne wins in a walk!&rdquo; the falsetto voice was
+      an exultant squeak of hilarious excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You called the turn.&rdquo; Even Ned's baritone had risen to a false-keyed
+      tenor; he was standing on his toes, peering over the heads of taller men
+      in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis brushed from her eyes the tears of sympathy that had welled into
+      them, and, raising her voice, spoke bravely, clinging to the vain hope:
+      &ldquo;Lucretia is game, father&mdash;she may win yet&mdash;the race is not lost
+      till they're past the post.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then her voice died away, and she kept pleading over and over in her
+      heart, &ldquo;Come on Lucretia&mdash;come on, brave little mare! Is she gaining,
+      father&mdash;can you see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll never make it up,&rdquo; Porter replied, as he watched the jumble of
+      red, and yellow, and black patterned into a trailing banner, which waved,
+      and vibrated, and streamed in the glittering sunlight, a furlong down the
+      Course&mdash;and the tail of it was his own blue, whitestarred jacket. In
+      front, still a good two lengths in front, gleamed scarlet, like an evil
+      eye, the all red of Lauzanne's colors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Lucretia, father?&rdquo; the girl asked again, stretching her slight
+      figure up in a vain endeavor to see over the shoulders of those in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She had an opening there,&rdquo; Porter replied, speaking his thoughts more
+      than answering the girl, &ldquo;but the boy pulled her into the bunch on the
+      rail. He doesn't want to get through. Oh!&rdquo; he exclaimed, as though some
+      one had struck him in the face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's wrong? Has she&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the Minstrel. His boy threw him fair across Lucretia, and knocked
+      her to her knees.&rdquo; He lowered his glasses listlessly. &ldquo;It's Lauzanne all
+      the way, if he lasts out. He's dying fast though, and Westley's gone to
+      the whip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was looking through his glasses again. Though beaten, his racing blood
+      was up. &ldquo;If Lauzanne wins it will be Westley's riding; the Hanover colt,
+      The Dutchman, is at his quarter. He'll beat him out, for the Hanovers are
+      all game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on you, Lauzanne!&rdquo; Even the exotic stephanotis failed to obliterate
+      the harsh, mercenary intensity of the feminine cry at the back of Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's beat!&rdquo; a deep discordant voice groaned. &ldquo;I knew he was a quitter;&rdquo;
+       the woman's companion was pessimistic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like trees of a forest, swayed by strong compelling winds, the people
+      rocked in excitement, tiptoed and craned eager necks, as they watched the
+      magnificent struggle that was drawing to a climax in the stretch. Inch by
+      inch the brave son of Hanover was creeping up on Lauzanne. How loosely the
+      big Chestnut galloped&mdash;rolling like a drunken man in the hour of his
+      distress. Close pressed to his neck, flat over his wither lay the intense
+      form of his rider&mdash;a camel's hump&mdash;a part of the racing
+      mechanism, unimpeding the weary horse in the masterly rigidity of his body
+      and legs; but the arms, even the shoulders of the great jockey thrust his
+      mount forward, always forward&mdash;forward at each stride; fairly lifting
+      him, till the very lurches of Lauzanne carried him toward the goal. And at
+      his girth raced the compact bay son of Hanover; galloping, galloping with
+      a stout heart and eager reaching head; straining every sinew, and muscle,
+      and nerve; in his eye the brave desire, not to be denied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, gallant little bay! On his back was the offspring of unthinking
+      parents&mdash;a pin-head. Perhaps the Evil One had ordained him to the
+      completion of Langdon's villainy with Lauzanne. At the pinch his judgment
+      had flown&mdash;he was become an instrument of torture; with whip and spur
+      he was throwing away the race. Each time he raised his arm and lashed, his
+      poor foolish body swayed in the saddle, and The Dutchman was checked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if he would but sit still!&rdquo; Porter cried, as he watched the equine
+      battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stand mob clamored as though Nero sat there and lions had been loosed
+      in the arena. The strange medley of cries smote on the ears of Allis. How
+      like wild beasts they were, how like wolves! She closed her eyes, for she
+      was weary of the struggle, and listened. Yes, they were wolves leaping at
+      the throat of her father, and joying in the defeat of Lucretia.
+      Deep-throated howls from full-chested wolves: &ldquo;Come on you, Lauzanne! On,
+      Westley, on! The Bay wins! The Dutchman&mdash;The Dutchman for a
+      thousand!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the new voice was stilled into nothingness by the shrill, reawakening
+      falsetto. &ldquo;Go on, Westley! Lauzanne wins&mdash;wins&mdash;wins!&rdquo; it seemed
+      to repeat. Allis sank back into her seat. She knew it was all over. The
+      shuffle of many feet hastening madly, the crash of eager heels down the
+      wooden steps, a surging, pushing, as the wolf-pack blocked each passage in
+      its thirstful rush for the gold it had won, told her that the race was
+      over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one knew which horse had won. Presently a quiet came over the mob like
+      a lull in a storm. Silently they waited for the winning number to go up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe it's a dead heat,&rdquo; said Porter; and Allis noted how calm and
+      restful his voice sounded after the exultant babel of the hoarse-throated
+      watchers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where was Lucretia, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Third,&rdquo; he answered, laconically, schooling his voice to indifference. &ldquo;I
+      hope it's a dead heat, for if Lauzanne gets the verdict I've got to take
+      him. I don't want him after that run; they made him a present of the race
+      at the start, and he only just squeezed home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why must you take the horse, father, if you don't want him? I don't
+      understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose there's no law for it&mdash;I said I would, that's all. The
+      whole thing is crooked though; they stole the race from Lucretia and
+      planted me with a dope horse, and hanged if I don't feel like backing out.
+      Let Langdon go before the Stewards about the sale if he dare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you give your word that you'd buy the horse, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did; but it was a plant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you'll take him, father. People say that John Porter's word is as
+      good as his bond; and that sounds sweeter in my ears than if I were to
+      hear them say that you were rich, or clever, or almost anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lauzanne gets it!&rdquo; called the eager grating voice behind them. &ldquo;There go
+      the numbers, Ned&mdash;three, five, ten; Lauzanne, The Dutchman, Lucretia.
+      I knew it. Dick don't make no mistakes when he's out for blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He drew it a bit fine that time,&rdquo; growled Ned, still in opposition; &ldquo;it
+      was the closest sort of a shave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurrah, Lauzanne!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again there was more hurrying of feet as the Chestnut's backers who had
+      waited in the stand for the Judge's decision, hurried down to the gold
+      mart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll take Lauzanne, father,&rdquo; Allis said, when the tumult had stilled;
+      &ldquo;it will come out right somehow&mdash;I know it will&mdash;he'll win
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Porter stood irresolutely for a minute, not answering the girl, as
+      though he were loath to go close to the contaminating influence that
+      seemed part and parcel of Lauzanne, and which was stretching out to
+      envelop him. He was thinking moodily that he had played against a man who
+      used loaded dice, and had lost through his own rashness. He had staked so
+      much on the race that the loss would cut cripplingly into his affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess you're right, Allis,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;a man's got to keep his word, no
+      matter what happens. I never owned a dope horse yet, and unless I'm
+      mistaken this yellow skate is one to-day. I'll take him though, girl; but
+      he'll get nothing but oats from me to make him gallop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Porter went resolutely down the steps, smothering in his heart the
+      just rebellion that was tempting him to repudiate his bargain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he reached the lawn, a lad swung eagerly up the steps, threw his eye
+      inquiringly along row after row of seats until it stopped at Allis. Then
+      he darted to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Sis&mdash;been looking for you. Where's Dad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone to get Lauzanne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lauzanne!&rdquo; and the boy's eyes that were exactly like her own, opened wide
+      in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; father bought him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The deuce! I say, Allis, that won't do. Don't you know there's something
+      wrong about this race? I just saved myself. I backed the little mare for a
+      V&mdash;then I heard something. This Langdon's a deuce of a queer fish, I
+      can tell you. I wonder Crane has anything to do with him, for the Boss is
+      straight as they make them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you back Lauzanne then, Alan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet I did; quick, too; and was hunting all over for the gov'nor to
+      tell him. You see, I know Langdon&mdash;he comes to the bank sometimes.
+      He's that slick he'll hardly say 'Good-day,' for fear of giving something
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then how did you&mdash;how did people know there was something wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, a woman, of course&mdash;she blabbed. I think she's Dick Langdon's
+      sister, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush-hh!&rdquo; and Allis laid her hand on the boy's arm, indicating with her
+      eyes the woman in the seat behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd better go and tell father&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't bother; he knows. It's a question of honor. Father said he'd
+      buy the horse, and he's gone to make good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't; that sort of thing will break a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a good way to go broke, Alan. Perhaps we'd all be richer if it
+      wasn't so strong in the Porter blood; but all the same, brother, you do
+      just as father is doing to-day&mdash;always keep your word. I tell you
+      what it is, boy&rdquo;&mdash;and her face lighted up as she spoke&mdash;&ldquo;father
+      is a hero&mdash;that's what he is; he's just the biggest, bravest man ever
+      lived. He couldn't do a mean act. How did you get away from the bank,
+      Alan?&rdquo; she said, changing the subject; &ldquo;I didn't know you were coming
+      to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mortimer was light, and took on my work. He's a good sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he bet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy laughed. &ldquo;Mortimer bet? That's rich. We call him 'Old Solemnity'
+      in the bank; but he doesn't mean any harm by it&mdash;he just can't help
+      it, that's all. If he had a stiff ruff about his neck, you could pose him
+      for a picture of one of those old Dutch burgomasters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's doing your work, and you're making fun of him, boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't make fun of him, at him, or with him; he's a grave digger; but
+      you can trust him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I'd killed a man and needed a friend to help me out, I'd go straight
+      to Mortimer; he's got that kind of eyes. Do you know why he's doing my
+      work to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you're away, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you recited that doggerel about The Run of Crusader.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alan! I've never spoken to Mr. Mortimer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's why he choked the butcher the night of the concert&mdash;I mean&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're talking nonsense, Alan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not, I know when a man's interested. Hello. Blest if the Boss isn't
+      coming this way&mdash;there's Crane. See, Allis? I've a notion to tell him
+      that his trainer is a crook.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you won't, Alan&mdash;you're too young to gabble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Philip Crane had evidently intended going higher up in the stand, but his
+      eye lighting on the brother and sister, he stopped, and turned in to where
+      they were sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good afternoon, Miss Porter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis started. Was the stand possessed of unpleasant voices? There was a
+      metallic ring in Crane's voice that affected her disagreeably. He was
+      almost a stranger to her; she hardly remembered ever having spoken to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned and nodded pleasantly to Alan, saying, &ldquo;May I take this seat?
+      I'm tired. The Cashier let you oft for the day, eh?&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Came
+      up to see your father's mare run, I suppose&mdash;I'm deuced sorry she was
+      beaten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are they waiting for&mdash;why have they taken the horses' numbers
+      down again? Are they trying to steal the race from Lauzanne now?&rdquo; It was
+      the woman's voice behind them, petulantly exclaiming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane turned in his seat, looked over his shoulder, and raised his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The impatient lady is my trainer's sister,&rdquo; he explained in a modulated
+      tone to Allis. &ldquo;A trainer is quite an autocrat, I assure you, and one must
+      be very careful not to forget any of the obvious courtesies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis wondered why he should find it necessary to make any explanation at
+      all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to thank you, Miss Porter, for that reading about Crusader.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis's eyes opened wide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I was there,&rdquo; Crane added, answering the question that was in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he said this a man came hurriedly up the steps, spoke to a policeman on
+      guard, and searched the faces with his eyes. Catching sight of Crane, he
+      came quickly forward and whispered something in his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, I must go&mdash;I'm wanted,&rdquo; Crane said to Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he turned, the Trainer's sister spoke to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter, Mr. Crane&mdash;there's something going on up in the
+      Stewards' Stand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fancy there's an objection, though I don't know anything about it,&rdquo; he
+      answered, as he went down the steps with the messenger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis breathed more freely when he had gone. Somehow his presence had
+      oppressed her; perhaps it was the fierce stephanotis that came in clouds
+      from the lady behind that smothered her senses. Crane had said nothing&mdash;just
+      an ordinary compliment. Like an inspiration it came to the girl what had
+      affected her so disagreeably in Crane&mdash;it was his eyes. They were
+      hard, cold, glittering gray eyes, looking out from between partly closed
+      eyelids. Allis could see them still. The lower lids cut straight across;
+      it was as though the eyes were peeping at her over a stone wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did I tell you about Crusader?&rdquo; Alan said, triumphantly. &ldquo;There's
+      another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wondered why Mr. Crane was so deuced friendly; but there's nothing to
+      get cross about, girl, he's a fine old chap, and got lots of wealth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned forward till he was close to his sister's ear, and added, in a
+      whisper, &ldquo;Her ladyship behind, Belle Langdon, is trying to hook him. Phew!&mdash;but
+      she's loud. But I'm off&mdash;I'm going to see what the row is about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When John Porter left the stand, the horses had just cantered back to
+      weigh in. The jockeys, one after another, with upraised whip, had saluted
+      the Judge, received his nod to dismount, pulled the saddles from their
+      steeds, and, in Indian file, were passing over the scales. As Lucretia was
+      led away, Porter turned into the paddock. He saw that Langdon was waiting
+      for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he won, just as I said he would,&rdquo; declared the latter; &ldquo;you've got
+      a good horse cheap. You'd ought to've had a bet down on him, an' won him
+      out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won,&rdquo; answered Porter, looking straight into the other's shifty eyes,
+      &ldquo;but he's a long way from being a good horse&mdash;no dope horse is a good
+      horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What're you givin' me?&rdquo; demanded Langdon, angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just what every blackguard ought to have&mdash;the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By God!&rdquo; the Trainer began, in fierce blasphemy, but John Porter took a
+      step nearer, and his gray eyes pierced the other man's soul until it
+      shriveled like a dried leaf, and turned its anger into fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you want to crawl&mdash;if you don't want to take Lauzanne&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Porter again interrupted Langdon&mdash;-&ldquo;I said I'd take the horse,
+      and I will; but don't think that you're fooling me, Mr. Langdon. You're a
+      blackguard of the first water. Thank God, there are only a few parasites
+      such as you are racing&mdash;it's creatures like you that give the sport a
+      black eye. If I can only get at the bottom of what has been done to-day,
+      you'll get ruled off, and you'll stay ruled off. Now turn Lauzanne over to
+      Andy Dixon, and come into the Secretary's office, where I'll give you a
+      check for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we'll settle about the horse now, an' there'll be somethin' to
+      settle between us, John Porter, at some other time and some other place,&rdquo;
+       blustered Langdon, threateningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter looked at him with a half-amused, half-tolerant expression on his
+      square face, and said, speaking in a very dry convincing voice: &ldquo;I guess
+      the check will close out all deals between us; it will pay you to keep out
+      of my way, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they moved toward the Secretary's office, Porter was accosted by his
+      trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Stewards want to speak to you, sir,&rdquo; said Dixon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right. Send a boy over to this man's stable for Lauzanne&mdash;I've
+      bought him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Trainer stared in amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give you the check when I come back,&rdquo; Porter continued, speaking to
+      Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's trouble on, sir,&rdquo; said Dixon, as they moved toward the Stewards'
+      box.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There always is,&rdquo; commented Porter, dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Stewards think Lucretia didn't run up to her form. They've had me up,
+      an' her jock, McKay, is there now. Starter Carson swears he couldn't get
+      her away from the post&mdash;says McKay fair anchored the mare. He fined
+      the boy fifty dollars at the start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think they've got the wrong pig by the ear&mdash;why don't they yank
+      Langdon? he's at the bottom of it. It a pretty rich, Andy, isn't it? They
+      hit me heavy over the race, and now they'd like to rule me off for that
+      thief's work,&rdquo; and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction
+      of Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, racin's hell now,&rdquo; commented Dixon with laconic directness. &ldquo;It
+      seems just no use workin' over a good horse when any mut of a crook who is
+      takin' a turn at plungin' can get at the boy. I believe Boston Bill's game
+      of gettin' a straight boy to play, an' lettin' the horses go hang, is the
+      proper racket.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, a good boy is better than a good horse nowadays; but they're like
+      North Poles&mdash;hard to come by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some mug give the Stewards a yarn that you'd bought Lauzanne, sir, an'
+      sez that's why you didn't win with the mare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter stopped, and gasped in astonishment. What next?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; continued Dixon, apologetically, &ldquo;I didn't know you was meanin'
+      to buy that skate, so I says it was all a damned lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things are mixed, Andy, ain't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not&mdash;I didn't mention it to you&mdash;it was all a fluke.
+      But I don't blame you, Andy. I'll go and talk to the Stewards&mdash;they're
+      all right; they only want to get at the truth of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Porter went up the steps of the Stewards' Stand, he felt how like a man
+      mounting a scaffold he was, an innocent man condemned to be hanged for
+      another's crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The investigation had been brought about by a note one of the Stewards had
+      received. The sender of the missive stated in it that he had backed
+      Lucretia heavily, but had strong reasons for believing there was a job on.
+      The backer was a reliable man and asked for a fair run for his money. The
+      note had come too late&mdash;just as the horses were starting&mdash;to be
+      of avail, except as a corroboration of the suspicious features of the
+      race. Starter Carson's evidence as to McKay's handling of the mare
+      coincided with the contents of the note. Then there was the fact of
+      Porter's having bought Lauzanne. The Stewards did not know the actual
+      circumstances of the sale, but had been told that Lucretia's owner had
+      acquired the Chestnut before the race. Where all was suspicion, every
+      trivial happening was laid hold of; and Alan's trifling bet on Lauzanne
+      had been magnified into a heavy plunge&mdash;no doubt the father's money
+      had been put up by the boy. A race course is like a household, everything
+      is known, absolutely everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter was aghast. Were all the Furies in league against him? He was more
+      or less a believer in lucky and unlucky days, but he had never experienced
+      anything quite so bad as this. He, the one innocent man in the
+      transaction, having lost almost his last dollar, and having been saddled
+      with a bad horse, was now accused of being the perpetrator of the
+      villainy; and the insinuation was backed up by such a mass of
+      circumstantial evidence. No wonder he flushed and stood silent, lost for
+      words to express his indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak up, Mr. Porter,&rdquo; said the Steward, kindly. &ldquo;Those that lost on
+      Lucretia are swearing the mare was pulled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And they're right,&rdquo; blurted out Porter. &ldquo;I know what the mare can do; she
+      can make hacks of that bunch. She was stopped, and interfered with, and
+      given all the worst of it from start to finish; but my money was burnt up
+      with the public's. I never pulled a horse in my life, and I'm too old to
+      begin now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe that,&rdquo; declared the Steward, emphatically. &ldquo;I've known you,
+      John Porter, for forty years, man and boy, and there never was anything
+      crooked. But we've got to clear this up. Racing isn't what it used to be&mdash;it's
+      on the square now, and we want the public to understand that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does the boy say,&rdquo; asked Porter; &ldquo;you've had him up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He says the mare was 'helped;' that she ran like a drunken man&mdash;swayed
+      all over the course, and he couldn't pull her together at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he mean she was doped?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've guessed it,&rdquo; answered the Steward, laconically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's nonsense, sir; and he knows it. Why, the little mare is as sweet
+      as a lamb, and as game a beast as ever looked through a bridle. Somebody
+      got at the boy. I can prove by Dixon that Lucretia never had a grain of
+      cocaine in her life&mdash;never even a bracer of whiskey&mdash;she doesn't
+      need it; and as for the race, I hadn't a cent on Lauzanne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He had a small bet; I didn't know that, even, until they were running.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you tell him not to back Lucretia, for he did Lauzanne?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told him not to bet at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you played the mare yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer Porter showed the Steward his race programme, on which was
+      written the wager he had made on Lucretia, and the bookmaker's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask Ullmer to bring his betting sheet,&rdquo; the Steward said to an assistant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the sheet, opposite John Porter's badge number, was a bet, $10,000 to
+      $4,000, in the Lucretia column.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did this gentleman make that bet with you?&rdquo; the Steward asked of Ullmer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He carries the number; besides I know Mr. Porter, I remember laying it to
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, that will do. Hit you pretty hard,&rdquo; he said, turning to
+      Porter. &ldquo;And you hadn't a saver on Lauzanne?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a dollar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about your buying him&mdash;is there anything in that story?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter explained the purchase. The Steward nodded his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They seem to have been pretty sure of winning, those other people,&rdquo; he
+      commented; &ldquo;but we can't do anything to them for winning; nor about
+      selling you the horse, I fear; and as far as you're concerned, Lucretia
+      was supposed to be trying. Who gave your jockey orders?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dixon. I don't interfere; he trains the horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'd like to have Dixon up here again for a minute. I'm sorry we've had
+      to trouble you, Mr. Porter; I can see there is not the slightest suspicion
+      attaches to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In answer to the Steward's query about the order to McKay, Dixon said: &ldquo;I
+      told McKay the boss had a big bet down, and to make no mistake&mdash;no
+      Grand Stand finish for me. I told him to get to the front as soon as he
+      could, and stay there, and win by as far as he liked. I got the office
+      that there'd be somethin' doin' in the race, an' I told him to get out by
+      himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After Dixon was dismissed, the Stewards consulted for a minute, with the
+      result that McKay was suspended for the balance of the meeting, pending a
+      further investigation into his methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      * * * * * * * * * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the carpeting of Porter and Dixon, a sea of upturned faces,
+      furrowed by lines of anxious interest, had surrounded the Judge's box.
+      Wave on wave the living waters reached back over the grassed lawn to the
+      betting ring. An indefinable feeling that something was wrong had crept
+      into the minds of the waiting people, tense with excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the horses had flashed past the post, and, after a brief wait for
+      decision, Lauzanne's number had gone up, his backers had hastened eagerly
+      to the money mart, and lined up in waiting rows behind the bookmakers'
+      stands. There they waited, fighting their impatient souls into submission,
+      for the brief wait would end in the acquiring of gold. Why did not the
+      stentorian-voiced crier send through the ring the joyful cry of &ldquo;All
+      right!&rdquo; The minutes went by, and the delay became an age. A whisper
+      vibrated the throng, as a breeze stirs slender branches, that the winner
+      had been disqualified&mdash;that there had been an objection. First one
+      dropped out of line; then another; one by one, until all stood, an army of
+      expectant speculators, waiting for the verdict that had its birthplace up
+      in that tiny square building, the Stewards' Stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's over the pulling of Lucretia,&rdquo; a man said, simply to relieve his
+      strained feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the most barefaced job I ever saw,&rdquo; declared another; &ldquo;it's even
+      betting the stable gets ruled off.&rdquo; He had backed Porter's mare, and was
+      vindictive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not on your life,&rdquo; sneered a Tout, wolfishly; &ldquo;a big owner always gets
+      off. The jock'll get it in the neck if they've been caught.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't they pay?&rdquo; whined the fourth. &ldquo;What's the pulling of the mare
+      got to do with it? The best horse won.&rdquo; He was a backer of Lauzanne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bet yer life the bookies won't part till the numbers of the placed horses
+      an' riders are up on that board again. They've run them down, don't you
+      see?&rdquo; chimed in the Tout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take two to one The Dutchman gets it,&rdquo; said a backer of that horse.
+      &ldquo;There's a job on, and they'll both get disqualified. Porter's kid won ten
+      thousand over Lauzanne, and that's why they stiffened the mare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what the Public are up against in this game,&rdquo; sneered the backer
+      of Lucretia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the jock'll have to stand the shot; I know how it goes,&rdquo; asserted the
+      Tout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to know,&rdquo; drawled Lauzanne's backer. The racing men within
+      earshot smiled, for the Tout had been a jockey before his license had been
+      taken away for crooked work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello! here it comes,&rdquo; cried Lauzanne's backer, as a fat, red-faced man
+      came swiftly down from the Stewards' Stand, ran to the betting ring, and
+      pushing his way through the crowd, called with the roar of a gorilla:
+      &ldquo;Al-l-l right! Lauzanne, first! The Dutchman, second! Lucretia, third!
+      They're al-l-l weighed in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A Niagara of human beings poured from the lawn to the ring; they ran as
+      though the course was on fire and they sought to escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about Lucretia?&rdquo; some one asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've broke McKay,&rdquo; the red-faced crier answered; &ldquo;suspended him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo; sneered the Tout, maliciously; &ldquo;it's the under dog
+      gets the worst of it every time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      * * * * * * * * * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Celt, is an outspoken man when the prod of his hot temper has loosened
+      his tongue, and Mike Gaynor was a Celt in excess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The injustice that had come to his benefactor, John Porter, had stirred a
+      tempest in his Irish soul. A fierce exclamation of profane wrath had gone
+      up from him as he watched the bad start from over the paddock rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A misguided retribution led Starter Carson to pass from the Judges' Stand
+      after the race, along the narrow passage between the Club Stand and the
+      course, to the paddock gate. There he met Mike, who forthwith set to
+      flailing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did ye notice a little mare called Lucretia in that race, Mr. Carson&mdash;did
+      ye see anythin' av her at all down at the post?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carson's eyes twinkled uneasily. Years of starting had taught him that
+      self-control was nine out of ten rules which should govern the Starter's
+      actions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was there anythin' th' mather wit' yer ancestor's eyes that ye come by,
+      Mister Carson?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Starter made answer with a smile of good-humored tolerance. But Mike
+      was only warming up; the hot blood was stinging his quick brain, and his
+      sharp tongue galloped on with unbridled irresponsibility. With the deep
+      pathos of scorn he continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye'r Carson the Stharter&mdash;Mister Carson! S'help me, Bob! ye couldn't
+      sthart a sthreet car down hill wit' bot' brakes off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carson ceased to smile; the smile had passed to other faces, the owners of
+      which were listening with fiendish delight to the castigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some one touched Mike on the arm, saying, &ldquo;Come over into the paddock,
+      Gaynor; you're barkin' up the wrong tree.&rdquo; It was Dixon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bot' t'umbs up! This game's too tough fer me&mdash;I'll ship me plugs to
+      Gravesend. Whin a straight man like Porther gets a deal av this kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, Mike,&rdquo; interrupted Dixon; &ldquo;let it drop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carson opened his lips to retort, then closed them tight, set his square
+      jaw firmly, turned on his heel, and walked away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What d' ye think av it, b'ys?&rdquo; appealed Mike to the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're wrong, Gaynor,&rdquo; declared a thin, tall, hawkfaced man, who was in
+      his shirt sleeves; &ldquo;my boy was in that run, and it isn't Carson's fault at
+      all. It's dope, Mike. Lauzanne was fair crazy with it at the post; and
+      McKay was dead to the world on the little mare&mdash;the Starter couldn't
+      get him away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right, Mike,&rdquo; added Dixon; &ldquo;Carson fined the boy fifty, an' the
+      Stewards set him down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that straight goods?&rdquo; asked Gaynor, losing confidence in the justice
+      of his wordy assault.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you're wrong, Mike,&rdquo; they all asserted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In five minutes Gaynor had found Carson, and apologized with the full
+      warmth of a penitent Irishman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      V
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      For a week John Porter brooded over Lucretia's defeat, and, worse still,
+      over the unjust suspicion of the unthinking public. Touched in its pocket,
+      the public responded in unsavory references to Lucretia's race. Porter
+      loved a good horse, and liked to see him win. The confidence of the public
+      in his honesty was as great a reward as the stakes. The avowed principle
+      of racing, that it improved the breed of horses, was but a silent
+      sentiment with him. He believed in it, but not being rich, raced as a
+      profession, honestly and squarely. He had asserted more than once that if
+      he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But his income must be
+      derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and just at this time he
+      was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad luck; financially, he was
+      in a hole; morally, he stood ill with the public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His reason told him that the ill-fortune could not last; he had one great
+      little mare, good enough to win, an honest trainer&mdash;there the
+      inventory stopped short; his stock in trade was incomplete&mdash;he had
+      not a trusty jockey. In his dilemma he threshed it out with Dixon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How's the mare doing, Andy?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;What did the race do to her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She never was better in her life,&rdquo; the Trainer answered, proudly. Then he
+      added, to ease the troubled look that was in the gray eyes of his master,
+      &ldquo;She'll win next time out, sir&mdash;I'll gamble my shirt on that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not with another McKay up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she's good enough for the 'Eclipse,' sir, dashed if I don't. I
+      worked her the distance, and she shaded the time they made last year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the use,&rdquo; said Porter, dejectedly; &ldquo;where'll we get a boy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, lots of the boys are straight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that,&rdquo; Porter answered, &ldquo;but all the straight ones are tied hand
+      and foot to the big stables.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been thinkin' it over,&rdquo; hazarded Dixon, tentatively&mdash;&ldquo;Boston
+      Bill's got a good lad&mdash;there's none of them can put it over him, an'
+      his boss ain't got nothin' in the 'Eclipse,' I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That means the same old game, Andy; we nurse the horse, get him into
+      condition, place him where he can win, and then turn him over to a plunger
+      and take the small end of the divide. Boston Bill would back her off the
+      boards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The stake'd mount up to seven or eight thousand, an' the win would square
+      the little mare with the public.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I'd do that, if I didn't land a dollar,&rdquo; said Porter. &ldquo;Andy, it hurt
+      me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did giving
+      up the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Trainer smiled. With him this was unusual; there was a popular
+      superstition that he never smiled except when one of his horses won. But
+      his heart expanded at Porter's words, for he, too, was fond of the little
+      mare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Porter spoke again, abruptly, and fast, as though he feared he might
+      change his mind: &ldquo;They downed me last trip, Dixon&mdash;I guess I'm
+      getting a bit slow in my paces; and you do just as you like&mdash;arrange
+      with Boston Bill if you think it's good business. He makes a specialty of
+      winning races&mdash;not pulling horses, and we need a win, too, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, sir. We'll land that stake; an' p'raps the sharp division'll
+      take a tumble. I'll bet a dollar they'll go for The Dutchman&mdash;he ran
+      a great race the other day, an' he's in the Eclipse&mdash;if they start
+      him. Lurcetia's right on edge, she's lookin' for the key hole, an' may go
+      back if we don't give her a race. We'd better get the money for the oat
+      bill while it's in sight. She oughter be a long price in the bettin',
+      too,&rdquo; continued Dixon, meditatively; &ldquo;the public soon sour on a beaten
+      horse. You'll have a chance to get even.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like that part of it,&rdquo; muttered Porter; &ldquo;I'm in the black books
+      now. People have no reason at all&mdash;no sense; they've got it into
+      their heads that dirty job was of my making, and if the filly starts at
+      ten to one, and I win a bit, they'll howl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't make a success of racin', sir, an' run your stable for the
+      public&mdash;they don't pay the feed bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you're right, Dixon,&rdquo; answered Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For immediate financial relief Porter knew that he must look to Lucretia&mdash;no
+      other horse in his stable was ready to win; but more immediately he must
+      arrange certain money matters with his banker, who was Philip Crane. To
+      Porter, Crane had been a tolerant financier, taking the man's honesty
+      liberally as a security; not but what Ringwood had been called upon as a
+      tangible asset. So that day, following his conversation with Dixin, the
+      master of Ringwood had an interview with his banker. It was natural that
+      he should speak of his prospects&mdash;his hopes of winning the Eclipse
+      with Lucretia, and, corroboratively, mention her good trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think that's a good mare of yours, Mr. Porter,&rdquo; said Crane,
+      sympathetically. &ldquo;I only race, myself in a small way, just for the outdoor
+      relaxation it gives me, you know, so I'm not much of a judge. The other
+      horse you bought&mdash;the winner of the race, I mean, Lauzanne&mdash;will
+      also help put you right, I should say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter hesitated, uneasily. He disliked to talk about a man behind his
+      back, but he knew that Langdon trained for Crane, and longed to give the
+      banker a friendly word of warning; he knew nothing of the latter's
+      manipulation of the trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a touch of rustic quaintness he said, with seeming irrelevance to the
+      subject, &ldquo;Have you ever picked wild strawberries in the fields, Mr.
+      Crane?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have,&rdquo; answered the other man, showing no surprise at the break, for
+      life in Brookfield had accustomed him to disjointed deals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you ever notice that going down wind you could see the berries
+      better?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane thought for a moment. &ldquo;Yes, that's right; coming up wind the leaves
+      hid them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so,&rdquo; commented Porter; &ldquo;and when a man's got a trainer he's nearly
+      always working up wind with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trainer hides things?&rdquo; queried Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some do. But the outsiders walking down wind see the berries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Banker pondered for a minute, then he said, &ldquo;Whose garden are the
+      berries in, Mr. Porter, yours or mine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you've always been a good friend of mine, Mr. Crane,&rdquo; Porter
+      answered, evasively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; said the other, meditatively; &ldquo;I understand. I'm much obliged. If
+      I thought for an instant that any trainer wasn't dealing perfectly
+      straightforward with me, I'd have nothing more to do with him&mdash;nothing
+      whatever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane sat looking through the open window at John Porter as the latter
+      went down the street. About his thin-lipped, square-framed mouth hovered
+      an expression that might have been a smile, or an intense look of
+      interest, or a touch of avaricious ferocity. The gray eyes peeped over the
+      wall of their lower lids, and in them, too, was the unfathomable
+      something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he repeated, as though Porter still stood beside him, &ldquo;if Langdon
+      tried to deceive me, I'd crush him. Poor old Porter with his story of the
+      strawberries! If he were as clever as he is honest, he wouldn't have been
+      stuck with a horse like Lauzanne. I told Langdon to get rid of that
+      quitter, but I almost wish he'd found another buyer for him. The horse
+      taint is pretty strong in that Porter blood. How the girl said that line,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+        'And a hush came over the clamorous mob;
+        Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      She's cleverer than her father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane sat for an hour. Porter had vanished from the landscape, but still
+      the Banker's thoughts clung to his personality as though the peeping eyes
+      saw nothing else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the time of the first loan obtained upon Ringwood, Crane had coveted
+      the place. It appealed to him with its elm-bordered, sweeping driveway,
+      leading from gate to old colonial residence. Its thick-grassed fields and
+      running water made it just the place for a man who tempered his passion
+      for racing with common sense. And it would pass from Porter's hands right
+      enough&mdash;Crane knew that. Porter might call it ill luck, but he, Crane
+      the Banker, knew it was the lack of something, the inability to make
+      money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Made music to me on Crusader.&rdquo; Yes, that was it. With the Porters it was
+      jingle of spurs, and stride of the horse. All very fine in theory, but
+      racing, as he looked at it, was a question of proper odds, and many other
+      things connected with the betting ring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why did the girl, Allis, with her jingling verse creep into his mind.
+      Perhaps it was because she was so different from the woman who was always
+      steeped in stephanotis. Of the one there was only the memory of an
+      unmodulated voice and oppressive perfume; in truth, of the other there was
+      not much more&mdash;just a pair of big, blue-gray, honest eyes, that
+      somehow stared at him fearlessly, and withal with a great sweetness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane suddenly chuckled in dry disapprobation of himself. Grotesquely
+      enough, all at once he remembered that he was forty&mdash;that very day
+      forty. He ran his hand over his waistcoat, dipped two fingers into the
+      pocket and drew out a cigar. Ordinarily the face of an alabaster Buddha
+      was mobile and full of expression compared with Crane's. His mind worked
+      behind a mask, but it worked with the clean-cut precision of clockwork.
+      When his thoughts had crystallized into a form of expression, Crane was
+      very apt to be exactly right in his deductions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Save for the curling smoke that streamed lazily upward from his cigar one
+      might have thought the banker fast asleep in his chair, so still he sat,
+      while his mind labored with the quiescent velocity of a spinning top. He
+      had won a big stake over Lauzanne's victory. The race had helped beggar
+      Porter, and brought Ringwood nearer his covetous grasp. If Porter failed
+      to win the Eclipse, his finances would be in a pitiable state; he might
+      even have to sell his good filly Lucretia. That would be a golden
+      opportunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From desiring the farm, insensibly Crane drifted into coveting the mare.
+      He fell to wondering whether The Dutchman might not beat Lucretia. A
+      question of this sort was one of the few he discussed with Langdon. Crane
+      had smoked his cigar out, had settled the trend of many things, and
+      developed the routine for his chessmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give Porter rope enough, in the way of funds, to tangle himself, and
+      in the meantime I'll run up to New York and see what Langdon thinks about
+      The Dutchman,&rdquo; was the shorthand record of his thoughts as he threw away
+      the end of his cigar, took his hat, and passed out of the bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening he talked with his trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What should win the Eclipse, Langdon?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I don't know what'll start,&rdquo; began the Trainer, with diplomatic
+      caution, running over in his mind the most likely twoyear-olds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would Porter's mare have a chance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think she would. I hear somethin' about a trial she gave them good
+      enough to win&mdash;if I could find out her time&mdash;Porter don't talk
+      much, an' Andy Dixon's like a clam. There's a boy in the stable, Shandy,
+      that I might pump&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't bother, Mr. Langdon; I dislike prying into anybody's business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Trainer stared, but he didn't know that Porter had told Crane all
+      about the trial, and so the latter could afford to take a virtuous pose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has The Dutchman a look in?&rdquo; continued Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On his runnin' he has; he wasn't half fit, an' got as bad a ride as ever
+      I see in my life. The race ought to be between 'em&mdash;I ain't seen no
+      two-year-olds out to beat that pair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I thought The Dutchman would win I'd buy him. I like game horses, and
+      men, too&mdash;that'll take the gaff and try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know as the owner'd sell him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember the buying of Silver Foot, Langdon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was a good horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The best handicap horse in the country, an' he was sold for a song&mdash;seven
+      thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Less than that, the first time,&rdquo; corrected Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, they stole him from old Walters; made him believe the horse was no
+      good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so,&rdquo; commented Crane; &ldquo;I've heard that story,&rdquo; and his smooth,
+      putty-like face remained blank and devoid of all meaning, as his eyes
+      peered vacantly over their lower lids at the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon waited for the other to continue, but the Banker seemed wrapped up
+      in a retrospect of the Silver Foot deal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know Billy Smith, that trains The Dutchman,&rdquo; hazarded Langdon; &ldquo;he's a
+      boozer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad of that&mdash;I mean, that you know Smith,&rdquo; declared Crane. &ldquo;I
+      happen to know the owner&mdash;his name is Baker. His racing is what might
+      be called indiscriminate, and like men of that class he sometimes blunders
+      upon a good horse without knowing it; and I doubt very much but that if he
+      knew all about the other race&mdash;how bad Lauzanne really is; how the
+      mare, Lucretia&mdash;well&mdash;got shut off, and couldn't get through her
+      horses, say&mdash;of course his own trainer, Smith, would have to tell
+      these things, you understand. In fact, if he knew the exact truth, he
+      might take a reasonable offer for The Dutchman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon nodded approvingly. He loved his subtle master; cards up his
+      sleeves tingled his nerves, and loaded dice were a joy for evermore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane proceeded to unwind the silken cord. &ldquo;Naturally Smith would hate to
+      lose a fair horse out of his stable, and would, perhaps, attempt to thwart
+      any deal; so I think you might remunerate him for his loss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When Silver Foot was sold, they gave him a bad trial before the sale&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not interested in Silver Foot,&rdquo; interrupted Crane; &ldquo;and I shouldn't
+      like to have anything&mdash;well, I don't want my name associated with
+      anything shady, you understand, Langdon? You are to buy The Dutchman as
+      cheap as you can, and run him as your own horse in the Eclipse. I think
+      Porter's mare will win it, so we needn't lose anything over The Dutchman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon started. With all his racing finesse he was a babe. The smooth,
+      complacent-faced man in front of him made him realize this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he gasped, &ldquo;there was a row over Lauzanne's race. If The Dutchman
+      runs in my name, an' a lot o' mugs play him&mdash;it's dollars to
+      doughnuts they will&mdash;an' he gets beat, there'll be a kick. I can't
+      take no chances of bein' had up by the Stewards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a bit,&rdquo; replied Crane, calmly. &ldquo;Supposing Porter's mare worked five
+      and a half furlongs in 1.07, how would she go in the Eclipse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'd win in a walk; unless The Dutchman was at his best when he might
+      give her an argument.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if I thought The Dutchman could beat the mare, I'd make him win, if
+      he never carried the saddle again,&rdquo; declared Crane, almost fiercely. Then
+      he interrupted himself, breaking off abruptly. Very seldom indeed it was
+      that Crane gave expression to sentiment; his words were simply a motor for
+      carrying the impact of his well-thought-out plans to the executive agents.
+      &ldquo;It will be doing Porter a good turn to-to-that is, if Lucretia wins. I
+      fancy he needs a win. Bad racing luck will hardly stop the mare this time&mdash;not
+      twice in succession you know, Langdon,&rdquo; and he looked meaningly at his
+      jackal. &ldquo;You buy The Dutchman, and be good to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He laid marked emphasis on the words &ldquo;be good to him.&rdquo; The trainer
+      understood. It meant that he was to send The Dutchman to the post half
+      fit, eased up in his work; then the horse could try, and the jockey could
+      try, and, in spite of it all, the fast filly of Porter's would win, and
+      his subtle master, Crane, would have turned the result to his own benefit.
+      Why should he reason, or object, or counterplot, or do anything but just
+      follow blindly the dictates of this past master in the oblique game he
+      loved so well? Crane wanted The Dutchman because he was a good horse; he
+      also wanted to have a heavy plunge on Lucretia; but with the son of
+      Hanover in other hands the good thing might not come off. Somehow Langdon
+      felt miserably inefficient in the presence of Crane&mdash;his self-respect
+      suffered; the other man's mind was so overmastering, even to detail. The
+      Trainer felt a sudden desire to right himself in Crane's estimation, give
+      some evidence of ordinary intelligence, or capability to carry out his
+      mission. &ldquo;If The Dutchman's owner was made to think that the horse was
+      likely to break down, throw a splint, or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Crane interrupted him in his quiet, masterful way, saying: &ldquo;I know
+      nothing of horse trading; I simply furnish the money, loan it to you, my
+      dear Mr. Langdon, and you buy the animal in your own best way. You will
+      pay for him with a check on my bank.&rdquo; No man could close out an interview
+      so effectually as Crane. As Langdon slipped away as though he had been
+      thrust bodily from the room, there was in his mind nothing but admiration
+      of his master&mdash;the man who backed up his delicate diplomacy with
+      liberal capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of what he had said to Langdon, there was little doubt in Crane's
+      mind but that the son of Hanover was a better horse than Lucretia. A
+      sanguine owner&mdash;even Porter was one at times&mdash;was so apt to
+      overrate everything in his own stable, especially if he had bred the
+      animal himself, as Porter had Lucretia. To buy The Dutchman and back him
+      on such short ownership to beat Lucretia would have been the policy of a
+      very ordinary mind indeed; he would simply be fencing, with rapiers of
+      equal length, with John Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane had attained to his success by thinking a little deeper than other
+      men, going a little beyond them in the carefulness of his plans. He knew
+      intuitively&mdash;in fact Porter's unguarded conversation had suggested it&mdash;that
+      Lucretia's owner meant to win himself out of his difficult position by
+      backing the little mare heavily for the Eclipse, expecting to get his
+      money on at good odds. By owning The Dutchman Crane could whipsaw the
+      situation; forestall Porter in the betting by backing Lucretia down to a
+      short price himself, and have Jakey Faust lay with a full vigor against
+      the Hanover colt. He would thus confine Porter to stake money, and
+      Ringwood would still lie chained to his bank by the golden links he had
+      forged on the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost insensibly, side by side with this weed of villainy there was
+      growing in Crane's mind a most peculiar flower of sentiment, a love
+      blossom. Strive as he would&mdash;though the apathy of his rebellion
+      somewhat startled him&mdash;Crane could not obliterate from his thoughts
+      the wondrous gray eyes of Allis Porter. Even after Langdon was gone, the
+      atmosphere of the room still smirched by unholy underplay, thoughts of the
+      girl came to Crane, jostling and elbowing the evil conceptions of his
+      restless mind. Grotesquely incongruous as it was, Crane was actually in
+      love; but the love flower, pure enough in itself, had rooted in marvelous
+      ground. His passion was absolutely love, nothing else&mdash;love at first
+      sight. But he was forty, and the methods of that many years must still
+      govern his actions. Instinctively he felt that he must win the girl by
+      diplomacy; and Crane's idea of diplomacy was to get a man irrevocably in
+      his power. If John Porter were indebted to him beyond redemption, if he
+      practically owned Ringwood, why should he not succeed with Allis? All his
+      life he had gone on in just that way, breaking men, for broken men were
+      beyond doubt but potter's clay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon bought The Dutchman. What methods he employed Crane took no pains
+      to discover; in fact, stopped Langdon abruptly when he sought to enlarge
+      on the difficulties he had overcome in the purchase. The price was the
+      only item that interested Crane&mdash;seven thousand dollars; that
+      included everything&mdash;even the secret service money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse acquired, Crane had one more move to make; he sent for Jakey
+      Faust, the Bookmaker. Faust and Crane had a reciprocal understanding. When
+      the Bookmaker needed financial assistance he got it from the Banker; when
+      Crane needed a missionary among the other bookmakers, Faust acted for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to back Lucretia for the 'Eclipse,&rdquo;' Crane said to the bookmaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucretia,&rdquo; ejaculated Faust. &ldquo;She'll have a rosy time beatin' Dutchy on
+      their last race. They'll put a better boy up on the colt next time, an' he
+      ought to come home all by himself&rdquo; &ldquo;Yes, a fairish sort of a jock will
+      have the mount I think-Westley's a good enough boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Westley?&rdquo; came wonderingly from Faust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; Langdon owns The Dutchman now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cherub pursed his fat round lips in a soft whistle of enlightenment.
+      It had staggered him at first that Crane, for whose acumen he had a
+      profound respect, should have intended such a hazardous gamble; now he saw
+      light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then my book is full on the Porter mare?&rdquo; he said, inquiringly. Crane
+      nodded his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' I lay against the Hanover colt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Crane nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's not bookmaking,&rdquo; continued Faust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not a bookmaker,&rdquo; retorted Crane. &ldquo;And see here, Faust,&rdquo; he
+      continued, &ldquo;when you've got my money on the Porter mare&mdash;when and how
+      I leave to you&mdash;I want you to cut her price short&mdash;do you
+      understand? Make her go to the post two to one on, if you can; don't
+      forget that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the mare goes wrong?&rdquo; objected Faust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think she will, but you needn't be in a hurry&mdash;there's
+      plenty of time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the limit?&rdquo; asked Faust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want her backed down to even money at least,&rdquo; Crane answered; &ldquo;probably
+      ten thousand will do it. At any rate you can go that far.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then for a few days Langdon prepared his new horse for the Eclipse
+      according to his idea of Crane's idea; and Dixon rounded Lucretia to in a
+      manner that gladdened John Porter's heart. They knew nothing of anything
+      but that Lucretia was very fit, that they had Boston Bill's jockey to ride
+      straight and honest for them, and that with a good price against the mare
+      they would recoup all their losses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The day of the race when John Porter went into the betting ring he was
+      confronted with even money about his mare. If he had read on the ring
+      blackboard a notice that she was dead, he would not have been more
+      astonished. He fought his way back to the open of the paddock without
+      making a bet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Even money!&rdquo; ejaculated Dixon when his owner told him of the ring
+      situation, &ldquo;why, they're crazy. Who's doin' it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not the public,&rdquo; declared Porter, &ldquo;for I was there just after the first
+      betting. It must be your friend Boston Bill that has forestalled us;
+      nobody else knew of the mare's trial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not on your life, Mr. Porter; Boston plays fair. D'ye think he could live
+      at this game if he threw down his friends?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But nobody else even knew that we'd got a good boy for the mare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It don't make no difference,&rdquo; curtly answered Dixon; &ldquo;it's a million
+      dollars to a penny whistle that Boston hasn't a dollar on yet. Our
+      agreement was that he'd send in his commission when they were at the post,
+      an' his word's like your own, sir, as solid as a judge's decision. It's
+      some one else. There's somebody behind that damned Langdon&mdash;he's not
+      clever enough for all this. D'you know that The Dutchman's runnin' in
+      Langdon's name to-day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is?'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he's supposed to own him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what's that got to do with Lucretia's price?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means that we're goin' to be allowed to win. The other day they laid
+      against her, an' she got beat; to-day they're holdin' her out, so I
+      suppose she'll win, but somebody else gets the benefit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gad! that Langdon must be a crook,&rdquo; muttered Porter. &ldquo;I'm going to speak
+      to my friend Crane about him again. No honest man should have horses in
+      his stable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That they shouldn't,&rdquo; asserted Dixon. &ldquo;But we've got our own troubles
+      to-day. From what I see of this thing, I'd rather back the mare at even
+      money than I would if she was ten to one. If I'm any judge we're being
+      buncoed good and plenty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you're right Dixon. I'll go back and have a good bet down on her
+      at evens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But in five minutes Lucretia's owner was back in the paddock with the
+      cheerful intelligence that the mare was now three to five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't back 'Salvator' among a lot of cart horses at that price,&rdquo;
+       commented Dixon; &ldquo;leave it alone, an' we'll go for the Stake. We're up
+      against it good and hard; somebody seems to know more about our own horse
+      than we do ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think myself that the gods are angry with us, Dixon,&rdquo; said Porter
+      moodily; &ldquo;and the mortals will be furious, too, whichever way the race
+      goes. They've backed the little mare at this short price no doubt, an' if
+      she's beaten they'll howl; if she wins they'll swear my money was on
+      to-day, and that I pulled her in her last race.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      John Porter sat in the Grand Stand with his usual companion, Allis, beside
+      him, as The Dutchman, Lucretia, and the other Eclipse horses passed down
+      the broad spread of the straight Eclipse course to the five-and-a-half
+      furlong post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though Porter had missed his betting, he intuitively felt the joy of an
+      anticipated win. Only a true lover of thoroughbreds can know anything of
+      the mad tumult of exultation that vibrates the heart strings as a loved
+      horse comes bravely, gallantly out from the surging throng of his rivals,
+      peerless and king of them all, stretching his tapered neck with eager
+      striving, and goes onward, past the tribunal, first and alone, the leader,
+      the winner, the one to be cheered of the many thousands wrought to frenzy
+      by his conquest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely Lucretia will win to-day, father&mdash;don't you think so?&rdquo; asked
+      Allis; &ldquo;I feel that she will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's got a big weight up,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;She's a little bit of a thing,
+      and it may drive her into the ground coming down the Eclipse hill. I
+      expect they'll come at a terrible jog, too; they don't often hang back on
+      that course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now that the betting worry and the labor of getting an honest boy were
+      over&mdash;that the horses had gone to the post, and that the race rested
+      with Lucretia herself, Porter's mind had relaxed. Even at the time of the
+      very struggle itself tension had gone from him; he was in a meditative
+      mood, and spoke on, weighing the chances, with Allis as audience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But they'll have to move some to beat the little mare's trial&mdash;they'll
+      make it in record time if they head her, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't the horse that beat her the other day in, too, father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Dutchman-yes, but I fancy his owner is backing my mare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wouldn't make any difference, though; she'd beat him anyway. If I'm
+      any judge, he's short.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis felt a rustle at her elbow as though someone wished to pass between
+      the seats. The faintest whiff of stephanotis came to her on the lazy
+      summer air. Involuntarily she turned her head and looked for the
+      harsh-voiced woman who had been verily steeped in the aggressive odor the
+      day of Lauzanne's triumph. Two burly men sat behind her. They, surely, did
+      not affect perfumery. Higher up the stand her eye searched&mdash;four rows
+      back sat the woman Alan had said was Langdon's sister. There was no
+      forgetting the flamboyant brilliancy of her apparel. But the almost
+      fancied zephyr of stephanotis was mingling with the rustle at her elbow;
+      she turned her head inquiringly in that direction, and Crane's eyes peeped
+      at her over the stone wall of their narrow lids. He was standing in the
+      passage just beyond her father, now looking wistfully at the vacant seat
+      on her left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good afternoon, Miss Porter&mdash;how are you, Porter? May I sit here
+      with you and see Lucretia win?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, come in!&rdquo; answered Porter, frankly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sitting with some friends higher up in the stand, when I saw you
+      here, and thought I'd like to make one of the victorious party.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis knew who the friends were; the clinging touch of stephanotis had
+      come with him. The discrepancy in Crane's sentiments jarred on Allis. That
+      other day this woman had been his trainer's sister, recognized for politic
+      purposes; to-day he had been sitting with &ldquo;friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Topping the rail in the distance, just where the course kinked a little to
+      the left, Allis could see the blur of many colored silks in the sunlight.
+      Then it seemed to flatten down almost level with the rail, as the horses
+      broadened out to the earth in racing spread and the riders clung low to
+      the galloping colts, for they had started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There they come,&rdquo; said Crane. &ldquo;What's in the lead, Porter?&rdquo; Porter did
+      not answer. A man could have counted thirty before he said, &ldquo;The
+      Dutchman's out in front&mdash;a length, and they're coming down the hill
+      like mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis felt her heart sink. Was it to be the same old story&mdash;was there
+      always to be something in front of Lucretia?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is your mare?&rdquo; Crane asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His own glass lay idly in his lap. Though he spoke of the race, it was
+      curious that his eyes were watching the play of Allis's features, as hope
+      and Despair fought their old human-torturing fight over again in her
+      heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now she's coming!&rdquo; Porter's voice made Crane jump; he had almost
+      forgotten the race. To the close-calculating mind it had been settled days
+      before. The Dutchman would not win, and Lucretia was the best of the
+      others&mdash;why worry?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were standing now&mdash;everybody was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my beauty, they'll have to gallop,&rdquo; Porter was saying. They were
+      close up, and Crane could see that Lucretia had got to the bay colt's
+      head, and he was dying away. He smiled cynically as he watched Westley go
+      to the whip on The Dutchman, with Lucretia half a length in the lead. Most
+      certainly Langdon was an excellent trainer; The Dutchman was just good
+      enough to last into second place, and Lucretia had won handily. What a win
+      Crane had had!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A little smothered gasp distracted his momentary thought of success, and,
+      turning quickly, he saw tears in a pair of gray eyes that were set in a
+      smiling face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing,&rdquo; came back to Crane out of the
+      poem Allis had recited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I congratulate you, Miss Porter,&rdquo; he said, raising his hat. Then he
+      turned, and held out his hand to her father, saying: &ldquo;I'm glad you've won,
+      Porter&mdash;I thought you would. The Dutchman quit when he was pinched.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't the colt's fault&mdash;he was short,&rdquo; said Porter. &ldquo;I shouldn't
+      like to have horses in that man's stable&mdash;he's too good a trainer for
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a marked emphasis on Porter's words; he was trying to give Crane
+      a friendly hint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean it's a case of strawberries?&rdquo; questioned Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well I know it takes a lot of candles to find a lost quarter,&rdquo; remarked
+      Porter, somewhat ambiguously. Then he added, &ldquo;I must go down to thank
+      Dixon; I guess this is his annual day for smiling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm coming, too, father,&rdquo; said Allis; &ldquo;I want to thank Lucretia, and give
+      her a kiss, brave little sweetheart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After Allis and her father had left Crane, he sat for a minute or two
+      waiting for the crowd of people that blocked the passageway after each
+      race to filter down on the lawn. The way seemed clearer presently, and
+      Crane fell in behind a knot of loud-talking men. The two of large
+      proportions who had sat behind Allis, were like huge gate posts jammed
+      there in the narrow way. As he moved along slowly he presently had
+      knowledge of a presence at his side&mdash;a familiar presence. Raising his
+      eyes from a contemplation of the heels in front of him, he saw Belle
+      Langdon. She nodded with patronizing freedom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I lost you,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was sitting with some friends here,&rdquo; he explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I saw her,&rdquo; she commented pointedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant one of the stout men in front said, with a bear's snarl,
+      &ldquo;Well that's the worst ever; I've seen some jobs in my time, but this puts
+      it over anything yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't you back the little mare?&rdquo; a thin voice squealed. It was the
+      'Pout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back nothin'! The last time out she couldn't untrack herself; an' today
+      she comes, without any pull in the weight, and wins in a walk from The
+      Dutchman; and didn't he beat her just as easy the other day?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Belle Langdon looked into Crane's face, and her eyes were charged with a
+      look of reciprocal meaning. Crane winched. How aggressively obnoxious this
+      half-tutored girl, mistress of many gay frocks, could make herself! There
+      was an implied crime-partnership in her glance which revolted him. Dick
+      Langdon must have talked in his own home. Crane's conscience&mdash;well,
+      he hardly had one perhaps, at least it was always subevident; to put it in
+      another way, the retrospect of his manipulated diplomacy never bothered
+      him; but this gratuitous sharing in his evil triumph was disquieting. The
+      malicious glitter of the girl's small black eyes contrasted strongly with
+      the honest, unaffected look that was forever in the big tranquil eyes of
+      Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were just at the head of the steps, and the Tout was saying to the
+      fat expostulator: &ldquo;I could have put you next; I steered a big bettor on&mdash;he
+      won a thousand over the mare. I saw Boston's betting man havin' an
+      old-time play, an' I knew it was a lead-pipe cinch. He's a sure thing
+      bettor, he is; odds don't make no difference to him, the shorter the
+      better&mdash;that's when his own boy's got the mount.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right to be wise after the race,&rdquo; grunted the fat man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;G'wan! the stable didn't have a penny on Lucretia last time; an' what do
+      you suppose made her favorite to-day?&rdquo; queried the Tout, derisively. &ldquo;It
+      took a bar'l of money,&rdquo; he continued, full of his own logical deductions,
+      &ldquo;an' I'll bet Porter cleaned up twenty thousand. He's a pretty slick cove,
+      is old 'Honest John,' if you ask me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl at Crane's side cackled a laugh. &ldquo;He's funny, isn't he?&rdquo; she
+      said, nodding her big plumed hat in the direction of the man-group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a talkative fool!&rdquo; muttered the Banker, shortly. &ldquo;The steps are
+      clear on the other side, Miss Langdon, you can get down there. I've got to
+      go into the paddock; you'll excuse me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Being vicious for the fun of the thing had never appealed to Crane; he
+      raced as he did everything else&mdash;to win. If other men suffered, that
+      was the play of fate. He never talked about these things himself, almost
+      disliked to think of them. He turned his back on Belle Langdon and went
+      down the right-hand steps. On the grass sward at the bottom he stopped for
+      an instant to look across at the jockey board.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three men had just came out of the refreshment bar under the stand. They
+      were possessed of many things; gold of the bookmakers in their pockets,
+      and it's ever-attendant exhilaration in their hearts. One of them had
+      cracked a bottle of wine at the bar, as tribute to the exceeding swiftness
+      of Lucretia, for he had won plentifully. At that particular stage there
+      was nothing left but to talk it over, and they talked. Crane, avaricious,
+      unhesitating in his fighting, devoid of sympathy, was not of the
+      eavesdropping class, but as he stood there he was as much a part of the
+      other men's conversation as though he had been a fourth member of the
+      brotherhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tell you none of these trainers ain't in it with a gentleman owner&mdash;when
+      he takes to racin'. When a man of brains takes to runnin' horses as a
+      profesh, he's gen'rally a Jim Dandy.&rdquo; It was he of the wine-opening who
+      let fall these words of wise value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D'you mean Porter, Jim?&rdquo; asked number two of the trio.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maybe that's his name. An' he put it all over Mister Langdon this trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As how?&rdquo; queried the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last time he runs his mare she's got corns in her feet the whole journey,
+      an' all the time he owns the winner, Lauzanne, see?&mdash;buys him before
+      they go out. Then Langdon thinks The Dutchman's the goods, an' buys him at
+      a fancy price&mdash;gives a bale of long goods for him&mdash;I've got it
+      straight that he parted with fifteen thousand. Then the gentleman owner,
+      Honest John, turns the trick with Lucretia, an' makes The Dutchman look
+      like a sellin' plater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess Langdon'll feel pretty sick,&rdquo; hazarded number three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd been watchin' the game,&rdquo; continued the wine man, &ldquo;an' soon's I saw a
+      move to-day from the wise guys in the ring, I plumped for the mare 'toot
+      sweet.&rdquo;'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What an extraordinary thing manipulation was, Crane mused, as he listened;
+      also how considerable of an ass the public was in its theoretical wisdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the three men drifted away to follow some new toy balloon of erratic
+      possibilities, and Crane wound through the narrow passage which led to the
+      paddock. There he encountered Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't run a very good horse, sir,&rdquo; began the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought otherwise,&rdquo; replied Crane, measuring the immediate vicinity of
+      listeners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had to draw it a bit fine,&rdquo; declared Langdon, with apologetic
+      remonstrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Running second is always bad business, except in a selling race,&rdquo;
+       retorted his master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got to think of myself,&rdquo; growled Langdon. &ldquo;If he'd been beat off,
+      there'd been trouble; the Stewards have got the other race in their crop a
+      bit yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not blaming you, Langdon, only I was just a trifle afraid that you
+      were going to beat Porter's mare. He's a friend of mine, and needed a win
+      badly. I'm not exactly his father confessor, but I'm his banker, which
+      amounts to pretty much the same thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about the horse, sir,&rdquo; asked the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll see later on. Let him go easy for the present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what he meant by that,&rdquo; Langdon mused to himself, as Crane moved
+      away. &ldquo;He don't make nobody a present of a race for love.&rdquo; Suddenly he
+      stumbled upon a solution of the enigma. &ldquo;Well, I'm damned if that wasn't
+      slick; he give me the straight tip to leave Porter to him&mdash;to let him
+      do the plannin'; I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Porter was an easy man with his horses. Though he could not afford,
+      because of his needs, to work out his theory that two-year-olds should not
+      be raced, yet he utilized it as far as possible by running them at longer
+      intervals than was general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll start the little mare about once more this season,&rdquo; he told Dixon.
+      &ldquo;The babes can't cut teeth, and grow, and fight it out in punishing races
+      on dusty hay and hard-shelled oats, when they ought to be picking grass in
+      an open field. She's too good a beast to do up in her young days. The
+      Assassins made good three-year-olds, and the little mare's dam, Maid of
+      Rome, wasn't much her first year out&mdash;only won once&mdash;but as a
+      three-year-old she won three out of four starts, and the fourth year never
+      lost a race. Lucretia ought to be a great mare next year if I lay her by
+      early this season. She's in a couple of stakes at Gravesend and
+      Sheepshead, and we'll just fit her into the softest spot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about Lauzanne?&rdquo; asked the Trainer, &ldquo;I'm afraid he's a bad horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is he doing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's stale. He's a bad doer&mdash;doesn't clean up his oats, an' mopes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess that killing finish with The Dutchman took the life out of him.
+      That sort of thing often settles a soft-hearted horse for all time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think it was the race, sir,&rdquo; Dixon replied; &ldquo;they just pumped the
+      cocaine into him till he was fair blind drunk; he must a' swallowed the
+      bottle. I give him a ball, a bran mash, and Lord knows what all, an' the
+      poison's workin' out of him. He's all breakin' out in lumps; you'd think
+      he'd been stung by bees.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never heard of such a thing,&rdquo; commented Porter. &ldquo;A man that would dope
+      a two-year-old ought to be ruled off, sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you oughter make a kick, sir,&rdquo; said Dixon, hesitatingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't. When I squeal, Andy, it'll be when there's nothing but the voice
+      left. I bought a horse from a man once just as he stood. I happened to
+      know the horse, and said I didn't want any inspection&mdash;didn't want to
+      see him, but bought him, as I say, just as he stood. When I went to the
+      stable to get him he wasn't worth much, Andy&mdash;he was dead. Perhaps I
+      might have made a kick about his not standing up, but I didn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, sir, I'm thinkin' Lauzanne's a deuced sight worse'n a dead horse;
+      he'll cost more tryin' to win with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say you're right, but he can gallop a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When he's primed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No dope for me, Andy. I never ran a dope horse and never will&mdash;I'm
+      too fond of them to poison them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll freshen him up a bit, sir, and we'll give him a try in a day or two.
+      Would you mind puttin' him in a sellin' race?&mdash;he cost a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He couldn't win anything else, and if anybody wants to claim him they
+      can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought of starting Diablo in that mile handicap; he's in pretty light.
+      He's about all we've got ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Dixon,&rdquo; Porter replied. &ldquo;It may be that we've broke our bad
+      luck with the little mare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were standing in the paddock during this conversation. It was in the
+      forenoon; Dixon had come over to the Secretary's office to see about some
+      entries before twelve o'clock. When the Trainer had finished his business,
+      the two men walked across the course and infield to Stable 12, where Dixon
+      had his horses. As they passed over the &ldquo;Withers Course,&rdquo; as the circular
+      track was called, Dixon pointed to the dip near the lower far turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a deuced funny thing,&rdquo; he said, speaking reminiscently, &ldquo;but that
+      little hollow there settles more horses than the last fifty yards of the
+      finish; it seems to make the soft ones remember that they're runnin' when
+      they get that change, an' they stop. I bet Diablo'll quit right there,
+      he's done it three or four times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was the making of a great horse as a two-year-old, wasn't he, Andy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They paid a long price for him, if that's any line; but I think he never
+      was no good. It don't matter how fast a horse is if he won't try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've an idea Diablo'll be a good horse yet,&rdquo; mused Porter. &ldquo;You can't
+      make a slow horse gallop, but there's a chance of curing a horse's temper
+      by kind treatment. I've noticed that a squealing pig generally runs like
+      the devil when he takes it into his head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Diablo's a squealing pig if there ever was one,&rdquo; growled Dixon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They reached the track stable, and, as if by a mutual instinct, the two
+      men walked on till they stood in front of Lauzanne's stall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a good enough looker, ain't he?&rdquo; commented Dixon, as he dipped under
+      the door bar, went into the stall, and turned the horse about. &ldquo;He's the
+      picture of his old sire, Lazzarone,&rdquo; he continued, looking the horse over
+      critically; &ldquo;an' a damned sight bigger rogue, though the old one was bad
+      enough. Lazzarone won the Suburban with blinkers on his head, bandages on
+      his legs, an' God knows what in his stomach. He was second in the Brooklyn
+      that same year. I've always heard he was a mule, an' I guess this one got
+      it all, an' none of the gallopin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How does he work with the others?&rdquo; queried Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Runs a bit, an' then cuts it&mdash;won't try a yard. Of course he's sick
+      from the dope, an' the others are a bit fast for him. If we put him in a
+      sellin' race, cheap, he'd have a light weight, an' might do better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter walked on to Lucretia's stall, and the trainer continued in a
+      monologue to Lauzanne: &ldquo;You big slob! you're a counterfeit, if there ever
+      was one. But I'll stand you a drink just to get rid of you; I'll put a
+      bottle of whisky inside of your vest day after to-morrow, an' if you win
+      p'raps somebody'll buy you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lauzanne did not answer-it's a way horses have. It is doubtful if his mind
+      quite grasped the situation, even. That neither Dixon, nor Langdon, nor
+      the jockey boys understood him he knew&mdash;not clearly, but
+      approximately enough to increase his stubbornness, to rouse his
+      resentment. They had not even studied out the pathology of his descent
+      sufficiently well to give him a fair show, to train him intelligently.
+      They remembered that his sire, Lazzarone, had a bad temper; but they
+      forgot that he was a stayer, not 'given to sprinting. Even Lauzanne's dam,
+      Bric-a-brac, was fond of a long route, was better at a mile-and-a-half
+      than five furlongs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lauzanne knew what had come to him of genealogy, not in his mind so much
+      as in his muscles. They were strong but sluggish, not active but
+      non-tiring. Langdon had raced Lauzanne with sprinting colts, and when they
+      ran away from him at the start he had been unequal to the task of
+      overhauling them in the short two-year-old run of half-a-mile. Then the
+      wise man had said that Lauzanne's courage was at fault; the jockeys had
+      called it laziness, and applied the whip. And out of all this uselessness,
+      this unthinking philosophy, the colt had come with a soured temper, a
+      broken belief in his masters&mdash;&ldquo;Lauzanne the Despised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter's trust that his ill luck had been changed by a win was a faith of
+      short life, for Diablo was most emphatically beaten in his race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then came the day of forlorn hope, the day of Lauzanne's disgrace,
+      inasmuch as it de-graduated him into the selling-platter class.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bad horse as Langdon knew Lauzanne to be, it occurred to him that Porter
+      had planned a clever coup. He had an interview with Crane over the
+      subject, but his master did not at all share the Trainer's belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What price would Lucretia, or The Dutchman, be in with the same lot?&rdquo;
+       Langdon asked, argumentatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About one to ten,&rdquo; Crane replied. &ldquo;But the Chestnut's beating them had no
+      bearing on this race. From what I see of Mr. Dixon, I don't at all class
+      him with you as a trainer&mdash;he hasn't the same resource.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon stood silent, sullenly turning over in his mind this doubtful
+      compliment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sure,&rdquo; continued the Banker, &ldquo;but that having stuck Porter with
+      Lauzanne, you shouldn't give him a hint about&mdash;well, as to what
+      course of preparation would make Lauzanne win a race for him. The ordinary
+      diet of oats is hardly stimulating enough for such a sluggish animal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon frowned. If Crane had not been quite so strong, quite so full of
+      unexpressed power, he would have rebelled at the assertion that he had
+      stuck Porter; but he answered, and his voice struggled between asperity
+      and deprecation, &ldquo;There ain't no call for me to give that stable any
+      pointers; Porter put it to me pretty straight that the horse had been
+      helped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what did you say?&rdquo; blandly inquired Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Told him to go to hell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This wasn't exactly truthful as we remember the interview, but its
+      terseness appealed to Crane, and he smiled as he said: &ldquo;Porter probably
+      won't take your advice, Langdon; he's stubborn enough at times. And even
+      if he does know that&mdash;that&mdash;Lauzanne' requires special
+      treatment, he won't indulge him&mdash;he's got a lot of old-fashioned
+      ideas about racing. So you see Lauzanne is a bad betting proposition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After Langdon had left Crane's thoughts dwelt on the subject they had just
+      discussed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From a backer's point of view Lauzanne is certainly bad business,&rdquo; he
+      mused; &ldquo;but the public will reason just as Langdon does. And what's bad
+      for the backers is good for the layers; I must see Faust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had better make a book to beat Lauzanne,&rdquo; Crane said to Jakey Faust,
+      just before business had commenced in the ring that afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cherub stared in astonishment; his eyes opened wide. That was nearly
+      the limit of his fat little face's expression, no matter what the
+      occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't own him now, do you, sir?&rdquo; he blurted out, with unthinking
+      candor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's dropped into a soft spot&mdash;he rates best in the percentage
+      card.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Figures sometimes lie,&rdquo; commented Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every handicapper tips him to win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're all broke because of their knowledge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The books'll mark him up first choice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's why it will be worth while playing the field to beat him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's in with a gang of muts to-day, an' he beat some cracker-jacks last
+      time out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were hypnotized that day, Mr. Faust; so was the Judge. Lauzanne
+      didn't beat anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't beat&mdash;what the hell&mdash;didn't the Chestnut get the
+      verdict?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did; but&mdash;&rdquo; and Crane looked at Faust, with patient toleration of
+      his lack of perception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cherub waited for an explanation of these contradictory remarks. But
+      he might have waited indefinitely&mdash;Crane had quite finished. The
+      Cherub raised his little round eyes, that were like glass alleys, green
+      and red and blue-streaked, to the other's face inquiringly, and
+      encountered a pair of penetrating orbs peering at him over some sort of a
+      mask&mdash;the face that sustained the eyes was certainly a mask&mdash;as
+      expressionless. Then it came to Jakey Faust that there was nothing left to
+      do but fill the Lauzanne column in his book with the many bets that would
+      come his way and make much money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane watched Lauzanne go lazily, sluggishly down to the post for his
+      race. He knew the horse's moods; the walk of the Chestnut was the
+      indifferent stroll of a horse that is thinking only of his dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They've given him nothing,&rdquo; the Banker muttered to himself; &ldquo;the
+      heavy-headed brute won't try a yard. But he'll fight the boy when he tries
+      to ride him out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The whisky that Dixon had surreptitiously given Lauzanne had been as
+      inefficacious as so much ginger beer; and in the race Lauzanne drew back
+      out of the bustle and clash of the striving horses as quickly as he could.
+      In vain his jockey used whip and spur; Lauzanne simply put his ears back,
+      switched his tail, and loafed along, a dozen lengths behind his field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the straight he made up a little of the lost ground, but he was
+      securely out of the money at the finish. Fate still sat and threw the dice
+      as he had for many moons&mdash;a deuce for John Porter, and a six for
+      Philip Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was late autumn; the legitimate racing season had closed. In August
+      Porter had taken his horses back to Ringwood for the winter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a man strives against Fate, when realization laughs mockingly at his
+      expectations, there comes to him a time when he longs for a breathing
+      spell, when he knows that he must rest, and wait until the wheel of life,
+      slow-turning, has passed a little through the groove of his existence.
+      John Porter had been beaten down at every point. Disastrous years come to
+      all men, whether they race horses or point the truthful way, and this year
+      had been but a series of disappointments to the master of Ringwood. After
+      Lucretia's win in the Eclipse, Porter did not land another race. Lucretia
+      caught cold and went off. He tried Lauzanne twice again, but the Chestnut
+      seemed thoroughly soured. Now he was back at Ringwood, a dark cloud of
+      indebtedness hanging over the beautiful place, and prospect of relief very
+      shadowy. If Lucretia wintered well and grew big and strong she might
+      extricate him from his difficulties by winning one or two of the big races
+      the following summer. About any of the other horses there was not even
+      this much of promise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thoroughly distrusting Lauzanne, embittered by his cowardice, Porter had
+      given him away&mdash;but to Allis. Strangely enough, the girl had taken a
+      strong liking to the son of Lazzarone; it may have been because of the
+      feeling that she was indirectly responsible for his presence at Ringwood.
+      Allis Porter's perceptions had been developed to an extraordinary degree.
+      All her life she had lived surrounded by thoroughbreds, and her sensitive
+      nature went out to them, in their courage and loyalty, in a manner quite
+      beyond possibility in a practical, routine-following horseman. To her they
+      were almost human; the play of their minds was as attractive and
+      interesting as the development of their muscles was to a trainer. When the
+      stable had been taken back to Ringwood, she had asked for Lauzanne as a
+      riding horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to give him away,&rdquo; her father had replied; &ldquo;I can't sell him&mdash;nobody
+      would buy a brute with such a reputation.&rdquo; This word brought to Porter's
+      mind his chief cause of resentment against the Chestnut. The public having
+      got into its head that Porter was playing coups, generously suggested that
+      he was pulling Lauzanne to get him in some big handicap light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't feed such a skate all winter,&rdquo; he declared angrily, after a
+      little pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, give him to me, father,&rdquo; the girl had pleaded; &ldquo;I am certain that
+      he'll make good some day; you'll see that he'll pay you for keeping your
+      word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Allis rode Lauzanne she discovered many things about the horse; that
+      instead of being a stupid, morose brute, his intelligence was
+      extraordinary, and, with her at least, his temper perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis's relationship with her father was unusual. They were chums; in all
+      his trouble, in all his moments of wavering, buffeted by the waves of
+      disaster, Allis was the one who cheered him, who regirt him in his armor:&mdash;Allis,
+      the slight olive-faced little woman, with the big, fearless Joan-of-Arc
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll see what we'll do next summer, Dad,&rdquo; she said cheerily. &ldquo;You'll
+      win with Lucretia as often as you did with her mother; and I'll win with
+      Lauzanne. We'll just keep quiet till spring, then we'll show them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon's horses, so silently controlled by Philip Crane, Banker, had been
+      put in winter quarters at Gravesend, where Langdon had a cottage. Crane's
+      racing season had been as successful as the Master of Ringwood's had been
+      disastrous. He had won a fair-class race with The Dutchman&mdash;ostensibly
+      Langdon's horse&mdash;and then, holding true to his nature, which was to
+      hasten slowly, threw him out of training and deliberately planned a big
+      coup for the next year. The colt was engaged in several three-year-old
+      stakes, and Crane set Langdon to work to find out his capabilities. As his
+      owner expected, he showed them in a severe trial gallop the true Hanover
+      staying-power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although Crane had said nothing about it at the time, he had his eye on
+      the Eastern Derby when he commissioned Langdon to purchase this gallant
+      son of Hanover. It was a long way ahead to look, to lay plans to win a
+      race the following June, but that was the essence of Crane's existence,
+      careful planning. He loved it. He was a master at it. And, after all,
+      given a good stayer, such as he had in The Dutchman, the mile-and-a-half
+      run of the Derby left less to chance than any other stake he could have
+      pitched upon; the result would depend absolutely upon the class and
+      stamina of the horses. No bad start could upset his calculations, no
+      little interference in the race could destroy his horse's chance if he
+      were good enough to win. The Dutchman's races as a two-year-old would not
+      warrant his being made a favorite, and Langdon, properly directed, was
+      clever enough to see that The Dutchman was at a comfortable price for
+      betting purposes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many things had crowded into this year of Crane's life. The bank, doing
+      but a modest business always, was running so smoothly that it required
+      little attention from the owner. This was one reason why he had thrown so
+      much subtle energy into his racing; its speculation appealed to him. The
+      plucking he had received as a moneyed youth rankled in his heart. The
+      possession of such a faithful jackal as Langdon carried him to greater
+      lengths than he would have gone had the obnoxious details been subject to
+      his own execution. Though conscienceless, he was more or less fastidious.
+      Had a horse broken down and become utterly useless, he would have ordered
+      him to be destroyed without experiencing any feeling of compassion&mdash;he
+      would have dismissed the matter entirely from his mind with the passing of
+      the command; but rather than destroy the horse himself, he probably would
+      have fed him. And so it was with men. If they were driven to the wall
+      because of his plans, that was their own look out; it did not trouble
+      Philip Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter he had known simply in a business way. From the first he had felt
+      that Ringwood would pass out of its owner's possession, and he had begun
+      to covet it. The Lauzanne race had been Langdon's planning altogether.
+      Crane, cold-blooded as he was, would not have robbed a man he had business
+      dealings with deliberately. He had told his trainer to win, if possible, a
+      race with Lauzanne, and get rid of him. That Langdon's villainous scheme
+      had borne evil fruit for John Porter was purely a matter of chance
+      selection. There was a Mephistophelean restitution in not striving to
+      wrest the Eclipse from Lucretia with The Dutchman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now, in this year, had come the entirely new experience of an
+      affection&mdash;his admiration for Allis Porter. It conflicted with every
+      other emotion that governed his being. All his life he had been selfish&mdash;considering
+      only Philip Crane, his mind unharrassed by anything but business obstacles
+      in his ambitious career. Love for this quiet, self-contained girl,
+      unadorned by anything but the truth, and honesty, and fearlessness that
+      were in her big steadfast eyes, had come upon him suddenly and with an
+      assertive force that completely mastered him. By a mere chance he had
+      heard Allis give her recitation, &ldquo;The Run of Crusader,&rdquo; in the little
+      church at Brookfield. Crane was not an agnostic, but he had interested
+      himself little in church matters; and the Reverend Dolman's concert, that
+      was meant to top down many weeds of debt that were choking the church, had
+      claimed him simply because an evening in Brookfield had come to hang
+      heavily on his hands. Now when the Reverend Dolman received Philip Crane's
+      check for fifty dollars the next day, to be applied to the church
+      encumbrance, he sought to allay his surprise by attributing the gift to
+      his own special pleading that evening, of course backed up by Providence.
+      If anybody had stated that the mainspring of the gift had been the wicked
+      horse-racing poem of their denunciation he would have been scandalized and
+      full of righteous disbelief. It is quite likely that even Crane would have
+      denied that Allis's poem had inspired him to the check; but nevertheless
+      it had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world of feeling and sympathy and goodness that had hung in her voice
+      had set a new window in his soul slightly ajar&mdash;so slightly ajar that
+      even now, months afterward, the lovelight was only beginning to stream
+      through. When love comes to a man at forty he is apt to play the game very
+      badly indeed; he turns it into a very anxious business, and moves through
+      the light-tripping measure with the pedantic dignity of a minuet dancer.
+      But Philip Crane was not given to making mistakes; he knew that, like
+      Crusader, &ldquo;His best racing days (in the love stakes) were over&rdquo;&mdash;especially
+      where the woman was but a girl. So he sat down and planned it all out as
+      he planned to win the Brooklyn Derby months later. And all the time he was
+      as sincerely in love as if he had blundered into many foolishness; but his
+      love making was to be diplomatic. Even now all the gods of Fate stood
+      ranged on his side; Allis's brother was in his bank, more or less
+      dependent upon him; Ringwood itself was all but in the bank; he stood
+      fairly well with John Porter, and much better with Allis's mother, for
+      already he had begun to ingratitate himself with Mrs. Porter. He would
+      cast from the shoulders of the Reverend Dolman a trifle more of the load
+      he was carrying. He would send the reverend gentleman another check.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why he should think it necessary to prepare his suit with so much subtlety
+      he hardly knew; in all reason he should be considered a fair match for
+      Allis Porter. He was not a bad man as the world understood him; he did not
+      profess Christianity, but, on the other hand, his life was extremely
+      respectable; he did not drink; he was not given to profane language; even
+      in racing his presence seemed to lend an air of respectability to the
+      sport, and it was generally supposed that he raced purely for relaxation.
+      In truth, it seemed to him that his marriage with Allis would be a deuced
+      good thing for the Porters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In actuality there were just two things that stood in the way&mdash;two
+      things which his position and wealth could not obviate&mdash;his age, and
+      the Porter pride. If Porter had not been dubbed &ldquo;Honest John&rdquo; early in
+      life, he might have been saddled with &ldquo;Proud Porter&rdquo; later on. The pride
+      had come up out of old Kentucky with all the other useless things&mdash;the
+      horse-racing, and the inability to make money, and the fancy for keeping a
+      promise. Something whispered to Crane that Allis would never come to him
+      simply out of love; it might be regard, esteem, a desire to please her
+      parents, a bowing to the evident decree of fate. Perhaps even the very
+      difficulty of conquest made Crane the more determined to win, and made him
+      hasten slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      As a rule few visitors went to Ringwood.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      John Porter had been too interested in his horses and his home life to
+      care much for social matters. Mrs. Porter was a home-body, too, caring
+      nothing at all for society&mdash;at best there was but little of it in
+      Brookfield&mdash;except where it was connected with church work. Perhaps
+      that was one reason why Allis had grown so close into her father's life.
+      It was a very small, self-contained household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike Gaynor had become attached to the staff at Ringwood this winter as a
+      sort of assistant trainer to Porter. Dixon only trained the Ringwood
+      horses during the racing season, Porter always supervising them in winter
+      quarters. Perhaps it was Porter's great cloud of evil fortune which had
+      cast its sinister influence over Mike because of his sympathy for the
+      master of Ringwood; certain it is that the autumn found him quite &ldquo;on his
+      uppers,&rdquo; as he graphically described his financial standing. An
+      arrangement was made by which Mike's disconsolate horses were fed at
+      Ringwood, and he took care of both strings. This delighted Allis, for she
+      had full confidence in Gaynor's integrity and good sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The early winter brought two visitors to Ringwood&mdash;Crane, who came
+      quite often, and Mortimer, who went out to the farm a couple of times with
+      Alan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Mortimer might be described as an angular young man. His face,
+      large-featured, square-jawed, and bold-topped by broad forehead, suggested
+      the solemnity Alan had found so trying. Of course a young man of his
+      make-up was sure to have notions, and Mortimer's mind was knotted with
+      them; there seemed no soft nor smooth places in his timber. That was why
+      he had reasoned with the butcher by energetically grasping his windpipe
+      the evening that worthy gentleman had expressed himself so distastefully
+      over Allis Porter's contribution to the Reverend Dolman's concert. Perhaps
+      a young man of more subtle grace would have received some grateful
+      recognition for this office, but the matter had been quite closed out so
+      far as Mortimer was concerned; Alan tried to refer to it afterward, but
+      had been curtly stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Mortimer's chief notion was that work was a great thing, seemingly
+      the chief end of man. Another notion almost equally prominent&mdash;he had
+      derived it from his mother&mdash;was, that all forms of gambling were
+      extremely bad business. First and foremost in this interdiction stood
+      horse racing. The touch of it that hung like a small cloud over the
+      Brookfield horizon had inspired Mrs. Mortimer, as it had other good people
+      of the surrounding country, with the restricted idea that those who had to
+      do with thoroughbred horses were simply gamblers&mdash;betting people. Her
+      home was in Emerson, a dozen miles from Brookfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite paradoxically, if Allis Porter had not given &ldquo;The Run of Crusader&rdquo;&mdash;most
+      certainly a racing poem&mdash;in the little church, this angular young man
+      with stringent ideas about running horses probably would have never
+      visited Ringwood. Something of the wide sympathy that emanated from her as
+      she told of the gallant horse's death struck into his strong nature, and
+      there commenced to creep into his thoughts at odd intervals a sort of
+      gratuitous pity that she should be inextricably mixed up with race horses.
+      His original honesty of thought and the narrowness of his tuition were apt
+      to make him egotistically sure that the things which appealed to him as
+      being right were incapable of variation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first he had liked Alan Porter, with no tremendous amount of unbending;
+      now, because of the interest Allis had excited in him, the liking began to
+      take on a supervisory form, and it was not without a touch of irritation
+      in his voice that Alan informed his sister that he had acquired a second
+      father, and with juvenile malignity attributed the incumbrance to her
+      seductive influence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With all these cross purposes at work it can be readily understood that
+      Mortimer's visits to Ringwood were not exactly rose-leaved. In truth, the
+      actors were all too conventionally honest, too unsocialized, to subvert
+      their underlying motives. Allis, with her fine intuition, would have
+      unearthed Mortimer's disapprobation of racing&mdash;though he awkwardly
+      strove to hide it&mdash;even if Alan had not enlarged upon this point.
+      This knowledge constrained the girl, even drove her into rebellion. She
+      took his misunderstanding as a fault, almost as a weakness, and shocked
+      the young man with carefully prepared racing expressions; reveled with
+      strange abandon in talks of gallops, and trials, and work-outs, and
+      breathers; threw ironmouthed horses, pullers, skates, and divers other
+      equine wonders at his head until he revolted in sullen irritation. In fact
+      they misunderstood each other finely; in truth their different natures
+      were more in harmony two miles apart, the distance that lay between the
+      bank and Ringwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By comparison Crane's visits to Ringwood were utopianly complacent.
+      Strangely enough, Mrs. Porter, opposed to racing as she was, came quite
+      readily under the glamor of his artistic unobtrusiveness. He had complete
+      mastery over the science of waiting. His admission to the good lady of a
+      passing interest in horses was an apology; there seemed such an utter
+      absence of the betting spirit that the recreation it afforded him condoned
+      the offense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was this difference between the two men, the old and the young:
+      Crane knew exactly why he went there, while Mortimer had asked himself
+      more than once, coming back from Ringwood feeling that he had been
+      misunderstood&mdash;perhaps even laughed at&mdash;why he had gone there at
+      all. He had no definite plan, even desire; he was impelled to it out of
+      some unrecognized force. It was because of these conditions that the one
+      potter turned his images so perfectly, and the other formed only poor,
+      distorted, often broken, dishes of inferior clay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It stood in the reason of things, however, that Mortimer, in spite of his
+      uncompromising attitude toward racing, should be touched by its tentacles
+      if he visited at Ringwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His first baptism came with much precipitancy on the occasion of his
+      fourth visit to the Porters. He had driven out with Alan to spend his
+      Saturday afternoon at Ringwood. An afternoon is not exactly like an
+      evening in the matter of entertaining a guest; something must be done;
+      cigars, or music, or small chatter are insufficient. If one is on the
+      western slope of life's Sierra perhaps a nap may kill the time profitably
+      enough, but this was a case where a young man had to be entertained, a
+      young man difficult of entertainment under the circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alan had some barbarous expedition of juvenile interest on hand; the
+      unearthing of a woodchuck, or it might have been a groundhog, in a back
+      field; but Allis would not become a party to the destruction of animal
+      life for the sport of the thing. She had a much better programme mapped
+      out for Mortimer. Some way she felt that if he could see the thoroughbred
+      horses in their stalls, could come to know them individually, casually
+      though it might be, he would perhaps catch a glimmer of their beautiful
+      characters. So she asked Mr. Mortimer to go and have a look at her pets.
+      Alan would none of it; he was off to his woodchuck or groundhog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm glad you don't want to go and kill anything,&rdquo; she said, turning
+      gratefully to Mortimer when he refused Alan's invitation, saying that he
+      preferred to look at the horses. &ldquo;I'll show you Diablo, and Lucretia, and
+      Lauzanne the Despised&mdash;he's my horse, and I'm to win a big race with
+      him next year. Gaynor is down at the stables; and I'll give you a
+      tip"-Mortimer winced&mdash;&ldquo;if you want to stand well in with Mike, let
+      him suspect that you're fond of horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the stable door they met Mike Gaynor. Mike usually vacillated between a
+      condition of chronic anger at somebody or something, and an Irish drollery
+      that made people who were sick at heart laugh. Allis was as familiar with
+      his moods as she was with the phases of Lauzanne's temper. On Mike's face
+      was a map of disaster; the disaster might be trivial or great. That
+      something was wrong the girl knew, but whether it was that a valuable
+      horse was dead, or that a mouse had eaten a hole in a grain bag she could
+      only discover by questioning Gaynor, for there were never degrees of
+      expressed emotion in Mike's facile countenance; either a deep scowl or a
+      broad grin were the two normal conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter, Mike?&rdquo; questioned Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mather, is it?&rdquo; began Gaynor, &ldquo;it's just this, Miss Allis; if yer father
+      thinks I'm goin' to stand by an' see good colts spiled in their timper
+      just because a rapscallion b'y has got the evil intints av ould Nick
+      himself, thin he's mistook, that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it Mike&mdash;Shandy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's him, Miss. He's the divil on wheels, bangin' thim horses about as
+      though he was King Juba.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis saw that Gaynor was indeed angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll speak to father about him, Mike,&rdquo; she answered; &ldquo;I won't have the
+      horses abused.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mark my words, Miss Allis, Diablo'll take it out of his hide some day.
+      The b'y'll monkey wit' him once too often, then there'll be no b'y left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May we see the horses, Mike&mdash;are they having their lie-down, or
+      anything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet, Miss; they're gettin' the rub-down now; don't ye hear Diablo
+      bastin' the boords av his stall wid that handy off hind-foot av his?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a filly for yer life,&rdquo; exclaimed the Trainer, rapturously, as he
+      opened gently the door of Lucretia's box stall. &ldquo;There's the straightest
+      filly iver looked through a halter,&rdquo; he continued, putting his arm with
+      the gentleness of a woman over the brown mare's beautiful neck. &ldquo;Come
+      here, ould girl,&rdquo; he said, coaxingly, as he drew the haltered head toward
+      the visitors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer looked with interest at the big, comfortable box stall, littered
+      a foot deep with bright, clean, yellow straw. How contented and at home
+      the mare appeared! It seemed almost a complete recompense, this attentive
+      care, for the cruelty he imagined race horses suffered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't tie her up?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tie her up!&rdquo; ejaculated Mike, a fine Celtic scorn in his voice; &ldquo;I'd
+      rather tie up a wife&mdash;if I had one,&rdquo; he added by way of extenuation.
+      &ldquo;No man would tie up a mare worth tin thousand dollars if she's worth a
+      cent, an' take chances av her throwin' hersilf in the halter; av coorse
+      she's hitched fer a bit after a gallop while she's havin' a rub-down, but
+      that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucretia's black nozzle came timidly forward, and the soft, velvety upper
+      lip snuggled Allis's cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She knows ye, Miss,&rdquo; said Mike. &ldquo;That's the way wit' horses&mdash;they're
+      like children; they know friends, an' ye can't fool thim. Now she's sizin'
+      ye up, Mister,&rdquo; as Lucretia sniffed suspiciously at Mortimer's chin,
+      keeping a wary eye on him. &ldquo;She'll know if ye like horses or not, an' I'd
+      back her opinion agin fifty min's oaths.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis watched with nervous interest the investigation. She almost felt
+      that if Lucretia liked her companion&mdash;well, it would be something
+      less to dislike in him, at all events. Lucretia seemed turning the thing
+      over in her mind, trying to think it out. There was some mystery about
+      this new comer. Evidently she did not distrust him entirely, else she
+      would have put her ears back a trifle and turned away with a little
+      impatient warning shake of her delicate head. She always turned in that
+      cross manner from Shandy, the stable boy. She had also discovered that the
+      visitor was not completely a horseman; she did not investigate his
+      pockets, nor put her head over his shoulder, as she would have done with
+      Mr. Porter or Mike, or even with one who was a stranger, as was Mortimer,
+      had she felt the unmistakable something which conveyed to her mind that he
+      was of the equine brotherhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucretia has found you out,&rdquo; said Allis, presently. &ldquo;You do like horses;
+      she knows it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I like animals, I don't deny,&rdquo; Mortimer answered, &ldquo;but I know very
+      little about them&mdash;nothing about race horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike frowned and looked disparagingly at the visitor. &ldquo;He must be a quare
+      duck,&rdquo; he muttered to himself. That a man should know nothing of
+      thoroughbreds was perfectly inexplicable to Gaynor. He knew many racing
+      men whose knowledge of horseflesh was a subject for ridicule, but then
+      they never proclaimed their ignorance, rather posed as good judges than
+      otherwise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with startling inconsistency Mike explained: &ldquo;There's many like ye,
+      sir, only they don't know it, that's all; the woods is full av thim. Would
+      ye like to give the filly a carrot, Miss?&rdquo; he added, turning to Allis.
+      &ldquo;I'll bring some.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he returned Allis gave one to Lucretia, then they passed to the next
+      stall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a useful horse,&rdquo; explained the Trainer; &ldquo;he's won some races in
+      his 'time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's his name?&rdquo; asked Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Game Boy. He's by the Juggler. Ye remember him, don't ye?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer was forced to confess that he didn't quite remember Juggler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's strange,&rdquo; commented Mike, turning the big bay about with evident
+      pride; &ldquo;he won the 'Belmont,' at Jerome Park, did the ould Juggler. Ye
+      must av heerd av that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer compromised by admitting that he had probably forgotten it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I haven't,&rdquo; declared Mike, reproachfully. &ldquo;If Game Boy stands a
+      prep this summer ye'll hear from him,&rdquo; he confided to Mortimer, as they
+      left the stall. &ldquo;Jist remember Game Boy; see, ye can't forget&mdash;a big
+      bay wit' a white nigh fore leg, an' a bit rat-tailed. Yes, Game Boy's all
+      right,&rdquo; monologued Mike; &ldquo;but here's a better; this is Diablo. He must
+      have tabasco in his head, fer he's got the divil's own timper. But he can
+      gallop a bit; he can go like a quarterhorse, an' stay till the cows come
+      home; but he's like Lauzanne acrost yonder, he's got a bee in his bonnet
+      an' it takes a divil to ride him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's hard on me, Mike,&rdquo; expostulated Allis. &ldquo;You see, Lauzanne goes
+      better with me in the saddle than any of the boys,&rdquo; she explained to
+      Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The divil or angels, I was going to say, Miss, when ye interrupted me,&rdquo;
+       gallantly responded Mike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diablo's head was tied high in a corner of the stall, for Shandy, the boy,
+      was hard at work on him with a double hand of straw, rubbing him down. The
+      boy kept up a peculiar whistling noise through his parted lips as he
+      rubbed, and Diablo snapped impatiently at the halter-shank with his great
+      white teeth as though he resented the operation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer gazed with enthusiasm at the shining black skin that glistened
+      like satin, or watered silk. Surely there was excuse for people loving
+      thoroughbreds. It was an exhilaration even to look at that embodiment of
+      physical development. It was an animate statue to the excellence of good,
+      clean living. Somehow or other Mortimer felt that though the living
+      creature before him was only a horse, yet nature's laws were being adhered
+      to, and the result was a reward of physical perfection and enjoyment of
+      life. He began to feel that a man, or even a woman&mdash;it was the subtle
+      presence of the woman at his side that made him involuntarily interject
+      this clause into his inaudible thoughts&mdash;yes, even a woman of high
+      moral attributes might find the most healthy form of interested amusement
+      in watching the superb development of horses that were destined for no
+      other purpose than to race and beget sons and daughters of the same
+      wondrous stamina and courage and speed. His detestation of racing had been
+      in reality an untutored prejudice; he had looked upon but one phase of the
+      question, and that quite casually, as it introduced itself into his life
+      by means of sensational betting incidents in the daily papers. To him all
+      forms of betting were highly disastrous&mdash;most immoral. But here, like
+      a revelation, came to him, in all its fascination, the perfect picture of
+      the animal, which he was forced to admit stood next to man in its
+      adornment of God's scheme of creation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Shandy swept his wisp of straw along the sensitive skin of Diablo's
+      stomach, the latter shrunk from the tickling sensation, and lashed out
+      impatiently with a powerful hind leg as though he would demolish his
+      tormentor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's not cross at all just,&rdquo; explained Mike; &ldquo;he's bluffin', that's all.
+      Shure a child could handle him if they'd only go the right way about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he leaned over and whispered in an aside to the visitors&mdash;&ldquo;Bot'
+      t'umbs up!&rdquo; (this was Mike's favorite oath). &ldquo;Diablo hates that b'y an'
+      some day he'll do him up, mark my words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Shandy,&rdquo; he cried, turning to the rubber, &ldquo;loose the Black's head
+      an' turn him 'round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer almost shrank with apprehension for the boy, for Diablo's ears
+      were back on his flat, tapering neck, and his eyes looking back at them,
+      were all white, save for the intense blue-shimmered pupil. To Mortimer
+      that look was the incarnation of evil hatred. But the boy unsnapped the
+      halter-shank without hesitation, and Diablo, more inquisitive than angry,
+      came mincingly toward them, nodding his head somewhat defiantly, as much
+      as to say that the nature of the interview would depend altogether upon
+      their good behavior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;See that!&rdquo; ejaculated Mike, a pleasant smile of satisfaction rippling the
+      furrows of his face; &ldquo;see how he picks out the best friend the stable's
+      got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diablo had stretched his lean head down, and was trying to nibble with
+      gentle lip the carrot Allis held half hidden behind her skirt. There was
+      none of Lucretia's timidity in Diablo's approach; it was full of an
+      assumption of equality, of trust in the intentions of the stranger who had
+      come with the mistress he hart faith in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're all like that when Miss Allis is about,&rdquo; explained Mike; &ldquo;there
+      never would be a bad horse if the stable-b'ys worked the same way. Tie him
+      up, Shandy,&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;Even the jockeys spoil their mounts,&rdquo; Gaynor
+      continued in a monotone; &ldquo;the horse'll gallop better for women any time&mdash;they
+      treat thim gentler, that's why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most interesting,&rdquo; hazarded Mortimer, feeling some acknowledgment of
+      Mike's information was due.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the trut'. Miss Allis'd take Lauzanne, or the Black, or the little
+      mare, an' get a better race out av thim than any jock I've seen ridin'
+      hereabout.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mike,&rdquo; exclaimed Allis, &ldquo;you flatter me; you almost make me wish that I
+      were a jockey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, bot' t'umbs up! Ye'd av made a good un, Miss, an' that's no
+      disrespect to ye, I'm sayin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer smiled condescendingly. Allis's quick eye caught his expression
+      of amused discontent; it angered her. Mike's praise had been practically
+      honest. To him a good jockey was the embodiment of courage and honesty and
+      intelligence; but she knew that to Mortimer it simply meant a phase of
+      life he considered quite outside the pale of recognized respectability.
+      Somehow she felt that Mike's encomium had lowered her perceptibly in the
+      opinion of this man whom she herself affected to look upon with but
+      toleration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They visited all the other stalls, eight of them, and listened to Mike's
+      eulogies on the inmates. Coming down the other side of the passage, the
+      last occupied box stall contained Lauzanne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Porter'll tell ye about this wan,&rdquo; said Mike, diplomatically. &ldquo;He's
+      shaped like a good horse, an' his sire, old Lazzarone, landed many a
+      purse, an' the 'Suburban,' too&mdash;won it on three legs, fer he was
+      clean gone in his pins, I'll take me oath to that. He was a good horse&mdash;whin
+      he liked. Perhaps Lauzanne'll do the same some day, fer all I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was such a tone of doubt in the Trainer's voice that even Mortimer
+      noticed it. Neither was there much praise of the big Chestnut; evidently
+      Mike did not quite approve of him, though hesitating to say so in the
+      presence of his mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Lauzanne is my horse,&rdquo; volunteered Allis. &ldquo;I even ride him in all
+      his work now, since he took to eating the stable-boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you're not afraid?&rdquo; asked Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer the girl slipped quietly into the stall, and going up beside
+      the Chestnut, who was standing sulkily with his head in the corner of his
+      box, took him by the ear and turned him gently around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's just a quiet-mannered chap, that's all,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;He's a big,
+      lazy, contented old boy,&rdquo; and she laid her cheek against his fawn-colored
+      nozzle. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she explained, &ldquo;he's got more brains than any of the
+      other horses, and when he's abused he knows it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he's grateful when he's kindly treated,&rdquo; commented Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; that's why I like horses better than men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; the exclamation slipped from Mortimer's lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most men, I mean,&rdquo; she explained. &ldquo;Of course, father, and Alan, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+       she hesitated; &ldquo;you see,&rdquo; she went on to explain, &ldquo;the number of my men
+      friends is limited; but except these, and Mike, and Mr. Dixon, I like the
+      horses best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I almost believe you're right, Miss Porter,&rdquo; concurred Mortimer; &ldquo;I've
+      known men myself that I fancy were much worse than even Diablo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mike thinks Lauzanne is a bad horse,&rdquo; the girl said, changing the
+      subject, &ldquo;but he'll win a big race this coming season. You just keep your
+      eye on Lauzanne. Here's your carrot, old chap,&rdquo; she said, stroking the
+      horse's neck, &ldquo;and we must go if we're to have that drive. Will you hitch
+      the gray to the buggy for us, Mike?&rdquo; she asked of Gaynor, as they came out
+      of the stable, &ldquo;we'll wait here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Mike started off there came to their ears a sound of turmoil from
+      Diablo's box; impatient kicks against the boards from the horse, and
+      smothered imprecations from the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear that fiend!&rdquo; the girl exclaimed, and there was wrath in her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He does seem a bad horse,&rdquo; concurred Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean Diablo; it's the boy. It's all his evil doing. Oh, I've
+      only one glove,&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;I know where it is, though; that
+      mischievous rascal, Lauzanne, nibbled it from the front of my jacket; I
+      saw him do it, but forgot to pick it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow me, Miss Porter; I'll get it for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; please don't!&rdquo; with emphasis. As he started back, she laid a
+      detaining hand on his arm. &ldquo;I'd much prefer to go myself; Lauzanne
+      distrusts strangers and might make trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As the girl entered the stable, Mortimer sauntered on in the direction
+      Mike had gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis opened the door of Lauzanne's stall, passed in, and searched in the
+      straw for the lost glove.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      X
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The noise of strife in Diablo's box had increased. There came the sound of
+      blows on the horse's ribs; a muttered oath, and suddenly a scream of
+      terror from the boy, drowned in an instant by the ferocious battlecry of
+      the enraged stallion. Mortimer, thirty yards away, heard it, and felt his
+      heart stand still; he had never heard anything so demoniac in his life. He
+      turned in such haste that his foot slipped on the frozen earth, and he
+      fell heavily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first sound of blows Allis had started angrily toward Diablo's box.
+      She was at the door when Shandy's cry of terror rang out. For an instant
+      the girl hesitated; what she saw was enough to make a strong man quail.
+      The black stallion was loose; with crunching jaws he had fastened on the
+      arm of Shandy, in the corner of the stall, and was trying to pull the boy
+      down that he might trample him to death. But for a second she faltered; if
+      ever quick action were needed, it was now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back&mdash;back, Diablo! back!&rdquo; she cried, as pushing past the black
+      demon she brought her hunting-crop down with full force between his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether it was the sound of his mistress's voice, or the staggering blow,
+      Diablo dropped the boy like a crushed rat, and, half rearing, looked
+      viciously at the brave girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick! through the hay window!&rdquo; commanded Allis, standing between Shandy
+      and the horse, and drawing the whip back over her left shoulder, ready to
+      give it to Diablo full in the throat should he charge again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cowed, the boy clambered through the opening. Enraged at the sight of his
+      assailant's escape, the horse gave another scream of defiance and sought
+      with striking forefeet and spread jaws to pull down this new enemy. Not
+      until then had Allis thought of calling for help; her one idea had been
+      for the boy's safety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a flash the full peril of the situation dawned upon her; perhaps her
+      life would be given for the boy who well deserved his punishment. She had
+      seen two stallions fight, and knew that their ferocious natures, once
+      roused, could only be quelled by a force stronger than she possessed. Yes,
+      surely she would be killed-her young life trampled out by the frenzied
+      animal. Incoherently but altogether these thoughts filled her mind; also
+      the knowledge that Mike was beyond hearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help, Mortimer!&rdquo; she called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He heard it as he reached the stable door. Even then he would have been
+      too late had not other rescue come more quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In rushing from Lauzanne's stall Allis had left the door swinging on its
+      hinges. At the first cry of defiance from the black stallion Lauzanne had
+      stretched high his head and sent back, with curled nostril, an answering
+      challenge. Then with ears cocked he had waited for a charge from his
+      natural enemy. When the mingled call of his mistress and Diablo's bugle
+      note came to him he waited no longer, but rushed across the passage and
+      seized the black horse by the crest just as he was overpowering the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at that instant Mortimer reached the scene&mdash;in his hand a
+      stable fork he had grabbed as he raced down the passage. Even Lauzanne's
+      attack, though it gave Allis a respite, would not have saved her life; the
+      madly fighting horses would have kicked and trampled her to death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God! Back, back, you devils!&rdquo; And pushing, crowding, hugging the side
+      of the stall, Mortimer fought his way to the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once Diablo's hoof shot out and the man's left arm, snapping like a
+      pistol, dropped useless at his side. His brain reeled with the shock. The
+      oddly swinging arm, dangling like a doll's, with the palm turned backward,
+      seemed to fascinate him. Why was he there? What was he doing? Why was he
+      hammering the horses over the head with a stable fork held tightly in his
+      right hand? He hardly knew; his mind was clouded; he was fighting by
+      instinct, and always crowding along the wall toward the farther corner.
+      The girl had quite faded from his sight. Somehow he felt that he must
+      drive the horses back, back, out of the stall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis, too, was fighting; bringing the crop down with cutting force over
+      the withers, neck, head, any part of the plunging mass in front of her.
+      She could escape now through the opening where the boy had gone; but was
+      not Mortimer in the same position she had been? She had seen him drop to
+      his knees when Diablo lashed out; he must be sorely hurt; now he was
+      reeling like a drunken man as he fought the mad brutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This way,&rdquo; she panted, catching him by the coat, and pulling him toward
+      the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, that was it! He saw her now. It steadied his senses. It was the girl,
+      and she had called him&mdash;&ldquo;Mortimer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back,&rdquo; he yelled irrelevantly, in answer, cutting Diablo across the face
+      with the fork. It was pandemonium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get through the window!&rdquo; the girl screamed in his ear. &ldquo;Quick! Now!&rdquo; and
+      she pushed him toward it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;first&mdash;back, you devils!&rdquo; and he pressed away from her,
+      closer to the horses, thrusting and striking with the steel-pointed fork.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horses were giving way; Diablo was fighting half through the door,
+      weakening before the onslaught of the powerful chestnut. Even in battle,
+      as in a race, the stamina of the Lazzarone blood was telling; the bulldog
+      courage of the strain was strong upon Lauzanne, now that he was roused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick! You can get out!&rdquo; again called the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You first!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This drear, repetition was the only expression Mortimer's numbed senses
+      were equal to; but he fought with the ferocity of a tiger&mdash;his wound
+      but enraged him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They could both escape, Allis knew, if she could bring Mortimer to
+      understand; but they must do it quick, if at all. It was useless. He
+      seemed conscious of but the one idea that he must drive the fighting
+      animals out into the passage to save her. She was not afraid now; the
+      man's presence had driven that all away. It was useless to speak to him of
+      the window, neither would go first; so, with her riding whip she fought
+      side by side with Mortimer; springing back from the swift-cutting
+      forefeet; sometimes even hugging close to the side of a horse as he lashed
+      out from behind; and once saving her companion from being cut down by
+      pulling him swiftly from under a raised foot. In the end the stallions
+      were forced out into the passage, just as Mike came rushing upon the
+      scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the battle had waned. Twice Diablo had been pulled to his knees,
+      forced down by the fierce strength that was Lauzanne's; the Black was all
+      but conquered. The Trainer's voice checked Lauzanne's fury; even the boy
+      had plucked up courage to return; and between them the Chestnut was driven
+      into his stall. All the fight had been taken out of Diablo. He struggled
+      to his feet, and stood trembling like a horse that had come out of a
+      fierce cutting race. On his neck were the marks of Lauzanne's teeth, where
+      they had snapped like the jaws of a trap; from his crest trickled a red
+      stream that dripped to the floor like water from a running eave. All the
+      fierce fire of hate had gone from his eyes. He hung his head dejectedly,
+      and his flanks quivered. Lauzanne, too, bore evidence of the vicious
+      strife. On one quarter, where Diablo's sharp hoof had ripped, was a cut as
+      though he had been lashed with a sickle, and his withers were torn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer and Allis had come out of the stall. The man, exhausted by the
+      struggle, leaned wearily, with pale, drawn face, against the wall; the
+      floor seemed slipping from under him; he felt a sensation of swiftly
+      passing off into nothingness. He was sleepy, that was all; but a
+      sleepiness to fight against&mdash;he must still fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are badly hurt.&rdquo; It was the girl's voice. He was almost surprised
+      that he recognized it, everything was so confused. He answered heavily,
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'm&mdash;I'm&mdash;I want&mdash;to lie down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, lean on my shoulder.&rdquo; It was Mike's voice this time. &ldquo;This is bad
+      business,&rdquo; the Trainer was saying; &ldquo;we must get him out of this; he's
+      nearly knocked out. Are ye all right, Miss?&rdquo; turning to Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wounded man turned guiltily; he had forgotten the girl. Yes, surely
+      she had been in that hell of noises with him&mdash;fighting too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm just frightened, that's all,&rdquo; answered Allis. &ldquo;Mr. Mortimer saved
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Had he? he wondered. How had he come in there, anyway? His mind refused to
+      work out the problem; his side was so sore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yer arm's broke,&rdquo; said Mike, passing to Mortimer's right side. &ldquo;Come,
+      lean on me, sir. Can ye walk? I'll put ye in the buggy and drive ye to the
+      house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the first step Mortimer staggered and swayed like a drunken man. In his
+      side were many sharp things pulling him down like grappling irons; on his
+      head was a great weight that crushed his feet into the hard planks; his
+      knees gave under this load, and he would have fallen but for Mike's strong
+      arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm&mdash;afraid;&rdquo; then he set his teeth hard, his voice had sought to
+      end the sentence in a groan of anguish; the thing that was tearing at his
+      side had whistled in his lungs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis stepped forward swiftly, and passing her arm about his waist, helped
+      Mike lead him to the door. Twice she put her left hand up and brushed
+      tears from her eyes; the struggle had unnerved her. Very helplessly
+      against her swayed the man she had laughed at half an hour before. And he
+      had been crushed saving her! But that was not why the tears came&mdash;not
+      at all. She was unstrung. &ldquo;And he's got grit,&rdquo; she kept muttering to
+      herself; &ldquo;he has never even groaned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they succeeded in getting him into the buggy; then, gently, Mike
+      drove to the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Porter, reading a book on the veranda, heard the crunch of wheels as
+      a buggy, slow-moving, turned into the drive. She raised her eyes
+      leisurely, the matter of the story still in her mind; but with a quick cry
+      of &ldquo;John!&rdquo; she sprang to her feet, the volume, left to itself, rustling
+      from her lap to the floor. The mother eyes saw that something was wrong,
+      and the mother heart felt that some evil had come to Allis. Mrs. Porter
+      had gone white in an instant. Over her hung heavy at all times the dread
+      of some terrible accident coming to Allis through the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you call, wife?&rdquo; Porter asked as he came to the door. Then he sprang
+      quickly across the veranda at sight of his wife's blanched face, and made
+      to catch her in his arms. But she stopped him, pointing down the drive.
+      &ldquo;It's Allis, John; oh, my God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;they're just coming back; here, sit down again,
+      I'll see,&rdquo; and he raced down the steps just as Mike pulled up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter, girl?&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The young gentleman's got a bit shook up, sir; nothin' bad loike,&rdquo; Mike
+      broke in hastily. The diplomatic rider, &ldquo;nothin' bad,&rdquo; was added for Mrs.
+      Porter's benefit, his quick eye having seen her white face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Allis 's not hurt at all,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;We'll help the young
+      gintleman in, an' I'd best go for the docthor, I'm thinkin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even as he was speaking they had helped Mortimer from the rig. He had not
+      uttered a sound; his teeth were set hard against the agony that was in his
+      side, and the queer dizziness that was over him left little beyond a
+      consciousness that he was being looked after, and that if he could only
+      keep going for a little, just use his legs a trifle, he would presently be
+      allowed to sleep. Yes, that was what he wanted; he was so drowsy. As he
+      went up the steps between the two men, a haggard face peered at him over
+      the rail. It was familiar; he felt that some recognition was due, for it
+      was a woman's face. He tried to smile. Then he was on a bed, and&mdash;and&mdash;sleep
+      at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the three men with the silence of disaster over them passed
+      struggling into the house, Mrs. Porter threw herself on Allis's neck, and
+      a passion of tears flooded down and damped the girl's shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God be thanked, God be thanked!&rdquo; gasped the troubled woman, and one hand
+      that was over the girl's shoulder patted her with erratic rapidity. Then
+      she interrupted herself. &ldquo;What am I saying&mdash;it's wicked, and Mr.
+      Mortimer like that. But I can't help it&mdash;I can't help it. Oh, Allis!
+      my heart was in my mouth; I feel that some day you will come home like
+      this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that instant Gaynor dashed by them, leaped into the buggy, and called,
+      as he drove off: &ldquo;I'll have the docthor in a jiffy; the young man's all
+      right!&rdquo; He was still talking as the whirr of swift-rushing wheels
+      smothered out his voice, and the dust rose like a steam-cloud, almost
+      blotting him from the landscape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, girl! I thought you'd been killed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, sit down, mother; you're all worked up,&rdquo; and Allis put a cool hand
+      on her mother's hot forehead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the shock to her feelings had loosed the good woman's vocabulary. At
+      all times smouldered in her heart a hatred of racing, even of the horses.
+      &ldquo;It's the anger of God,&rdquo; Mrs. Porter denounced vehemently. &ldquo;This gambling
+      and racing is contrary to His law. Never a night passes, Allis, that I do
+      not pray to God that He may open your father's eyes to the sin of racing.
+      No good can come of it&mdash;no good has ever come of it&mdash;nothing but
+      disaster and trouble. In a day the substance of a year is wasted. There
+      never can be prosperity living in sin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush, mother,&rdquo; crooned Allis, softly. This outburst from Mrs. Porter
+      startled the girl; it was so passionate, so vehement. When they had talked
+      of racing in the home life the mother had nearly always preserved a
+      reproachful silence; her attitude was understood and respected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must speak, girl,&rdquo; she said again; &ldquo;this sinful life is crushing me. Do
+      you think I feel no shame when I sit in meeting and hear our good minister
+      denounce gambling and racing? I can feel his eyes on me, and I cannot
+      raise my voice in protest, for do not I countenance it? My people were all
+      church people,&rdquo; she continued, almost apologetically, &ldquo;tolerating no sin
+      in the household. Living in sin there can be no hope for eternal life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, mother,&rdquo; soothed the girl; &ldquo;I know just how you feel, but we
+      can't desert father. He does not look upon it as a sin, as carrying any
+      dishonor; he may be cheated, but he cheats no man. It can't be so sinful
+      if there is no evil intent. And listen, mother; no matter what anybody may
+      say, even the minister, we must both stick to father if he chooses to race
+      horses all his life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, sweetheart!&rdquo; John Porter cried out in a pleased voice, as he came out
+      to them, &ldquo;looking after mother; that's right. Cynthia has helped me fix up
+      Mortimer. He'll be all right as soon as Mike gets back with Rathbone. I
+      think we'd better have a cup of tea; these horses are trying on the
+      nerves, aren't they, little woman?&rdquo; and he nestled his wife's head against
+      his side. &ldquo;How did it happen, Allis? Did Mortimer slip into Diablo's box,
+      or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was all over that rascally boy, Shandy. Diablo was just paying him
+      back for his ill-treatment, and I went in to rescue him, and Mortimer
+      risked his life to save mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was plucky; eh, girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He fought the Black like a hero, father. But, father, you must never
+      think bad of Lauzanne again; if he hadn't come Mr. Mortimer would have
+      been too late.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's dreadful, dreadful,&rdquo; moaned the mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis shot a quick look at her father. He changed the subject, and
+      commenced talking about Alan&mdash;wondering where he was, and other
+      irrelevant matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was fresh divertisement as Mike rattled up, and Doctor
+      Rathbone, who was of a great size, bustled in to where Mortimer lay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three smashed ribs and a broken arm was his inventory of the damage
+      inflicted by Diablo's kick, when he came out again with Porter, in an
+      hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid one of the splintered ribs is tickling his lung,&rdquo; he added,
+      &ldquo;but the fellow has got such a good nerve that I hardly discovered this
+      unpleasant fact. He'll be all right, however; he's young, and healthy as a
+      peach. Good nursing is the idea, and he'll get that here, of course. He
+      doesn't want much medicine; that we keep for our enemies,&mdash;ha! ha!&rdquo;
+       and he laughed cheerily, as if it were all a joke on the battered man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thim docthers is cold-blooded divils,&rdquo; was Mike's comment. &ldquo;Ye'd a
+      thought they'd been throwin' dice, an' it was a horse on the other
+      gintleman. Bot' t'umbs! it was, too. Still, if ould Saw-bones had been in
+      the box yonder wit' Diablo, he wouldn't a-felt so funny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mortimer behaved well; didn't he, Mike?&rdquo; asked Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Behaved well; is it? He was like a live divil; punched thim two big
+      stallions till they took water an' backed out. My word! whin first I see
+      him come to the stable wit' Miss Allis, thinks I, here's wan av thim city
+      chumps; he made me tired. An' whin he talked about Lauzanne's knees,
+      m'aning his hocks, I had to hide me head in a grain bag. But if ye'd seen
+      him handle that fork, bastin' the Black, ye'd a thought it was single
+      sticks he was at, wit' a thousand dollars fer a knock-out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One can't always tell how a colt will shape, can they, Mike?&rdquo; spoke
+      Porter, for Mike's fanciful description was almost bringing a smile to
+      Mrs. Porter's troubled face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye can't, sor, an' yer next the trut' there. I've seen a herrin'-gutted
+      weed av a two-year-old&mdash;I remember wan now; he was a Lexington. It
+      was at Saratoga; an' bot' t'umbs! he just made hacks av iverythin' in
+      soight&mdash;spread-eagled his field. Ye wouldn't a-give two dollars fer
+      him, an' he come out an' cleaned up the Troy Stake, like the great horse
+      he was.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you think Mortimer has turned out something like that; eh, Mike?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, fer a man that knows no more av horses than I know av the strology
+      av stars, he's a hot wan, an' that's the God's trut'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer's gallant act had roused the Irishman's admiration. He would have
+      done as much himself, but that would have been expected of a horseman,
+      constantly encountering danger; that an office man, to be pitied in his
+      ignorance, should have fearlessly entered the stall with the fighting
+      stallions was quite a different matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Allis, with her more highly developed sense of character analyzation,
+      felt something of this same influence. She had needed some such
+      manifestation of Mortimer's integral force, and this had come with
+      romantic intensity in the tragic box-stall scene. This drama of the stable
+      had aroused no polished rhetoric; Mortimer's declamation had been
+      unconventional in the extreme. &ldquo;Back, you devils!&rdquo; he had rendered with
+      explosive fierceness, oblivious of everything but that he must save the
+      girl. The words still rang in the ears of Allis, and also the echo of her
+      own cry when in peril, &ldquo;Mortimer!&rdquo; There must have been a foreshadowing in
+      her soul of the man's reliability, though she knew it not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even without the doctor's orders, it was patent that Mortimer must remain
+      at Ringwood for a few days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as if Philip Crane, playing with all his intense subtlety, had met
+      his master in Fate; the grim arbiter of man's ways had pushed forward a
+      chessman to occupy a certain square on the board for a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer had been most decisively smashed up, but his immense physique had
+      wonderful recuperative powers. The bone-setting and the attendant fever
+      were discounted by his vitality, and his progress toward recovery, was
+      marvelous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Crane heard of the accident on one of his visits to Brookfield a couple of
+      days later, and of course must hurry to Ringwood to see his employee. It
+      happened that the Reverend Mr. Dolman graced the Porter home with his
+      presence the same evening that Crane was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally the paramount subject of interest was the narrow escape of Miss
+      Allis; but the individuality of discussion gradually merged into a crusade
+      against racing, led by the zealous clergyman. John Porter viewed this
+      trend with no little trepidation of feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Mrs. Porter who precipitated matters by piously attributing Allis's
+      escape to Providence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Undoubtedly, undoubtedly!&rdquo; Mr. Dolman said, putting the points of his
+      fingers together in front of his lean chest. He paused a moment, and
+      Porter groaned inwardly; he knew that attitude. The fingers were rapiers,
+      stilettos; presently their owner would thrust, with cutting phrase,
+      proving that they were all indeed a very bad lot. Perhaps John Porter
+      would have resented this angrily had he not felt that the Reverend
+      Inquisitor was really honest in his beliefs, albeit intolerably narrow in
+      his conclusions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dolman broke the temporary silence. &ldquo;But we shouldn't tempt Providence by
+      worshiping false images. Love of animals is commendable&mdash;commendable&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      emphasized this slight concession&mdash;&ldquo;but race horses always appeal to
+      me as instruments of the Evil One.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It wasn't the horse's fault at all, Mr. Dolman,&rdquo; Allis interposed, &ldquo;but
+      just a depraved human's. It was the boy Shandy's fault.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't thinking of one horse,&rdquo; continued the minister, airily; &ldquo;I meant
+      race horses in general.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think Mr. Dolman is right,&rdquo; ventured Mrs. Porter, hesitatingly; &ldquo;it's
+      flying in the face of Providence for a girl to go amongst those race
+      horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bad-tempered men make them vicious, mother,&rdquo; Allis said; &ldquo;and I believe
+      that Shandy's punishment was the visitation of Providence, if there was
+      any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Reverend Dolman's face took on an austere look. It was an insult to
+      the divine powers to assert that they had taken the part of a race horse.
+      But he turned the point to his own ends. &ldquo;It's quite wrong to abuse the
+      noble animal; and that's one reason why I hold that racing is contrary to
+      the Creator's intentions, quite apart from the evil effect it has on
+      morals.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are all men immoral who race, Mr. Dolman?&rdquo; John Porter asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His question forced Dolman to define his position. Porter always liked
+      things simplified; racing was either wrong in principle or right. Dolman
+      found him rather a difficult man to tackle. He had this irritating way of
+      brushing aside generalization and forcing the speaker to get back to first
+      principles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reverend gentleman proceeded cautiously. &ldquo;I should hardly care to go
+      so far as that&mdash;to make the rule absolute; a very strong man might
+      escape contamination, perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Porter sighed audibly. The minister was weakening most lamentably,
+      giving her husband a loophole to escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hardly think racing quite so bad as it is generally supposed to be,&rdquo;
+       interposed Crane, feeling that Porter was being pilloried somewhat. He
+      received a reproachful look from Mrs. Porter for his pains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've never seen any good come of it,&rdquo; retorted Dolman. &ldquo;A Christian man
+      must feel that he is encouraging gambling if he countenances racing, for
+      they contend that without betting racing is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything in life is pretty much of a gamble,&rdquo; Porter drawled, lazily;
+      &ldquo;there aren't any such things. The ships that go to sea, the farmer's crop&mdash;everything
+      is more or less a matter of chance. If a man goes straight he has a fairly
+      easy time with his conscience, no matter what he's at; but if he doesn't,
+      well, he'd better go hungry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great many very honorable men are racing today,&rdquo; added Crane; &ldquo;men who
+      have built up large fortunes through honest dealing, and wouldn't be
+      racing if they felt that it was either unchristian or dishonorable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They can't be Christians if they countenance gambling,&rdquo; asserted the
+      minister, doggedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It occurred to Mortimer that whenever the discussion took broader lines,
+      Dolman drew it back into the narrow cell of his own convictions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter scratched his head perplexedly. They had been discussing the moral
+      influence of racing; this seemed more like theology. &ldquo;It is certainly
+      unchristian,&rdquo; commented Mrs. Porter, severely. &ldquo;I haven't seen much
+      Christian spirit in any business,&rdquo; said Porter, quietly; &ldquo;they all seem
+      more a matter of written agreements. In fact there's more done on honor in
+      racing than in any of the business gambles. A man that's crooked in racing
+      is sure to come to grief in the long run.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane shifted in his chair, and Dolman coughed deprecatingly. &ldquo;For my
+      part,&rdquo; continued Porter, &ldquo;I've never found it necessary to do anything I'm
+      ashamed of in racing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His wife saw an opening. &ldquo;But, John dear, you were treated most shamefully
+      last year; a dishonest boy hauled your horse&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pulled, mother,&rdquo; interposed Allis; &ldquo;pulled father's horse, you mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps, though I fail to see where the difference can be, if the horse
+      ran the other way and your father lost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter smiled indulgently. &ldquo;The boy was punished, Helen,&rdquo; he said.
+      &ldquo;Dishonesty is not tolerated on the race course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but something is always happening,&rdquo; she continued in lament. &ldquo;It's
+      contrary to the law of the church, John. It seems just like a visitation
+      of divine wrath the way things happen. And you're so sanguine, John; last
+      year you were going to win a big race with Diablo when he threw his leg&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Threw a splint, mother,&rdquo; prompted Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought your father said it was his leg had something the matter with
+      it,&rdquo; argued Mrs. Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The splint was on his leg, mother dear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm not familiar with racing phrases, I must say, though I should
+      be, goodness knows; I hear little else. And talk of cruelty to animals!&rdquo;
+       she turned to Mr. Dolman; &ldquo;they burned the poor beast's leg with hot irons&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The minister held up his hands in horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It didn't give him as much pain as the doctor gave Mr. Mortimer setting
+      his arm,&rdquo; declared Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it was racing injured the horse's leg,&rdquo; interposed Dolman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your horse has got a ringbone, Mr. Dolman,&rdquo; said Allis, &ldquo;and a
+      spavin, too. I've been looking at him. That's because you drive him too
+      fast on hard roads. And his feet are contracted from neglect in shoeing.
+      It's just cruel the way that poor old horse has been neglected. Race
+      horses are much better taken care of.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis's sudden onslaught switched Mr. Dolman from the aggressive to the
+      defensive with great celerity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I confess I know very little about horses,&rdquo; he was forced to apologize;
+      then, with something of asperity, &ldquo;the spiritual welfare of my
+      congregation takes up my entire time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This rebuke caused a momentary silence, and Dolman, turning to Mortimer,
+      said, &ldquo;I hope you don't approve of racing, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer didn't, but a look from Allis's eyes inexplicably enough caused
+      him to hedge very considerably in his reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know nothing about the race course,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but from what I see of
+      the thoroughbreds I believe a man would have to be of very low order if
+      their noble natures did not appeal to him. I think that courage, and
+      honesty, and gentleness&mdash;they all seem to have it&mdash;must always
+      have a good influence. Why, sir,&rdquo; he continued, with a touch of
+      excitement, &ldquo;I think a man would be ashamed to feel that he was making
+      himself lower than the horses he had to do with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis looked grateful. Even Porter turned half about in his chair, and
+      gazed with a touch of wonderment at the battered young man who had
+      substituted common sense for sophistical reasoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reverend gentleman frowned. &ldquo;It's not the horses at all,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;it's the men who are disreputable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Porter gave a little warning cough. In his zealousness Mr. Dolman
+      might anger her husband, then his logic would avail little.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The men are like the horses,&rdquo; commented Porter, &ldquo;some bad and some good.
+      They average about the same as they do in anything else, mostly good, I
+      think. Of course, when you get a bad one he stands out and everybody sees
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And sometimes horses&mdash;and men, too, I suppose&mdash;get a bad name
+      when they don't deserve it,&rdquo; added Allis. &ldquo;Everybody says Lauzanne is bad,
+      but I know he's not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was a case of this dreadful dishonesty,&rdquo; said Mrs. Porter, speaking
+      hastily. She turned in an explanatory way to Crane. &ldquo;You know, Mr. Crane,
+      last summer a rascally man sold my husband a crooked horse. Now, John,
+      what are you laughing at?&rdquo; for her husband was shaking in his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was wondering what a crooked horse would look like,&rdquo; he answered, and
+      there were sobs in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, John, when you brought him home you said he was crooked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As usual, Allis straightened matters out: &ldquo;It was the man who was crooked.
+      Mother means Lauzanne,&rdquo; she continued.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; proceeded the good woman, &ldquo;a Mr. Langdon, I remember now, treated
+      my husband most shamefully over this horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane winced. He would have preferred thumbscrews just then. &ldquo;John is
+      honest himself,&rdquo; went on Mrs. Porter, &ldquo;and he believes other men, and this
+      horse had some drug given him to make him look nice, so that my husband
+      would buy him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shameful,&rdquo; protested Dolman. &ldquo;Are men allowed to give horses drugs?&rdquo; he
+      appealed to Mr. Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; the racing law is very strict on that point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But evidently it is done,&rdquo; contended Dolman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think there's very little of it,&rdquo; said Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This turn of the conversation made Crane feel very uneasy. &ldquo;Do you think,
+      Mr. Porter,&rdquo; he asked, &ldquo;that there was anything of that sort over
+      Lauzanne? Do you think Langdon would&mdash;&rdquo; He hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Langdon has a tolerable idea of what I think,&rdquo; answered Porter. &ldquo;I
+      shouldn't trust that man too much if I were you. He's got cunning enough,
+      though, to run straight with a man like yourself, who has a horse or two
+      in his stable, and doesn't go in for betting very heavily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know very little about him,&rdquo; protested Crane; &ldquo;and, as you say, he will
+      probably act quite straightforward with me, at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; continued Porter, half wearily, as though he wished to finish the
+      distasteful discussion; &ldquo;there are black sheep in racing as there are in
+      everything else. My own opinion is that the most of the talk we hear about
+      crooked racing is simply talk. At least nine out of ten races are honestly
+      run&mdash;the best horse wins. I would rather cut off my right hand than
+      steal a race, and yet last summer it was said that I had pulled Lucretia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I never heard of that, John,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Porter, in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you didn't,&rdquo; dryly answered her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis smiled; she had settled that part of it with her father at the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you'll excuse me,&rdquo; began Crane, rising, &ldquo;I think Mr. Wortimer is
+      getting tired. I believe I'll jog back to Brookfield.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Reluctantly the Reverend Dolman rose, too. He felt, somehow, that the
+      atmosphere of racing had smothered his expostulation&mdash;that he had
+      made little headway. The intense honesty that was John Porter's shielded
+      him about almost as perfectly as, a higher form of belief might have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with almost a worldly cunning it occurred to the clergyman that he
+      could turn the drawn battle into a victory for the church; and as they
+      stood for a minute in the gentle bustle of leave-taking, he said: &ldquo;The
+      ever-continuing fight that I carry on against the various forms of
+      gambling must necessarily take on at times almost a personal aspect&mdash;&rdquo;
+       he was addressing Mr. Porter, ostensibly&mdash;&ldquo;but in reality it is not
+      quite so. I think I understand your position, Mr. Porter, and&mdash;and&mdash;what
+      shall I say&mdash;personally I feel that the wickedness of racing doesn't
+      appeal to you as a great contamination; you withstand it, but you will
+      forgive me saying so, thousands have not the same strength of character.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter made a deprecatory gesture, but Dolman proceeded. &ldquo;What I was going
+      to say is, that you possibly realize this yourself. You have acted so
+      wisely, with what I would call Christian forethought, in placing your son,
+      Alan, in a different walk in life, and&mdash;&rdquo; he turned with a grave bow
+      in Crane's direction&mdash;&ldquo;and in good hands, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His mother wished it,&rdquo; Porter said, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, John was very good about Alan's future,&rdquo; the mother concurred. &ldquo;But,
+      husband, you quite agreed that it was much better for Alan to be in the
+      bank than possibly drifting into association with&mdash;well, such
+      dishonorable men as this Mr. Langdon and his friends. He is so much better
+      off,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;with young men such as Mr. Crane would have about
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Reverend Dolman smiled meekly, but it was in triumph. He had called
+      attention to an act which spoke far louder than Mr. Porter's disclaiming
+      words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter was not at all deceived by the minister; in fact, he rather admired
+      the other's cleverness in beating him on the post. He gave a little laugh
+      as he said: &ldquo;I should not have succeeded very well in a bank. I am more at
+      home with the horses than I am with figures; but I expect I would have
+      gone fairly straight, and hope the boy will do the same. I fancy one of
+      the great troubles about banking is to keep the men honest, the temptation
+      of handling so much money being great. They seem to have more chances to
+      steal than men on the race course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As usual, Porter seemed to be speaking out of his thoughts and without
+      malice; no one took offense. It was simply a straightforward answer to
+      Dolman's charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter had simply summed up the whole business in a very small nutshell.
+      That there was temptation everywhere, and that honest men and thieves were
+      to be found on race courses, in banks, in every business, but that, like
+      the horses, a fair share of them were honest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speaking materially of race horses quite outside of the moral aspect,&rdquo;
+       said Crane, as he was taking his leave, &ldquo;you'll have to be mighty careful
+      of that Diablo, Mr. Porter, when Miss Allis is about; he seems a
+      vindictive brute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, John; you'll have to sell him right away; I'll be frightened to
+      death while he's about the place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall never be a bit afraid of him,&rdquo; remonstrated Allis; &ldquo;Shandy, who
+      made all the mischief, has been discharged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Diablo has always been more trouble than he's worth,&rdquo; said Porter. &ldquo;I
+      thought he was going to be a good horse, but he isn't; and if he has taken
+      to eating people I'll give him away some day. I wouldn't sell him as a
+      good horse, and nobody'd buy a man-eater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll buy him when you make up your mind, Mr. Porter,&rdquo; exclaimed Crane,
+      somewhat eagerly. &ldquo;I have nobody sweet enough to tempt his appetite. In
+      the meantime, Miss Allis, if I were you I should keep away from him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then presently, with good-nights and parting words of warning about
+      Diablo, the guests were gone; and Mortimer, having declined Porter's
+      proffered help, was somewhat awkwardly&mdash;having but one good hand&mdash;preparing
+      to retire in Alan's room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mind worked somewhat faster than his fingers; several new problems had
+      been given it to labor over within the compass of a single moon. That
+      horse racing should ever become a disturbing interest in his life had
+      seemed very improbable; now it was like a gale about his soul, it swayed
+      him. He was storm-tossed in the disturbing element; he could come to no
+      satisfying conclusion. On the one hand the thoroughbred horses were to be
+      admired; they were brave and true, creatures of love. Also Porter was an
+      honest man, the one thing he admired above all else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Miss Allis! Somehow or other his eyes wandered to a picture that
+      rested on a mantelpiece in the room. He took it down, looking furtively
+      over his shoulder as he did so, and taking it close under the lamp that
+      was on the table sat and gazed steadfastly into the girlish face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in the photograph the big, wondrous eyes seemed to say, &ldquo;What of
+      wrong, if we are not wrong?&rdquo; That was the atmosphere so thoroughly
+      straightforward and honest that wrong failed of contamination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still it was unconvincing to Mortimer. The horses might be good, the man
+      honest, and the girl pure and sweet, but the life itself was distasteful.
+      Reason as one might, it was allied to gambling. Mortimer rose with a sigh,
+      the whole thing wearied him. Why should he distress his mind over the
+      matter? As he put the photograph back on the mantel he held it for an
+      instant, then suddenly; with a nervous, awkward gesture, brought it to his
+      lips and kissed the eyes that seemed to command tribute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The movement twisted his broken-ribbed side and an agony of pain came to
+      him in quick retribution. It was as though the involuntary kiss had
+      lurched him forward into a futurity of misery. The spasm loosed beads of
+      perspiration which stood cold on his forehead. Swift taken from the
+      stimulant of his thoughts, his nerves overtaxed by the evening, jangled
+      discordantly, and he crept into bed, feeling an unutterable depression as
+      though the room, was filled with evil, threatening spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In coincidence the two men, Mortimer and Crane, had similar thoughts the
+      day after Mr. Dolman's discussion; and, rather remarkably, their
+      deductions were alike, having the same subject of mental retrospect&mdash;Allis
+      Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was evident that outside of her family little interested her but
+      horses; certainly not a very lofty aspiration. When the conversation had
+      dealt with broad principles, men and their shortcomings, the previous
+      evening, she had centralized it in Lauzanne, picturing him as symbolical
+      of good acts and evil repute. Patently it was difficult to become
+      interested in such a young woman; actually she monopolized their thoughts.
+      Inconsistently the fair offender felt no recoil of this somewhat
+      distressing situation; her mind busied itself chiefly over the reclamation
+      of Lauzanne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By inheritance all the qualities of a good horse had come to him except a
+      submissive temper. Allis worked on the theory that his disposition had
+      been set awry by injudicious handling; that unlimited patience would cause
+      him to forget all that. He could gallop, else he had not won the race in
+      which he beat The Dutchman. That he had needed a stimulant that day was
+      because he had been soured and would not try with his wits about him. From
+      the time of coming back to Ringwood Allis had ridden him in all his
+      exercise gallops, and had asked Mike personally to supervise his stable
+      education. It had taken all her great patience, all her youthful
+      enthusiasm and faith, for the Chestnut had notions beyond all belief. At
+      first, missing the abuse, he almost seemed to thirst for it; tried the
+      gentle girl in every way&mdash;sulked, and loafed, and took little streaks
+      of trying to cut the course, and made false breaks as though he were going
+      to run with a full vigor; even laid hold of the horses with his teeth when
+      opportunity offered. These antics did not break the girl's faith; she rode
+      him with the gentle hand a woman knows and a horse soon learns to
+      appreciate, and gave him to understand that he was to have fair treatment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter viewed this continuous performance with silent skepticism. He did
+      not abuse horses himself, neither did he put up with too much nonsense
+      from them. To him they were like children, needing a lot of tolerant
+      kindness, but, also, at times, to be greatly improved by a sound whipping.
+      Once when he suggested something of this sort to Allis, saying that
+      Lauzanne was a spoiled child, she admitted he was, but that thoughtless
+      cruelty and not indulgence had done the harm, therefore kindness was the
+      cure. The first sign of regeneration was the implicit faith that Lauzanne
+      began to place in his young mistress. At first when she put up a hand to
+      pet him he would jerk his head away in affright; now he snuggled her
+      shoulder, or nibbled at her glove in full spirit of comradarie. Then one
+      day in a gallop came a stronger manifestation, a brief minute of
+      exhilaration, with after-hours of thankfulness, and beyond that, alas for
+      the uncertainty of a spoiled temper, an added period of wallowing in the
+      Slough of Despond!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on a crisp, sparkling morning, and with Shandy&mdash;it was before
+      his downfall&mdash;on Lucretia, another stable lad, Ned Carter, on Game
+      Boy, and Allis on Lauzanne, the three swung off for a working gallop of a
+      mile or more. Lauzanne was in an inquisitive mood, as the other two raced
+      on in front. What was his light-weighted rider up to anyway? Why did she
+      always leave it to him to do just as he liked? Was she really deceiving
+      him? Did she wish him to lie back there behind the others always? He fell
+      to wondering what she would do if he were to take hold of the bit and
+      spread his big muscles in one rushing gallop, and go on past the others
+      and get home to the feed box first. He rattled the snaffle in his mouth
+      with nervous indecision&mdash;he had a notion to try it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady, my boy!&rdquo; said Allis, as she slipped the reins back through her
+      fingers till they stretched tight. A dozen times she had sought in vain to
+      make him think she did not wish him to gallop, but something in the crisp
+      air this morning threw him off his guard. Why should he be forced to lag
+      behind? He stretched the arch of his neck straight till the bit held hard
+      in his mouth; the ears pitched forward in eager point; the great frame
+      under the girl quivered and sank closer to earth; the roar of his beating
+      hoofs came up to her ears, muffled by the drive of the wind that was now a
+      gale as the Chestnut raced into it with the speed of an express. How her
+      heart sang! Here was speed, and with such stride&mdash;strong, and
+      straight, and true! Low she crouched, and her call to Lauzanne was but a
+      joyous whisper. Her small hands were framed in steel, strength to steady
+      the big Chestnut as he swung round the course glued to the rail. On
+      Lauzanne sped, and to the rhythm of his big heaving quarters the girl's
+      soul sang a song of delight. At last, at last was coming her reward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, just when everything had been achieved, when the great gallop
+      had brought them half up the stretch, something came to Lauzanne&mdash;perhaps
+      the memory of the whipping finishes; at any rate, he curled up like a dog,
+      threw his ears back&mdash;Allis could feel the sudden stiff prop of the
+      forelegs as he set himself against the rush of speed&mdash;and in a dozen
+      strides he was Lauzanne again, Lauzanne the Despised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it had gone on for weeks, Allis working out her theory up to the
+      time of the trouble over Diablo. There was something in the girl's quiet
+      determination that was masterful; perhaps that was why she had always had
+      her own way at home. Now this mastery was spreading out wonderfully;
+      Lauzanne, and Mike, and her father, and Crane, and Mortimer, all in
+      different degrees of subjection, but, as Fate knew, all subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Porter's continual lament on the subject of racing had given Crane a
+      keynote for his line of action. It was the day following her scoring of
+      the tolerant husband that Crane revisited Ringwood full of his new idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had an impulse to buy back Lauzanne. For almost the first time in his
+      life he experienced twinges of remorse; this was because of Allis.
+      Porter's affairs were in a bad way, and he would probably accept eagerly
+      an offer from Crane to lighten his load. Individually he cared little for
+      Porter's financial troubles, but it was a good opportunity to prepare the
+      way for a stronger pressing of his suit with the girl. With his usual fine
+      discrimination he spoke to Mrs. Porter first, intimating never so slightly
+      that her words had won his entire sympathy; that if her husband would sell
+      any of the horses he would buy them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a convincing sincerity about Crane at all times; what he did he
+      did with the full vigor of a man believing in its truth. One might almost
+      have suspected that he deceived himself, that he had no conception of the
+      unrighteousness of his acts. At any rate, he imposed most successfully
+      upon the mother of Allis. Quite egotistically she attributed to herself
+      the trend of his friendship. In racing phrase, Crane was out for a killing
+      and playing his cards with consummate skill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the master of Ringwood he went very straight to the point. This was
+      possible, as Porter could not hesitate to discuss his financial condition
+      with his banker. Crane offered to buy Lucretia; this with him was purely a
+      speculation, but Porter would not part with his little mare. Then the
+      banker spoke of Lauzanne, saying that he felt somewhat guilty since
+      learning the previous evening that the horse had been doped. Porter failed
+      to see where Crane had anything to do with it. But the latter insisted
+      that he had unwittingly helped Langdon by speaking of Lauzanne as a good
+      horse. He had known nothing of the matter, beyond that his trainer had
+      assured him the horse would win; in fact, he had backed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter laughed at the idea that responsibility could attach to Crane. As
+      to the Chestnut, he was not worth a tenth of the three thousand he had
+      cost&mdash;that was well known; and if Crane or any other man sought to
+      buy him at that price it would savor too much of charity. At any rate,
+      Lauzanne belonged to Allis, and Crane would have to bargain with her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was Diablo, Crane said; his presence was a menace to Miss
+      Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've nursed him for a good while,&rdquo; Porter replied, &ldquo;and he's a bad
+      betting proposition&mdash;he's too uncertain. You don't want such a horse
+      as that&mdash;nobody does. I'll keep him a bit longer, and put him in a
+      handicap or two where the purse will be worth running for, and I won't
+      have to back him; he'll get in with a featherweight, and some day may take
+      it into his head to gallop, though he's a rank bad one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane did not press the point; he understood Porter's motives throughout.
+      He knew the master of Ringwood was an unchanging man, very set in his
+      ways, adhering closely to his plans and opinions. So Crane went back to
+      Brookfield without purchasing a horse, saying as he left, &ldquo;I claim first
+      privilege when you wish to sell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had talked to Porter in the stable, and Mike, busy near by, heard that
+      part of their conversation referring to the horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They haven't got money enough in the bank to take the little mare from us
+      yet, have they, Mike?&rdquo; Porter said to Gaynor, full of his pride in
+      Lucretia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That they haven't, sor,&rdquo; replied Mike, proudly. &ldquo;But, faith, I wish th'
+      gint hadn't come a-tryin' to buy her; it's bad luck to turn down a big
+      offer fer any horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter smiled indulgently. This stable superstition did not appeal to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would a-broke the bad luck, sor, to have let him took the Black.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would have broken his bank, you mean, Mike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he'll break somewan's back here yet, an' I'm tellin' you that
+      sthraight. They say a black cat's full av th! divil, but Diablo's ould
+      Nick hisself, though I'm sayin'it was th' b'y Shandy's fault sp'ilin' him.
+      An' if it wasn't fer Miss Allis it's a pity you couldn't a-sold him the
+      Chestnut. He's a sawhorse&mdash;he's as heavy in th' head as a bag of
+      salt; he'll never do no good to nobody. Them's the kind as kapes a man
+      poor, eatin' their heads off, an' wan horse, or maybe two, in the stable
+      earnin' th' oats fer them. It's chaper to cut th' t'roats av such cattle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you're right, Mike,&rdquo; Porter answered, quietly, as he left the
+      stable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane, driving back to Brookfield, turned over in his mind the matter of
+      his mission. He was satisfied. He had succeeded in the main objective
+      point. It would have been a good move to have acquired Lucretia, to have
+      tempted her owner to part with her for ready money in sight. The money
+      would soon have disappeared; then Porter, with a lot of bad horses on his
+      hand, would almost certainly have come more firmly into the grasp of
+      Crane. The offer to buy Lauzanne had been a bit of saving grace, a faint,
+      generous impulse, begot of Allis's regenerating influence; but Crane had
+      discovered that Porter did not at all suspect him of interest in the fraud&mdash;that
+      was a great something. He had also established himself firmly in Mrs.
+      Porter's good graces, he could see. It would be indeed strange if in the
+      end he did not succeed completely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Shandy's escapade with Diablo had brought a new trouble to Mike Gaynor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy had been discharged with a severe reprimand from Mr. Porter, and a
+      punctuation mark of disapproval from the Trainer's horn-like hand. He had
+      departed from Ringwood inwardly swearing revenge upon everybody connected
+      with that place; against Diablo he was particularly virulent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike tried to secure a boy in the Brookfield neighborhood to ride Diablo
+      in his work, but Shandy's evil tongue wagged so blatantly about the
+      horse's bad temper that no lad could be found to take on in the stables.
+      Ned Carter might have ridden Diablo at work, but the big Black was indeed
+      a horse of many ideas. He had taken a notion to gallop kindly while
+      accompanied by Lucretia and Lauzanne; worked alone he sulked and was as
+      awkward as a broncho of the plains. Also he disliked Carter&mdash;seemed
+      to associate his personality with that of Shandy's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike's discontent over the hitch spread to John Porter. It was too bad;
+      the horses had been doing so well. For three days Diablo had no gallop. On
+      the fourth Porter determined to ride the horse himself; he would not be
+      beaten out by an ungrateful whelp like Shandy. In his day he had been a
+      famous gentleman jock, and still light enough to ride work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like the idea, sor; it's not good enough,&rdquo; remonstrated Mike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his master was obdurate. If Allis rode Lauzanne, why shouldn't he ride
+      Diablo?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaynor would have ridden the horse himself rather than have his master do
+      so, but he had a bad leg. Once upon a time it had been crushed against the
+      rail. Somebody must ride Diablo; the horse, naturally highstrung, was
+      becoming wild with nervousness through being knocked out of his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three days after his discharge Shandy sat brooding with the low
+      cunning of a forest animal over his fancied ill-treatment. More than once
+      he had received money from Langdon for touting off to him Porter's stable
+      matters; now in his unreasoning bitterness he contrasted Langdon and
+      Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dick's white, he is, an' I'll go git a job from him. I gits half eat by
+      that crazy skate, an' fired without a cent fer it. God drat 'em!&rdquo; he
+      muttered; &ldquo;I'll get even, or know why. They'll put Ned up on Diablo, will
+      they? The sneak! He split on me fer beltin' the Black, I know, damn him!
+      They ain't got another boy an' they won't git one. I'll fix that stiff,
+      Carter, too; then they won't have no boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drank beer, and as it irritated his ferret mind a devilish plot came
+      into his being and took possession of him&mdash;a plot easy of execution
+      because of his familiarity with the Ringwood stables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night he slipped through the dark, like a hyena pup, to Ringwood.
+      That the stable was locked mattered not. More than once, out of laziness,
+      Shandy had shirked going to Mike's quarters for the keys and had found
+      ingress by a small window, a foot square, through which the soiled straw
+      bedding was thrown into the yard. Standing on the dung heap, Shandy worked
+      open the board slide that closed this window, and wormed his weasel-form
+      through the small opening. He passed down the passage between the stalls
+      and entered a saddle room at the farther end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bloomin' thing used to be on the fourth peg,&rdquo; he muttered, drawing
+      his small figure up on tiptoe and feeling along the wall for something.
+      &ldquo;Blow me!&rdquo; and he chuckled fiendishly as his fingers encountered the cold
+      steel of a bit, &ldquo;I'd know that snaffle in hell, if I got a feel of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a patent device of a twist and a loose ring in the center of the
+      bit he clutched, which Porter had devised for Diablo's hard mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shandy gave the bridle a swing, and it clattered to the floor from its
+      peg. Diablo snorted and pawed the planks of his stall nervously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, my buck,&rdquo; hissed Shandy, &ldquo;you wait till to-morror; you'll git
+      the run of yer life, I'm thinkin', damn their eyes!&rdquo; and he went off into
+      a perfect torrent of imprecation against everybody at Ringwood, hushing
+      his voice to a snarling whisper. Then he shut the door of the saddle room,
+      sat down on the floor and pulled from his pocket a knife and stub of
+      candle. He lighted the latter and held it flame down till a few drops of
+      wax formed a tiny lake; into this he stuck the candle upright, shielding
+      its flame with his coat. He opened the knife and laying it down, inspected
+      minutely the bridle which lay across his leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Diablo's right enough,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I couldn't be mistook on the bit,
+      nor them strong lines.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He picked up the knife, and holding the leather rein across the palm of
+      his left hand started to saw it gently with the blade. Almost instantly he
+      left off. &ldquo;Of all the bloomin' ijits! God drat me fer a goat! He'd feel
+      that cut the first slip through his fingers the leather took.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gathered in the rein until he had it six inches from the bit. There he
+      cut, stopping many times, and doubling the leather close to the light to
+      see how deep he had penetrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, Mr. Bloody Ned!&rdquo; he exclaimed at last, as inspection showed that
+      only the outer hard shell of the leather remained intact. &ldquo;That'll just
+      hold till the Black takes one of his cranky spells, an' you give him a
+      stiff pull. God help you then!&rdquo; Even this was a blasphemous cry of
+      exultation; not a plea for divine assistance for the man he plotted
+      against.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His next move proved that his cunning was of an exceptional order. From
+      his coat pocket he brought forth a pill box. In this receptacle Shandy
+      dipped a forefinger, and rubbed into the fresh cut of the leather a trifle
+      of blackened axle grease which he had taken from a wagon wheel before
+      starting out. Then he wiped the rein with his coat tail and looked at it
+      admiringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bloke won't see that, blast him!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He hung the bridle up in its place, put out the candle, dropped it in his
+      pocket and made his way from the stable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he passed Diablo's stall the big Black snorted again, and plunged in
+      affright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll get enough of that to-morror,&rdquo; sneered the boy. &ldquo;I hope you and
+      Ned both break your damn necks. Fer two cents I'd drop somethin' in your
+      feed-box that'd settle you right now; but it's the skunk as split on me I
+      want to get even with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Shandy trudged back to where he nested in Brookfield and soon slept with
+      calm restfulness, as though no evil had ever homed in his heart. In the
+      first gray of the early morning he rose and went out to the race course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The course near Ringwood had formerly been a trotting track, and was still
+      used at irregular intervals for the harness horses. In its primitive days
+      a small, square, box-like structure had done duty as a Judges' Stand. With
+      other improvements a larger structure had been erected a hundred yards
+      higher up the stretch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to the little old stand that Shandy took his way. Inside he waited
+      for the coming of Gaynor's string of gallopers as supremely happy in his
+      unrighteous work as any evil-minded boy might be at the prospect of
+      unlimited mischief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ned'll ride Diablo, sure; there's nothin' else to it,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;I
+      hope he breaks his blasted neck. I'll pay 'em out fer turnin' me off like
+      a dog,&rdquo; he continued, savagely, the small ferret eyes blazing with fury.
+      &ldquo;I'll learn the damn&mdash;Hello!&rdquo; His sharp ears had caught the muffled
+      sound of hoofs thudding the turf in a slow, measured walk. He peeped
+      between the boards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it's Mike. And the girl, too&mdash;blast her! She blamed me fer near
+      bein' eat alive by that black devil of a dope horse. Hell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This ambiguous exclamation was occasioned by the sight of his former
+      master springing into the saddle on Diablo's back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the game, eh? God strike me dead! I hope you git enough of him. My
+      arms ache yet from bein' near pulled out of the sockets by that
+      leather-mouthed brute. Gee, if the boss hasn't got spurs on! If he ever
+      tickles the Black wit' 'em&mdash;say, boys, there'll be a merry hell to
+      pay, and no pitch hot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young Arab spoke to the boards as though they were partners in his
+      iniquity. Then he chuckled diabolically, as in fancy he saw Porter being
+      trampled by the horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girl's on Lauzanne,&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;she's the best in the lot, if she
+      did run me down. A ridin' that sorrel mut, too, when she ought to be in
+      the house washin' dishes. A woman ain't got no more business hangin'
+      'round the stable than a man's got in the kitchen. Petticoats is the
+      devil; I never could abide 'em.&rdquo; Shandy sometimes harked back to his early
+      English Whitechapel, for he had come from the old country, and had brought
+      with him all the depravity he could acquire in the first five years of his
+      existence there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ned's got the soft snap in that blasted bunch,&rdquo; as his eye discovered
+      Carter on Lucretia. &ldquo;He's slipped me this go, but I've nobbled the boss,
+      so I don't care. I'm next 'em this trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As the three horses and their riders came on to the course he pulled out a
+      cheap stop-watch Langdon had equipped him with for his touting, and
+      started and stopped it several times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll pay fer their feed, you damn ole skinflint,&rdquo; he was apostrophizing
+      Porter, &ldquo;an' I'll be next the best they can do, an' stan' in on the
+      rake-off. Gee! I thought they was out fer a trial,&rdquo; he muttered, looking
+      disconsolately at the three as they cantered the first part of the
+      journey. &ldquo;I'll ketch 'em at the half, on the off chance,&rdquo; he added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though the timepiece in his hand clicked impatiently, after he pressed
+      the stem with his thumb, as Diablo's black nozzle showed past the
+      half-mile post, the three horses still cantered. Lauzanne was loping
+      leisurely with the action of a wooden rocking-horse. Lucretia, her long,
+      in-tipped ears cocked eagerly forward, was throwing her head impatiently
+      into the air as though pleading for just one strong gallop. Diablo's neck
+      was arched like the half of a cupid's bow; his head, almost against his
+      chest, hung heavy in the reins tight-drawn in Porter's strong hands. His
+      eyes, showing full of a suspicious whiteness, stood out from his lean,
+      bony head; they were possessed of a fretful, impatient look. Froth flecked
+      back from the nervous, quivering lips, and spattered against his black
+      satin-skinned chest, where it hung like seafoam on holding sand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whoa! Steady, old boy!&rdquo; Porter was coaxing soothingly. &ldquo;Steady, boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The ease up has put the very deuce into this fellow,&rdquo; he flung over his
+      shoulder to Allis, who was at Diablo's quarter. &ldquo;He's a hard-mouthed brute
+      if ever there was one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll be all right, dad,&rdquo; she called forward, raising her voice, for the
+      wind cut her breath; &ldquo;Shandy rode him with a heavy hand, that's why.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll put a rubber bit in his mouth, to soften it,&rdquo; he pumped brokenly.
+      &ldquo;Let out a wrap, girl, and we'll breeze them up the stretch; come on.
+      Carter, get to the front with the mare.&rdquo; A quarter of a mile from the
+      finish the horses raced into a swinging stride. Diablo was simply mad with
+      a desire to gallop; but in the saddle was his master; no horse ever did as
+      he wished with John Porter. Battling against the sharps his honesty might
+      handicap him out of the strife, but in the saddle the elation of movement
+      crept into his sinews, and he was superb, a king. As a jockey, he would
+      have been unsurpassed. It filled his heart with delight to play with the
+      fierce, imperious animal he rode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady, my boy&mdash;no you don't!&rdquo; This as Diablo stuck his neck
+      straight out like an arrow and sought to hold the bit tight against the
+      bridle teeth, that he might race at his own sweet will. Back came the
+      right hand, then the left, three vicious saws, and the bit was loose and
+      Diablo's head drawn down again close to the martingale. Lucretia and
+      Lauzanne were pulling to the front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; called Porter to Ned Carter; &ldquo;I want to see the little mare in
+      her stride. Take them out at three-quarter gallop down the back stretch.
+      I'll be treading your heels off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this they were opposite the old stand, where Shandy was hiding. The
+      boy, surmising that a gallop was on, and anxious to see them as they
+      rounded the turn going down the back, had knocked a board loose to widen
+      the crack. As the horses came abreast, Shandy, leaning forward in his
+      eagerness, dislodged it at the top, and it fell with a clatter, carrying
+      him half through the opening. The wind was blowing fair across the little
+      stand, so the scent of the boy came to Diablo's nostrils at the same
+      instant the startling noise reached his nervous ears. In a swerve he
+      almost stopped, every muscle of his big body trembling in affright. Porter
+      was nearly thrown from his seat by this crouching side step; the horse
+      seemed to shrink from under him. Just for an instant, but the reins had
+      flapped loose against the wet neck and Diablo felt freedom. With a snort
+      he plunged forward like a wounded buck, and raced madly after Lucretia,
+      who had bolted when the crash came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter had lost a stirrup in the sudden twist, and the reins had slipped
+      through his fingers as he grabbed the mane on Diablo's wither to pull his
+      weight back into the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the black neck was straight and taut, flatcapped by the slim ears that
+      lay close to the throatlatch. The thunder of his pounding hoofs reached to
+      the ears of Lucretia and Lauzanne in front, and urged them onward. Carter
+      had sat down in the saddle, and taken a steadying pull at the brown mare.
+      Even Lauzanne seemed lifted out of his usual lethargy, and, widemouthed,
+      was pulling Allis out of the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Curse the brute!&rdquo; gasped Porter, burying his knees in the saddle flaps,
+      and searching for the dangling stirrup with the toe of his right foot.
+      Once he almost had it, but missed; the iron, swinging viciously, caught
+      Diablo in the flank&mdash;it made little difference, his terror was
+      complete. All the time Porter was kneading the dangling reins back through
+      forefinger and thumb, shortening his hold for a strong pull at the
+      galloping brute's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who-o-o-a-h, who-o-o-ah, stead-y!&rdquo; and, bracing himself against the
+      pummel he swung the weight of his shoulders on the reins. As well might he
+      have pulled at the rock of Gibraltar. Diablo's head was up, his teeth set
+      hard and the man's strength was as nothing against the full-muscled neck
+      of the big horse. Diablo was cutting down the lead the other two held over
+      him, galloping like a demon. Porter felt that he must loosen the bit and
+      throw that set head down to get command of the horse. One fierce yank to
+      the right and the black head swayed a trifle; another to the left and&mdash;God
+      in heaven! the rein snapped, and its loose end came back, slashing the
+      rider across the face. He reeled with the recoil, nearly bringing Diablo
+      to his knees with the sudden swing of weight on the right rein. Porter's
+      brain jerked foolishly for an instant; then he was the trained horseman
+      again, and had let the remaining leather slip through his fingers a
+      trifle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; he shouted to those in front; &ldquo;go on&mdash;give me a lead! Hang
+      to the course!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He realized now that the crazed brute under him must run himself out. All
+      he could do was to sit tight and wait till Diablo had raced himself to a
+      standstill. To use the one rein meant a crash into the rail, and surely
+      death. Before, he had thought only of the horse's welfare; now it was a
+      matter of his own life. All that remained to him was to keep a cool head,
+      a steady nerve, and wait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Freed of restraint, not battled with, the Black's stride lengthened, his
+      nostrils spread wider, the hoofs pounded quicker and quicker until the
+      earth echoed with their palpitating beat. The other horses heard the
+      turmoil, and they, too, became more afraid, and took up the mad rush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diablo's reaching nose was at Lauzanne's hip when Allis took one swift
+      backward glance. She saw the dangling rein, the set look in her father's
+      face, the devil eyes of the horse, and for one breath-gasp her heart
+      fluttered in its beat. As quickly she put the fear from her, and swinging
+      Lauzanne a shade wide, left Diablo more room next the rail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On, Lauzanne!&rdquo; she called through drawn lips; and hitched encouragingly
+      in the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lucretia was still in front, her speed mocking at the swift rush of
+      Lauzanne and Diablo. But how the Black galloped! Every post saw him
+      creeping up on the Chestnut, and Allis riding and nursing him to keep the
+      runaway hemmed in at the turns, so that he could not crash through the
+      outer rail. No one spoke again. Each knew that nothing was left to do but
+      keep Diablo to the course, and ride, ride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just in front of Lauzanne, with swinging stride raced the brown mare,
+      waiting till the Chestnut should drop back beaten, to take up the running
+      with Diablo. That was Carter's good judgment; and he rode as though it
+      were the Derby, and he was nursing his mount for the last call at the
+      finish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the three quarters Lauzanne and Diablo were neck and neck; at the half,
+      the Black was lapped on Lucretia; another furlong and she was laboring to
+      keep her place, nose and nose with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm done,&rdquo; panted Carter, feeling the mare swerve and falter; &ldquo;I'm done&mdash;God
+      help us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still there was no check in the Black's gallop; he was like a devil that
+      could go on forever and ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had turned into the straight with Lucretia a neck to the bad, when
+      Carter heard the girl's voice faintly calling, &ldquo;Pull out, Ned!&rdquo; The boy
+      thought it fancy. Lauzanne the Despised couldn't be there at their heels.
+      He had thought him beaten off long ago. But again the voice came, a little
+      stronger, &ldquo;Pull out, Ned!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This time there was no mistake. It might be a miracle, but it was his duty
+      to obey. As he galloped, Carter edged Lucretia to the right. Without
+      looking back he could feel Lauzanne creeping up between him and Diablo.
+      Soon the Chestnut's head showed past his elbow, and they were both lapped
+      on the Black. Halfway up the stretch Allis was riding stirrup to stirrup
+      with her father. Porter's weight was telling on Diablo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's got him. Lauzanne'll hold him if he doesn't quit,&rdquo; Carter muttered,
+      as he dropped back, for Lucretia was blown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Past the finish post Lauzanne was a head in front, and Diablo was
+      galloping like a tired horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's beat!&rdquo; ejaculated Carter. &ldquo;Hello! that's it, eh? My word, what a
+      girl!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He saw Allis reach down for the slack rein running from her father's hand
+      to Diablo's mouth. &ldquo;Missed! She's got it!&rdquo; he cried, eagerly. &ldquo;The devil!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Allis grasped Diablo's rein, the horse, with sudden fury at being drawn
+      toward Lauzanne, his old foe, snapped at the Chestnut. As he did so,
+      thrown out of his stride, his forelegs crossed and he went down in a heap
+      with the rider underneath. The force of his gallop carried the Black full
+      over onto his back. He struggled to his feet, and stood, shaking like a
+      leaf, with low-stretched neck and fearcocked ears, staring at the crushed,
+      silent figure that lay with its face smothered in the soft earth. In a
+      dozen jumps Allis stopped Lauzanne, threw herself from the saddle, and
+      leaving the horse ran swiftly back to her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my God! he's dead, he's dead!&rdquo; she cried, piteously, the nerve that
+      had stood the strain of the fierce ride utterly shattered and unstrung at
+      sight of the senseless form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's not dead,&rdquo; said Carter, putting his hand over Porter's heart. &ldquo;It's
+      just a bad shake-up. Mike's coming, and we'll soon get him home. He'll be
+      all right, Miss Allis&mdash;he'll be all right,&rdquo; he kept muttering in a
+      dazed manner, as he raised her father's head to his knee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take Lucretia and gallop for the docthor, Miss 'Allis,&rdquo; commanded Mike
+      coming up on the run. &ldquo;We'll get yer father home in the buggy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In God's mercy, don't let him die, Mike,&rdquo; and bending down she pressed
+      her lips to the cold forehead that was driven full of sand. &ldquo;Get him home
+      quick, and try not to let mother see. I'll take Lauzanne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lauzanne had followed her and was standing waiting; his big eyes full of a
+      curious wonderment. Mike lifted Allis to the saddle. As he drew back his
+      hand he looked at it, then up at the girl. &ldquo;Don't cry, Miss,&rdquo; he said,
+      struggling a little with his voice that was playing him tricks; &ldquo;yer
+      father's just stunned a bit. The dochtor'll brace him up all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's bad business, this,&rdquo; he continued, as Allis galloped on her errand,
+      and he helped Carter lift the injured man. &ldquo;There, that's roight; jist
+      carry his legs; I'll take him under the back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they moved slowly toward the buggy that stood in the paddock, Diablo
+      followed at their heels as though he had done nothing in the world but
+      take a mild gallop. &ldquo;Ye black divil!&rdquo; muttered Mike, looking over his
+      shoulder; &ldquo;ye've murthered wan av the best min as iver breathed. If I'd me
+      way, I'd shoot ye. I'd turn ye into cat meat; that's what ye'r fit for!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What broke the rein?&rdquo; he asked of Carter as they neared the buggy; &ldquo;what
+      started thim goin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Somebody was in the old stand,&rdquo; Carter replied, as putting his foot on
+      the step he raised himself and the dead weight of the limp man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, steady, Ned. Pull the cushion down in the bottom. Now ye've got
+      it. Bot' t'umbs! it's as good as an ambulance. I'll hold his head in me
+      lap, an' ye drive. Here, Finn,&rdquo; he continued, turning to the boy who had
+      caught and brought up Lucretia, &ldquo;take the wee filly an' that divil's baste
+      back to the barn; put the busted bridle by till I have a good look at it
+      after. Go on, Ned; slow; that's it, aisy does it. When we get out on the
+      turnpike ye can slip along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had turned into the road he spoke again to Carter, &ldquo;Ye were
+      sayin', Ned, there was a guy in th' ould stan'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Carter; &ldquo;somebody was toutin' us off. A board broke, an'
+      that frightened the boss's mount.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I t'ought I see a b'y skinnin' off the track,&rdquo; commented Gaynor. &ldquo;First I
+      t'ought it was Shandy, but what'd he be doin' there? Did ye see his face,
+      Ned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was too busy takin' a wrap on Lucretia; she was gettin' a bit out of
+      hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When they came to the gate which gave entrance to Ringwood house Mike said
+      to Carter, with rough sympathy in his voice: &ldquo;Slip in ahead, Ned, and tell
+      the Misses that the boss has had a bit av a spill. Say he's just stunned;
+      no bones broke. Bot' t'umbs! though, I fear he's mashed to a jelly. Ask
+      fer a bottle of brandy till we give him a bracer. Ned!&rdquo; he called, as
+      Carter slipped from the buggy, &ldquo;see if ye kin kape the Misses from seein'
+      the boss till the docthor comes. Git hould of the girl Cynthie, an' give
+      her the tip that things is purty bad. Go on now; I'll drive slow wid wan
+      hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike's kindly precautions were of little avail. Mrs. Porter saw the
+      slow-moving conveyance crawling up the broad drive, and instinctively knew
+      that again something terrible had occurred. That Allis was not there added
+      to her fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's just bad, ma'am,&rdquo; Carter was saying, as Mike reached the steps. But
+      she didn't hear him; her face was white, and in her eyes was the horror of
+      a great fear, but from her lips came no cry; her silence was more dreadful
+      than if she had called out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll carry him, ma'am,&rdquo; Mike said, as she came down the steps to the
+      buggy, and clutching the wheel rim swayed unsteadily. &ldquo;Jest git a bed
+      ready, Misses,&rdquo; Gaynor continued, softly; &ldquo;git a bed ready, an' he'll be
+      all roight afther a bit. He's just stunned; that's all, just stunned!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was curious how the sense of evil had limited each one's vocabulary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me help,&rdquo; pleaded Mrs. Porter, speaking for the first time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll carry him, Misses&mdash;he's just stunned,&rdquo; repeated Mike, in a
+      dreary monotone, as feeling each step carefully with his toe he and Carter
+      bore the still senseless form into the house. The wife had got one of the
+      battered hands between her own, and was walking with wide, dry, staring
+      eyes close to her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O John, John! Speak to me. Open your eyes and look at me. You're not
+      dead; O God! you're not dead!&rdquo; she cried, passionately, breaking down, and
+      a pent-up flood of tears coming to the hot, dry eyes as the two men laid
+      Porter on the bed that Cynthia had made ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, Misses, don't take on now,&rdquo; pleaded Mike. &ldquo;The boss is jest
+      stunned; that's all. I've been that way a dozen toimes meself,&rdquo; he added,
+      by way of assurance. &ldquo;Where's the brandy? Lift his head, Ned; not so much.
+      See!&rdquo; he cried, exultantly, as the strong liquor caused the eyelids to
+      quiver; &ldquo;see, Misses, he's all roight; he's jest stunned; that's all.
+      There's the dochtor now. God bless the little woman! She wasn't long!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of wheels crunching the gravel, with a sudden stop at the porch,
+      had come to their ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out av the room, Ma'am,&rdquo; Mike besought Mrs. Porter; &ldquo;come out av the
+      room an' lave the docthor bring the boss 'round.&rdquo; He signaled to Cynthia
+      with his eyes for help in this argument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Mrs. Porter,&rdquo; seconded Cynthia, &ldquo;go out to the porch; Miss Allis and
+      I will remain here with the doctor to get what's needed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, a fall, eh,&rdquo; commented Dr. Rathbone, cheerily, coming briskly into
+      the room. Then he caught Mike's eye; it closed deliberately, and the
+      Irishman's head tipped never so slightly toward Mrs. Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now 'clear the room,' as they say in court,&rdquo; continued the doctor, with a
+      smile, understanding Mike's signal. &ldquo;We mustn't have people about to
+      agitate Porter when he comes to his senses. I'll need Cynthia, and perhaps
+      you'd better wait, too, Gaynor. Just take care of your mother, Miss Allis.
+      I'll have your father about in a jiffy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's jest stunned; that's all!&rdquo; added Mike, with his kindly, parrotlike
+      repetition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed a million years to the wife that she waited for the doctor's
+      outcoming. Twice she cried in anguish to Allis that she must go in; must
+      see her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He may die,&rdquo; she pleaded, &ldquo;and I may never see his eyes again. Oh, let me
+      go, Allis, I'll come back, I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait here, mother,&rdquo; commanded the girl. &ldquo;Doctor Rathbone will tell us if&mdash;if&mdash;&rdquo;
+       she could not finish the sentence&mdash;could not utter the dread words,
+      but clasping her mother's hands firmly in her own, kept her in the chair.
+      Once Mike came out and said, &ldquo;He's jest stunned, Ma'am. The docthor says
+      he'll be all roight by an' by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won't die&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's worth a dozen dead men, Ma'am; he's jest stunned; that's all!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another long wait, then Dr. Rathbone appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Porter will be all right, Madame; it'll take time; it'll take time&mdash;and
+      nursing. But you're getting used to that,&rdquo; he added, with a smile, &ldquo;but,&rdquo;
+       and he looked fixedly at Allis, &ldquo;he must have quiet; excitement will do
+      more harm than the fall.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me the truth, doctor,&rdquo; pleaded Mrs. Porter, struggling to her feet,
+      and placing both hands on his shoulders, &ldquo;I can stand it&mdash;see, I'm
+      brave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've told you the truth, Mrs. Porter,&rdquo; the doctor answered. &ldquo;There's no
+      fear for your husband's recovery if he has quiet for a few days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked into his eyes. Then crying, &ldquo;I believe you, doctor; thank God
+      for his mercy!&rdquo; swayed, and would have fallen heavily but for Mike's ready
+      arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She'll be better after that,&rdquo; said the doctor, addressing Allis. &ldquo;It has
+      been a hard pull on her nerves. Just bathe her temples, and get her to
+      sleep, if you can. I'll come back soon. Your father is not conscious, or
+      will he be, I'm thinking, for a day or two. He has heavy concussion.
+      Cynthia has full directions what to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      After Dr. Rathbone had left Mike and Carter went down to the stables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll jest have a look at that broke rein,&rdquo; said Gaynor; &ldquo;that sthrap was
+      strong enough to hang Diablo. If there's not some dirty business in this,
+      I'll eat me hat. T'umbs up! but it was a gallop, though. The Black kin
+      move whin he wants to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what do you think of old Lauzanne?&rdquo; exclaimed Carter. &ldquo;He just wore
+      Diablo down, hung to him like a bulldog, an' beat him out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the girl's ridin'; an' Lauzanne was feared, too. He's
+      chicken-hearted; that's what he is. Some day in a race he'll get away in
+      front av his horses, an' beat 'em by the length av a street. He'll be a
+      hun'red to wan, an' nobody'll have a penny on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When they arrived at the stable Mike headed straight for the harness room.
+      The light was dim, coming from a small, high, two-paned window; but Mike
+      knew where every bridle and saddle should be. He put his hand on Diablo's
+      headgear, and bringing it down carried it through the passage to a stable
+      door where he examined it minutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jest what I tought. Look at that,&rdquo; and he handed it to Carter for
+      inspection. &ldquo;How do ye size that up, Ned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The rein's been cut near through,&rdquo; replied Carter. &ldquo;I wonder it held as
+      long as it did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dirty, low-down trick,&rdquo; commented Mike. &ldquo;I'll hang it back on the peg
+      just now, but don't use it again fer a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he reentered the saddle room briskly his heel slipped on the plank
+      floor, bringing him down. &ldquo;I'd take me oath that was a banana peel, if it
+      was on the sidewalk,&rdquo; he exclaimed, after a gymnastic twist that nearly
+      dislocated his neck. &ldquo;Some of ye fellows is pretty careless wit' hoof
+      grease, I'm thinkin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      More out of curiosity than anything else he peered down at the cause of
+      his sudden slip. &ldquo;What the divil is it, onyway?&rdquo; he muttered, kneeling and
+      lighting a match, which he held close to the spot. &ldquo;Bot' t'umbs!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed, &ldquo;it's candle grease. Have aither of ye b'ys been in here wit' a
+      candle? It's agin the rules.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There isn't a candle about the barn, an' you know it, Mike,&rdquo; cried
+      Carter, indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike was prospecting the floor with another light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's two burnt matches,&rdquo; he continued, picking them up. &ldquo;An' they were
+      loighted last night, too. See that, they're long, an' that means that they
+      wasn't used for lightin' a pipe or a cigar&mdash;jes' fer touchin' off a
+      candle, that's all. I know they was loighted last night,&rdquo; he said, as
+      though to convince himself, &ldquo;fer they're fresh, an' ain't been tramped on.
+      If they'd been here fer two or three days, roight in front of the door,
+      they'd have the black knocked off 'em wid ye boys' feet. This wan didn't
+      light at all hardly, an' there's a little wool fuzz stickin' to it. Gee!
+      that manes some wan sthruck it on his wool pants. Git the lantern, Ned,
+      p'raps we'll fin' out somethin' more. The light from that high up winder
+      ain't good enough fer trackin' a bear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the lantern was brought, Mike continued his detective operations,
+      nose and eyes close to the floor, like a black tracker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that, Ned?&rdquo; he asked, pointing his finger at a dark brown spot on
+      the boards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carter crouched and scrutinized Mike's find. &ldquo;Tobacco spit,&rdquo; and he gave a
+      little laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Roight you are; that's what it is. Now who chaws tobaccie in this
+      stable?&rdquo; he demanded of Carter, with the air of a cross-examining counsel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does Finn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I don't think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't Shandy always have a gob of it in his cheek&mdash;the dirty pig?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he did, Mike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I t'ought so; I t'ought it was that blackguard. But how did the swine get
+      in here? The stable was locked, an' I had the key in me pocket. I'll take
+      me oath to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carter took his cap off, ran a hand reflectively up and down the crown of
+      his head, canvassing every possible entry there might be to the stalls.
+      Suddenly he replaced his cap and whistled softly. &ldquo;I know, Mike; he
+      crawled through the dung window. I've seen him do it half a dozen times.
+      When he was too lazy to go for the keys, he'd wiggle through that hole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike said nothing, but led the way to the back of the stable. There he
+      climbed upon the pile of rotting straw, and examined closely the small,
+      square opening, with its board slide, through which Shandy had passed the
+      night before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God! I t'ought so!&rdquo; he ejaculated. &ldquo;Here's more tobacco spit, where the
+      cutt'roat divil stood when he opened the winder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking down, his eye caught the glint of something bright deep in the
+      straw. He dug his hand down into the mass and brought up a knife. &ldquo;Whose
+      is that, Ned?&rdquo; he queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Carter looked at it closely. &ldquo;Shandy's,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;I'll swear to that.
+      I've borrowed it from him more than once to clean out the horses' hoofs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bot' t'umbs up! I'd hang that b'y to a beam if I had him here. He cut
+      that rein as sure as God made little apples,&rdquo; declared Mike, vehemently.
+      &ldquo;An' the gall av him to go an' sit there in the ould stand to watch the
+      Black run away wit' somewan an' kill 'em. Now jest kape yer mouth shut,
+      Ned, an' we'll put a halter on this rooster. By hivins! when I git him
+      I'll make him squale, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The seriousness of Porter's accident became clearer to Doctor Rathbone the
+      following day. He imparted this information to Allis; told her that in all
+      probability it would be weeks before her father would be strong again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the meantime, little woman, what are you to do with all these hungry
+      horses on your hands?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's answer came quickly enough, for she had lain awake through all
+      the dreary night, thinking out this problem. Without medical knowledge she
+      had felt certain that her father was badly injured, and the gloomy future
+      had come to her in the darkness instead of sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll look after them,&rdquo; she answered the doctor, quite simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A smile of skepticism hovered about his full lips, as he raised his eyes
+      to the girl's face, but the look of determination, of confidence that he
+      met put his doubts to flight. &ldquo;I believe you can do it, if any man can,&rdquo;
+       and he put his big hand on her slight shoulders, as much as to say, &ldquo;I'm
+      behind you; I believe in you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course an inkling of Porter's condition had to be given his wife,
+      though the full gravity was masked. This was done by Allis, and Mrs.
+      Porter immediately became a prey to abject despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first thing to be done was to get rid of Diablo. She was too gentle to
+      ask that he be shot, but he must go, even if he be given away. She would
+      willingly have sacrificed all the horses. Always with their presence had
+      come financial troubles, spiritual troubles; now the lives of those dear
+      to her were in actual peril. No wonder the good woman was rendered
+      hysterical by the strong emotions that swayed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her depression she somewhat startled Allis by insisting that they must
+      send for Mr. Crane at once. After all, it was not so unreasonable; with
+      the master of Ringwood helpless, who else could they consult with over
+      their entangled condition? For, the past year Porter had found it
+      necessary to keep in constant touch with the bank; so they must become
+      familiar with the details of the entanglement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Porter had come to have the utmost confidence in Crane's friendship
+      and ability; he was the one above all others to have Diablo taken off
+      their hands. So Philip Crane, to his intense delight, was summoned to
+      Ringwood. This was his first knowledge of Porter's mishap, for he had been
+      in New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane was supposed to possess a rare magnetism; most certainly men came
+      under his influence with a noiseless, cheerful complaisance. It may have
+      been that there was a slight fascination in the oblique contour of his
+      eyes, but in reality his power lay in his exquisite finesse; people delved
+      for him under the impression that they were laboring according to the
+      dictates of their own sweet wills. Figuratively speaking, he twisted Mrs.
+      Porter round his finger, and so delightfully, that she was filled with
+      gratitude because of Crane's kindness in their hour of trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The matter of Diablo was settled in a minute; he would buy the horse
+      himself, and the price could be arranged when Mrs. Porter was able to
+      discuss the matter&mdash;that is, definitely; in the meantime he would pay
+      a thousand for him. He understood Porter had bough him for that price.
+      With a touch of kindly humor, Crane declared that he would have a small
+      bet on the horse for Allis the first time he started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beyond parting with Diablo, Allis would not go farther in the matter of
+      selling the horses; this was the full extent of her concession to the
+      mother. Had she known that her father had entered Diablo in the Brooklyn
+      Handicap she might even have refused to part with the horse. As it
+      happened, Porter had entered both Lucretia and Diablo in the Brooklyn a
+      day or so before his accident, but had not spoken of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane assured Mrs. Porter that she need not distract her mind over money
+      matters, the bank could easily carry their lead until her husband was
+      himself again. No matter how things turned out, it was a delicate matter
+      to touch upon, the possibility of Porter's condition taking a serious
+      turn, but coming from Crane it seemed like an earnest of his sincerity&mdash;well,
+      Mrs. Porter would find a friend in him, quite willing and able to smooth
+      their difficult path.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane had meant to defer any protestations of regard for Allis until a
+      propitious future, but with his quick perception he saw that the
+      psychological moment had been moved forward by the sudden effacement of
+      the master of Ringwood. If he spoke now to Mrs. Porter it would give her a
+      right to call upon his services. He would appear in the light of a debtor;
+      it would break down barriers which might seem to exist because of their
+      non-relationship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane had not been without a suspicion that the younger man, Mortimer,
+      might prove a rival; heroics such as the Diablo episode were apt to give
+      young people a romantic interest in each other; Fate had more than evened
+      matters up by giving him the present opportunity. He thought with some
+      satisfaction how perfectly helpless Mortimer was in the present instance,
+      for he was most undeniably poor. It was an opportunity to be grasped; and
+      Crane never let the tide pass its flood in the waters of his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the banker spoke to Mrs. Porter of his strong love for Allis; so
+      delicately, and with so much sincerity, that she was completely won over.
+      It is true, the ground had been prepared for the seed, for the mother had
+      long feared that Allis might become attached to some one of Porter's
+      racing associates. Though strong in spiritual matters, the good woman was
+      not without worldly instinct. She was pleased with Crane personally; he
+      was not by any means a racing man; a rich banker, who would make a most
+      desirable husband for her daughter. Of course, it would rest with the girl
+      herself. Mrs. Porter would not coerce nor influence her; but why should
+      not Allis come to care for Crane under the influence of his strong love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Porter's mind had rebounded from its dazed condition after her
+      husband's accident, and was now acute. All these thoughts came to her with
+      rapidity, as Crane talked with masterly judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the mother's suggestion that he speak to Allis he put forward a plea of
+      delicate consideration for the girl; he would rather deny himself; he
+      would wait patiently until her mind was in a happier condition. Cleverly
+      enough he knew that Mrs. Porter was now his ally, and would plead his
+      cause with less chance of failure than if he startled Allis by the sudden
+      fronting of life's great problem.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Crane had gone Allis found her mother calmed by his visit; his
+      assurances had driven away distressing clouds of financial worry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost immediately Mrs. Porter transmitted to the girl what had come to
+      her of Crane's declaration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seems almost like an answer to my prayer,&rdquo; she said to Allis; &ldquo;not, of
+      course&rdquo;&mdash;she interrupted herself&mdash;&ldquo;that I've been praying for a
+      husband for you, but this wicked racing has warped the whole woof of my
+      life; it seemed inevitable in the strength of its contaminating atmosphere
+      that you would be wedded into it, though one were better dead than
+      willingly choose a path of sin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you've settled it, mother!&rdquo; Allis's big eyes took on a dangerous
+      look of rebellion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, daughter; you must choose for yourself; only you will be wise not to
+      go contrary to your parent's wishes. I did&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are not sorry, mother?&rdquo; there was reproach in the girl's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not for having wedded your father, but because of his racing life. I
+      should have been firmer, and asked him to give it up before I married him.
+      He might have done it then. Mr. Crane is a gentleman, Allis. That is a
+      great deal nowadays, and he loves you most sincerely. Words often mean
+      very little, but one can tell&mdash;at least when they've come to years of
+      discretion they can&mdash;from a man's voice whether he is in earnest or
+      not. I suppose it is very worldly to speak of his riches, but in poverty
+      one can do very little, very little good. I had rather that you didn't
+      have to look with misgiving into the future, Allis; it has taken much joy
+      out of my existence. The dread of poverty is a nightmare; it wears one's
+      life threadbare. To the young, buoyed up by confidence in the rosy future,
+      this may seem sordid, but this feeling of insecurity mars many lives which
+      might otherwise be happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, Allis,&rdquo; her mother continued, &ldquo;I know you are heart-whole, so I
+      can't cause you any misery by my well-meant advice. You've been a good
+      girl, and there has been nobody of your class about. Mr. Mortimer is, I
+      dare say, a gentleman, and I must confess I was afraid that you might
+      mistake a feeling of generosity to him for something stronger; but that
+      was only an idle fancy, I see. It would have been unfortunate if it were
+      otherwise, for he is very poor indeed. His small salary must be all taken
+      up in keeping himself, his widowed mother, and a younger sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis gave a sudden start. She had not known these particulars of
+      Mortimer's life; but they carried certain explanations of his conduct.
+      Quite casually she had formed an impression that he was penurious;
+      something he had dropped about not being able to afford certain pleasures.
+      That was where the money went&mdash;to support his mother and sister.
+      Unwittingly her mother was pleading the cause of two men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother's talk depressed Allis greatly. Why should this troublesome
+      matter come to her when she had so much to bear, so much to do. It gave
+      her quite a shock to find that as her mother talked she was not thinking
+      of Crane at all. She could not picture his face, even; just the
+      narrow-lidded eyes peeped at her in her thoughts once or twice; it would
+      be horrible to look into them forever and ever. The face of Mortimer, pale
+      and firm-set as it had been in that day of strife, was always obliterating
+      the other visage. Was her mother right? Was she so heart-whole? As if her
+      thoughts had bearing on her mother's mind, the latter said: &ldquo;I wouldn't
+      have spoken to you of this matter while your father is so ill if it
+      weren't for the fact that our position is very precarious. I can't
+      understand just how badly off we are, but if anything were to happen your
+      father, I hardly know what would become of us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mr. Crane has promised to help us if&mdash;if&mdash;&rdquo; There was a
+      hard ring in the girl's voice as she spoke, getting not past the &ldquo;if,&rdquo;
+       refusing to put into words the distressing thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no 'if' about it, daughter. Mr. Crane is our friend, your
+      father's friend, and he is going to help us; and he only spoke of his
+      regard for you by way of an excuse&mdash;it was delicacy on his part,
+      thinking that I would have less compunction in accepting his good offices.
+      All I ask, girl, is that you will try to like Mr. Crane; if you can't,
+      well, you won't find me making you unhappy. But I can tell you this,
+      Allis, unless matters mend, and how the change is to come I can't say,
+      your father will lose Ringwood and it will belong to Mr. Crane. Even if
+      the horses were sold off, the money would not clear the debts; besides, I
+      think that even the horses are encumbered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis stood in indecision for a little, thinking deeply; then she went up
+      to her mother, and, taking her face in her hands, kissed her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand, mother,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you are worrying over the dear old
+      place, over my future, and over father, and it is nothing but worry,
+      worry, worry all the time. But I'll save Ringwood for you, mother. I hope
+      father will soon be well again and that luck will change; but anyway,
+      mother, I promise you that no matter what effort it costs me you sha'nt
+      sacrifice the dear old place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Porter's eyes were wet with tears of gratitude. She was thinking only
+      of the redemption of the place through Crane; but Allis's words had meant
+      far more than she had taken from them. They were inspired by a faith that
+      she could save their fortunes without sacrificing herself to Crane. If
+      not, if she failed, she was brave, she was a Porter, and would keep her
+      word and save Ringwood, even at that price.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Journeying back to New York, Crane reviewed in detail his interview with
+      Mrs. Porter. He congratulated himself upon his wisdom in having instituted
+      his love suit by proxy. With all his masterfulness he was very
+      considerably in awe of Miss Allis. There was a not-to-be-daunted
+      expression in her extraordinary eyes which made him feel that a love tilt
+      with her would be a somewhat serious business. He pictured himself as an
+      ardent lover; he would cut a droll figure in that role, he knew; emotions
+      were hardly in his line. He might feel such an assertive emotion as love
+      quite as strongly as anyone, in fact, did, but could he express himself
+      with faultless consistency? He rather doubted it. His usual slow-advancing
+      method was certainly ordained of this intricate endeavor; and he had made
+      great progress with the mother, the one above all others to be placated;
+      adversity, continuous as it promised to be, would probably settle Porter's
+      influence in his favor. His plan of action plainly was to be often at
+      Ringwood to familiarize the household with his presence. The acquiring of
+      Diablo would facilitate that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Diablo&mdash;a skate! He laughed to himself over his purchase. Certainly
+      Langdon would laugh at him, too; not openly, of course; Crane wouldn't
+      tolerate that. What an influence this girl had over him, to be sure! Any
+      man who had endeavored to sell him a bad horse would have had a hopeless
+      task; with but a nod of encouragement from Allis he would have bought
+      every horse&mdash;all the useless crooks they had; the stable was full of
+      them, Lauzanne among the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The influence was dividing his nature into a dual one; starting into life
+      infantile thoughts of a generous morality; an unrest of great vigor was
+      coming to him, retribution; possibly the power to feel the difference
+      between an avariciousness, fathering dishonesty, and this new recognition
+      of other rights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his arrival in New York he sent for his trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bought a horse at Ringwood. I want you to look after him, Langdon,&rdquo; he
+      said. &ldquo;Their man, Gaynor, will send him direct to your stables.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Trainer's face brightened. &ldquo;Did you get Lucretia after all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I bought a big black, Diablo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The look of delight faded from Langdon's eyes quickly. &ldquo;The devil!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I said; that's his name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he's the most uncertain brute that ever wore a set of plates. You'll
+      get no good of him, sir; he's bad, clean through. It's come down to him
+      from his second sire, Robert the Devil, without a bit of the good, either.
+      He'd break a man that would follow him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He won't break me,&rdquo; answered Crane, quietly; &ldquo;nor you, either, Langdon&mdash;you've
+      got too much sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This subtle tribute mollified the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane proceeded: &ldquo;I remember the horse quite well. Four thousand was paid
+      for him as a yearling; as a two-year-old he was tried out good enough to
+      win the Futurity; but when it came to racing he cut it and finished in the
+      ruck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right,&rdquo; commented Langdon. &ldquo;He owes me a good bit, that same
+      Johnny; his people thought him a lead-pipe cinch, and I went down the line
+      on him to my sorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so. You know him as well as I do. It's a great way to get acquainted
+      with them, isn't it, Langdon; put your money on, and have the good thing
+      go down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon had the highest possible opinion of his master's astuteness and
+      began to waver in his antipathy to Diablo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think he's really good, then, sir; did he show you a fast trial?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't even see the horse,&rdquo; Crane answered, looking dreamily out of the
+      window. &ldquo;I bought him to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused in reflection; he couldn't tell Langdon why he had bought him,
+      and he hardly cared to have his prestige with the Trainer destroyed. He
+      continued, shifting the subject&mdash;matter a trifle, &ldquo;You did John
+      Porter up over Lauzanne last summer, Langdon&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me?&rdquo; questioned 'the Trainer. Was Crane forgetting his share in the
+      matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you!&rdquo; affirmed the other, looking him steadily in the eye. &ldquo;You sold
+      him Lauzanne, and Lauzanne was loaded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon said nothing. What the devil was coming?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; drawled Crane, &ldquo;Porter's badly hurt; he's out of the race for some
+      time to come. They're friends of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're friends,&rdquo; mused Langdon; &ldquo;who in thunder are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're friends of mine, and I offered to buy Lauzanne back, just to help
+      them out; but the old man's daughter has got the Chestnut for a hack, and
+      she won't sell him. It was Diablo's fault that Porter got the fall, so
+      they were willing to part with him, and I took the brute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was certainly a new role for Crane to play, Langdon thought; his
+      employer helping people out when they were in difficulties was a
+      revelation. The Trainer felt inclined to laugh. No doubt there was
+      something back of it all; some tout must have given Crane information of a
+      fast gallop Diablo had done, and he had gone to Ringwood to buy the horse,
+      thinking that Porter would be selling some of his racers owing to the
+      accident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon tried to remember what Shandy had said about Diablo, or whether
+      the boy had mentioned his name at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder what condition he's in?&rdquo; the Trainer remarked, questioningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Physically I think he's all right; it seems he galloped something under
+      forty miles with Porter before he came a cropper. But I understand they
+      had an imp of a boy, Sheedy, or 'Shaney'&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shandy,&rdquo; corrected Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that's the name,&rdquo; affirmed Crane, drawing a semicircle in the air
+      with his cigar, &ldquo;and he's a devil on wheels, by all accounts. Diablo's no
+      angel, as you've said, Langdon, and this boy made him a heap worse. You've
+      handled some bad horses in your time, and know more about it than I do;
+      but I'd suggest that you put Westley&mdash;he's a patient lad&mdash;to
+      look after the Black; give him quite a bit of work, and when you've got
+      him right, try him out with something, and if he shows any form we'll pick
+      out a soft spot for him. Let me see, he's a maiden&mdash;fancy that,
+      buying a four-year-old maiden!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon laughed approvingly. Crane was evidently coming back to his view
+      of the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, as I've said, he's a maiden, and we'll try and graduate him out of
+      that class. It will be a great chance for a killing if we can round him
+      into his early two-year-old form; and you can do it, Langdon, if anybody
+      on earth can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I've got him on his reputation,&rdquo; thought Crane, idly brushing specks
+      of cigar ash from the front of his coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as I thought,&rdquo; mused Langdon; &ldquo;the old man's got a horse after his
+      own heart. Everybody thinks Diablo's no good, but the boss has found out
+      something, and is on for the biggest kind of a coup.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How's The Dutchman coming on?&rdquo; asked Crane, intimating by the question
+      that the subject of Diablo bad been closed out, for the present, at least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great. He cleans up his four quarts three times a day, and is as big as a
+      cart horse. I never had a better doer in my hands. If he keeps well, and I
+      think he will, you have a great chance with him for the Brooklyn Derbv.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's encouraging. There are some good horses in it, though, White Moth
+      and others. However, I'll back The Dutchman to win fifty thousand, and
+      there'll be ten thousand in that for you, Langdon, if it comes off.&rdquo; The
+      Trainer's mouth watered. Money was his god. Horses were all right as a
+      means to an end, but the end itself was gold. He would stop at nothing to
+      attain that end; his avaricious mind, stimulated by Crane's promise, came
+      at once to the disturbing element in the pleasant prospect, Shandy's
+      report of Lucretia's good form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you find out anything about Porter's mare Lucretia? I know White
+      Moth's form; both fit and well. The Dutchman holds him safe over the Derby
+      journey.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I didn't hear anything about Porter's mare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have,&rdquo; said Langdon, decisively. &ldquo;I paid a boy to keep an eye on her,
+      and he says she'll be hard to beat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane frowned. &ldquo;What boy?&rdquo; he asked, abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, just drop that; chuck that game. John Porter has his own troubles.
+      If he can win, let him. He can't if The Dutchman keeps well; but anyway,
+      our own horses will keep us fully occupied.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon was dumbfounded. If Crane had opened the Bible and read a chapter
+      from St. Luke he would not have been more astonished. It had occurred to
+      him that he had done a remarkably smart thing; he had expected
+      commendation for his adroitness in looking after his master's interests.
+      This disapprobation of such a trivial matter as the touting off of an
+      opponent's horses was another new discovery in his master's character.
+      Where were they at, anyway? Presently Crane would be asking him to give
+      the public a fair run for their money each time out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once a light dawned upon Langdon. Crane was doubling on him. He saw
+      it like a flash. His employer had a tout on the ground himself; that was
+      how he had got next some good performance of Diablo's. My, but it was
+      clever; he could appreciate it. Crane rose in his estimation again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite humbly he answered: &ldquo;Very, well; it's not my funeral; I'll bring The
+      Dutchman to the post fit to run the race of his life. If Lucretia beats
+      him it won't be my fault. I thought perhaps you might want to hedge a bit
+      on Porter's mare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think it. I'll stand The Dutchman; there are too many in to start
+      backing them all. Let me know if the Black gives you any encouragement,
+      and I'll see about placing him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After Langdon had gone Crane lighted a fresh cigar and let his thoughts
+      circle about Allis and Diablo. It would be just like the play of Fate for
+      the horse to turn out good, now that John Porter had got rid of him. When
+      evil fortune set its hard face against a man he could do little toward
+      making the wicked god smile, and Porter, even when he was about, was a
+      poor hand at compelling success.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+   . . . . . . . . . .
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Jakey Faust learned of Diablo's transition from Porter's to Langdon's
+      stable. This information caused him little interest at first; indeed, he
+      marveled somewhat at two such clever men as Crane and Langdon acquiring a
+      horse of Diablo's caliber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust's business relationship with Crane was to a certain degree
+      tentative. Crane never confided utterly in anybody; if agents obeyed his
+      behests, well and good; and each transaction was always completed in
+      itself. He had discovered Faust and used him when it suited his purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some time after the purchase of Diablo, Jakey, reading his Morning
+      Telegraph, came with much interest upon the entries for the Brooklyn
+      Handicap, published that day. They were all the old campaigning Handicap
+      horses, as familiar to Faust as his fellow members of the betting ring. As
+      his eye ran down the long list a sudden little pig grunt of surprise
+      bubbled up through his fat throat. &ldquo;Gee, Diablo! Oh, ho, Mr. Crane!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tore out the list and put it in his pocket; then he sat for a time,
+      thinking. The result was a run down to Gravesend to pay just a friendly
+      visit to Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As far as Crane was concerned, the Trainer and the Bookmaker were like two
+      burglars suddenly coming upon each other while robbing the same house;
+      they were somewhat in a condition of armed neutrality, toward each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust hoped that Langdon would talk about Diablo; but the Trainer was like
+      most of his guild generally, a close-mouthed man, so Jakey had to make his
+      own running.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the boss goin' to do with Diablo?&rdquo; he asked Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must 've bought him for a work horse, I guess,&rdquo; the Trainer answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he any good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can eat; that's all I see from him yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What did he buy him for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To help a snoozer that was sittin' in bad luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust had an odd habit of causing his fat sides to ripple like troubled
+      water when he wished to convey the impression that he was amused; he never
+      laughed, just the rib ripple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's funny?&rdquo; Langdon asked, eying Jakey, with querulous disfavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crane buying a horse to help a man,&rdquo; answered the Cherub, wondering if
+      Langdon was so devoid of humor as to take it seriously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crane told me so himself,&rdquo; said the Trainer; &ldquo;Porter's hurt, an' I guess
+      they're in a hole, an' the boss took over Diablo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Dick,&rdquo; and Faust edged close enough to tap the other man's ribs with
+      his thumb, &ldquo;were you born yesterday? I say,&rdquo; continued the Cherub, for
+      Langdon had turned away somewhat impatiently, &ldquo;what's the good av givin'
+      me that gup; you didn't stand for it yourself&mdash;not on yer life. Th'
+      old man's pretty slick; buys a bad horse to help a poor mutt, an' enters
+      him in the Brooklyn, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Brooklyn!&rdquo; exclaimed Langdon, thrown off his guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With corpulent intensity the Cherub melodramatically drew from his pocket
+      the Telegraph clipping and tendered it to Langdon, watching the latter's
+      face closely. &ldquo;That's the pea, Dick, eh?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon was thinking. Was Crane doubling on him all around? Why the devil
+      hadn't he told him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now you ain't takin' in that fairy tale of Crane's any more'n I am, Dick.
+      Why can't we do a bit for ourselves over this; it won't hurt the boss
+      none. Won't throw him down. This horse was a good youngster, an' Crane
+      didn't get him without seein' him do somethin'. You jest keep me posted,
+      an' if he shapes good I can back 'm fer an old-time killin', see? I'll
+      divvy up straight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon didn't answer at once&mdash;not with satisfaction to Faust; he
+      knew that Crane held the butter for his bread, even the bread itself; but
+      here was a man with cake, and he loved cake. Finally, in the glamour of
+      Jakey's talk of untold wealth to be acquired, Langdon, swayed by the
+      cupidity of his nature rather than his better judgment, promised
+      half-heartedly to cooperate with Faust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no sooner had the latter gone than the lode-star of Langdon's
+      self-interest flickered clearly in view, and he promised Mr. Jakey,
+      mentally, a long trip to a very hot place, indeed, rather than a
+      surreptitious partnership over Diablo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was some little time after this, while Faust was feeling somewhat
+      irritated at the absence of information from Langdon, that he had an
+      interview with Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to back The Dutchman to win fifty thousand for me over the
+      Brooklyn Derby,&rdquo; the latter said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there's no winner book on it,&rdquo; objected Faust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just where your cleverness will come in,&rdquo; suavely answered Crane.
+      &ldquo;There's no hurry, and there are always people looking for foolish money.
+      There's one such in Chicago, O'Leary; and I fancy they could even be found
+      in New York. But you ought to get fifty to one, about it, if you put it on
+      easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see you have Diablo entered for the Brooklyn,&rdquo; Faust put out as a
+      feeler. &ldquo;Don't you want a commission worked on him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't enter him; that was somebody else's foolishness, and I don't
+      want to back him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a hundred to one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A thousand would be short odds, I should say,&rdquo; answered Crane. &ldquo;But wait
+      a bit. I bought him just to&mdash;well, I took him from some people who
+      were tired of his cannibal ways, and promised to have a small bet on him
+      the first time he ran, for&mdash;for the man.&rdquo; The equivocation was really
+      a touch of delicacy. &ldquo;You might take the odds to fifty for me; there's not
+      one chance in a million of his starting, but I might forget all about this
+      little matter of the bet, even if I were foolish enough to pay post-money
+      on him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hadn't I better dribble on more from time to time, if he has a chance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not of my money, thanks!&rdquo; The &ldquo;thanks&rdquo; clipped like a steel trap, and the
+      business was completed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust went away more than ever suspicious of Crane and Diablo. That fifty
+      dollars being put on for anybody else was bunkum. What was Crane up to
+      anyway? If he really meant to back the horse he would not have started
+      with such a trifle. Perhaps Diablo had been stuck in the Brooklyn simply
+      to see how the handicapper would rate him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust was convinced that Crane had some big coup in view; he would wait a
+      little, and at the first move have a strong play himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0019" id="link2H_4_0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Langdon was a consummate trainer, a student of horse character. He knew
+      that while biniodide of mercury would blister and put right a bowed
+      tendon, or the firing iron take the life out of a splint, that a much
+      finer knowledge than this was requisite to get fullhearted work out of a
+      thoroughbred. Brain must be pitted against brain; so he studied his
+      horses; and when Diablo came into his hands, possessed of a mind disease,
+      he worked over him with considerable intelligent patience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This study of horse character was the very thing that had caused him to go
+      wrong over Lauzanne. He had not gone quite far enough; had not waited for
+      time to demonstrate clearly the horse's temperament, but had recourse to a
+      cocaine stimulant. But with him Lauzanne's case had been exceptional.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first there was little encouragement over Diablo, but almost by
+      accident Langdon discovered that the Black's bad temper was always fanned
+      into a blaze by the sight of the boy Shandy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came a glint of hope. Diablo took a fancy to Westley, the jockey, who
+      was experimentally put on his back in the working gallop. After that
+      Shandy was kept out of the way; Westley took Diablo under his care, and
+      the big horse began to show a surprising improvement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane had been quite honest in his statement that he thought Diablo a bad
+      horse. His having been entered by Porter in the &ldquo;Brooklyn&rdquo; suggested the
+      possiability that his former owner must have seen some merit in the horse.
+      At any rate, he advised Langdon to give Diablo a patient trial. He really
+      had very little idea that the horse would start in the Handicap&mdash;it
+      seemed improbable. Langdon was also convinced that Porter had discovered
+      something great in Diablo; that Crane knew this, and had paid a stiff
+      price for the horse, and to his own ends was keeping it dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the winter turned into April he intimated to Crane that it was time for
+      them to decide the placing of the horses, and suggested that they try them
+      out. Crane had already decided to race The Dutchman this year in his own
+      name and not in Langdon's. If The Dutchman came up to expectation they
+      could give him a slow preparation up to Derby time; they could find out
+      whether Diablo was worth keeping for&mdash;well, for Morris Park or
+      Gravesend, or they could hurry him on a little, and start him at Aqueduct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane agreed with this reasoning, and it was decided to give the two
+      horses a home trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the day that Langdon had said he would try Diablo and The Dutchman,
+      Crane went down to Gravesend. When he got to the Trainer's house he found
+      the latter waiting for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I sent the horses over with the boys,&rdquo; Langdon said; &ldquo;if you'll just wait
+      a minute, I'll have a buggy hitched up and we'll drive over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A stable-boy brought the trap to the door in a few minutes, and Langdon,
+      telling Crane to get in, disappeared into the house, returning presently
+      with two saddles, which he placed in the buggy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A couple of favorite saddles of mine,&rdquo; he explained, &ldquo;they're like old
+      fiddles that great players carry about under their arms an' sleep with,
+      an' never let no one but themselves touch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you that particular with these?&rdquo; asked Crane by way of conversation,
+      not feeling at all interested in what he considered a fad of the
+      Trainer's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I mostly handle 'em myself. They cost a bit. I had 'em made to
+      order. The boys is that careless, they'd smash anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they jogged along, Langdon kept up a monologue dissertation on the
+      merits of the two horses. &ldquo;It's a good day for a gallop,&rdquo; and he flicked
+      the driving beast's quarter with the whip; &ldquo;there's not much wind, an' the
+      air's a bit sharp. They'll be on their mettle, the both of 'em, more
+      'specially Diablo. I had his plates changed. 'Pears to me he hadn't been
+      shod in three moons; I'll bet the smith took an inch off his toes.&rdquo; Then
+      he broke off to chuckle awhile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane was not skilled in the anatomy of a horse, beyond as it worked out
+      in winning races and money. That a horse had toes had never quite come
+      into his knowledge, and Langdon's gurgle of mirth he put down to a
+      suspicion that the Trainer was taking a rise out of him in what he had
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinking of Paddy Caramagh when he shod Diablo the other day. I
+      think you've heard Pat swear. He holds the belt for cussin' in this part
+      of the country. Well, he let it all out of him before he'd finished with
+      the Black. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I can hear him still, with the sweat running
+      off his face like oats spilling from a feed bag. I says to Paddy, 'Rub his
+      nose a bit,' for I could see it was more nervousness with the horse than
+      sheer deviltry. 'With what?' says Paddy, 'the hammer? Be gor! You're
+      right, though,' says he, and with that he tries to put a twister on
+      Diablo's nose. Holy mother! Diablo reached for him, and lifted the shirt
+      clean off his back. Say, there was a scared Irishman, if you ever saw one
+      in your life. He threw down the plate, cussin' as only Paddy can, and
+      swore the brute could run till he'd wore his hoofs off, for all of him.
+      Well, I takes hold of the Black's head, an' kids him a bit, only
+      firm-like, and we shod him right enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is bad tempered, then?&rdquo; asked Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; just wants a fair deal; that's all. You make him believe you're on
+      the square, an' he'll do what's right. But he hasn't got no use for any of
+      the guys that gets a cranky play in on him; he won't stand it. I'm going
+      to put Westley up on him to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about The Dutchman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Colley'll do. Any kid can ride him, if they sit still. He's just the
+      easiest-tempered horse ever looked through a bridle; he knows what's doin'
+      all the time. But Colley ain't no good on Diablo, an' if he can smell
+      Shandy, that settles it&mdash;it's all over. I'll put Westley up; it takes
+      a man to ride that horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about this gallop?&rdquo; asked Crane; &ldquo;there'll be spies about trying to
+      find out things, won't there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bet yer life, there'll be somebody, sir. It's just like when I was out in
+      Colorado; you couldn't see a vulture if you traveled forty days, perhaps,
+      but plant a dead thing anywhere and in an hour the sky simply rained 'em
+      down. These touts is most like vultures of anything I know; you've just
+      got to work your stunt to give 'em the go-by, that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane took but an apathetic interest in the matters that held full sway
+      over the Trainer's mind; looking after these incidents was Langdon's part
+      of the contract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was why they were so strong together. Langdon could do it. Just how
+      the trial was to benefit them alone, with the inevitable tout at hand,
+      Crane knew not, neither did he investigate; that was up to the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They drove into the paddock. Westley, Colley, and the two stable lads were
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall we bring out the horses?&rdquo; asked Westley, as Langdon sat swinging a
+      leg loosely over the end of the buggy seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any of the talent about, Bill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite likely, though I haven't seen none.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we'll slip 'em now. Just saddle up careless like, and no
+      preliminary, mind you. The sharks won't look for a brush till you've gone
+      around once. Take your mounts down the stretch to the quarter post, an'
+      then come away the first break; if there's anyone toutin' you off, they'll
+      think it just a pipe opener, an' won't catch the time. Run out the
+      mile-an'-a-quarter, make a race of it, but don't go to the bat. Diablo an'
+      The Dutchman don't need no whip to give us about the best they've got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, sir,&rdquo; answered Westley. &ldquo;If I'm a judge, when the Black's
+      through pullin', he's done racin', 'cause he's a keen one, so there won't
+      be no call to put the bud to him. If any of the rail birds is lookin'
+      they'll think we're goin' under a strong wrap, even when we're all out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lang don nodded his head. He was a man not given to exuberant
+      appreciation. The boys averred that when Dick Langdon didn't curse at them
+      they had done pretty well, indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your weight?&rdquo; he asked of Westley, abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've just tipped the scales at a hundred-and-three in my sweater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One hundred and three,&rdquo; mused the Trainer, making a mental calculation.
+      &ldquo;What's Colley's weight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's as near a hundred as you can make it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you bring over a saddle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; two of 'em; one apiece for the horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell Colley to take one, and some leads, and weigh out a hundred and
+      twelve. That'll be three pounds above the scale for May, weight for age,
+      for the three-year-old, The Dutchman. I guess he won't need more'n seven
+      pounds dead weight, for it's a five-pound saddle, I think. Let me see, you
+      said a hundred and three, you were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir; in the sweater; I can take that off&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; never mind. Take this saddle,&rdquo; and he lifted one from the buggy;
+      &ldquo;it'll just suit Diablo; he's got a herring-bone of a wither, an' this is
+      high in the tree, an' won't cut him. Here's the cloth an' some leads;
+      weigh out a hundred and twelve too. Weight for age&mdash;Diablo's a
+      four-year-old; you ought to carry a hundred and twenty-six, but he's not
+      The Dutchman's class, an' the ycungster'd lose him before they'd gone half
+      the journey. We'll run 'em at level weights, an' he'll get closer to The
+      Dutchman, an' the sharks won't have such a fairy tale to tell about our
+      horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred and twelve, you said, sir?&rdquo; queried Westley, as he put the
+      saddle that Langdon handed him over his left arm, slipped the thin sheets
+      of lead in his pocket, and stood dangling the linen weight cloth in his
+      right hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; level weights&mdash;a hundred an' twelve pounds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Westley,&rdquo; the Trainer called as the little man started off, &ldquo;just bring
+      the saddle back to me here when you've weighed. I'll put it on Diablo
+      myself; he's a touchy cuss, and I don't want him ruffled by careless
+      handlin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You take considerable trouble over it,&rdquo; remarked Crane. &ldquo;One would think
+      it was a big handicap you meant to capture this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon started visibly. Was Crane thinking of the Brooklyn? Did this
+      quiet, clever man sitting at his elbow already know as much as he hoped to
+      discover in his present gallop?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He answered: &ldquo;Handicaps is usually won pretty much like this; they're
+      generally settled before the horse goes to the post for the trip itself.
+      When he goes through the paddock gate the day of the big race he's out of
+      his trainer's hands; the man's got no more to do with the race himself
+      than a kid sittin' up in the grand stand. Here's where I come in, if we
+      mean to land the Brooklyn,&rdquo; and he looked searchingly at Crane, a
+      misleading grin on his lips. But the latter simply joined in the laugh,
+      doubtingly, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred and twelve, neat,&rdquo; declared Westley, as he returned, throwing
+      some loose leads into the buggy. &ldquo;Colley's gone to saddle The Dutchman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; answered Langdon, getting down from the seat and taking the
+      saddle. &ldquo;Go and tell the boy to bring Diablo out of the stall. I'll saddle
+      him in the open. He generally kicks the boards when I cinch him up, an' it
+      puts him in a bad humor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon started off with the jockey, but turned back, saying, &ldquo;Oh, Mr.
+      Crane, I wanted to ask you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this he had reached the buggy, while Westley continued on his way to
+      the stalls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a fine day, sir,&rdquo; continued Langdon, finishing his sentence, and
+      exchanging the saddle held in his hand for the one that was in the buggy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to put the other on?&rdquo; asked Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I fancy Diablo will like this better. Touchy brutes, these race
+      horses; got to humor 'em. Come on over to the stalls&mdash;the horse'll
+      stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diablo was being led around in a small circle by his boy. He was a
+      magnificent creature, sixteen and a half hands high, and built on the same
+      grand scale; perhaps a bit leggy for the huge barrel that topped the
+      limbs; that was what caused him to go wrong in his younger days. His black
+      skin glistened in the noonday sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I call the mirror of health,&rdquo; said Langdon, in an unwonted
+      burst of poetic eloquence, as he passed his hand across the horse's ribs.
+      Then feeling that somehow he had laid himself open to a suspicion of
+      gentleness, added, &ldquo;He's a hell of a fine looker; if he could gallop up to
+      his looks he'd make some of the cracks take a back seat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Diablo had resented either the mellifluous comparison or the rub of
+      Langdon's hand, for he lashed out furiously, with a great farreaching leg
+      that nearly caught Crane unawares.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your polite language seems to be as irritating to him as the blacksmith's
+      oaths,&rdquo; ejaculated Crane, as he came back from the hasty retreat he had
+      beaten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's only play. Good horses is of two kinds when you're saddlin' 'em. The
+      Dutchman there'll hang his head down, and champ at the bit, even if you
+      bury the girt' an inch deep in his belly; he's honest, and knows it's all
+      needed. That's one kind; and they're generally the same at the post,
+      always there or thereabouts, waitin' for the word 'go.' An' they race
+      pretty much the same all the time. If you time 'em a mile in 1:40 at home,
+      they'll do it when the colors is up, an' the silk a-flappin' all about 'em
+      in the race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whoa! Hold still, you brute! Steady, steady! Whoa!&rdquo; This to Diablo, for
+      while talking he had adjusted the weight cloth with the gentleness of a
+      cavalier putting a silk wrap about his lady love's neck, and had put a
+      fold of soft woolen cloth over the high-boned wither.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand out in front of him and hold his head down a bit;&rdquo; this to the boy.
+      Then as he slipped the saddle into place and reached underneath for the
+      girths, he continued his address to Crane on the peculiarity of racers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now this is a horse of another color, this one; he ain't takin' things
+      easy at no stage of the game. He objects to everything, an' some day
+      that'll land him a winner, see? He'll get it into his head that the other
+      horses want to beat him out, an' he'll show 'em a clean pair of heels;
+      come home on the bit, pullin' double. Whoa, boy! Steady, steady, old man!&rdquo;
+       Then he ceased talking, for he had taken the girth strap between his
+      teeth, and was cinching up the big Black with the firm pull of a grizzly.
+      Diablo squirmed under the torture of the tightening web on his sensitive
+      skin, and crouched as though he would fall on the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir;&rdquo; continued Langdon, as he ran the stirrups up under the saddle
+      flap out of the way, and motioned to the boy to lead Diablo about. &ldquo;Yes,
+      sir; this fellow's different. He's too damn sensitive. At the post he's
+      like as not to act like a locoed broncho, an' get one blamed for having
+      'juiced' him, but he don't need no dope; what he needs is steadying. If he
+      gets away in front, them long legs of his will take some catchin'. He's
+      the kind that wins when the books are layin' a hundred to one against him.
+      But the worst of it is with his sort, like as not the owner hasn't a penny
+      on them; but the public'll howl; they'll call it in-an'-out runnin'; an'
+      the scribblers'll get their paper to print a notice that the stable ought
+      to be ruled off; an' all the time you're breakin' your heart trying to get
+      him to give his true&mdash;Hello! there's Colley out on The Dutchman;
+      mount your horse, Westley&mdash;wait, you don't need no spurs; yes, carry
+      a whip, an' give the guys that is watchin' a stage play with it; but don't
+      hit the Black. We'll just see what he'll do himself, this trip,&rdquo; he added,
+      addressing Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taking Westley's small-booted foot in his hand, he lifted the lad to
+      Diablo's back, and led the horse out through a gate to the course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The two boys cantered their mounts down to the quarter post carelessly, as
+      though they were going around to the far side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at 'em!&rdquo; cried the Trainer; &ldquo;isn't he a little gentleman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To the uninitiated this might have been taken as a tribute to one of the
+      boys, Westley, perhaps; but the Trainer was not even thinking of them.
+      They were of no moment. It was the wine-red bay, The Dutchman, cantering
+      with gentle, lazy grace, that had drawn forth this encomium. His head,
+      somewhat high carried, was held straight and true in front, and his big
+      eyes searched the course with gentle inquisitiveness, for others of his
+      kind, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a lovely horse,&rdquo; commented Crane, knowing quite well to what Langdon
+      referred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's all that, but just look at the other devil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Diablo was throwing his nose fretfully up and down, up and down; grabbing
+      at the bit; pirouetting from one side the course to the other; nearly
+      pulling Westley over his neck one minute, as with lowered head he sought
+      to break away, and the next dashing forward for a few yards with it stuck
+      foolishly high, like a badmouthed Indian cayuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Westley'll manage him,&rdquo; Langdon confided to Crane, after a period of
+      silent observation; &ldquo;he'll get his belly full of runnin' when he's gone a
+      mile and a quarter with The Dutchman. Gad! that was neat; here they come;&rdquo;
+       for the two boys had whirled with sudden skill at the quarter post, and
+      broke away, with Diablo slightly in the lead. &ldquo;My God! he can move,&rdquo;
+       muttered Langdon, abstractedly, and quite to himself. The man at his side
+      had floated into oblivion. He saw only a great striding black horse coming
+      wide-mouthed up the stretch. At the Black's heels, with dogged lope, hung
+      the Bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take him back, take him back, Westley!&rdquo; yelled Langdon, leaning far out
+      over the rail, as the horses raced by, Diablo well in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Trainer's admonition seemed like a cry to a cyclone, as void of
+      usefulness. What power could the tiny dot lying close hugged far up on the
+      straining black neck have over the galloping fiend?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, that's the way,&rdquo; Langdon said, nodding his head to Crane, and
+      jerking a thumb out toward the first turn in the course, where the two
+      horses were hugging close to the rail; &ldquo;that's the way he's worked here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which one?&rdquo; asked his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Black, an' if he ever does that in a race&mdash;God help the others&mdash;they'll
+      never catch him; they'll never catch him; they'll never catch him,&rdquo; he
+      kept repeating, dwelling lovingly on the thought, as he saw the
+      confirmation of it being enacted before his eyes; for across the new green
+      of the grass-sprouted course he could see two open lengths of daylight
+      between Diablo and The Dutchman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifty-one and a half for the half-mile,&rdquo; he imparted to Crane, looking at
+      his watch. &ldquo;Now The Dutchman is moving up; Colley doesn't mean to get left
+      if he can help it. I'm afraid Diablo'll shut up when he's pinched; his
+      kind are apt to do that. The Dutchman is game, an' if he ever gets to the
+      Black's throat-latch he'll chuck it. But it takes some ridin'; it takes
+      some ridin', sir.&rdquo; He was becoming enthusiastic, exuberant. The silent man
+      at his side noticed the childish repetition with inward amusement. He had
+      thought that Langdon would have been overjoyed to see the bay horse
+      smother his opponent. Was not the Trainer to have ten thousand dollars if
+      The Dutchman won the Handicap? But here he was pinning his satisfaction to
+      the good showing of Diablo. He didn't know of the compact between Langdon
+      and the Bookmaker Faust, but he strongly suspected from the Trainer's
+      demeanor that the gallop he was witnessing foretold some big coup the
+      latter scented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He hasn't got him yet, he hasn't got him yet!&rdquo; cried Langdon, joyfully,
+      as the horses swung around the bottom turn, closer locked, but with Diablo
+      still a short length in the lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane saw no great cause for exhilaration. The Dutchman was certainly
+      giving the Black twenty pounds the best of it in the weights, for one was
+      a three-year-old while the other was four, and they each carried a hundred
+      and twelve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The mile in 1:42,&rdquo; chirped Langdon. &ldquo;That's movin', if you like,
+      considerin' the track, the condition of the horses, an' that they're
+      runnin' under a double wrap. Now we'll see a ding-dong finish, if the
+      Black doesn't show a streak of yellow. Dutchy's got him,&rdquo; he added, as
+      through his glasses he saw them swing into the straight, neck and neck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clever Mr. Westlev!&rdquo; for Diablo's rider, having the rail and the lead,
+      had bored out slightly on the turn, so as not to cramp the uncertain horse
+      he rode, and carried The Dutchman wide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up the straight they came, the boys helping their mounts with leg and arm;
+      the Black holding his own with a dogged persistence that quite upset
+      Langdon's prognostication of cowardice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the watchers it was as exciting as a stake race. The stamina that
+      Langdon had said would stand The Dutchman in good stead over the mile and
+      a half Handicap course now showed itself. First he was level with the
+      Black, then gradually, stride by stride, he drew away from Diablo, and
+      finished a short length in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great trial,&rdquo; cried the Trainer, gleefully, holding out his watch for
+      Crane's inspection. &ldquo;See that!&rdquo; pointing to the hand he had stopped as the
+      Bay's brown nozzle flashed by the post; &ldquo;two-nine on this course! Anything
+      that beats that pair, fit and well, a mile and a quarter on a fast
+      track'll have to make it in two-five, an' that's the record.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks good business for the Derby, Langdon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it does. That's the first showing I've had from the colt as a
+      three-year-old; but I knew he had it in him. Hanover was a great horse&mdash;to
+      my mind we never had his equal in America&mdash;but this youngster'll be
+      as good as his daddy ever was. I don't think you ought to start him, sir,
+      till the Derby, if you're set on winnin' it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had moved up to the gate as he talked, and now opened it, waiting for
+      the boys to come back. They had eased down the horses gradually after the
+      fierce gallop, turned them about and were trotting toward the paddock,
+      where stood the two men. Langdon took Diablo by the bridle rein and led
+      him in toward the stalls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did he shape under you, Westley?&rdquo; he asked, as the boy slipped from
+      the saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't ask to ride a better horse. I thought I had the colt beaten,
+      sure; but my mount seemed to tire a little at the finish. He didn't toss
+      it up, not a bit of it; ran as game as a pebble; he just tired at the
+      finish. I think a mile is his journey. He held The Dutchman safe at a
+      mile.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess you're right, Westley; a mile's his limit. At level weights with
+      the three-year-old, which means that he had twenty pounds the best of it,
+      he should have held his own the whole route to be a stayer, for the colt
+      isn't more'n half ready yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't hustle him none too much, sir; I might a-squeezed a bit more out
+      of him. Did we make fair time?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite a feeler, Mister Jockey,&rdquo; thought Langdon to himself; &ldquo;it's news
+      you want, eh?&rdquo; Then he answered aloud, with a diplomacy born of many years
+      of turf tuition: &ldquo;Fairish sort of time; it might have been better, perhaps&mdash;a
+      shade under two-twelve. I thought they might have bettered that a couple
+      of seconds. But they'll come on&mdash;they'll come on, both of them. If
+      anybody asks you, Westley, The Dutchman was beaten off, see? I don't like
+      to discourage the clever owners that has good 'uns in the Derby&rdquo; Then he
+      added as a sort of after thought, and with wondrous carelessness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn't matter about the Black, you know; he's only a sellin' plater,
+      so it doesn't matter. But all the same, Westley, when we find a soft spot
+      for him, an over-night sellin' purse or somethin, you'll have the leg up,
+      with a bet down for you at a long price, see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time Langdon had slipped the saddle from Diablo's back the boy had
+      thrown a hooded blanket over him, and he was led away. &ldquo;Send them home,
+      Westley. Now, Mr. Crane, we'll drive back to the house an' have a bit of
+      lunch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they drove along Crane brought up the subject of the trial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The colt must be extra good, Langdon, or the Black is&mdash;well, as he
+      was represented to be, not much account.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess Diablo's about good enough to win a big handicap, if he happened
+      to be in one at a light weight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't win to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He came pretty near it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where would he have been carrying his proper weight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About where he was, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You said as a four-year-old he should have had up a hundred and
+      twenty-six, and he carried a hundred and twelve; and, besides, had the
+      best boy by seven pounds on his back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just pass me that saddle, Mr. Crane,&rdquo; said Langdon, by way of answer.
+      &ldquo;No; not that&mdash;the one I took off Diablo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane reached down his hand, but the saddle didn't come quite as freely as
+      it should have. &ldquo;What's it caught in?&rdquo; he asked, fretfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In itself, I reckon&mdash;lift it.&rdquo; &ldquo;Gad! it's heavy. Did Diablo carry
+      that? What's in it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lead-built into it; it's my old fiddle, you know. You're the first man
+      that's had his hand on that saddle for some time, I can tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Diablo did carry his full weight,&rdquo; commented Crane, a light breaking
+      in upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just about, and carried it like a stake horse, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I changed the saddles after Westley weighed. He's a good boy, and
+      don't shoot off his mouth much, but all the same things will out while
+      ridin' boys have the power of speech.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks as though Diablo had something in him,&rdquo; said Crane,
+      meditatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's got the Brooklyn in him. Fancy The Dutchman in at seventy pounds;
+      that's what it comes to. Diablo's got ninety to carry, an' he gave the
+      other twenty pounds to-day. You've got the greatest thing on earth right
+      in your hands now&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon hesitated for a minute, and then added: &ldquo;But I guess you knew this
+      all before, or you wouldn't have sent him here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bought him for a bad horse,&rdquo; answered Crane, quietly; &ldquo;but if he turns
+      out well, that's so much to the good. But it's a bit of luck Porter's not
+      having declared him out to save nearly a hundred. He seems to have raced
+      pretty loose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder if he thinks I'm taking in that fairy tale?&rdquo; thought Langdon.
+      Aloud, he said: &ldquo;But you'll back him now, sir, won't you? He must be a
+      long price in the winter books.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; I'll arrange that,&rdquo; answered the other, &ldquo;and I'll take care of you,
+      too. I suppose Westley will take the mount?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you can just give him to understand that he'll be looked after if
+      the horse wins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the Brooklyn, sir, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seems like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't say anything about the race to Westley, though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll leave all that to you. I'll attend to getting the money on; you do
+      the rest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Crane had gone, Langdon paid further mental tribute to his master's
+      astuteness. &ldquo;Now I see it all,&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;the old man just thought to
+      keep me quiet; throw me of the scent till he duplicated the other trial,
+      whenever they pulled it off. Now he's got a sure line on the Black, an'
+      he'll make such a killin' that the books'll remember him for many a day.
+      But why does he keep throwin' that fairy tale into me about buyin' a bad
+      horse to oblige somebody? A man would be a sucker to believe that of
+      Crane; he's not the sort. But one sure thing, he said he'd look after me,
+      an' he will. He'd break a man quick enough, but when he gives his word it
+      stands. Mr. Jakey Faust can look after himself: I'm not goin' to take
+      chances of losin' a big stable of bread-winners by doublin' on the Boss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon's mental analysis of Crane's motives was the outcome of
+      considerable experience. The Banker's past life was not compatible with
+      generous dealing. His act of buying Diablo had been prompted by newborn
+      feelings of regard for the Porters, chiefly Allis; but no man, much less
+      Langdon, would have given him credit for other than the most selfish
+      motives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      True to his resolve, Langdon utterly refused to share his confidences with
+      Jakey Faust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've tried the horses,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and the Dutchman won, but Crane knows
+      more about the whole business than I do. You go to him, Jake, or wait till
+      he sends for you, an' you'll find out all about it. My game's to run
+      straight with one man, anyway, an' I'm goin' to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That was all Faust could learn. When an occasion offered he slipped a
+      ten-dollar note into Shandy's hand, for he knew the lad was full open to a
+      bribe, but Shandy knew no more than did the Bookmaker. The Dutchman, had
+      won the trial from the Black quite easily, was the extent of his
+      knowledge. As to Diablo himself, Shandy gave him a very bad character
+      indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Faust was in a quandary. First Crane had confided in him over Diablo, but
+      now his silence seemed to indicate that he meant to have this good thing
+      all to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Langdon had promised to cooperate, now he, too, had closed up like a
+      clam; he was as mute as an oyster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crane is dealin' the cards all the time,&rdquo; thought Faust; &ldquo;but there's
+      some game on, sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He determined to back Diablo for himself at the long odds, and chance it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later Crane received a very illiterate epistle, evidently from a
+      stable-boy; it was unsigned:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;DERE Boss, Yous is gittin it in the neck. de big blak hors he didn't
+      carre the sadel you think the blak hors had on his bak. Yous got de duble
+      cros that time. Der bokie hes axin me wot de blak is good fer der bokie is
+      playin fer to trow yous downe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No moar at presen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the wholly ambiguous communication that Crane had found under his
+      door. There was no stamp, neither place nor date written in the letter;
+      nothing but an evident warning from some one, who, no doubt, hoped to get
+      into his good graces by putting him on his guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it happened, Crane had just made up his mind to make his plunge on
+      Diablo while the odds were long enough to make it possible with the outlay
+      of very little capital. He smoked a heavy Manuel Garcia over this new
+      contingency. It did not matter about the saddles. Langdon had confided in
+      him fully. But how had the writer of the ill-spelled missive known of that
+      matter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, he had better make his bet before these whisperings came to other
+      ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the bookmaker mentioned? That must be Faust. Why was he prowling about
+      among stable lads?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He sent for Faust. When the latter had come, Crane asked Diablo's price
+      for the Brooklyn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's thirty to one now,&rdquo; replied the Bookmaker; &ldquo;somebody's backin' him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust's small baby eyes were fixed furtively on Crane's pale, sallow face,
+      as he imparted this information; but he might as well have studied the
+      ingrain paper on the wall; its unfigured surface was not more placid, more
+      devoid of indication, than the smooth countenance he was searching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane remained tantalizingly silent for a full minute; evidently his
+      thoughts had drifted away to some other subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Faust, speaking again to break the trying quiet, &ldquo;some one's
+      nibblin' at Diablo in the books. I wonder if it's Porter; did he think him
+      a good horse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It can't be Porter, nor any one else who knows Diablo. It's some foolish
+      outsider, tempted by the long odds. I suppose, however, it doesn't matter;
+      in fact, it's all the better. You took that five thousand to fifty for me,
+      didn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, just lay it off. You can do so now at a profit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't want to back Diablo, then? Shall I lay against him further?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you like&mdash;in your own book. I don't want to have anything to do
+      with him, one way or the other. I always thought he was a bad horse, and&mdash;and&mdash;well,
+      never mind, just lay that bet off. I shall probably want to back The
+      Dutchman again shortly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Faust had gone, Crane opened the little drawer which held his betting
+      book, took it out, and drew a pencil through the entry he had made
+      opposite Allis's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's off for a few days, thanks to Mr. Faust,&rdquo; he thought. Then he ran
+      his eye back over several other entries. &ldquo;Ah, that's the man&mdash;Hummel;
+      he'll do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Next he consulted his telephone book; tracing his finger down the &ldquo;H&rdquo;
+       column he came to &ldquo;Ike Hummel, commission broker, Madison 71184.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Over the 'phone he made an appointment for the next day at eleven o'clock
+      with Hummel; and the result of that interview was that Crane backed Diablo
+      to win him a matter of seventy-five thousand dollars at the liberal odds
+      of seventy-five to one; for Jakey Faust, feeling that he had made a
+      mistake in backing the Black, had laid off all his own bets and sent the
+      horse back in the market to the longer odds. Crane had completely thrown
+      him of his guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No sooner had Faust congratulated himself upon having slipped out of his
+      Diablo bets than he heard that a big commission had been most skillfully
+      worked on this outsider for the Brooklyn. In his new dilemma he went to
+      Crane, feeling very much at sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're backin' your horse again, sir,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; heavy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he's worth backing at all I suppose he's worth backing heavily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This aphorism seemed to merit a new cigar on Crane's part, so he lighted
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's travelin' up and down in the market,&rdquo; continues Faust. &ldquo;He dropped
+      to thirty, then went back to seventy-five; now he's at twenty; I can't
+      make it out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't try,&rdquo; advised Crane, soothingly. &ldquo;Too much knowledge is even
+      as great a danger as a lesser amount sometimes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust started guiltily and looked with quick inquiry at the speaker, but,
+      as usual, there was nothing in his presence beyond the words to hang a
+      conjecture on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought for your sake that I'd better find out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't worry about me; that is, too much, you know. I go down to
+      Gravesend once in a while myself, and no doubt know all that's doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A great fear fell upon Faust. Evidently this was an intimation to him to
+      keep away from the stables. How did Crane know&mdash;who had split on him?
+      Was it Langdon, or Shandy, or Colley? Some one had evidently aroused
+      Crane's suspicion, and this man of a great cleverness had put him away
+      while he worked a big commission through some one else. The thought was
+      none the less bitter to Faust that it was all his own fault; his
+      super-cleverness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' you don't want me to work a commission for you on Diablo?&rdquo; he asked,
+      desperately.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I sha'n't bet on him at present. And say, Faust, in future when I
+      want you to do any betting on my horses, on my account, you know, I'll
+      tell you. Understand? You needn't worry, that is&mdash;other people. I'll
+      tell you myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean&mdash;&rdquo; Faust had started to try a plausible explanation,
+      but Crane stopped him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind; the matter is closed out now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, sir,&rdquo; persisted Faust, &ldquo;if you've got your money all on, can I take
+      a bit now? Is it good business? We've worked together a good deal without
+      misunderstanding before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, we have,&rdquo; commented Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; an' I'd like to be in on this now. I didn't mean to forestall you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane raised his hand in an attitude of supplication for the other man to
+      desist, but Faust was not to be stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I made a mistake, an' I'm sorry; an' if you will tell me whether Diablo's
+      good business for the Brooklyn, I'll back him now at the shorter price.
+      There's no use of us bein' bad friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think Diablo's a fairly good bet,&rdquo; said Crane, quietly, entirely
+      ignoring the question of friendship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won't be poachin' if I have a bet, then?&rdquo; asked the Cherub, more
+      solicitous than he had appeared at an earlier stage of the game.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poachers don't worry me,&rdquo; remarked Diablo's owner. &ldquo;I'm my own game
+      keeper, and they usually get the worst of it. But you go ahead and have
+      your bet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, there won't be no more bad breaks made by me; but I didn't
+      mean to give you none the worst of it. Good day, sir,&rdquo; and he was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Faust has had his lesson,&rdquo; thought Crane, as he took from a drawer the
+      stable-boy's ill-favored note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wonder who sent me this scrawl? It gave me a pointer, though. I suppose
+      the writer will turn up for his reward; but the devil of it is he'll sell
+      information of this sort to anyone who'll buy. Must weed him out when I've
+      discovered the imp. At any rate Faust will go straight, now he's been
+      scorched. I'll just re-enter that bet to the Little Woman while I think of
+      it. 'Three thousand seven hundred and fifty to fifty, Diablo for the
+      Brooklyn, laid to Miss Allis Porter.'&rdquo; Then he dated it. &ldquo;She loses by
+      this transaction, but that won't matter; it will be a pretty good win if
+      it comes off. She may even refuse this, though she shouldn't, for it's a
+      part of the bargain that I was to have a bet on for her, a small bet, of
+      course. Yes, yes; I remember, a small bet. But this is a small bet. There
+      was nothing said about the size of the winnings. She was probably thinking
+      of gloves. Jingo, she has a lovely hand, I've noticed it; long slim
+      fingers, even the palm is long; sinewy I'll warrant; nothing pudgy about
+      that hand. Hey, Crane, you're silly!&rdquo; he cried, half audibly, taking
+      himself to task; &ldquo;doing business in big moneys&mdash;a cool seventy-five
+      thousand, if it materializes, perhaps even more&mdash;and then slipping
+      off into a mooney dream, vaporing about a girl's slim hand. I suppose
+      that's the love symptom. But at forty! it's hardly my normal condition, I
+      fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The slim hand beckoned him off into a disjointed reverie. Was he the
+      better for it? What would the end be? Before the new emotion he could look
+      back upon his past struggles with sordid satisfaction. Men in battle were
+      not given to uneasy qualms of compunction, nor questionings as to the
+      method that had led to victory. His life had been one long-drawn-out
+      battle; the financial soldiers that had fallen by the wayside because of
+      his sword play did not interest him; they were dead; being dead, their
+      memory harrassed him not at all. If there were commercial blood stains
+      upon his hand, they were hidden by the glove of success. After a manner he
+      had had peace; now all was disquiet; the turmoil of an awakened gentler
+      feeling clashing with the polemics of self-satisfying selfishness. And all
+      because of a girl! To him that was the peculiar feature of the disturbance
+      in his nature. He, Philip Crane, the strong man of strong men, to be shorn
+      of his indifference to everything but success by a girl unskilled in
+      managing anything but a horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all very fine to argue it out with one's self,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;but I
+      simply can't help it.&rdquo; He was astonished to find that he was pacing up and
+      down the floor of his apartment. Undoubtedly he was possessed of a
+      tremendous regard for the girl Allis. But why not put it from him; why not
+      conquer himself as he had always done? To let it master him meant the
+      giving up of things that were almost second nature. He could not love the
+      girl as a good woman should be loved, and&mdash;and&mdash;well, the gray
+      eyes that had their strength because of supreme honesty would surely bring
+      him disquietude. It would indeed be difficult to change his nature much;
+      his habits were almost like leopard's spots; they were grown into the woof
+      of his existence. Even if he won her it must be almost entirely because of
+      a superior diplomacy. Everything told him that his love was not returned.
+      It seemed almost impossible that it should be; there was not more
+      disparity in their years than in their two selves. &ldquo;All very fine again,&rdquo;
+       he muttered, somewhat savagely; &ldquo;I want her, I want her, not because of
+      anything but love. What she is, or what I am counts for nothing; love is
+      all compelling; my first master, I salute thee,&rdquo; this in sarcastic
+      sincerity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his strength he relied upon his power to bring forth an answering love,
+      at least regard, should he win Allis. Yes, it would surely come. He had
+      not even a young rival to combat. Yes, he would win, first Allis, and
+      afterward her love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm quite silly,&rdquo; he ejaculated; &ldquo;but I can't help it. But I can go out
+      and get some fresh air, and I will.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was the middle of May. Down in the earth the strong heart of reawakened
+      nature throbbed with a pulsating force that sent new life forth on its
+      errand of rejuvenation. The apple trees had peeped out with pink eyes, and
+      seeing the summer maiden stalking through the land, had thrown off their
+      timid coyness and shaken loose a drapery of white, all rose-tinted and
+      green-shaded, that turned their broad-acred homes into fairy ball rooms.
+      And for music the bees, and the birds, and shrill fife-playing frogs
+      volunteered out of sheer joyousness of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tiny shavings of green wag, the gentle spring grass, lay strewn about the
+      ballroom floor, and glistened in the warm light that was of one high-hung
+      chandelier, the sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But all the newborn awakening, all the sweet strength of soul and life
+      that was borne to the waiting land on the wings of soft winds, brought not
+      the hoped-for allotment to John Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Ringwood they had waited for the springtime. That would work the cure
+      the doctor's skill had failed of. A man of outdoors, it was the house
+      caging that was killing him, keeping him back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These things were said; but Doctor Rathbone only shook his wise, old head,
+      with its world of good sense, and answered: &ldquo;It is none of these things.
+      The trouble is in his mind; he is fretting. A sensitive man, well in body,
+      may be brought to illness by anticipated disaster. That could not have
+      been the case with John Porter well, but John Porter ill is quite a
+      different matter. It's as I have said before, give him hope, win him
+      races.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Allis was really glad at the near approach of the time of her trial.
+      The day was coming fast, soon, when She was to go forth with her little
+      band of horses, as a man almost in everything, to strive for the
+      fulfillment of that which had been put upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nearness of the not-to-be-shirked responsibility drove into her veins
+      an unlooked-for exhilaration of strength. She had thought that she would
+      look with dread upon the going away from Ringwood; that a feeling much
+      akin to stage fright would quite unnerve her at the very last. The riding
+      at home, the horse lore, and the almost constant companionship with her
+      father, always among horses and horsemen, though it appeared somewhat
+      dreadful to the village folks had been as nothing to her. Now that she
+      needed strength for the newer, stranger endeavor, it came to her, even as
+      the blossoms came to the swaying apple trees, great and small.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What wouldn't she do? she asked herself many times, to bring a
+      strength-giving peace to her father's troubled mind. Even Mrs. Porter,
+      implacably bitter against racing, must condone what was so evidently
+      Allis's study, if it tended to their happiness; the mother had softened
+      somewhat in the austerity of her opposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Evening after evening they had discussed the gloomy outlook, with, always
+      from Allis's side, a glimmer of hopeful light. The girl's patient resolve
+      had worn down the mother's pessimistic dread of anticipated evil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know, Allis,&rdquo; she had said, &ldquo;how I look upon this thoroughly
+      unchristian pursuit. Nothing can justify it from a true woman's point of
+      view, absolutely nothing&mdash;not even poverty. I would willingly suffer
+      the loss of all we possess&mdash;that it is so little is due to this
+      dreadful, immoral horse racing&mdash;but I would sacrifice even what
+      remains, if your father were well and willing to start afresh in some
+      occupation befitting his noble character. I would help him, to endure
+      every hardship, even deprivation, without a murmur.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, mother,&rdquo; interrupted Allis, &ldquo;it's impossible now; I think it always
+      was, for, as you know, father knew nothing of other business. Nothing
+      would tempt him to be dishonest in racing, and he always enjoyed it
+      because of his love for horses. But with all that, mother, if he had been
+      in a position to please you, if he had felt that we&mdash;you, and Alan,
+      and I&mdash;would not have suffered, I am sure he would have listened to
+      your pleadings and given it up. He might perhaps have gone on breeding
+      horses, for you wouldn't have objected to that, would you, mother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's the wicked associations of the race course which I felt degraded
+      a man of your father's character. But I'm not going to dishearten you,
+      Allis, nor hamper you now in your brave acceptance of the task that has
+      come to you, because of wrong done before. It is distasteful to me, of
+      course; it would be to any right-minded mother, to have her daughter in a
+      position so repellant; but, strange as it may seem I'd rather you went
+      with the horses than Alan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alan couldn't go, mother; he couldn't give up his place in the bank;
+      besides, father has purposely kept him from racing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it, Allis; I wasn't thinking of that, though. Alan has the
+      gambling spirit born in him; it's not his fault; it's the visitation of
+      the sins of the father upon the son. It came to your father in just the
+      same way. No, I'm not even blaming your father for it; it has come down
+      from generation to generation; but there has never been dishonor, thank
+      God&mdash;there has never been a dishonest Porter in my husband's family,
+      and, please God, there never may be. That would be too much! It would kill
+      me. And it's better that you go, Allis, for Alan is but a boy, and the
+      temptations to a young man at the race course must be almost impossible to
+      resist. Besides, your going may bring new life to your father; the doctor
+      is so hopeful&mdash;he says it will. He was afraid that he had shocked me,
+      when he said you were to win races for your father's good. It displeased
+      the pastor; I know it did, but perhaps he doesn't quite understand how
+      much we have at stake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's so narrow, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Reverend Mr. Dolman thinks only of our souls, daughter; naturally,
+      too, and one can hardly be a Christian and race horses. But we have got so
+      much to consider. I hope I am not wrong in feeling glad that you are able
+      to look after our interests. I should like to pray for your success even,
+      Allis. It might be wrong; I might feel guilty; but if it makes your father
+      better, don't you think I'd be forgiven?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure you would, mother, and it would make me stronger. I'm so glad. I
+      didn't want to displease you. I wanted you to feel that I was doing right.
+      It will be lighter now; I sha'n't mind what anybody says if you're with
+      me, mother. Now everything will come out right; I know it will. And if it
+      does, if father gets strong, just out of thankfulness, I'll coax him to
+      try something else, for your sake, mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, for his own, Allis. I think only of him in this matter.&rdquo; The
+      prospective commencement of the racing campaign seemed to foreshadow a
+      complete fulfillment of the doctor's prophecy should success smile upon
+      this modern Joan of Arc; for the bustle of preparation was music to the
+      ears of the stricken man, and he fought the lethargic fever of discontent
+      that was over him until his eyes brightened and his face took on a hopeful
+      look of interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brave little woman,&rdquo; he said to Allis, &ldquo;it's a shame for a great hulk as
+      I am to lie up here, while you fight the sharks that were almost too much
+      for your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he spoke a little lower, as a man utters unfamiliar words for the
+      first time. &ldquo;Your mother said that Providence would look after you. Sounds
+      strange, doesn't it, girl? But I'm glad. Your mother was so bitter&mdash;I
+      don't blame her&mdash;now she's turned right around. And, Allis, I believe
+      with a little tempting, a little coaxing, she'd almost have a bet on
+      Lucretia in your hands. Funny, isn't it?&rdquo; And he gave a little chuckle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis hadn't heard her father laugh for a long time. It wasn't much of a
+      laugh, very dry, and very short lived, hardly lighting up his face at all,
+      but still it was the feeble pulsation of humor which showed that the old
+      John Porter spirit was not quite broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the betting, Allis, you must have Dixon come down here to see me,
+      for the horses are to go to his stable again, aren't they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right. I thought we had arranged it that way, but I seem to forget
+      things since that bad tumble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't forget much now, father; you're getting stronger in every way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Blarney, girl. But I don't mind; your blarney is like the sunshine, that
+      comes through the window every day at ten. Ah, I know to the very minute
+      when to look for it. But about Dixon. Have him come down, for we must
+      arrange to back Lucretia&mdash;she's worth it. She's been doing well,
+      hasn't she, girl? O God! why can't I go out into the open and see the
+      little mare do just one gallop? And then I'd like to sit and look at the
+      trees sway back and forth in the wind. Their swing is like the free gallop
+      of a good horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He dropped the brief, fretful remonstrance against fate with an apologetic
+      turning away of his head, and continued about the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucretia's in the Brooklyn, Allis; you know that, of course. If Dixon
+      starts her, the stake alone will be about enough to run for, for a
+      three-year-old has a tough job ahead in that mob of picked horses. But
+      you'll get a line on her there&mdash;I think she'll win with ninety-two
+      pounds up; but if she shows good form, then she'll have to be backed for
+      the Brooklyn Derby. Lucretia's the best three-year-old in the land, I
+      know. We'll have to arrange for that money. There will be a couple of
+      thousand to be had if it seems safe business. You and Dixon will judge of
+      that. You're taking Lauzanne, girl. Is it worth while?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lauzanne is going to do great things for us, father. I'm sure of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still young, Allis. I talked like that when I was your age. Fancy and
+      horse racing go arm in arm always, and they're like an experienced man of
+      forty hobnobbing with the little love god; they're just about as well
+      mated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter's irrelevant simile caused Allis to start, and Crane's relentless
+      eyes came and peeped at her through the narrow-slitted lids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, though, little girl; your faith may make Lauzanne win, and I
+      think Lucretia's speed will carry her to the front, so you may strike a
+      bit of luck at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A few days later Mike Gaynor took the stable up to Gravesend. Dixon had a
+      cottage there, which he occupied with his wife, and Allis was to stop with
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 20th of May the horses were settled in their racing quarters. Only
+      four days remained for introducing Lucretia to the Gravesend track; on the
+      24th she would take up her ninety-two pounds and be tested to the utmost
+      in the great Brooklyn Handicap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dixon felt that several things were in her favor. She was as quiet as an
+      old cow at the post; many false starts would improve rather than diminish
+      her chances, for nothing seemed to excite the gallant little brown mare.
+      Her great burst of speed would enable the jockey to get out of the ruck
+      and steal a good place to lie handy at the leader's heels. She could be
+      nursed to the last furlong of the stretch, for the sight of horses in
+      front would not daunt her brave spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Against the mare were two or three rather important factors; she was
+      slight of build, not overstrong, and the crush of contending horses might
+      knock her out of her stride, should they close in. Then there was just a
+      suspicion of lack of staying power in the Assassin strain; Lucretia might
+      not quite last the mile and a quarter so early in the season, being a
+      mare. However, she had a chance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I'd hardly call it a betting chance,&rdquo; Dixon said, speaking to Allis;
+      &ldquo;there's never been a three-year-old won the Brooklyn yet. There'll be
+      openings enough to put down the money later on&mdash;in the Derby, if the
+      mare pans out well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy Dixon was first of all 'a careful man. &ldquo;There are risks enough in
+      racin' without lookin' for them,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;When one has got an absolute
+      lead-pipe cinch, it's two to one against its coming off.&rdquo; That was another
+      of his conservative aphorisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Andy made no big wins, had never been booked as a successful plunger, had
+      never skinned the ring; on the other hand, bringing the scales of equity
+      to a dead level, he had never been forced to ask any man to pay his feed
+      bills for him, nor let an account stand over for a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis was in good hands, and, what added to the value of the situation,
+      she knew it, and would take Dixon's advice. The Trainer's opinion was
+      borne out by the betting market; Lucretia stood a long way down in the
+      list. Even Diablo, bad horse as he was supposed to be, was at a shorter
+      price; the heavy outlay of his owner, and some intangible rumors having
+      caused the bookmakers to feel inclined to hold him close up against their
+      chests. His work since his trial with The Dutchman had been quite
+      satisfactory. He looked upon Westley, the jockey, as a friend, and strode
+      along in his gallops as though he had never sulked or shown temper in his
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Favoritism for the Brooklyn was divided between The King, a five-year-old
+      that had won it the year before, and White Moth, a three-year-old, winner
+      of the last year's Futurity. Jockey Redpath had been riding Lucretia in
+      her gallops since she had come to Gravesend. At last Dixon had been
+      singularly fortunate in the matter of jockeys. Redpath was just making his
+      reputation, making it as all jockey reputations are made, by winning
+      races.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This somewhat unstudied factor in racing had loomed large on his mental
+      vision. It might be possible to acquire a reputation in other professions
+      by good fortune or favor. As a jockey, a light weight might possibly make
+      money by dishonest methods, though that itself seemed doubtful, but there
+      was no way to rise to the top of the tree except by riding winners; verily
+      there was one royal road to fame in the field. Knowing all this, Redpath
+      rode to win.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 22d Dixon gave Lucretia a good strong three-quarter gallop over the
+      handicap course; on the 23d she had a quiet canter; and on the morning of
+      the 24th, the eventful day, she poked her mouse-brown nozzle over the bar
+      of her stall when Allis came to look at her and seemed to say, &ldquo;I'll do my
+      part to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing could have been wished for in Lucretia's appearance that wasn't
+      there, except just the faint suspicion of a sacrifice of strength to
+      speed. But if the frame wasn't there, the good strong heart was; the
+      courage and the gentleness, and the wisdom, and the full glow of perfect
+      health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For hours the trains had borne to Long Island crowd after crowd of eager,
+      impatient New Yorkers. Lovers of horses, lovers of gambling, pure and
+      simple; holiday makers, and those who wished to see the Brooklyn run out
+      of sheer curiosity; train after train whirled these atoms of humanity to
+      the huge gates of the Gravesend arena, wherein were to battle that day the
+      picked thoroughbreds, old and young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even like bees, black-coated and buzzing, the eager ones swarmed from the
+      cars and rehived in the great stand. Betting ring, and paddock, and lawn
+      became alive because of their buzz; tier after tier, from step to roof,
+      the serrated line of whitefaced humanity waited for the grand struggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first race was but a race, that was all. Horses galloped, but did they
+      not gallop other days? It was not the Brooklyn. And also the second was
+      but another race. How slow, and of what little interest were the horses!
+      Verily, neither was it the Brooklyn, and it was the Brooklyn forty
+      thousand pairs of eyes had come to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Down in the betting ring men of strong voices bellowed words of money
+      odds, and full-muscled shoulders pushed and carried heads about that were
+      intent on financial businesses. But what of that? It was not the Brooklyn,
+      it was gambling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out in the paddock a small brown mare of gentle aspect, with big soft
+      eyes, full of a dreamy memory of fresh-shooting grass, walked with easy
+      stride an elliptical circle. Her fetlocks fair kissed the short grass in
+      an unstable manner, as though the joints were all too supple. Inside of
+      the circle stood Allis Porter and a man square of jaw and square of
+      shoulder, that was Andy Dixon. Presently to them came Mike Gaynor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're gittin' next it now, Miss Allis; we'll soon know all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're all ready, Mike,&rdquo; said Dixon, with square solemnity. &ldquo;When they've
+      beat the little mare they'll be catchin' the judge's eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's nothing left now, Mike, but just a hope for a little luck,&rdquo; added
+      the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye'r talking now, Miss Allis. Luck's the trick from this out. The little
+      mare'll have a straight run this trip. Here's the b'y comin' now, and a
+      good b'y he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little man in blue jacket and white stars joined them, saluting Miss
+      Allis with his riding whip. &ldquo;Are you going to win, Redpath?&rdquo; asked the
+      girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going to try, Miss. She's a sweet mare to ride, but it's a big field.
+      There's some boys riding that ought to be in the stable rubbing horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll have to get out in front,&rdquo; said Dixon, speaking low; &ldquo;your mare's
+      too light to stand crowdin', an' even if you have to take her back for a
+      breather after you've gone half the journey, she'll come again, for she's
+      game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Them Langdon fellows thinks they've got a great chance wit' our cast-off,
+      Diablo,&rdquo; volunteered Mike. &ldquo;I had a peep at him in the stall, an' he's
+      lookin' purty fit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He never was no class,&rdquo; objected Dixon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If ye'd see him gallop the day he run away, ye'd think he had class,&rdquo;
+       said Mike. &ldquo;Bot' tumbs up! ye'd a t'ought it was the flyin' Salvator.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we'll soon know all about it,&rdquo; declared Dixon. &ldquo;There's the
+      saddlin' bell. Have you weighed out, Redpath? Weight all right, ninety-two
+      pounds?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, sir. It was a close call to make it, though; there was a few
+      ounces over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the better; it's a hot day, an' if they're long at the post it'll
+      take them spare ounces out of you, I fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dixon held up his finger to the boy that was leading Lucretia, and nodding
+      his head toward the stall led the way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're number seven, Mike,&rdquo; said Allis, looking at the leather tag which
+      carried the figure on Jockey Redpath's right arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'There's luck in odd numbers, said Rory O'Moore,'&rdquo; quoted Mike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've a superstitious dread of seven,&rdquo; the girl said; &ldquo;it's the one number
+      that I always associate with disaster&mdash;I don't mind thirteen a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll break the bad luck seven to-day,&rdquo; asserted little Redpath, bravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; answered Allis. &ldquo;Let me put my finger on the number for good
+      luck,&rdquo; and she touched the badge on his arm. &ldquo;Now I'm going up to get a
+      good seat in the stand,&rdquo; she continued; &ldquo;I'll leave Lucretia to you,
+      Redpath.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As the slight figure, looking slighter still in a long trailing race coat,
+      passed through the paddock gate to the stand enclosure, Mike Gaynor spoke
+      to the jockey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Redpath, me b'y, it's up to ye to put yer best leg for'ard to-day. Ye'r
+      ridin' for the greatest little woman in this big country. In all the stand
+      up there, wit' their flounces and jewels, there isn't a lady like her. Not
+      wan av them judys kin touch her as a rale proper lady. God bless me, she's
+      de sweetest&mdash;&rdquo; then he checked himself; he was going to say the
+      sweetest filly, but even to his rough-hewn mind, tutored only by horse
+      lore, it seemed sacrilege to speak of Miss Porter as anything but a lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're right, Mike,&rdquo; concurred the little man; &ldquo;I'd rather ride the mare
+      for her than White Moth, or The King, or any of the favorites for their
+      owners.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' the ould man lyin' there at home on his back, eh, Redpath? He's as
+      good as gold hisself; that's where the girl gets it; not sayin' a word
+      ag'in Mrs. Porter; she don't understand, that's all. But ye'll put up the
+      ride of your life, me b'y, won't ye?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do that, old chap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mike'll stand by ye,&rdquo; affirmed Gaynor. &ldquo;Say, b'y,&rdquo; and he turned and
+      looked squarely into the eyes of the little man, &ldquo;I know if they beats ye
+      to-day, 'twon't be yer fault 'cause why?&rdquo;&mdash;and he put his hand on
+      Redpath's shoulder&mdash;''cause ye'r like many another man, sweet on the young
+      Missis. Now, now, now stop that!&rdquo; and he held up his finger warningly, as
+      the other raised his voice in mild protest; &ldquo;it's to yer credit. It'll do
+      ye no good in wan way, av coorse, for, as ye say, she'll never know it.&rdquo;
+       Redpath had not made the statement Mike attributed to him, but the latter
+      was giving him a kindly pointer. &ldquo;But it'll do ye no harm. The likin' av a
+      good woman will sometimes make a man av a scoundrel, but ye'r a long way
+      from bein' that, me b'y; so it'll do ye tons av good. There's the bugle;
+      go an' mount, an' I'll watch how ye get on; an' good luck to ye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Regally, one after another, in stately file, the turf kings, decked out
+      with the silken jackets that rested a-top&mdash;crimson, and gold, and
+      blue, and white, and magpie, passed through the paddock gate to the newly
+      smoothed course. Very modest and demure number seven, the little brown
+      mare, looked beside the strong-muscled giants, bright bay, golden
+      chestnut, and raven-wing black, that overshadowed her in the procession
+      that caught the forty thousand pairs of eyes. Something of this thought
+      came to Allis, sitting in the stand. What a frail little pair they were,
+      both of them, and to be there battling for this rich prize that was so
+      hardly fought for, by strong men athirst for gold, and great horses a-keen
+      for the gallop!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, there was Diablo, the very number Allis had said carried no dread for
+      her, thirteen. What a strange coincidence! What a cruel twist of fate it
+      would be if he were to win!&mdash;he looked equal to it. A man sitting at
+      Allis's elbow suddenly cried in a voice enthused into the joyous treble of
+      a boy's: &ldquo;Look at that big Black; isn't he a beaut? Number thirteen.
+      That's a hoodoo number, if you like; it's enough to give a backer cold
+      feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you weren't superstitious, Rex;&rdquo; this was a woman's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not, an' I'm going straight down to back that Black, thirteen and
+      all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On Allis's other side one of the party was ticking off the horses by their
+      numbers as they passed; &ldquo;One, two, that's White Moth; they say she'll win;
+      three, Red Rover; four, what's that? that's George L.; five, six, seven;
+      just look at that little runt. What is it? Oh, Lucretia. Might as well run
+      a big calf, I should think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's just lovely,&rdquo; declared a lady in the party. &ldquo;She's as graceful as a
+      deer, and I'm sure she'll run as fast as any of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't live in that mob; they'll smother a little thing like her,&rdquo;
+       declared the man, emphatically. &ldquo;Where are we&mdash;ten, eleven, The King,
+      that's the winner for a hundred. Look at him. He carries my money. It's
+      all over now; they can't beat him. That's a fine looker, though, thirteen,&mdash;Diabo,
+      eh? What's that horse Diablo, George?&rdquo; turning to one of the men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No good&mdash;a maiden; I looked them all up in the dope book; how they
+      expect to win the Brooklyn with a maiden gets beyond me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat tortured, Allis listened to the voluble man on her left, who was
+      short and fat, and red of face, as he graded, with egotistical
+      self-sufficiency, the thirteen competitors for the big Handicap. Lucretia
+      he had passed over in disdain. Crude as his judgment seemed, arrogantly
+      insufficient, it affected Allis disagreeably. Now that everything had been
+      done, that the last minute of suspense was on, she was depressed. The
+      exhilaration of preparation had gone from her, and the words of the
+      captious man on her left, &ldquo;that little runt,&rdquo; hung with persistent
+      heaviness on her soul. All the vast theater of the stand was a buzz of
+      eager chatter. Verily it was a race; it was the Brooklyn Handicap. Lips
+      that smiled gave a mocking lie to drawn, strained faces, and nervous,
+      shifting eyes, that told of the acceptance of too deep a hazard. The weeks
+      and months of mental speculation embodied in heavy bets would have their
+      fruit ripened and plucked within a brief half hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis's gaze dropped to the grass lawn in front of the stand for a minute,
+      her eyes seeking repose from the strain of watching the horses as they
+      went down to the starting post. How fretfully erratic were the men who
+      dotted its green sward with gray and solemn black! The deeper interest
+      Allis had over there on the course where was the little mare, seemed to
+      lift her to a great height above them. How like ants they were, crossing
+      and recrossing each other's paths, twisting and turning without semblance
+      of an objective point, creatures of an impulse almost lower than instinct,
+      devoid of this well-directed governing motive. Yes, they were like an army
+      of ants that had been suddenly thrown into confusion. She saw one of them
+      come hurriedly out of the paddock, talking impetuously with bended head&mdash;for
+      he was tall&mdash;to a short man in gray tweed, beyond doubt a trainer.
+      Suddenly the tall man broke away, hurried to the rail which separated the
+      lawn from the course, leaned far over its top to take a last look at the
+      horses, and then with a queer shuffling trot he hurried to the mob that
+      was surging and pushing about the bookmakers. Allis noted with minute
+      observance each little act in this pantomime of the last-minute plunge.
+      Just beneath where she sat two men were having a most energetic duel of
+      words. A slim, darkskinned youth, across whose fox-like face was written
+      in large letters the word &ldquo;Tout,&rdquo; was hammering into his obdurate
+      companion the impossibility of some certain horse being defeated.
+      Presently the other man's hand went into his pocket, and when it came
+      forth again five ten-dollar bills were counted with nervous reluctance and
+      hesitatingly made over to the Tout. Tight clutching his prize this pilot
+      of the race course slipped from Allis's sight and became lost in the
+      animated mass that heaved and swayed like full-topped grain in a harvest
+      breeze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within all that enclosure there seemed no one possessed of any calm. To
+      the quiet girl it was a strange revelation; no one could have as much at
+      stake as she had, and yet over her spirit there was nothing beyond the
+      lethargy of depression. No; no one is calm, she thought. Ah, the assertion
+      was too sweeping. Coming up the steps, just at her right, was a man who
+      might have been walking in a quiet meadow, or a full-leafed forest, for
+      all there was of agitation in his presence. A sudden new thought came to
+      Allis; she had never seen that face distraught but once. The collected man
+      was Philip Crane. A tinge of almost admiration tingled the girl's mind. To
+      be possessed of calm where all was nervous strain was something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly the unimpassioned face lighted up; the narrow-lidded eyes gleamed
+      with brightened interest. As eagerly as a boy their owner, Crane, came
+      forward and saluted Allis. At that instant the man of many words on her
+      left rose from his seat to chase through the interminable crowd on the
+      lawn a new victim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis had sought to be alone in this short time of trial; she was hardly
+      sure of herself. If Lucretia failed she might break down; for what would
+      come to her father should the message home be one of disaster? Even if the
+      little mare won her joy might lead her to commit strange pranks; she felt
+      that her heart would burst out of sheer joy, if she did not shout in
+      exultation, or caper madly, as she had seen others do in the hour of
+      victory. She was sorry that Crane had come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was looking for you,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I want to see you win this race; that
+      is, if&mdash;I mean, like every other man here, I have harked back to my
+      natural instinct of covetous acquisition and had a bet on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not Lucretia?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I've bet on Diablo. Langdon thinks he'll win. Do you remember
+      the agreement about his purchase?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was that? I've half forgotten it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a little bet on your account, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I remember; but that was only in fun, wasn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was part of the bargain, and it's on. You'll take it, won't you, if he
+      wins&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're off!&rdquo; Some one had shouted the magic words from the head of the
+      steps. In a second every voice of the thousands was stilled, and there was
+      only the noise of shuffling feet, as eager watchers stood up to see the
+      horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a false start,&rdquo; said Crane, quietly, turning toward the girl. &ldquo;It
+      would have been well for you, Miss Allis, had the starter let them go.
+      Lucretia was well out in the lead; it was Diablo's fault, too, that they
+      had to go back&mdash;he was left standing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane's voice was Fate's voice. Would there never be anything but Lucretia
+      and Diablo, seven and thirteen, thirteen and seven?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Diablo's a bad horse at the post, sure,&rdquo; ejaculated Crane, letting his
+      field glass rest for an instant on his knee; &ldquo;he just backs up and shakes
+      his head viciously; evidently he doesn't like the idea of so much
+      company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is Lucretia acting, Mr. Crane?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perfectly. You must have instilled some of your own patience into her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl hardly heard the implied compliment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would the patience be rewarded? Or would thirteen, that was symbolical of
+      evil, and its bearer, Diablo, who was an agent of evil, together snatch
+      from her this prize that meant so much? It was strange that she should not
+      think of the other horses at all. It was as though there were but two in
+      the race&mdash;Lucretia and Diablo&mdash;and yet they were both outsiders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Starter is having a bad time of it; that makes six false breaks,&rdquo;
+       said Allis's companion; &ldquo;it will end by his losing patience with the boys,
+      I fear, and let them go with something off in a long lead. But they say
+      this Fitzpatrick is a cool hand, and gives no man the best of it. He'll
+      probably fine Diablo's rider a hundred dollars; I believe it's customary
+      to do that when a jockey persistently refuses to come up with his horses.
+      Just look at that!&mdash;the black fiend has lashed out and nearly
+      crippled something.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not Lucretia, Mr. Crane!&rdquo; gasped Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it's a chestnut&mdash;there they go! Good boy, Westley. I mean
+      Diablo's jockey has done a fiendish clever thing. He came through his
+      horses on the jump, carried them off their feet, they all broke&mdash;yes,
+      the flag's down, and he's out with a clean lead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Down in front a bell was clanging viciously; people were rushing with
+      frenzied haste from the betting ring, and clambering up the steps of the
+      stand; in the stand itself the whole vast mob had risen to its feet, and
+      even now the rolling beat of eager hoofs was in the aid, hushed of the
+      mob's clamor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, Crane had spoken truly; a great striding black, along whose neck hung
+      close a tiny figure in yellow and red, was leading the oncoming horses.
+      Allis strained her eyes trying to discover the little mare, but she was
+      swallowed up in the struggling mob that hung at Diablo's heels. As they
+      opened a little, swinging around the first turn, Allis caught sight of the
+      white-starred blue jacket. Its wearer was quite fifth or sixth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucretia is doing well,&rdquo; said Crane; &ldquo;she's holding her own; she's lapped
+      on White Moth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed strange to Allis that any other thought should come into her
+      mind at that time other than just concern for Lucretia, but she caught
+      herself wondering at Crane's professional words of description. For the
+      time he was changed; the quick brevity of his utterance tokened an
+      interested excitement. He was not at all like the Crane she knew, the
+      cold, collected banker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lucretia's doing better,&rdquo; her companion added a few seconds later. &ldquo;If I
+      were given to sentiment, I should say her gallop was the poetry of motion.
+      She deserves to win. But honestly, Miss Allis, I think she'll never catch
+      the Black; he's running like a good horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis could not answer; the strain was too great for words. It would be
+      all over in a minute or so; then she would talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your mare is creeping up, Miss Allis; she's second to the Black now, and
+      they've still a good three furlongs to go. You may win yet. It takes a
+      good horse to make all his own running for a mile and a quarter and then
+      in. His light weight may land him first past the post. There are only four
+      in it now, the rest are beaten off, sure. Diablo is still in the lead;
+      White Moth and Lucretia are a length back; and The King is next, running
+      strong. It's the same into the stretch. Now the boys are riding; Lucretia
+      is drawing away from White Moth&mdash;she's pressing Diablo. You'll win
+      yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was drowned by the clamor that went up from every side. &ldquo;Diablo!
+      White Moth! Lucretia!&rdquo; What a babel of yells! &ldquo;He's beat! Come on!&rdquo; It was
+      deafening. All the conjecture of months, all the hopes and fears of
+      thousands, compressed into a few brief seconds of struggling endeavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis had sat down. There was less frenzied excitement thus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God of Justice!&rdquo; it was Crane's voice, close to her ear; his hot breath
+      was on her cheek; he had leaned down, so that she might hear him. &ldquo;Your
+      jockey has sold you, or else Lucretia quit. I thought I saw him pull her
+      off. I'm sorry, Miss Allis, God knows I am, though I've won&mdash;for
+      Diablo is winning easily.&rdquo; Then he straightened up for an instant, only to
+      bend down again and say, &ldquo;Yes, Diablo has won, and Lucretia is beaten off.
+      Perhaps it wasn't the boy, after all, for it's a long journey for a
+      three-year-old mare. Can I do anything for you? Let me see you down to the
+      paddock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; the girl answered, struggling with her voice. &ldquo;Yes, I must
+      go, for Dixon will be terribly disappointed. I must go and put a brave
+      face on, I suppose. It's all over, and it can't be helped. But you've won,
+      and I congratulate you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor old dad!&rdquo; she muttered to herself, &ldquo;to have fairly given away Diablo
+      just when he was ready to win a big race.&rdquo; With a tinge of bitterness the
+      girl thought how much her mother's opposition was to blame for this narrow
+      missing of a great victory. She was glad to get away from the cataract of
+      voices that smothered her like great falling waters. There was little
+      exultation. If it had been any solace to her, she had much companionship
+      in her dashed hopes; for Diablo, the winner, had not been backed by the
+      general public; the favorite, White Moth, had been beaten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the first outburst a sullen anger took possession of the race-goers.
+      They had been wronged, deceived; another coup had been made by that trick
+      manipulator, Langdon. How carefully he had kept the good thing bottled up.
+      If the mob could have put into execution its half-muttered thoughts, every
+      post about the Gravesend track would have been decorated with a fragment
+      of Langdon's anatomy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the bookmakers were less jubilant than usual over this winning of an
+      outsider, for Crane, and Langdon, and Faust, and two or three others who
+      had either received a hint or stumbled upon the good thing, had taken out
+      of the ring a tidy amount of lawful currency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Crane accompanied Allis to the paddock gate; and she continued on to the
+      fatal number seven stall. Lucretia had just been brought in, looking very
+      distressed after her hard race. For an instant the girl forgot her own
+      trouble at sight of the gallant little mare's condition. Two boys were
+      busy rubbing the white-crusted perspiration and dust from her sides;
+      little dark rivulets of wet trickled down the lean head that hung wearily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we lost!&rdquo; It was Dixon's voice at Allis's elbow. &ldquo;That'll do,&rdquo; to
+      the boys; &ldquo;here, put this cooler on, and walk her about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he turned to Allis again. &ldquo;She was well up with the leaders half way
+      in the stretch; I tho't she was goin' to win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was it too far for her, Dixon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Trainer did not answer at once; with him at all times questions were
+      things to be pondered over. His knitted brows and air of hesitating
+      abstraction showed plainly that this question of Allis's was one he would
+      prefer to answer days later, if he answered it at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't she stop suddenly?&rdquo; Allis asked, again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't just see from where I was what happened,&rdquo; he replied,
+      evasively; &ldquo;and I haven't asked the boy yet. She may have got shut in. Ah,
+      here he comes now,&rdquo; as the jockey returned from the weighing scales.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Redpath seemed to think that some explanation was necessary, as he came up
+      to Allis and the Trainer, so he said: &ldquo;The little mare seemed to have a
+      chance when I turned into the stretch, an' I thought once I was goin' to
+      win; but that big Black just kept galloping, galloping, an' I never could
+      get to his head; I'd a been in the money, though, if somethin' hadn't
+      bumped me; an' then my mount just died away&mdash;she just seemed to die
+      away.&rdquo; He repeated this is a falling decadence, as though it best
+      expressed his reason for finishing in the ruck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we're beat, an' that's all there is to it,&rdquo; declared Dixon, half
+      savagely; then he added, &ldquo;an' by a cast-off out of your father's stable,
+      too, Miss Allis. If there's any more bad luck owin' John Porter, hanged if
+      I wouldn't like to shoulder it myself, an' give him a breather.&rdquo; Then,
+      with ponderous gentleness for a big, rough-throwntogether man, he
+      continued: &ldquo;Don't you fret, Miss; the little mare's all right; she'll pull
+      your father through all this; you just cheer up. I've got to go now an'
+      look after her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Trainer had gone the jockey turned to Allis, hesitatingly, and
+      said: &ldquo;Dixon's correct about the little mare; she's all right. I wouldn't
+      speak even afore him, though he's all right too, but&rdquo; and he looked about
+      carefully to see that nobody was within ear-shot. Two men were talking a
+      little farther out in the paddock, and Redpath, motioning to Allis,
+      stepped close to the stall that was next to the one Lucretia had occupied,
+      &ldquo;I could a-been in the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl started. Crane had said that the jockey had stopped riding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Miss; you mustn't blame me, for I took chances of bein' had up afore
+      the Stewards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did wrong if you didn't try to win,&rdquo; exclaimed Allis, angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did try to win, but I couldn't. I saw that I'd never catch that big
+      Black; he was going too strong; his long stride was just breaking the
+      little mare's heart. She's the gamest piece of horseflesh&mdash;say, Miss
+      Porter, believe me, it just hurt me to take it out of her, keeping up with
+      that long-legged devil. If I could a-headed him once, just got to him once&mdash;I
+      tried it when we turned into the straight&mdash;he'd have quit. But it was
+      no use&mdash;the mare couldn't do it. With him out of the race I'd have
+      won; I could a-been second or third as it was, but it might have done the
+      little mare up so she wouldn't be any good all season. I thought a bit
+      over this when I was galloping. I knew she was in the Brooklyn Derby, an'
+      when I had the others beat at a mile, thinks I, if the public don't get
+      onto it, Mr. Porter can get all his losses back in the Brooklyn Derby.
+      That's why I eased up on the little mare. You don't think I could do
+      anything crooked against you, Miss? Give me the mount in the Derby, an'
+      your father can bet his last dollar 'that Lucretia'll win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he finished speaking Mike Gaynor shuffled moodily up to them. Usually
+      Mike's clothes suggested a general despondency; his wiry body, devoid of
+      roundness as a rat trap, seemed inadequate to the proper expression of
+      their original design. The habitual air of endeavorless decay had been
+      accentuated by the failure of Lucretia to win the Brooklyn. Mike had
+      shrunken into his allenveloping coat with pathetic moroseness. The look of
+      pity in his eye when it lighted upon Allis gave place to one of rebellious
+      accusation as he turned his head slowly and glared at Redpath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye put up a bad ride there, b'y,&rdquo; he commenced, speaking in a hard, dry,
+      defiant tone; &ldquo;a bad ride, an' no mistake. Mind I'm not sayin' ye could
+      a-won, but ye might a-tried,&rdquo; and he waited for Redpath's defense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She was all out, Mike, beat; what was the use of driving her to death
+      when she hadn't the ghost of a chance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a little too hard on Redpath,&rdquo; remonstrated Allis; &ldquo;he's just been
+      telling me that he didn't wish to punish the mare unnecessarily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His business was to win if he could, Miss,&rdquo; answered Mike, not at all won
+      over. &ldquo;It was a big stake, an' he ought to've put up a big finish. The
+      Black would've quit if ye'd ever got to his throat-latch; he's soft,
+      that's what he is. An' just where ye could have won the race, p'r'aps, ye
+      quit ridin' an' let him come home alone. It's queer b'ys that's ridin'
+      now, Miss,&rdquo; Gaynor added, fiercely, nodding his head in great decision,
+      and, turning away abruptly, the petulant moroseness showing deeper than
+      ever in his wrinkled face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mustn't mind Mike, Redpath,&rdquo; said Allis; &ldquo;he's a good friend of our
+      family, and is upset over the race, that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't blame him,&rdquo; answered the jockey; &ldquo;he would have rode it out and
+      spoiled your chance with the mare&mdash;that would have done no good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still, I hardly like it,&rdquo; answered the girl. &ldquo;I know you did it for my
+      sake, but it doesn't seem quite right. Don't do anything like this again.
+      Of course, I don't want Lucretia pushed beyond her strength, nor cut up
+      with the whip, but she ought to get the place if she can. People might
+      have backed her for the place, and we've thrown away their money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bettors will look after their own interests, Miss Porter, and they
+      wouldn't help you a little bit if you needed it; they'd be more like to do
+      you a bad turn. If I'd driven the mare to death, an' been beaten for the
+      place, as I might have, the papers would have slated me for cruelty. You
+      must believe that I did it for the best, Miss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, and I suppose I must thank you, but don't do it again. I'd rather
+      you didn't carry your whip at all on Lucretia; she doesn't need it; but
+      don't ease her up if you've got a chance till you pass the winning post.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As the two finished speaking, and moved away, a thin, freckled face peered
+      furtively from the door of stall number six. Just the ferret-like eyes and
+      a knife-thin nose showed past the woodwork, but there could be no
+      mistaking the animal. It was Shandy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got you again,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;Blast the whole tribe of you! I'll
+      just pip you on that dirty work, blowed if I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Brooklyn had been run and won; won by Langdon's stable, and lost by
+      John Porter's. That night Allis spent hours trying to put into a letter to
+      her mother their defeat and their hopes in such a way as to save distress
+      to her father. She wound up by simply asking her mother to get Dr.
+      Rathbone to impart as much information as he deemed advisable to his
+      patient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a very depressed lot at Dixon's cottage that evening. Dixon was
+      never anything else but taciturn, and the disappointment of the day was
+      simply revolving in his mind with the monotonous regularity of a
+      grindstone. They had lost, and that's all there was about it. Why talk it
+      over? It could do no good. He would nurse up Lucretia, and work back into
+      her by mile gallops a fitting strength for the Brooklyn Derby. With
+      incessant weariness he rocked back and forth, back and forth in the big
+      Boston rocker; while Allis, at a little table in a corner of the room,
+      sought to compose the letter she wished to send home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With apathetic indifference the girl heard a constrained knock at the
+      cottage door; she barely looked up as Dixon opened to a visitor. It was
+      Crane who entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At almost any other time his visit would have been unpleasant. In his
+      presence even the most trivial conversation seemed shrouded in a
+      background of interested intentions; but to-night Dixon's constrained
+      depression weighed heavy on her spirits and irritated her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Luck was against you to-day, Dixon,&rdquo; exclaimed the visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They were too strong for the little mare,&rdquo; answered the Trainer, curtly.
+      &ldquo;Our cast-off won, of course, but there were a half dozen in the race that
+      would have beaten Lucretia, I fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis looked inquiringly at the Trainer; he had not talked that way to
+      her. Then a light dawned upon the girl. She had not associated Dixon with
+      diplomacy in her mind, she knew that he could maintain a golden silence,
+      but here he was, actually throwing out to the caller a disparaging
+      estimate of Lucretia's powers. This perpetual atmosphere of duplicity was
+      positively distasteful. In the free gallop of the horses there was nothing
+      but an inspiration to honest endeavor; but in this subtle diplomacy Allis
+      detected the touch of defilement which her mother so strongly resented.
+      Perhaps to-night she was more sensitive to depressing influences; at any
+      rate she felt a great weariness of the whole business. Then the spirit of
+      resolve rose in open rebellion against these questionings; almost
+      Jesuitical she became at once. What mattered the ways or means, so that
+      she did no wrong? Was not the saving of her father's health and spirit,
+      and his and her mother's welfare above all these trivial questionings; did
+      not the end justify the means; might not her success, if the fates in pity
+      gave her any, save her from&mdash;from&mdash;she did not even formulate in
+      thought the contingency, for there stood the living embodiment of
+      it-Crane; everything seemed crowding her into the narrow confines of her
+      sacrificial crypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane had spoken to her on his entry. As she was writing he had continued
+      his discussion of the race with Dixon; perhaps, even&mdash;it was a
+      hopeful thought, born of desire&mdash;he had come to see the Trainer.
+      Crane's next words dispelled that illusion. It was in answer to an
+      observation from Dixon that he was forced to go to the stables, that Crane
+      said: &ldquo;If Miss Porter has no objection I'll remain a little longer; I want
+      to discuss a matter concerning her father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis felt quite like fleeing to the stables with Dixon; she dreaded that
+      Crane was going to bring up again the subject of his affection for her.
+      But the Trainer had passed out before she could muster sufficient moral
+      courage to put in execution her half-formed resolve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to speak about that wager on Diablo,&rdquo; began Crane. A thrill of
+      relief shot through the girl's heart. Why had be troubled himself to come
+      to her over such a trifling matter&mdash;a pair of gloves, perhaps half a
+      dozen pairs even.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I put the bet on some time ago,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;when Diablo was at a long
+      price. It was only a trifle, as we agreed upon&mdash;&rdquo; Allis noticed that
+      he laid particular stress upon &ldquo;agreed.&rdquo; &ldquo;But it has netted you quite a
+      nice sum, three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane said this in a quiet voice, without unction; but it startled the
+      girl&mdash;she stared in blank amazement. Her companion was evidently
+      waiting for her to say something; seemed to expect an exclamation of
+      joyous approval. She noticed that the gray eyes she so distrusted had
+      taken on that distasteful peeping expression, as though he were watching
+      her walk into a trap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot take it,&rdquo; answered Allis, decisively, after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane raised his hand in mild protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was good of you, kind; but how could I accept a large sum of money
+      like that when I am not entitled to it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are&mdash;it's yours. The bet was made in your name I entered it at
+      the time in my book, and the bookmaker is ready to pay the money over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't take it&mdash;I won't. No, no, no!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be foolishly sensitive, Miss Allis. Think what your father lost
+      when he parted with Diablo for a trivial thousand dollars; and it was my
+      fault, for I arranged the sale. Your father's needs&mdash;pardon me, but I
+      know his position, being his banker&mdash;yes, he needs this money badly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father needs a good many things, Mr. Crane, which he would not accept
+      as a gift; he would be the last man to do so. We must just go on doing the
+      best we can, and if we can't succeed, that's all. We can't accept help,
+      just yet, anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was bitter; the reference to her father's troubles, though meant
+      partly in kindness, angered her. It caused her to feel the meshes of the
+      net drawing closer about her, and binding her free will. The fight was
+      indeed on. More than ever she determined to struggle to the bitter end.
+      Almost indefinably she knew that to accept this money, plausible as the
+      offering was, meant an advantage to Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't leave this large sum with the bookmaker,&rdquo; he objected. &ldquo;He
+      would like nothing better; he would laugh in his sleeve. I can't take it;
+      it isn't mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't touch it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I had better speak to your father about it,&rdquo; said Crane,
+      tentatively; &ldquo;he can have no objection to accepting this money that has
+      been won.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father won't take it, either,&rdquo; answered the girl; &ldquo;I know his ideas about
+      such matters. He won't take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane brought all his fine reasoning powers to bear on Allis, but failed
+      signally in his object. He was unaccustomed to being balked, but the
+      girl's firm determination was more than a match for his adaptable
+      sophistry. He had made no headway, was quite beaten, when Dixon's
+      opportune return prevented absolute discomfiture. Crane left shortly,
+      saying to Allis as he bade them good night: &ldquo;I'm sorry you look upon the
+      matter in this light. My object in coming to-night was to give you a
+      little hope for brightness in your gloomy hour of bad luck; but perhaps I
+      had better speak to your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd rather you didn't,&rdquo; she answered, somewhat pleadingly. &ldquo;Dr. Rathbone
+      has cautioned us all against worrying father, and this could have no other
+      result than but to distress him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis's letter had been completed, but she now added a postscript, telling
+      her mother briefly of Crane's insistence over the bet, and beseeching her
+      to devise some plan for keeping this new disturbing element from her
+      father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane was remaining over night in Gravesend, and, going back to his
+      quarters, he reviewed the evening's campaign. He had expected opposition
+      from Allis, but had hoped to overcome the anticipated objections; he had
+      failed in this, but it was only a check, not defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled complacently over his power of self-control in having allowed no
+      hint of his absorbing passion to escape him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Acceptance of this money by Allis, the money which was the outcome of an
+      isolated generous thought, would have given him a real advantage. To have
+      spoken, though never so briefly of his hopes for proprietary rights, would
+      have accentuated the girl's sensitive alarm. He was too perfect a
+      tactician to indulge in such poor sword play; he had really left the
+      question open. A little thought, influenced by the desperate condition of
+      Porter's fortunes, might make Allis amenable to what was evidently her
+      best interest, should she be approached from a different quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane had made the first move, and met checkmate; the second move would be
+      through Allis's mother; he determined upon that course. All his old
+      cunning must have surely departed from him if he could not win this girl.
+      Fate was backing him up most strenuously. Diablo had been cast into his
+      hands&mdash;thrust upon him by the good fortune that so steadily
+      befriended him. He was not in the habit of attributing unlooked-for
+      success to Providence; he rarely went beyond fate for a deity.
+      Unmistakably then it was fate that had cast the horoscope of his and
+      Allis's life together. Never mind what means he might use to carry out
+      this decree; once accomplished, he would more than make amends to the
+      girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew most delightful pictures of the Utopian existence his wealth would
+      make possible for Allis. For the father he would provide a racing stable
+      that would bring profit in place of disaster. Crane smiled somewhat grimly
+      as he thought that under those changed circumstances even Allis's mother
+      might be brought to condone her husband's continuance in the nefarious
+      profession. If for no other reason than the great success he had made in
+      the Brooklyn Handicap with Diablo, his spirits were that evening
+      impossible of the reception of even a foreshadowing of failure. A
+      suppressed exhilaration rose-tinted every projected scheme. He would win
+      Allis, and he would win the Brooklyn Derby with his good colt, The
+      Dutchman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He went to sleep in this happy glamour of assured success, and, by the
+      inevitable contrariness of things, dreamed that he was falling over a
+      steep precipice on The Dutchman's back, and that at the bottom Mortimer
+      and Allis were holding a blanket to catch him in his fall. Even in his
+      imaginative sleep, he was saved from a dependence upon this totally
+      inadequate receptacle for a horse and rider, for he woke with a gasp after
+      he had traveled with frightful velocity for an age through the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane was a man not given to superstitious enthrallment; his convictions
+      were usually founded on basic manifestations rather than fanciful visions;
+      but somehow the night's dream fastened upon his mind as he lingered over a
+      breakfast of coffee and rolls. Even three cups of coffee, ferociously
+      strong, failed to drown the rehearsal of his uncomfortable night's gallop.
+      Why had he linked Mortimer and Allis together? Had it been fate again,
+      prompting him in his sleep, giving him warning of a rival that stood
+      closer to the girl than he?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than once he had thought of Mortimer as a possible rival. Mortimer
+      was not handsome, but he was young, tall, and square-shouldered&mdash;even
+      his somewhat plain face seemed to reflect a tall, square-shouldered
+      character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Subconsciously Crane turned his head and scanned critically the reflection
+      of his own face in a somewhat disconsolate mirror that misdecorated a
+      panel of the breakfast room. Old as the glass was, somewhat bereaved of
+      its quicksilver lining at the edge, it had not got over its habit of
+      telling the truth. Ordinarily little exception could have been taken to
+      the mirrored face; it was intellectual; no sign-manual of cardinal sin had
+      been placed upon it; it was neither low, nor brutal, nor wolfishly cunning
+      in expression. Its pallor rather loaned an air of distingue, but&mdash;and
+      the examination was being conducted for the benefit of a girl of twenty&mdash;it
+      was the full-aged visage of a man of forty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than ever a conviction fixed itself in Crane's mind that, no matter
+      how strong or disinterested his love for Allis might be, he would win her
+      only by diplomacy. After all, he was better versed in that form of
+      love-making, if it might be so called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane was expecting Langdon at ten o'clock. He heard a step in the
+      breakfast room, and, turning his head, saw that it was the Trainer.
+      Mechanically Crane pulled his watch from his pocket; he had thought it
+      earlier; it was ten. Langdon was on time to a minute. Nominally what there
+      was to discuss, though of large import, required little expression. With
+      matters going so smoothly there was little but assurances and
+      congratulations to be exchanged. Diablo's showing in the big Handicap
+      confirmed Langdon's opinion that both the Black and The Dutchman had given
+      them a great trial; probably they would duplicate their success with The
+      Dutchman in the Brooklyn Derby. It was only a matter of a few days, and
+      the son of Hanover had steadily improved; he was in grand fettle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon's appreciation of Crane's cleverness had been enhanced by the
+      successful termination of what he still believed was a brilliantly planned
+      coup. He had never for an instant thought that Crane purchased the horse
+      out of kindness to anyone. It was still a matter of mystery to him,
+      however, why his principal should wish to keep dark just how he had
+      learned Diablo's handicap qualities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accustomed to reading Langdon's mind, Crane surmised from the Trainer's
+      manner that the latter had something that he had not yet broached. Their
+      talk had been somewhat desultory, much like the conversation of men who
+      have striven and succeeded and are flushed with the full enjoyment of
+      their success. Suddenly the Trainer drew himself together, as if for a
+      plunge, and said: &ldquo;Did you notice Porter's mare in the Brooklyn, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; she ran a pretty good race for a three-year-old.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She did, an' I suppose they'll start her in the Derby. Do you happen to
+      know, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fancy they will,&rdquo; answered Crane, carelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She stopped bad yesterday; but I've heard somethin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane remembered his own suspicion as to Lucretia's rider, but he only
+      said, &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;After the race yesterday the jockey, Redpath, was talkin'&mdash;to the
+      Porter gal&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane started. It jarred him to hear this horseman refer to Allis as &ldquo;the
+      Porter gal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Redpath told her,&rdquo; proceeded Langdon, &ldquo;that when he saw he couldn't quite
+      win he pulled his mount off to keep her dark for the Derby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you know this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A boy in my stable happened to be in the stall an' heard 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's the boy? Can you believe him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Shandy. He used to be with the Porters.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a flash it came to Crane that the spy must be the one who had written
+      him the note about Faust and the change of saddles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that doesn't affect us, that I can see,&rdquo; commented Crane. &ldquo;I'm not
+      backing their mare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It means,&rdquo; declared Langdon, with great earnestness, &ldquo;that if Lucretia
+      could have beat all the others but Diablo, she has a rosy chance for the
+      Derby; that's what it means. The Black got away with a flyin' start, and
+      she wore him down, almost beat him; I doubt if The Dutchman could do that
+      much. She was givin' him a little weight, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we can't help it. I've backed The Dutchman to win a small fortune,
+      and I'm going to stand by it. You're in it to the extent of ten thousand,
+      as you know, and we've just got to try and beat her with our colt; that's
+      all there is to it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't like it,&rdquo; muttered Langdon, surlily. &ldquo;She's a mighty good
+      three-year-old to put up a race like that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She may go off before Derby day,&rdquo; suggested Crane; &ldquo;mares are uncertain
+      at this time of year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's just it; if she would go off we'd feel pretty sure then. I think
+      the race is between them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we'll know race day; if she goes to the post, judging from what you
+      say, it'll be a pretty tight fit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She didn't cut much figure last year when Lauzanne beat her.&rdquo; Langdon
+      said this with a drawling significance; it was a direct intimation that if
+      Lucretia's present jockey could be got at, as her last year's rider had
+      been&mdash;well, an important rival would be removed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane had not been responsible for the bribing of Lucretia's jockey,
+      though he was well aware what had occurred; had even profited by it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There'll be no crooked work this time,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;nobody will interfere
+      with the mare's rider, I hope,&rdquo; and he looked significantly at Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think they will,&rdquo; and the Trainer gave a disagreeable laugh.
+      &ldquo;From what Shandy tells me, I fancy it would be a bad game. The truth of
+      the matter is that gosling Redpath is stuck on the gal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane's pale face flushed hot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe that Shandy you speak of is a lying little scoundrel. I have an
+      idea that he wrote me a note, a wretched scrawl, once. Wait, I've got it
+      in my pocket; I meant to speak to you about it before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane drew from the inner pocket of his coat a leather case, and after a
+      search found Shandy's unsigned letter, and passed it over to the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's dollars to doughnuts Shandy wrote it. Let me keep this, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're welcome to it,&rdquo; answered Crane; &ldquo;you can settle with him. But
+      about the Derby, I have reasons for wishing to win that race, reasons
+      other than the money. I want to win it, bad. Do you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I do. When you say you want to win a race, you generally want to
+      win it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I do. But see here, Langdon, just leave their jockey to take orders
+      from his own master, see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wasn't goin' to put up no game with him, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not, of course not. It wouldn't do. He's a straight boy, I
+      think, and just leave him to ride the best he knows how. We've got a
+      better jockey in Westley. Besides, the Brooklyn Handicap has taken a lot
+      out of their mare; they may find that she'll go back after it. I think
+      you'd better get rid of that Shandy serpent; he seems ripe for any
+      deviltry. You can't tell but what he might get at The Dutchman if somebody
+      paid him. If I'm any judge of outlawed human nature, he'd do it. I've got
+      to run down to Brookfield on a matter of business, but shall be back again
+      in a day or so. Just keep an eye on The Dutchman&mdash;but I needn't tell
+      you that, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That two-year-old I bought at Morris Park is coughin' an' runnin' at the
+      nose; I blistered his throat last night; he's got influenza,&rdquo; volunteered
+      the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep him away from The Dutchman, then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got him in another barn; that stuff's as catchin' as measles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If The Dutchman were to get a touch of it, Porter would land the Derby
+      with Lucretia, I fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or if they got it in their stable we'd be on Easy Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so. But Dixon's pretty sharp; he'll look out if he hears it's
+      about. However, we've got to watch our own horse and let them do the
+      same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That evening Langdon and Jakey Faust were closeted together in a room of
+      the former's cottage. An A1 piece of villainy was on, and they were
+      conversing in low tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a cinch for The Dutchman if it wasn't for that damn mare Lucretia,&rdquo;
+       Langdon observed, in an injured tone, as though somehow the mare's
+      excellence was an unwarranted interference with his rights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about the jock?&rdquo; asked Faust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No good&mdash;can't be done. He's mooney on the gal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; commented the Cherub. &ldquo;Did you talk it over with the Boss? He's not
+      a bad guy gettin' next a good thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He gave me the straight tip to give Redpath the go-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's his little game? Is he going to hedge on the mare?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; he'll stand his bet flat-footed. Say, he's the slickest! If he didn't
+      give me the straight office that the mare might get sick, then I'm a
+      Dutchman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're both Dutchmen.&rdquo; The Cherub laughed immoderately at his stupid joke.
+      &ldquo;See, we're both standin' for The Dutchman, ain't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon frowned at the other's levity. &ldquo;You'll laugh out the other side
+      your mouth if Lucretia puts up a race in the Derby like she did in the
+      Handicap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But ain't she goin' to get sick? We could whip-saw them both ways then,
+      that's if we knew it first. I could lay against her an' back your horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish the old man wasn't so devilish deep; he makes me tired sometimes;
+      gives it to me straight in one breath that he's got reasons for wantin' to
+      win the race, an' then he pulls that preacher mug of his down a peg an'
+      says, solemn like: 'But don't interfere with their jockey.' Then he talks
+      about The Dutchman or Lucretia gettin' the influenza, an' that Andy Dixon
+      is pretty fly about watchin' the mare. Now what do you make of all that,
+      Jake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you area mug. It don't need no makin' up. That book's all rounded
+      to. He wants the mare stopped, an' don't want no muddlin' about with the
+      jockey, see? Wasn't there a row over stoppin' Lucretia last year? Wasn't
+      the boy set down for the meetin'? You ought to know; you had to pay
+      through the nose for shuttin' his mouth. But what made the old man talk
+      about the mare gettin' sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon searched his memory; just how was that subject started? &ldquo;Damn it!
+      yes, of course; I told him about the two-year-old havin' the influenza.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Dick, my boy, you've guessed it, though you weren't trying. Crane
+      would like to see the Porter mare coughin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you can't take a strange horse into their stable, an' him sick,&rdquo;
+       objected the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right you are, Dick. But you could take the sickness there, if you had a
+      boy with the sabe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was thinkin' of that,&rdquo; said Langdon, reflectively; &ldquo;I was wonderin' if
+      that's what the Boss meant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure thing&mdash;that's his way; he never wants to stand in for none of
+      the blame, but he likes to feel sure that he's goin' to win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks a bit like it, damn me if it don't; an' I believe he was givin'
+      me a pointer about the proper boy for the job, too. He said Shandy would
+      get at a horse quick enough if he was paid for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are; what more do you want? Would you have Crane get out on the
+      housetop an' shout to you to go an' cruel Porter's mare? He's slick, he
+      is, an' if it can be done you've got a great chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm a poor man,&rdquo; whined Langdon, &ldquo;an' I can't take no chances on loosin'
+      ten thousand, if it can be helped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's got to be done right away, 'cause it'll take a couple of days to get
+      the mare coughin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told Shandy to come here,&rdquo; said the Trainer; &ldquo;he ought to be turnin' up
+      soon. When you hear him knock, just slip into that other room, an' leave
+      the door open a little so that you can hear what takes place. God knows
+      what that young imp wouldn't swear if a fellow had no witnesses. I think
+      he's comin' here to-night to ask me to pay him to do some dirty job, an' I
+      won't do it, see?&rdquo; and he winked at Faust. &ldquo;He's a bad boy,&rdquo; said the
+      Bookmaker, in a tone of mock condemnation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There he is now,&rdquo; declared Langdon. &ldquo;I hear a step on the gravel. Quick,
+      slip into the room; he'll be peepin' through the windows; he's like a
+      fox.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a knock at the door. When Langdon opened it Shandy shuffled into
+      the room with a peculiar little rocking-horse sort of gait, just like the
+      trot of a skunk. His whole appearance somehow suggested this despised
+      animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you heard anything from the Porter stable?&rdquo; Langdon asked, when the
+      boy had taken a seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The little mare's well,&rdquo; the boy answered, laconically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's bad luck for us, Shandy. We'll be poorer by the matter of a few
+      thousand if they win the Derby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's we?&rdquo; questioned Shandy, with saucy directness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The whole stable. A man has played The Dutchman to win a hundred
+      thousand, an' he's goin' to give the boys, one or two of them, five
+      hundred if it comes off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small imp's weak, red-lidded eyes took on a hungry, famished look.
+      &ldquo;What're you givin' us is that straight goods?&rdquo; he demanded, doubtingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon didn't answer the question direct; he said: &ldquo;My man's afraid
+      somebody'll get at The Dutchman. There's a lot of horse sickness about,
+      an' if anyone was to take some of the poison from a sick horse's nose and
+      put it in The Dutchman's nostrils at night, why he'd never start in the
+      Derby, I reckon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A look of deep cunning crept into the boy's thin freckled face; his eyes
+      contracted and blinked nervously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What th' 'ell's the difference? If the Porter mare starts Redpath thinks
+      he's got a lead-pipe cinch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd lose your five hundred; that's the difference,&rdquo; retorted Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' if she doesn't start, an' our horse wins, I get five hundred? Is that
+      dead to rights?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If The Dutchan wins you get the money,&rdquo; replied the Trainer,
+      circumspectly. &ldquo;You mustn't come to me, Shandy, with no game about takin'
+      the horse sickness from, our two-year-old an' fixin' Porter's mare, 'cause
+      I can't stand for that, see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy would have interrupted, but Langdon motioned him to keep silent,
+      and proceeded:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, if it leaked out an' we'd won a lot of money over The Dutchman,
+      damn fools would say that I'd been at the bottom of it; an' if they had me
+      up in front of the Stewards I couldn't swear that I'd had nothing to do
+      with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, held it in front of Shandy's
+      eyes, and said: &ldquo;What did you write that letter for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy stared in blank amazement. He trembled with fear; it was the
+      warning note he had sent to Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now if I was to show that to Faust he'd put a pug on to do you up, see? I
+      wouldn't give three cents for your carcass after they'd finished with
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't mean nothin', s' help me God, I didn't,&rdquo; pleaded the boy; &ldquo;give
+      it back to me, sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can take it, only don't play me the double cross no more. If you're
+      doin' anything crooked, don't mix me up in it. You couldn't get into
+      Porter's stable, anyway, if you tried to fix the mare.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't say I was goin' to do no bloomin' job; but I could get in right
+      enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I ain't puttin' you next no dirty work, but if you hear that the
+      mare gets this horse sickness that's goin' about, let me know at once,
+      see? Come here quick. If Faust got a chance to lay against the mare he
+      probably wouldn't say anythin' about that note, if he did know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll give you the office, sir, when she's took sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right. You ain't got any too many friends, Shandy, an' you'd
+      better stick to them that'll help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I get that five hundred, sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Lucretia don't beat The Dutchman, you get it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When the boy had gone Faust came forth from his hiding like a badger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a bad boy&mdash;a wicked boy!&rdquo; he said, pulling a solemn face.
+      &ldquo;You're a good man, Langdon, to steer him in the straight an' narrer path.
+      He'll take good care of The Dutchman for that five hundred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if you don't pay these kids well they'll throw you down; an' I ain't
+      takin' no chances, Faust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Porter mare might catch the influenza, eh, Dick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If she does, I'll let you know at once, Jake. But I ain't in it. I
+      threatened to kick that kid out when he hinted at something crooked.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard you, Langdon, I'll take my oath to that. But I must be off now.
+      You know where to find me if there's anything doin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The next day, intent on persuading Porter to accept the money won over
+      Diablo, Crane took a run down to Ringwood farm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Allis had foreshadowed, his visit was of no avail, so far as Porter's
+      acceptance of the winnings was concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With natural forethought Crane first talked it over with Mrs. Porter, but
+      that good lady would have felt a sort of moral defilement in handling any
+      betting money, much less this that seemed obscured in uncertainty as to
+      its rightful ownership. She believed very much in Crane's bona fides, and
+      had no doubt whatever but his statement of the case was absolutely
+      truthful. But Allis had refused to accept the money; it would never do for
+      her to go beyond her daughter's judgment. She even thought it unadvisable
+      for Crane to discuss the matter with her husband; it would only worry him,
+      and she was positive that, in his pride of independence, he would refuse
+      to touch a penny that was not actually due him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there's a payment on Ringwood due in a few days,&rdquo; Crane argued, &ldquo;and
+      we must arrange for that at all events. If this money, which is rightfully
+      your family's, could be applied on that, it would make a difference, don't
+      you think?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose John must settle it,&rdquo; she said, resignedly; &ldquo;perhaps you had
+      better see him. I can't interfere one way or the other. I have no head for
+      business,&rdquo; she added, apologetically; &ldquo;I'm not sure that any of us have
+      except Allis. We just seem to drift, drift, drift.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane stated the facts very plausibly, very seductively, to John Porter.
+      Porter almost unreasonably scented charity in Crane's proposal. He
+      believed that the bet was a myth; Crane was trying to present him with
+      this sum as a compensation for having lost Diablo. It wasn't even a loan;
+      it was a gift, pure and simple. His very helplessness, his poverty, made
+      him decline the offer with unnecessary fierceness. If Allis had refused
+      it, if she were strong enough to stand without this charity, surely he, a
+      man, battered though he was, could pass it by. He had received a hopeful
+      message from Allis as to Lucretia's chances in the Derby; they felt
+      confident of winning. That win would relieve them of all obligations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't take it,&rdquo; Porter said to Crane. &ldquo;Allis is more familiar with the
+      circumstances of the bet&mdash;if there was one&mdash;than I. It must just
+      rest with her; she's the man now, you know,&rdquo; he added, plaintively; &ldquo;I'm
+      but a broken wreck, and what she says goes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there's a payment on Ringwood falling due in a few days,&rdquo; Crane
+      remonstrated, even as he had to Mrs. Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter collapsed, fretfully. He could stand out against prospective
+      financial stringency, but actual obligations for which he had no means
+      quite broke down his weakened energy. He had forgotten about this
+      liability, that is, had thought the time of payment more distant. He would
+      be forced to recall the money he had given Dixon to bet on Lucretia for
+      the Derby, to meet this payment to the bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quite despondently he answered the other man. &ldquo;I had forgotten all about
+      it; this shake-up has tangled my memory. I can pay the money, though,&rdquo; he
+      added, half defiantly; &ldquo;it will hamper me, but I can do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden thought came to Crane, an inspiration. &ldquo;I've got it!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Porter brightened up; there was such a world of confidence in the other's
+      manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll just let this Diablo money stand against the payment which is about
+      due on Ringwood; put it in the bank to cover it, so to speak; later we can
+      settle to whom it belongs. At present it seems to be nobody's money; it's
+      seldom one sees a few thousand going abegging for an owner,&rdquo; he added,
+      jocularly. &ldquo;You say it isn't yours; I know it isn't mine; and most
+      certainly it doesn't belong to the bookmaker, for he's lost it fair and
+      square. We can't let him keep it; they win enough of the public's money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Reluctantly, Porter gave a half-hearted acquiescence. He would have
+      sacrificed tangible interests to leave the money that was in Dixon's hands
+      with him to bet on Lucretia. It would be like not taking the tide at its
+      flood to let her run unbacked when her chances of winning were so good,
+      and the odds against her great enough to insure a big return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was after banking hours, quite toward evening, by the time Crane had
+      obtained this concession. He had brought the winnings for John Porter's
+      acceptance, should the latter prove amenable to reason. Now it occurred to
+      him that he might leave the money with one of the bank staff, who could
+      deposit it the next day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane drove back to the village and went at once to the cashier, Mr.
+      Lane's house. He was not at home; his wife thought perhaps he was still in
+      the bank. Crane went there in search of him. He found only Mortimer, who
+      had remained late over his accounts. From the latter Crane learned that
+      the cashier had driven over to a neighboring town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn't matter,&rdquo; remarked Crane; &ldquo;I can leave this money with you.
+      It's to meet a payment of three thousand due from John Porter about the
+      middle of June. You can put it in a safe place in the vault till the note
+      falls due, and then transfer it to Porter's credit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll attend to it, sir,&rdquo; replied Mortimer. &ldquo;I'll attach the money to the
+      note, and put them away together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On his way to the station Crane met Alan Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you'd like a holiday to see your father's mare run for the
+      Derby, wouldn't you, Alan?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should very much, sir; but Mr. Lane is set against racing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I think he'll let you off that day. I'll tell him he may. But, like
+      your mother, I don't approve of young men betting&mdash;I know what it
+      means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was thinking, with bitterness, of his own youthful indiscretions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you go, don't bet. You might be tempted, naturally, to back your
+      father's mare Lucretia, but you would stand a very good chance of losing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you think she'll win, sir?&rdquo; Alan asked, emboldened by his
+      employer's freedom of speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not. My horse, The Dutchman, is almost certain to win, my trainer
+      tells me.&rdquo; Then he added, apologetic of his confidential mood, &ldquo;I tell you
+      this, lest through loyalty to your own people you should lose your money.
+      Racing, I fancy, is very uncertain, even when it seems most certain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Crane had cause to congratulate himself upon the somewhat clever
+      manipulation of a difficult situation. He had scored again in his
+      diplomatic love endeavor. He knew quite well that Allis's determined stand
+      was only made possible by her expectation of gaining financial relief for
+      her father through Lucretia's winning the Derby. Should she fail, they
+      would be almost forced to turn to him in their difficulties. That was what
+      he wanted. He knew that the money won over Diablo, if accepted, must
+      always be considered as coming from him. The gradual persistent dropping
+      of water would wear away the hardest stone; he would attain to his wishes
+      yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was no bungler to attempt other than the most gently delicate methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0029" id="link2H_4_0029">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Encouraged by Jockey Redpath's explanation of his ride on Lucretia, Allis
+      was anxious that Dixon should take the money her father had set aside for
+      that purpose and back their mare for the Brooklyn Derby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We had better wait a day or two,&rdquo; Dixon had advised, &ldquo;until we see the
+      effect the hard gallop in the Handicap has had on the little mare. She
+      ain't cleanin' up her oats just as well as she might; she's a bit off her
+      feed, but it's only natural, though; a gallop like that takes it out of
+      them a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the day after Crane's visit to Ringwood that Dixon advised Allis
+      that Lucretia seemed none the worse for her exertion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps we'd better put the money on right away,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She's sure to
+      keep well, and we'll be forced to take a much shorter price race day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back the stable,&rdquo; advised Allis, &ldquo;then if anything happens Lucretia we
+      can start Lauzanne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Trainer laughed in good-natured derision. &ldquo;That wouldn't do much good;
+      we'd be out of the frying pan into the fire; we'd be just that much more
+      money out for jockey an' startin' fees; he'd oughter been struck out on
+      the first of January to save fifty dollars, but I guess you all had your
+      troubles about that time an' wasn't thinkin' of declarations.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may have been luck; if Lauzanne would only try, something tells me
+      he'd win,&rdquo; contended the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And somethin' tells me he wouldn't try a yard,&rdquo; answered Dixon, in
+      good-humored opposition. &ldquo;But I don't think it'll make no difference in
+      the odds we get whether we back the stable or Lucretia alone; they won't
+      take no stock in the Chestnut's prospects.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So Dixon made a little pilgrimage among the pencilers. He was somewhat
+      dismayed and greatly astonished that these gentry also had a somewhat rosy
+      opinion of Lucretia's chances. Her good gallop in the Brooklyn Handicap
+      had been observed by other eyes than Crane's. Ten to one was the best
+      offer he could get.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dixon was remonstrating with a bookmaker, Ulmer, when the latter answered,
+      &ldquo;Ten's the best I'll lay&mdash;I'd rather take it myself; in fact, I have
+      backed your mare because I think she's got a great chance; she'll be at
+      fours race day. But I'll give you a tip&mdash;it's my game to see the
+      owner's money on,&rdquo; and he winked at the Trainer as much as to say, &ldquo;I'll
+      feel happier about it if we're both in the same boat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It'll be on, sure thing, if I can get a decent price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you go to Cherub Faust; he'll lay you longer odds. I put my bit on
+      with him at twelve, see? If I didn't know that you an' Porter was always
+      on the straight I'd a-thought there was somethin' doin', an' Faust was
+      next it, stretchin' the odds that way. How's the mare doin&mdash;is she
+      none the worse?&rdquo; Ullmer asked, a suspicious thought crossing his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're backin' her&mdash;an' money talks,&rdquo; said Dixon, with quiet
+      assurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Faust is wise to somethin'&mdash;he stands in with Langdon, an' I
+      suppose they think they've got a cinch in The Dutchman. Yes, that must be
+      it,&rdquo; he added, reflectively; &ldquo;they made a killin' over Diablo, an' likely
+      they got a good line on The Dutchman through him in a trial. But a
+      three-year-old mare that runs as prominent in the big Handicap as Lucretia
+      did, will take a lot of beatin. She's good enough for my money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thanking him, Dixon found Faust, and asked of him a quotation against
+      Porter's stable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twelve is the best I can do,&rdquo; answered the Cherub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll take fifteen to one,&rdquo; declared Dixon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't lay it; some of the talent&mdash;men as doesn't make no mistake, is
+      takin' twelve to one in my book fast as I open my mouth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want fifteen,&rdquo; replied Dixon, doggedly. &ldquo;Surely the owner is entitled
+      to a shade the best of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the size of your bet?&rdquo; queried the Cherub.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you lay me fifteen, I'll take it to a thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you want it ag'in' the stable, an' you've two in; with two horses
+      twelve is a long price.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm takin' it against the stable just because it's the usual thing to
+      couple it in the bettin. It's a million to one against Lauzanne's starting
+      if Lucretia keeps well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust gave a little start and searched Dixon's face, furtively. The
+      Trainer's stolid look reassured him, and in a most sudden burst of
+      generosity he said: &ldquo;Well, I'll stretch a point for you, Dixon. Your boss
+      is up ag'in' a frost good and hard. I'll lay you fifteen thousand to one
+      ag'in' the stable, an' if Lauzanne wins you'll buy me a nice tiepin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His round, fat sides heaved spasmodically with suppressed merriment at the
+      idea of Lauzanne in the Brooklyn Derby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They must have a pretty good opinion of The Dutchman,&rdquo; Dixon thought, as
+      he moved away after concluding the bet. &ldquo;I'm naturally suspicious of that
+      gang, when they get frisky with their money. It's a bit like I've heard
+      about the Sultan of Turkey always givin' a present to a man before cutting
+      his head off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Trainer told Allis what he had done. He even spoke of his distrust at
+      finding Faust laying longer odds against their mare than the other
+      bookmakers. &ldquo;But I don't see what they can do,&rdquo; he said, reflectively,
+      studying the grass at his feet, his brow quite wrinkled in deep thought.
+      &ldquo;The mare's well, and we can trust the boy this time, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you can trust Redpath,&rdquo; affirmed Allis, decisively. &ldquo;If Faust is in
+      with Langdon, as you say, it just means that they're goin' on their luck,
+      and think their colt, The Dutchman, can't lose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must be that,&rdquo; concurred the Trainer, but in a hesitating tone that
+      showed he was not more than half satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You backed the stable?&rdquo; queried Allis, as an afterthought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, an' Lauzanne'll have a chance to-day to show whether he's worth the
+      pencil that wrote his name beside Lucretia's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are starting him to-day? I had almost forgotten that he was entered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it'll give him a fair trial&mdash;it's a mile, an' there ain't no
+      good horses, that is, stake horses, in the race. I'll put Redpath up on
+      him, an' you might have a talk with the boy, if you like. You're onto
+      Lauzanne's notions better'n I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis gave Jockey Redpath the benefit of her knowledge of Lauzanne's
+      peculiarities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid he won't take kindly to you,&rdquo; she said, regretfully; &ldquo;he's as
+      notional as most of his sire's line. But if he won't try he won't, and the
+      more you fight him the sulkier he'll get. I wish I could ride him myself,&rdquo;
+       she added, playfully; then fearing that she had hurt the boy's feelings by
+      discounting his ability, added, hastily: &ldquo;I'm afraid I've spoiled
+      Lauzanne; he has taken a liking to me, and I've learned how to make him
+      think he's having his own way when he's really doing just what I want him
+      to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Redpath's admiration for Allis Porter was limited to his admiration for
+      her as a young lady. Being young, and a jockey, he naturally had notions;
+      and a very prominent, all-absorbing notion was that he could manage his
+      mount in a race much better than most boys. Constrained to silent
+      acquiescence by respect for Allis, he assured himself, mentally, that, in
+      the race his experience and readiness of judgment would render him far
+      better service than orders&mdash;perhaps prompted by a sentimental regard
+      for Lauzanne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chestnut was a slow beginner; that was a trait which even Allis's
+      seductive handling had failed to eradicate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the starter sent Lauzanne off trailing behind the other seven runners
+      in the race that afternoon, Redpath made a faint essay, experimentally, to
+      hold to Allis's orders, by patiently nestling over the Chestnut's strong
+      withers in a vain hope that his mount would speedily seek to overtake the
+      leaders. But evidently Lauzanne had no such intention; he seemed quite
+      satisfied with things as they were. That the horses galloping so
+      frantically in front interested him slightly was evidenced by his cocked
+      ears; but beyond that he might as well have been the starter's hack
+      bringing that gentleman along placidly in the rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just as I thought,&rdquo; muttered the boy; &ldquo;this skate's kiddin' me just as he
+      does the gal. He's a lazy brute&mdash;it's the bud he wants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Convinced that he was right, and that his orders were all wrong, the
+      jockey asserted himself. He proceeded to ride Lauzanne most energetically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the horse's mind this sort of thing was associated with unlimited
+      punishment. It had always been that way in his two-year-old days; first,
+      the general hustle&mdash;small legs and arms working with concentric
+      swing; then the impatient admonishment of fierce-jabbing spurs; and
+      finally the welt-raising cut of a vicious, unreasoning whip. It was not a
+      pleasurable prospect; and at the first shake-up, Lauzanne pictured it
+      coming. All thoughts of overtaking the horses in front fled from his mind;
+      it was the dreaded punishment that interested him most; figuratively, he
+      humped his back against the anticipated onslaught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Redpath felt the unmistakable sign of his horse sulking; and he promptly
+      had recourse to the jockey's usual argument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sitting in the stand Allis saw, with a cry of dismay, Redpath's whip-hand
+      go up. That Lauzanne had been trailing six lengths behind the others had
+      not bothered her in the slightest&mdash;it was his true method; his work
+      would be done in the stretch when the others were tiring, if at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If the boy will only sit still&mdash;only have patience,&rdquo; she had been
+      saying to herself, just before she saw the flash of a whip in the
+      sunlight; and then she just moaned. &ldquo;It's all over; we are beaten again.
+      Everything is against us&mdash;everybody is against us,&rdquo; she cried,
+      bitterly; &ldquo;will good fortune never come father's way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time the horses had swung into the stretch, and Lauzanne had not in
+      the slightest improved his position, it dawned upon Redpath that his
+      efforts were productive of no good, so he desisted. But his move had cost
+      the Porters whatever chance they might have had. Left to himself, Lauzanne
+      undertook an investigating gallop on his own account. Too much ground had
+      been lost to be made up at that late stage, but he came up the straight in
+      gallant style, wearing down the leaders until he finished close up among
+      the unplaced horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis allowed no word of reproach to escape her when Redpath spoke of
+      Lauzanne's sulky temper. It would do no good&mdash;it would be like crying
+      over spilt milk. The boy was to ride Lucretia in the Derby; he was on good
+      terms with the mare; and to chide him for the ride on Lauzanne would but
+      destroy his confidence in himself for the other race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid the Chestnut's a bad actor,&rdquo; Dixon said to Allis, after the
+      race. &ldquo;We'll never do no good with him. If he couldn't beat that lot he's
+      not worth his feed bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would have won had I been on his back,&rdquo; declared the girl, loyally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's no good, Miss; you can't ride him, you see. We've just got one peg
+      to hang our hat on&mdash;that's Lucretia.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lauzanne's showing in this race was a great disappointment to Allis; she
+      had hoped that his confidence in humanity had been restored. Physically he
+      had undoubtedly improved; his legs had hardened and smoothed down. In
+      fact, his whole condition was perfect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She still felt that if Redpath had followed her advice and allowed
+      Lauzanne to run his own race he would have won. The race did not shake her
+      confidence in the horse so much as in the possibility of getting any
+      jockey to ride him in a quiescent manner. When it was impossible of
+      Redpath, who was eager to please her, whom else could they look to? They
+      might experiment, but while they were experimenting Lauzanne would be
+      driven back into his old bad habits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning brought them fresh disaster; all that had gone before was
+      as nothing compared with this new development in their run of thwarted
+      endeavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ned Carter had given Lucretia a vigorous exercise gallop over the Derby
+      course. As Dixon led the mare through the paddock to a stall he suddenly
+      bent down his head and took a sharp look at her nostrils; another stride
+      and they were in the stall. The Trainer felt Lucretia's throat and ears;
+      he put his hand over her heart, a look of anxious dismay on his usually
+      stolid face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She coughed a little, sir, when I pulled her up,&rdquo; volunteered Carter,
+      seeing Dixon's investigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid she's took cold,&rdquo; muttered Dixon. &ldquo;Have you had her near any
+      horses that's got the influenza?&rdquo; he asked, looking inquiringly at Carter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ain't been near nothing; I kept her away from everything, for fear
+      she'd get a kick, or get run into.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope to God it's nothin',&rdquo; said the Trainer; and his voice was quite
+      different from his usual rough tone. Then a sudden suspicion took
+      possession of him. Faust's readiness to lay long odds against the mare had
+      haunted him like a foolish nightmare. Had there been foul play? The mare
+      couldn't have taken a cold&mdash;they had been so careful of her; there
+      had been no rain for ten days; she hadn't got wet. No, it couldn't be
+      cold. But she undoubtedly had fever. A sickening conviction came that it
+      was the dreaded influenza.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That morning was the first time she had coughed, so Faust could not have
+      known of her approaching illness, unless he had been the cause of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Trainer pursued his investigation among the stable lads. When he asked
+      Finn if he had noticed anything unusual about the mare, the boy declared
+      most emphatically that he had not. Then, suddenly remembering an incident
+      he had taken at the time to be of little import, he said: &ldquo;Two mornin's
+      ago when I opened her stall and she poked her head out, I noticed a little
+      scum in her nose; but I thought it was dust. I wiped it out, and there was
+      nuthin' more come that I could see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the row?&rdquo; asked Mike Gaynor, as he joined Dixon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the details were explained to him Mike declared, emphatically, that
+      some one had got at the mare. Taking Dixon to one side, he said: &ldquo;It's
+      that divil on wheels, Shandy; ye can bet yer sweet loife on that. I've
+      been layin' for that crook; he cut Diablo's bridle an' t'rew th' ould man;
+      an' he done this job, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how could he get at her?&rdquo; queried the Trainer. &ldquo;The stable's been
+      locked; an' Finn and Carter was sleepin' in the saddle room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That divil could go where a sparrer could. How did he git in to cut th'
+      bridle rein&mdash;t'rough a manure window no bigger'n your hat. He done
+      that, as I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if the mare's got it we're in the soup. Have you seen Miss Porter
+      about, Mike?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did a minute ago; I'll pass the word ye want to see her&mdash;here she
+      comes now. I'll skip. Damn if I want to see them gray eyes when ye tell
+      about the little mare. It'll just break her heart; that's what it'll do.
+      An' maybe I wouldn't break the back av the devil as put up this dirty job.
+      It isn't Shandy that's as much to blame as the blackguard that worked
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dixon ran over in his mind many contorted ways of breaking the news to
+      Allis, and finished up by blurting out: &ldquo;The mare's coughin' this mornin',
+      Miss; I hope it ain't nothin', but I'm afraid she's in for a sick spell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming to the course, the girl had allowed rosy hope to tint the gray
+      gloom of the many defeats until she had worked herself into a happy mood.
+      Lucretia's win would put everything right; even her father, relieved of
+      financial worry, would improve. The bright morning seemed to whisper of
+      victory; Lucretia would surely win. It was not within the laws of fate
+      that they should go on forever and ever having bad luck. She had come to
+      have a reassuring look at the grand little mare that was to turn the tide
+      of all their evil fortune. The Trainer's words, &ldquo;The mare's coughin',&rdquo;
+       struck a chill to her heart. She could not speak&mdash;the misery was too
+      great&mdash;but stood dejectedly listening while Dixon spoke of his
+      suspicions of foul play.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What villains there were in the world, the girl thought; for a man to lay
+      them odds against their horse, knowing that she had been poisoned, was a
+      hundred times worse than stealing the money from their Dockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't suppose we'll ever be able to prove it,&rdquo; declared Dixon,
+      regretfully; &ldquo;but that doesn't matter so much as the mare being done for;
+      we're out of it now good and strong. If we'd known it two days ago we
+      might a-saved the money, but we've burned up a thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll have to start Lauzanne,&rdquo; said Allis, taking a brave pull at
+      herself, and speaking with decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We might send him to the post, but that's all the good it'll do us, I'm
+      feared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've seen him do a great gallop,&rdquo; contended Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He did it for you, but he won't do it for nobody else. There ain't no boy
+      ridin' can make him go fast enough for a live funeral. But we'll start
+      him, an' I'll speak to Redpath about takin' the mount.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis was thinking very fast; her head, with its great wealth of black
+      hair, drooped low in heavy meditation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't engage him just yet, Dixon,&rdquo; she said, looking up suddenly, the
+      shadow of a new resolve in her gray eyes; &ldquo;I'll talk it over with you when
+      we go back to the house. I'm thinking of something, but I don't want to
+      speak of it just now&mdash;let me think it over a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dixon was deep in thought, too, as he went back to his own stables. &ldquo;We
+      haven't got a million to one chance,&rdquo; he was muttering; &ldquo;the money's
+      burned up, an' the race is dead to the world, as far as we're concerned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That Allis could evolve any plan to lift them out of their Slough of
+      Despond he felt was quite impossible; but at any rate he got a distinct
+      shock when, a little later, a slight-formed girl, with gray eyes, set
+      large and full in a dark face, declared to him that she was going to ride
+      Lauzanne in the Derby herself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God, Miss!&rdquo; the Trainer exclaimed, &ldquo;you can't do it. What would people
+      say&mdash;what would your mother say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People will say the race was well ridden if I'm any judge, and mother
+      won't be interested enough to know whether Lucretia was hitched to a buggy
+      in the Derby or not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But the Judge would never allow a girl&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There'll be no girl in it;&rdquo;. and Allis explained, in minute detail the
+      result of her deep cogitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It won't work; you never could do it,&rdquo; objected Dixon, with despondent
+      conviction. &ldquo;That big head of hair would give you dead away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The head of hair won't be in evidence; it will be lying in my trunk,
+      waiting to be made up into a wig after we've won.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; it won't do,&rdquo; the Trainer reiterated; &ldquo;everybody'd know you, an'
+      there'd be a fine shindy. I believe you could ride the horse right enough,
+      an' if he has a chance on earth you'd get it out of him. But give up the
+      idea, everybody'd know you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl pleaded, but Dixon was obdurate. He did not contend for an
+      instant that she was not capable of riding the horse,&mdash;only in a race
+      with many jockeys she would find it different from riding a trial gallop,&mdash;but
+      his main objection was that she'd be known. Allis closed the discussion by
+      saying that she was going home to encourage her father a little over the
+      mare's defeat in the Handicap, and made Dixon promise not to engage
+      Redpath for Lauzanne till her return next morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can't take another mount,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;because he's retained for
+      Lucretia, and we haven't declared her out yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm hopin' we may not have to,&rdquo; remarked Dixon. &ldquo;Anyway, there's no hurry
+      about switchin' the boy onto Lauzanne, so we'll settle that when you come
+      back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0030" id="link2H_4_0030">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Allis's visit to Ringwood was a flying one. Filial devotion to her father
+      had been one motive, but not the only one. Her brother Alan's wardrobe
+      received a visitation from hands not too well acquainted with the
+      intricacies of its make-up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Porter was undoubtedly brightened by the daughter's visit. Lucretia's
+      defeat in the Handicap had increased his despondency. To prepare him
+      gradually for further reverses Allis intimated, rather than asserted, that
+      Lucretia might possibly have a slight cold&mdash;Digon wasn't sure; but
+      they were going to run Lauzanne also. Like the Trainer, her father had but
+      a very poor opinion of the Chestnut's powers in any other hands but in
+      that of the girl's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who'll ride him?&rdquo; he asked, petulantly. &ldquo;It seems you can't trust any of
+      the boys now-a-days. If they're not pin-headed, they're crooked as a
+      corkscrew. Crane tells me that Redpath didn't ride Lucretia out in the
+      Handicap, and whether he rides the mare or Lauzanne it seems all one&mdash;we'll
+      get beat anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another boy will have the mount on Lauzanne,&rdquo; Allis answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What difference will that make? You can't trust him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can trust this boy, father, as you might your own son, Alan.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know about that. Alan in the bank is all right, but Alan as a
+      jockey would be a different thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father, you would trust me, wouldn't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I would, in the tightest corner ever was chiseled out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you can trust the jockey that's going to ride Lauzanne just as
+      much. I know him, and he's all right. He's been riding Lauzanne some, and
+      the horse likes him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all Lauzanne,&rdquo; objected Porter, the discussion having thrown him
+      into a petulant mood. &ldquo;Is Lucretia that bad&mdash;is she sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She galloped to-day,&rdquo; answered the girl, evasively. &ldquo;But if anything
+      happens her we're going to win with the horse. Just think of that, father,
+      and cheer up. Dixon has backed the stable to win a lot of money, enough
+      to-enough to&mdash;well, to wipe out all these little things that are
+      bothering you, dad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She leaned over and kissed her father in a hopeful, pretty way. The
+      contact of her brave lips drove a magnetic flow of confidence into the
+      man. &ldquo;You're a brick, little woman, if ever there was one. Just a tiny
+      bunch of pluck, ain't you, girl? And, Allis,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;if you don't
+      win the Derby, come and tell me about it yourself, won't you? You're sure
+      to have some other scheme for bracing me up. I'm just a worthless hulk,
+      sitting here in the house a cripple while you fight the battles. Perhaps
+      Providence, as your mother says, will see you through your hard task.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't come and tell you that we've lost, dad; I'll come and tell you
+      that we've won; and then we'll all have the biggest kind of a blow-out
+      right here in the house. We'll have a champagne supper, with cider for
+      champagne, eh, dad? Alan, and Dixon, and old Mike, and perhaps we'll even
+      bring Lauzanne in for the nuts and raisins at desert.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the Rev. Dolman,&mdash;you've left him out,&rdquo; added the father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were both laughing. Just a tiny little ray of sunshine had dispelled
+      all the gloom for a minute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I must go back to my horses,&rdquo; declared Allis, with another kiss.
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, dad&mdash;cheer up;&rdquo; and as she went up to her room the smile
+      of hope vanished from her lips, and in its place came one of firm, dogged
+      resolve. Allis needed much determination before she had accomplished the
+      task she had set herself&mdash;before she stood in front of a mirror,
+      arrayed in the purple and fine linen of her brother. She had thought Alan
+      small, and he was for a boy, but his clothes bore a terribly suggestive
+      impression of misfit&mdash;they hung loose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mentally thanking the fashion which condoned it, she turned the trousers
+      up at the bottom. &ldquo;I'll use my scissors and needle on them to-night,&rdquo; she
+      said, ruthlessly. Thank goodness, the jockeys are all little chaps, and
+      the racing clothes will fit better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coat was of summer wear, therefore somewhat close-fitting for Alan;
+      but why did it hang so loosely on her? She was sure her brother was not so
+      much bigger. A little thought given to this question of foreign apparel
+      brought a possible solution. The undergarments she had tumbled about in
+      her search were much heavier than her own. Her crusade had its side of
+      comedy; she chuckled as, muttering, &ldquo;In for a penny, in for a pound,&rdquo; she
+      reincarnated herself completely, so far as outward adornment was
+      concerned. Then she examined herself critically in the glass. The mirror
+      declared she was a passable counterfeit of her brother; all but the
+      glorious crown of luxuriant hair. Perhaps she had better leave it as it
+      was until she had met with the approval of Dixon&mdash;the terrible
+      sacrifice might be for nothing. She wavered only for an instant&mdash;no
+      half measure would do. &ldquo;In for a penny, in for a pound.&rdquo; The slightest
+      weakness in carrying out her bold plan might cause it to fail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice she took up a pair of scissors, and each time laid them down again,
+      wondering if it were little short of a madcap freak; then, shrinking from
+      the grinding hiss of the cutting blades, she clipped with feverish haste
+      the hair that had been her pride. It was a difficult task, and but a rough
+      job at best when finished, but the change in her appearance was marvelous;
+      the metamorphosis, so successful, almost drowned the lingering regret. She
+      drew a cap over her shorn head, packed her own garments and a few of her
+      brother's in a large bag, buttoned her newmarket coat tight up to her
+      throat, and once more surveyed herself in the glass. From head to foot she
+      was ready. Ah, the truthful glass betrayed the weak point in her armor&mdash;the
+      boots. In an instant she had exchanged them for a pair of Alan's. Now she
+      was ready to pass her mother as Allis in her own long cloak, and appear
+      before Dixon without it as a boy. That was her clever little scheme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before going up to her room she had asked that the stableman might be at
+      the door with a buggy when she came down, to take her to the station. When
+      she descended he was waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm taking some clothes back with me, mother,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Let Thomas
+      bring the bag down, please.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're getting dreadfully mannish in your appearance, daughter; it's that
+      cap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have to wear something like this about in the open;&rdquo; answered Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But for traveling, girl, it seems out of place. Let me put a hat on you.
+      I declare I thought it was Alan when you came into the room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't wait; this will do. I must be off to catch my train. Goodbye,
+      mother; wish me good luck,&rdquo; and she hurried out and took her seat in the
+      buggy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0031" id="link2H_4_0031">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Some hours later Dixon, sitting in his cottage, oppressed by the
+      misfortune that had come to his stable, heard a knock at the door. When he
+      opened it a neatly dressed, slim youth stepped into the uncertain light
+      that stretched out reluctantly from a rather unfit lamp on the center
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this Mr. Dixon?&rdquo; the boy's voice piped modestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, lad, it is. Will you sit down?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy removed his cap, took the proffered chair, and said somewhat
+      hesitatingly, &ldquo;I heard you wanted a riding boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I do, an' I don't. I don't know as I said I did, but,&rdquo;&mdash;and he
+      scanned the little figure closely, &ldquo;if I could get a decent lightweight
+      that hadn't the hands of a blacksmith, an' the morals of a burglar, I
+      might give him a trial. Did you ever do any ridin'&mdash;what stable was
+      you in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've rode a good deal,&rdquo; answered the little visitor, ignoring the second
+      half of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mayne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Main what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Al Mayne,&rdquo; the other replied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, s'posin' you show up at the course paddocks to-morrow mornin'
+      early, an' I'll see you shape on a horse. D'you live about here&mdash;can
+      you bring your father, so if I like your style we can have things fixed
+      proper?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy's face appealed to Dixon as being an honest one. Evidently the lad
+      was not a street gamin, a tough. If he had hands&mdash;the head promised
+      well&mdash;and could sit a horse, he might be a find. A good boy was rarer
+      than a good horse, and of more actual value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I'll stay here to-night so as to be ready for the mornin',&rdquo; said
+      the caller, to Dixon's astonishment; and then the little fellow broke into
+      a silvery laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jimminy! If it isn't&mdash;well, I give in, Miss Allis, you fooled
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I ride Lauzanne now?&rdquo; the girl asked, and her voice choked a little&mdash;it
+      might have been the nervous excitement, or thankfulness at the success of
+      her plan in this its first stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they know at home?&rdquo; the Trainer asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, nobody is to know but you, Mr. Dixon&mdash;you and Mrs. Dixon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This suggested a thought to the Trainer. &ldquo;The good wife's at work in the
+      kitchen; I'll bring her in. Perhaps she'd like to hire a help,&rdquo; and he
+      chuckled as he opened a door and called, &ldquo;Come here for a minute. This is
+      a boy&rdquo;&mdash;he turned his head away&mdash;&ldquo;I'm takin' on for Lauzanne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Mrs. Dixon. Then, with severe politeness, &ldquo;Good evenin', young
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two figures in male attire broke into a laugh simultaneously. The good
+      lady, oblivious to the humorous side of her greeting, flushed in anger.
+      &ldquo;Appears to be mighty funny,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;What's the joke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nuthin',&rdquo; replied the husband, speaking hastily. &ldquo;Can you give the
+      lad a bed? He wants to bunk here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Andy, you know I can't. There's only Miss Allis's room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give her&mdash;him that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you crazy, Andy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too bad, Mrs. Dixon; I sha'n't let your husband tease you any more.
+      I am Allis; but I'm glad you didn't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Allis, where's your beautiful hair gone? Surely you didn't cut
+      that off just for a joke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then she was taken fully into their confidence; and before Allis retired
+      Dixon had been quite won over to the plan of Allis's endeavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning the Trainer asked the girl whether she would ride Lauzanne
+      a working gallop to get accustomed to the new order of things, or would
+      she just wait until race day and take her place in the saddle then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid Mike'll spot you,&rdquo; he said&mdash;&ldquo;even Carter may.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll ride to-day,&rdquo; declared Allis; &ldquo;I musn't take any chances of losing
+      this race through my inexperience. Even Lauzanne will hardly know me, I'm
+      afraid. Mike and Carter needn't see much of me&mdash;I can slip away as
+      soon as I've ridden the gallop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's a boy's sweater, then,&rdquo; said Dixon; &ldquo;the collar'll half hide your
+      face. I'll get a pair of ridin' breeches an' boots for you by tomorrow.
+      The little mare's in for it sure,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;her legs are swellin', an'
+      she's off her feed&mdash;just nibbles at a carrot. I feel as bad as if it
+      was a child that was sick, she's that gentle. She can't start, an' I'll
+      just tell Redpath that he can take another mount if he gets it. You're
+      still bound to ride the Chestnut?&rdquo; he asked, by way of assurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we'll get five pounds off the weight for 'prentice allowance&mdash;that's
+      somethin'. I'll arrange about a permit for you. What did you say your name
+      was, mister?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Al Mayne, please, sir,&rdquo; this in the humble tone of a stable-boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Miss&mdash;Al, I mean&mdash;you can carry Lauzanne around the
+      course at nine o'clock sharp; then you'd better come back here an' rest up
+      all day&mdash;lay low.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A new boy, I'm tryin',&rdquo; Dixon explained to Gaynor, after he lifted a
+      little lad to Lauzanne's back at the paddock gate, and they stood watching
+      the big Chestnut swing along with his usual sluggish stride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's got good hands,&rdquo; said Mike, critically, &ldquo;though he seems a bit
+      awkward in the saddle. Ye couldn't have a better trial horse fer a new
+      b'y. If Lauzanne's satisfied with him he can roide onythin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Allis, who was now Al Mayne, the boy, came around and back to the
+      paddock, she slipped quietly from the horse, loitered carelessly about for
+      a few minutes, and then made her way back to Dixon's quarters. Nobody had
+      paid any attention to the modest little boy. Riding lads were as plentiful
+      as sparrows; one more or less called for no comment, no investigation.
+      Even Mike lost interest in the new boy in wondering why Miss Allis had not
+      made her usual appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did the horse like it?&rdquo; Dixon asked of the girl when he returned
+      home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he knew. I whispered in his ear as we cantered along, and he'll be
+      all right&mdash;he'll keep my secret.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think he's due for a pipe opener to-morrow. It's just three days
+      till the Derby, an' we've got to give him a strong workout. Besides, it'll
+      put you next what you've got to do in the race. To-morrow mornin' you had
+      better canter him just slow around once, an' then send him a full
+      mile-an'-aquarter as though there was money hung up for it. I'll catch his
+      time, an' we'll get wise to what he can do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This programme was carried out; and as Dixon looked thrice at his watch
+      after the gallop to make sure that he was not mistaken in the time, 2:11,
+      he began to wonder if, after all, the girl was not nearly right in her
+      prophetic hope that the despised Lauzanne would win the Brooklyn Derby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can move; he surprised me,&rdquo; the Trainer said to Allis as she
+      dismounted. &ldquo;He's not blown, either; he's as fresh as a daisy. Gad! we'll
+      do those blackguards up yet, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gallop had attracted Mike's attention also. As Allis moved away he
+      called after her, &ldquo;I say, b'y, hould on a minute. What's yer name,
+      ennyway?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Al,&rdquo; answered the small voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, by me faith, ye didn't put up no bad roide. Ye handled that horse
+      foine. Don't run away, lad,&rdquo; he added, hurrying after the retreating
+      Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before she could escape him, he had her by the arm, and turned about face
+      to face. Even then he didn't recognize her, for Allis had taken a most
+      subtle precaution in her make-up. The delicate olive of her cheeks was
+      hidden under a more than liberal allowance of good agricultural
+      cosmetique. It had been well rubbed in, too, made of a plastic adherence
+      by the addition of mucilage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lord, what a doirty face!&rdquo; exclaimed Mike. &ldquo;But ye kin ride, b'y; so dirt
+      don't count; clean ridin's the thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If Allis hadn't laughed in his face, being full of the happiness of hope,
+      Mike would not have recognized her&mdash;even then he didn't hit it off
+      quite right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alan Porter!&rdquo; he gasped. &ldquo;Bot' t'umbs up! Is it ye, b'y?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; and a small warning finger was held up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't fear, b'y, that I'll give it away. Mum's the word wit' me. But I'm
+      dahmned if I t'ought ye could roide like that. It's jus' in the breed,
+      that's what it is; ye take to it as natural as ducks&mdash;&rdquo; Mike had a
+      habit of springing half-finished sentences on his friends. &ldquo;Yer father
+      could roide afore ye; none better, an' Miss Allis can sit a horse foiner
+      nor any b'y as isn't a top-notcher. But this beats me, t'umbs up, if it
+      doesn't. I onderstand,&rdquo; he continued, as Allis showed an inclination to
+      travel, &ldquo;ye don't want the push to get on to ye. They won't, nayther&mdash;what
+      did ye say yer name was, sonny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Al Mayne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye'r a good b'y, Al. I hope Dixon lets ye roide the Chestnut in the
+      Derby. I'd give wan av me legs&mdash;an' I needs 'em bot'&mdash;to see ye
+      beat out that gang av highway robbers that got at the mare. They'll not
+      git at the Chestnut, for I'll slape in the stall me self.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Allis moved away, Mike stood watching the neat figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the game, eh?&rdquo; he muttered to himself; &ldquo;the gal don't trust
+      Redpath no more'n I do; palaver don't cut no ice wit' her. The b'y didn't
+      finish on Lucretia, an' that's all there is to it. But how's Alan goin' to
+      turn the trick in a big field of rough ridin' b'ys? If it was the gurl
+      herself&rdquo; a sudden brilliant idea threw its strong light through Mike's
+      brain pan. He took a dozen quick shuffling steps after Allis, then stopped
+      as suddenly as he had started. &ldquo;Mother a' Moses! but I believe it's the
+      gurl; that's why the Chestnut galloped as if he had her on his back.
+      Jasus! he had. Ph-e-e-w-w!&rdquo; he whistled, a look of intense admiration
+      sweeping over his leather-like face. &ldquo;Bot' t'umbs! if that isn't pluck.
+      There isn't a soul but meself'll git ontil it, an' she all but fooled me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0032" id="link2H_4_0032">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The news that Lucretia was sick had got about. The Porter's stable
+      traveled out in the betting for the Brooklyn Derby until a backer&mdash;if
+      there had been one&mdash;could have written his own price, and got it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon had informed Crane of this change in their favor, though he said
+      nothing about the deal with Shandy which had brought about the poisoning
+      of the mare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry that Porter's mare has gone wrong,&rdquo; Crane said. &ldquo;I think we
+      would have won anyway, but it'll just about ruin them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Figuratively, Langdon closed one eye and winked to himself. Crane must
+      know that it was his implied desires that had led up to the stopping of
+      Lucretia. Langdon thought Crane just about the most complete hypocrite
+      he'd ever met; that preacher face of his could look honorably pious while
+      its owner raked in a cool forty thousand over the Trainer's dirty work.
+      However, that cut no figure, it was his ten thousand dollars Langdon was
+      after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as they thought they had destroyed the chances of their strongest
+      opponent, came a new disturbing feature. Other eyes than Dixon's has seen
+      Lauzanne's strong gallop; other watchers than his had ticked of the
+      extraordinary good time, 2:11 for the mile and a quarter, with the horse
+      seemingly running well within himself, never urged a foot of the journey,
+      and finishing strong, was certainly almost good enough to warrant his
+      winning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This information had been brought to Langdon, but he also had observed the
+      gallop. And the same boy was to ride Lauzanne in the race, he understood,
+      for Redpath had been released, and was looking for another mount. It
+      wasn't in the natural order of things that one small stable would have in
+      it two horses good enough to win the Derby, especially when one of them
+      was a cast-off; but there was the gallop; time, like figures, didn't lie,
+      not often; and as he thought of it Langdon admitted that he had never seen
+      such an improvement in a horse as had been made in Lauzanne. Shandy had
+      told him that it was Miss Porter's doing, that she had cured him of his
+      sulky moods; the gallop Langdon had witnessed seemed to bear out the truth
+      of this. What was he to do? They couldn't repeat the trick they had played
+      on Lucretia. The Dutchman might win; he had worked the full Derby
+      distance, a mile and a half, in 2:45, nearly all out at the finish.
+      Lauzanne's gallop was only a mile and a quarter; he might not be able to
+      stay the additional quarter. But there was ten thousand dollars at stake&mdash;for
+      Langdon. He sought to discover the identity of Lauzanne's rider; but
+      nobody knew him&mdash;Dixon had picked him up somewhere. Perhaps he could
+      be got at; that would simplify matters greatly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning after her fast work on Lauzanne, Allis, draped as she was into
+      the personification of Al Mayne, arrived at the course before their
+      horses. As she was leaning over the paddock rail waiting for Lauzanne to
+      come, Langdon, who had evidently determined upon a course of action,
+      sauntered up carelessly to the girl and commenced to talk. After a free
+      preliminary observation he said, &ldquo;You're the boy that's ridin' for Andy
+      Dixon, ain't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small figure nodded its head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I seen you gallop that Chestnut yesterday. Where you been ridin&mdash;you're
+      a stranger here, I reckon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out West,&rdquo; answered Allis, at a hazard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, San Francisco, eh? Are you engaged to Dixon?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm just on trial.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goin' to ride the Chestnut in the race?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the boy nodded; under the circumstances it wasn't wise to trust too
+      much to speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ain't no good&mdash;he's a bad horse. I guess I've got the winner of
+      that race in my stable. If he wins, I'd like to sign you for a year. I
+      like the way you ride. I ain't got no good lightweight. I might give you a
+      thousand for a contract, an' losin' and winnin' mounts when you had a leg
+      up. How do you like ridin' for Dixon?&rdquo; he continued, the little chap not
+      answering his observations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't goin' to ride no more for him after this race,&rdquo; answered the
+      other, quite truthfully enough, but possessed of a curiosity to discover
+      the extent of the other's villainy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't blame you. He's no good; he don't never give his boys a chance.
+      If you win on the Chestnut, like as not they'll just give you the winnin'
+      mount. That ain't no good to a boy. They ain't got no money, that's why.
+      The owner of my candidate, The Dutchman, he's a rich man, an' won't think
+      nothin' of givin' a retainer of a thousand if we won this race. That'll
+      mean The Dutchman's a good horse, and we'll want a good light boy to ride
+      him, see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis did see. Langdon was diplomatically giving her as A1 Mayne to
+      understand that if she threw the race on Lauzanne, she would get a place
+      in their stable at a retainer of a thousand dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can afford it if we win the race,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;for we stand a big
+      stake. Come and see me any time you like to talk this over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After he had gone, just as Allis was leaving the rail, she was again
+      accosted; this time by Shandy. She trembled an instant, fearing that the
+      small red-lidded ferret eyes would discover her identity. But the boy was
+      too intent on trying to secure his ill-earned five hundred dollars to
+      think of anything else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good mornin', boy,&rdquo; he said, cheerily. &ldquo;I used to be in Dixon's stable.
+      It's hell; and he's a swipe. I see my boss talkin' to you just now. Did he
+      put you next a good thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis nodded her head, knowingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's all right. So's the other one&mdash;the guy as has got the mun; he's
+      got a bank full of it. I'm on to him; his name's Crane&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't know him,&rdquo; continued the imp; &ldquo;he's too slick to go messin'
+      about. But if the old man promised you anything, see, God blast me, you'll
+      git it. Not like that other skin-flint hole where you don't git nothin'. I
+      stand in five hundred if our horse wins the Derby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you ride him?&rdquo; asked Al Mayne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ride nothin'. I don't have to. I've did my job already.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't believe they'll give you five hundred for nothin',&rdquo; said Allis,
+      doubtingly, knowing that the boy's obstinate nature, if he were crossed,
+      would probably drive him into further explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, you're a stiff. What'd the ole man want you to do&mdash;pull
+      Lauzanne?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knowed it. What was the use of stoppin' the mare an' let the Chestnut
+      spoil the job?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that what you get the five hundred for?&rdquo; asked Allis, a sudden
+      suspicion forcing itself upon her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, what d' you take me fer, a flat car? But she's sick, ain't she? An'
+      you jes' take care of the Chestnut now, an' I'll give you a hundred out of
+      my five, God bli' me if I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke Shandy looked hastily about to see that no one was listening,
+      then he continued: &ldquo;If you give me the double cross an' peach, I'll split
+      yer head open.&rdquo; His small eyes blazed with venomous fury. &ldquo;Besides, it
+      won't do no good, my word's as good as yours. But I'll give you the
+      hundred, s'help me God! I will, if you don't ride the Chestnut out. Mum's
+      the word,&rdquo; he added, bolting suddenly, for Dixon had entered the paddock
+      with his horses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the horses also came Mike Gaynor. While their blankets were being
+      taken off and saddles adjusted, he came over to Allis. There was a
+      suppressed twinkle of subverted knowledge in his weatherbeaten eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good mornin', Al,&rdquo; he said, nodding in a very dignified manner, and
+      putting a strong accent on the name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Mike had determined to keep from the girl the fact that he had
+      penetrated her disguise. With proper Irish gallantry, crude as it might be
+      in its expression, but delicate enough in its motive, he reasoned that his
+      knowledge might make her uncomfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see that fly-by-night divil Shandy talkin' to ye as I come in. What new
+      mischief is he up to now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wants me to pull Lauzanne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He ain't got no gall, has he? That come from headquarters; it's Langdon
+      put him up to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was talkin' to me, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I t'ought he would be. But he didn't know ye, Miss Allis&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Heavens! It was out. Mike's sun-tanned face turned brick-red; he could
+      have bitten off his unruly Irish tongue. The girl stared at him
+      helplessly, her cheeks, that were scarlet, tingling under the hot rush of
+      blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There ye are, an' believe me, I didn't mean it. I was goin' to keep me
+      mouth shut, but I never could do that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You knew then, yesterday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indade I didn't, an' that's a good sign to ye nobody'll know. But whin I
+      t'ought wit' meself I knowed that Alan couldn't ride Lauzanne the way ye
+      did; an' ye didn't deny ye was him, an' if ye wasn't him ye must be
+      yerself, see?&rdquo; which more or less lucid explanation seemed to relieve
+      Mike's mind mightily. &ldquo;I think ye're Jes doin' roight, Miss&mdash;Al, I
+      mean; I must get used to that name; s'help me, I believe ye'll win on the
+      Chestnut&mdash;that gallop was good enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think I can do it, Mike, among all those jockeys?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure thing, ye can, A&mdash;Al, me b'y; he won't need no ridin' in yer
+      hands; all ye'll have to do is sit still an' keep him straight. He'll win
+      the race in the stretch, an' there won't be many there to bother&mdash;they'll
+      all be beat off. Now, it's a good thing that I do know about this, for
+      I'll just kape close to ye an' kape any wan that's likely to spot ye away,
+      if I have to knock him down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike had worked himself up to a fine frenzy of projected endeavor; he cast
+      about for further services he could render his admired mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' ye know Carson the starter; he's jes the loveliest Irishman; there
+      isn't a b'y on earth could git an inch the best av it from him on a start,
+      not if they was to give him gold enough to weigh a horse down. But I'll
+      jes' tip him the wink that ye'r a gurl, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mike, what are you saying? Do you mean to ruin everything?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The rosy hue of eager joyousness that had crept into Gaynor's suntanned
+      face vanished; his jaw drooped, and a pathetic look of sheepish apology
+      followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; he ejaculated, mournfully; &ldquo;bot' tumbs up! but it's a pity.
+      Carson's an Irish gintleman, an' if I could till him ye was a gurl, he'd
+      knock the head plumb off any b'y that 'ud bother ye. Ye'd git away well,
+      too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the girl told Mike all that Shandy and Langdon had said. It only
+      confirmed Mike's opinion that between them they had poisoned Lucretia. He
+      felt that with a little more evidence he would be able to prove both
+      crimes&mdash;the one with Diablo and the one with Lucretia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brooklyn Derby was to be run the next day. Allis was glad that it was
+      so near; she dreaded discovery. She was like a hunted hare, dodging
+      everyone she fancied might discover her identity. She would have to run
+      the gauntlet of many eyes while weighing for the race, and at the time of
+      going out; even when she returned, especially if she won. But in the
+      excitement over the race, people would not have time to devote to a
+      strange jockey's visage. She could quite smear her face with dirt, for
+      that seemed a natural condition where boys were riding perhaps several
+      races in one afternoon. The jockey cap with its big peak well pulled down
+      over her head would add materially to her disguise. Mike would fetch and
+      carry for her, so that she would be in evidence for very few minutes at
+      most. Dixon even, opposed to the idea as he had been at first, now assured
+      her quite confidently that nobody would make her out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's the horses they look at,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and the colors. An apprentice
+      boy doesn't cut much ice, I can tell you. Why, I've been racin' for
+      years,&rdquo; he went on with the intent of giving her confidence, &ldquo;an' many a
+      time I see a boy up on a horse that must have rode on the tracks over a
+      hundred times, an' I can't name him to save my neck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At any rate there was nothing more to do until she made the great
+      endeavor, until she went to the track at the time set for the Brooklyn
+      Derby, dressed in the blue jacket with the white stars of her father's
+      racing colors; that was the plan adopted. A buggy, with Mike driving,
+      would take her straight to the paddock quite in time for the race.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0033" id="link2H_4_0033">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      After Crane left the money for Porter's note with Mortimer the latter took
+      the three one-thousand-dollar bills, pinned them to the note, placed them
+      in a cigar box and put the box away carefully in the bank safe, to remain
+      there until the 14th of June, when it became due. Incidentally Mortimer
+      mentioned this matter to Alan Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane in writing to the cashier about other affairs of the bank touched
+      upon the subject of Porter's obligation, stating that he had left the
+      money with Mr. Mortimer to meet the note when it matured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day before the Derby, the 12th of the month, Alan asked his day's
+      leave and got it. The cashier more readily granted Alan's request, as
+      Crane had intimated in his letter that it would please him if the lad were
+      to have a holiday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alan went up to New York that evening. Earlier in the day he somewhat
+      hesitatingly confided to Mortimer that he had backed Lucretia when she was
+      well and looked to have a good chance to win her race; now she was
+      scratched, and his money was lost. Bearing in mind what Crane had said
+      about The Dutchman's chances of winning, even with Lucretia in the race,
+      he felt now that it appeared almost like a certainty for Crane's horse. If
+      he could have a bet on The Dutchman he would surely recoup his losses.
+      Alan explained all these racing matters very minutely and with great
+      earnestness to Mortimer, for the latter was quite unfamiliar with the
+      science of race gambling. Having stated his predicament and hoped-for
+      relief, as an excuse for so doing, he wound up by asking his companion for
+      a loan of two hundred dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer had little less horror of betting and its evil influence than
+      Mrs. Porter, but under the circumstances he would perhaps have complied
+      with the boy's request had he been provided with sufficient funds. As it
+      was, he said: &ldquo;I don't like the idea of lending you money to bet with,
+      Alan; your mother wouldn't thank me for doing so; besides, if you lost it
+      you'd feel uncomfortable owing me the money. At any rate, I haven't got
+      it. I couldn't lend you two hundred, or half of it. I suppose I haven't
+      got a hundred to my credit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, never mind then,&rdquo; answered Alan, angrily, stiffening up, because of
+      Mortimer's lecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll lend you what I've got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want it. I can get it some other place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better take&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take nothing&mdash;I don't want it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, I'm sorry I can't oblige you. But take my advice and don't bet
+      at all; it'll only get you into trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks; I don't need your advice. I was a fool to ask you for the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Alan,&rdquo; began Mortimer, in a coaxing tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don't 'Alan' me any more. I can get along without your money and
+      without your friendship; I don't want either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer remained silent. What was the use of angering the boy further? He
+      would come to see that he had meant it in good part, and would be all
+      right in a day or two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the rest of the day Alan preserved a surly distance of manner,
+      speaking to Mortimer only once&mdash;a constrained request for a bunch of
+      keys in the latter's possession which unlocked some private drawers in the
+      vault.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning it suddenly occurred to Mortimer that Porter's note fell
+      due that day&mdash;either that day or the next, he wasn't sure. The
+      easiest way to settle the question was to look at the date on the note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped into the vault, took out the little cigar box, opened it, and
+      as he handled the crisp papers a sudden shock of horror ran through his
+      frame. One of the bills was gone; there were only two one-thousand-dollar
+      notes left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The discovery paralyzed him for an instant. He was responsible; the money
+      had been left in his charge. Then he looked at the note; it matured the
+      next day. All the money had been in the box the morning before, for he had
+      looked at it. Only the cashier and Alan Porter knew that it was in the
+      vault.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole dreadful truth came clearly to Mortimer's mind with absolute
+      conviction. Alan, infatuated with the prospect of winning a large sum over
+      The Dutchman, and failing to borrow from him, had taken the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gravity of the situation calmed Mortimer, and his mind worked with a
+      cool method that surprised him. Bit by bit he pieced it out. The boy,
+      inconsistently enough, had reasoned that the money was his father's, and
+      that he was only borrowing family property. No doubt he had felt sure of
+      winning, and that he would be back in time to replace the thousand before
+      it was needed. This sophistical reasoning had, without doubt, tempted the
+      lad to commit this&mdash;this&mdash;Mortimer felt a reluctance to bestow
+      the proper name upon Alan's act, but undoubtedly it was stealing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And if the boy lost the money, what would happen? He couldn't repay it;
+      the shortage would be discovered and Allis's brother would be ruined,
+      branded as a 'thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer would willingly put the money back himself for Allis's sake; but
+      he hadn't it. What was he to do? If he could find Alan and force him to
+      give up the stolen money he could yet save the boy. But Alan had gone to
+      Gravesend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like an inspiration the thought came to Mortimer that he must go after him
+      and get the money before it was lost. He shoved the box back in its place,
+      and came out into the office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was half past ten by the clock. Luckily the cashier had not come yet.
+      Mortimer's mind worked rapidly. He must make some excuse and get away;
+      anything; he must even lie; if he saved the boy it would be justifiable.
+      Why did not the cashier come, now that he was ready for him? Each minute
+      seemed an age, with the honor of Allis's brother hanging in the balance.
+      He would need money. He drew a check for a hundred dollars. A hasty
+      inspection showed that he still had a trifle more than this amount to his
+      credit. Why he took a hundred he hardly knew; fate seemed writing the
+      check. He had barely finished when the cashier appeared. At once Mortimer
+      spoke to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want leave of absence to-day, sir,&rdquo; he said, speaking hurriedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cashier frowned in astonishment. &ldquo;Impossible We are short-handed with
+      young Porter away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be back in the morning,&rdquo; pleaded Mortimer. &ldquo;My mother is very ill.
+      I've opened up, and Mr. Cass can manage, I'm sure, if you'll let me go. I
+      wouldn't ask it, but it's a matter of almost life and death.&rdquo; He had
+      nearly said of honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unwillingly the cashier consented. It probably meant extra work for him;
+      he would certainly have to take a hand in the office routine. Theirs was
+      not a busy bank, and that day was not likely to be a very pressing one,
+      but still he would have to shoulder some of the labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Full of the terrible situation, Mortimer cared not who worked, so that he
+      got away in time to save Allis's brother from himself. At last he was
+      free. He almost ran to the station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking from the window of the bank, the cashier seeing Mortimer's rapid
+      pace, muttered: &ldquo;I guess the poor man's mother is pretty bad; I'm glad I
+      let him go. He's a good son to that mother of his.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At eleven o'clock Mortimer got a train for New York. During the wait at
+      the station he had paced up and down the platform with nervous stride. A
+      dozen times he looked at his watch&mdash;would he be too late? He had no
+      idea how long it would take to reach Gravesend; he knew nothing of the
+      race track's location. As the train whirled him through Emerson, where his
+      mother lived, he could see the little drab cottage, and wondered
+      pathetically what the good woman would say if she knew her son was going
+      to a race meeting. At twelve he was in New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0034" id="link2H_4_0034">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer found that he could take an &ldquo;L&rdquo; train to the Bridge, and transfer
+      there to another taking him direct to the course. At the Bridge he was
+      thrust into a motley crowd, eager, expectant, full of joyous anticipation
+      of assured good luck. He was but a tiny unit of this many-voiced throng;
+      he drifted a speck on the bosom of the flood that poured into the waiting
+      race train. He was tossed into a seat by the swirling tide, and as the
+      train moved he looked at his fellow-passengers. There was a pleasant air
+      of opulence all about him. Gold chains of fair prominence, diamonds of
+      lustrous hue, decorated the always rotund figures. He fell to wondering
+      why the men were all of a gross physique; why did the ladies wear dresses
+      of such interminable variety of color; from whence came the money for this
+      plethora of rich apparel?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The race literature that had come Mortimer's way had generally dealt with
+      the unfortunate part of racing. Somehow he had got the impression that
+      everybody lost money at it. He was sure Alan Porter had, also the father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      True, on the train were some bearing undeniable evidences of poverty; but
+      not many. One man of this latter unfortunate aspect sat next him. His
+      whole appearance was suggestive of the shady side of life. With the
+      industry of a student he pored over a disheveled sporting paper for half
+      an hour, then throwing it under the seat he cast a furtive look at his
+      neighbor, and presently said, &ldquo;Dere'll be big fields to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's too bad,&rdquo; Mortimer answered, through ignorance, thinking that the
+      other referred to perhaps a considerable walk across country to reach the
+      course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I like it,&rdquo; declared the man of sad drapery; &ldquo;it means long odds if
+      you're next somethin' good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer confined his remarks to a brief &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; for the other man might as
+      well have been speaking Choctaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you doped 'em out for de Derby?&rdquo; asked the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer shook his head. Whatever it was it was connected with horse
+      racing, and he felt sure that he hadn't done it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'll tell you somethin'&mdash;will you put down a good bet if I
+      steer you straight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer was growing weary; his mind, troubled by the frightful disaster
+      that threatened Allis's family, wanted to draw within itself and ponder
+      deeply over a proper course of action; so he answered: &ldquo;My dear sir, I'm
+      afraid you're mistaken. I never bet on races. But I thank you for your
+      kind offer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The unwashed face looked at him in blank amazement, then it wrinkled in a
+      mirthful laugh of derision. &ldquo;What d' 'ell you goin' to Gravesend for, den?
+      Blamed if I don't believe you dough&mdash;you look it. Say, is dat
+      straight goods&mdash;did you never have a bet in your life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm damned! Say, I believe you've got de best of it, dough. Wish
+      I'd never bucked ag'in' de bookies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you stop it now, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, pard, do you drink?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smoke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A hopeless air of utter defeat came into the thin, sharp face. Its owner
+      had been searching for a simile. He wanted to point a moral and he
+      couldn't find it. The young man at his elbow was too immaculate. He tried
+      to explain: &ldquo;Racin's like any other locoed t'ing&mdash;it's like tobacco,
+      or drink, or stealin' money out of a bank&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer shivered. He had felt a moral superiority in denying the implied
+      bad habits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's like any of 'em,&rdquo; continued the ragged philosopher; &ldquo;a guy starts
+      simply as a kid, an' he gets de t'row-down. He takes a bracer at himself,
+      and swears he'll give it de go-by, but he can't&mdash;not on your life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer had read much about confidence men, and half expected that his
+      self-imposed acquaintance would try to borrow money, but he was
+      disillusionized presently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But de ring ain't broke Ole Bill yet. I'll clean up a t'ousand to-day&mdash;say,
+      I like your mug; you ain't no stiff, or I miss my guess, an' I'll put you,
+      next a good t'ing, damme if I don't, an' you don't need to divvy up,
+      neither. Dere's a chestnut runnin' in de Derby what dey call Larcen, an'
+      I'm goin' to plank down a hun'red chicks on him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He detected a look of incredulous unbelief in Mortimer's face, evidently,
+      for he added, &ldquo;You t'ink I ain't got no dough, eh?&rdquo; He dug down into the
+      folds of his somewhat voluminous &ldquo;pants&rdquo; and drew forth a fair-sized roll.
+      &ldquo;See? That wad goes to Larcen straight. I see him do a gallop good enough
+      for my stuf; but dey got a stable-boy on him, an' dat's why he'll be ten
+      to one. But dat don't cut no ice wit' me. He'll be out for de goods; it's
+      a gal owns him, an' dere'll be nut'in' doin'. Gal's name's Porter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Mortimer started. What a little world it was, to be sure! Even here
+      on the ferry boat, crowded with men of unchristian aspect, he heard the
+      name of the woman he loved, and standing symbolical of honesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the name of this&mdash;this horse?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Larcen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean Lauzanne?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dat's it. I jes' heered it, an' I t'ought it was Larcen. You've got
+      it straight, stranger. Say, are you wise to anyt'in'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not about the horse; but I know the people&mdash;the young lady; and
+      they'll win if they can&mdash;that's sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dere won't be many dead 'uns in de Derby. First money's good enough fer
+      most of de owners. First horse, I see him gallop like a good 'un. An' I'm
+      a piker; I like a bit of odds fer my stuff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer saw the other occupants of the train moving toward the front end.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess we're dere,&rdquo; said his companion; &ldquo;perhaps I'll see you on de
+      course. If you make a break to-day, play Larcen; he'll win. Say, I didn't
+      catch your name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mortimer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, take care of yourself, Mr. Morton. See you later.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      * * * * * * * * * *
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his ignorance of a race meet Mortimer had felt sure he would be able to
+      find Alan Porter without trouble. The true difficulty of his quest soon
+      dawned upon him. Wedged into the pushing, shoving, hurrying crowd, in
+      three minutes he had completely lost himself. A dozen times he rearranged
+      his bearings, taking a certain flight of steps leading up to the grand
+      stand as the base of his peregrinations; a dozen times he returned to this
+      point, having accomplished nothing but complete bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He asked questions, but the men he addressed were too busy to bother with
+      him; some did not hear, others stared at him in distrust, and many
+      tendered flippant remarks, such as &ldquo;Ask a policeman;&rdquo; &ldquo;You'll find him in
+      the bar;&rdquo; &ldquo;He's gone to Europe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even Mortimer's unpracticed mind realized speedily that it would be
+      nothing short of a miracle if he were to find anyone in all those
+      inpatient thousands who even knew the person he was seeking. One young man
+      he spoke to declared that he knew Alan Porter quite well; he was a great
+      friend of his; he'd find him in a minute. This obliging stranger's quest
+      led them into the long race track bar room, which somehow or other
+      suggested to Mortimer a cattle shambles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Behind the bar young men in white coats, even some in their shirt sleeves,
+      were setting forth on its top, with feverish haste, clinking glasses that
+      foamed and fretted much like the thirsty souls who called vociferously for
+      liquid refreshment. Everybody seemed on fire&mdash;burnt up by the thirst
+      of a consuming fever, the fever of speculation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer's new friend suggested that they indulge in beer while waiting
+      for the sought one's appearance, and waxing confidential he assured his
+      quarry that he had a leadpipe cinch for the next race&mdash;it couldn't
+      lose. The trainer was a bosom friend of his; a sort of hybrid brother in
+      friendship. He himself was no tipster, he was an owner; he even went the
+      length of flashing a bright yellow badge, as occult evidence of his
+      standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These matters did not interest the searcher in the slightest; they only
+      wasted his precious time. If he did not find Alan Porter soon the stolen
+      money would be lost, he felt sure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must find my friend,&rdquo; he said, cutting the garrulous man short. &ldquo;Excuse
+      me, I'll go and look for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the other was insistent; ferret-like, he had unearthed good meat&mdash;a
+      rare green one&mdash;and he felt indisposed to let his prey escape. His
+      insistence matured into insolence as Mortimer spoke somewhat sharply to
+      him. Ignorant of racing as the latter was, he was hardly a man to take
+      liberties with once he recognized the infringement. The enormity of his
+      mission and the possibility that it might be frustrated by his undesirable
+      tormentor, made him savage. Raised to quick fury by a vicious remark of
+      the tout who held him in leash, he suddenly stretched out a strong hand,
+      and, seizing his insulter by the collar, gave him a quick twist that laid
+      him on his back. Mortimer held him there, squirming for a full minute,
+      while men gathered so close that the air became stifling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently a heavy hand was laid on Mortimer's shoulder and a gruff
+      policeman's voice asked, &ldquo;What's the matter here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing much,&rdquo; Mortimer replied, releasing his hold and straightening up;
+      &ldquo;this blackguard wanted me to bet on some horse, and when I refused,
+      insulted me; that's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other man had risen, his face purple from the twist at his throat. The
+      officer looked at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At it again, Mr. Bunco. I'll take care of him,&rdquo; he continued, turning to
+      Mortimer. &ldquo;He's a tout. Out you go,&rdquo; this to the other man. Then, tickled
+      in the ribs by the end of the policeman's baton, the tout was driven from
+      the enclosure; the spectators merged into a larger crowd, and Mortimer was
+      left once more to pursue his fruitless search.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he emerged into the open of the lawn he saw a gentleman standing
+      somewhat listlessly, self-absorbed, as though he were not a party to the
+      incessant turmoil of the others, who were as men mad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a faith born of limited experience, Mortimer risked another hazard.
+      He would ask this complacent one for guidance. What he had to do justified
+      all chances of rebuke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, sir,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;I am looking for a young friend of mine whose
+      people own race horses. Where would I be likely to find him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If he's an owner he'll probably be in the paddock,&rdquo; replied the composed
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Could you tell me where the paddock is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the right,&rdquo; and sweeping his arm in that direction the stranger sank
+      back into his inner consciousness, and blinked his eyes languidly, as
+      though the unusual exertion of answering his inquisitor's questions had
+      decidedly bored him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That man is one in a thousand; yea, forty thousand, for he is a stranger
+      to excitement,&rdquo; Mortimer said to himself, as he strode rapidly across the
+      grass to a gate which opened in the direction the other had indicated. His
+      eagerness had almost carried him through the gateway when a strong arm
+      thrown across his chest, none too gently, barred his further progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Show your badge, please,&rdquo; cried a voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer exposed the pasteboard he had acquired on his entry to the stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't pass in here,&rdquo; said the guardian; &ldquo;that's only good for the
+      stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; began Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand aside&mdash;make room, please!&rdquo; from the gatekeeper, cut short his
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Others were waiting to pass through. In despair he gave up his untenable
+      place, and once more was swallowed in the maelstrom of humanity that
+      eddied about the stand enclosure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was heading for his rock of locality, the stairway, hurrying
+      somewhat recklessly, he ran with disturbing violence full tilt into a man
+      who had erratically turned to his left, when according to all laws of the
+      road he should have kept straight on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg pardon&mdash;&rdquo; began Mortimer; then stared in blank amazement,
+      cutting short his apology. The victim of his assault was Mr. Crane. The
+      latter's close-lidded eyes had rounded open perceptibly in a look of
+      surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Mortimer!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;You here? May I ask who's running the
+      bank?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Anxious about the stolen money the sudden advent of Crane on his immediate
+      horizon threw the young man into momentary confusion. &ldquo;My mother was ill&mdash;I
+      got leave&mdash;I had to see Alan Porter&mdash;I've come here to find him.
+      They'll manage all right at the bank without me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He fired his volley of explanation at his employer with the rapidity of a
+      Maxim gun. Truth and what he considered excusable falsehood came forth
+      with equal volubility. Crane, somewhat mollified, and feeling that at
+      first he had spoken rather sharply, became more gracious. At sight of
+      Mortimer he had concluded that it was to see Allis the young man had come,
+      perhaps at her instigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you seen Alan Porter, sir?&rdquo; Mortimer asked, anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did, but that was about an hour ago. You will probably find him&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      was going to say&mdash;&ldquo;in the paddock with his sister,&rdquo; but for reasons
+      he refrained; &ldquo;let me see, most likely sitting up in the grand stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Mortimer stood scanning the sea of faces that rose wave on wave above
+      him, Mr. Crane said, &ldquo;I hope you found your mother better. If I see Alan
+      I'll tell him you are looking for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mortimer turned around Crane had gone. He had meant to ask about the
+      race Porter's horse Lauzanne was in, but had hesitated for fear he should
+      say something which might give rise to a suspicion of his errand. He heard
+      the rolling thunder of hoof beats in the air. From where he stood, over
+      the heads of many people he could see gaudy colored silk jackets coming
+      swiftly up the broad straight boulevard of the race course; even as he
+      looked they passed by with a peculiar bobbing up-and-down motion. The
+      effect was grotesque, for he could not see the horses, could not see the
+      motive power which carried the bright-colored riders at such a terrific
+      pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thought flashed through his mind that it might be the Derby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What race is that?&rdquo; he asked of one who stood at his elbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man's face wore a sullen, discontented look, and no wonder, for he
+      had, with misplaced confidence, wagered many dollars on a horse that was
+      even then prancing gaily in many yards behind the winner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what race that was?&rdquo; Mortimer repeated, thinking the silent
+      one had not heard him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you look at your race card?&rdquo; retorted the jaundiced loser,
+      transporting himself and his troubles to the haven of liquid consolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His answer, curt as it was, gave Mortimer an inspiration. He looked about
+      and saw many men consulting small paper pamphlets; they were like people
+      in an art gallery, catalogue in hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By chance, Mortimer observed a young man selling these race catalogues, as
+      he innocently named them. He procured one, and the seller in answer to a
+      question told him it was the third race he had just seen, and the next
+      would be the Brooklyn Derby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There it was, all set forth in the programme he had just purchased. Seven
+      horses to start, all with names unfamiliar except The Dutchman and
+      Lauzanne. He had almost given up looking for Alan; it seemed so hopeless.
+      At any rate he had tried his best to save the boy's honor; told deliberate
+      lies to do it. Now it was pretty much in the hands of fate. He remembered
+      what Alan had said about The Dutchman's certain chance of winning the
+      coming race. He felt that if the horse won, Alan would put back the stolen
+      thousand dollars; if not, where would the boy get money to cover up his
+      theft?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had seemed to Mortimer a foolish, desperate thing to risk money on
+      anything so uncertain as a horse race; but here was at stake the honor of
+      a bright, splendid young man&mdash;even the happiness of his parents,
+      which the poor, deluded boy had wagered on one horse's chance of winning
+      against six others. It was terrible. Mortimer shuddered, and closed his
+      eyes when he thought of the misery, the shame, that would come to Allis
+      and her mother when they knew, as they must, if Crane's horse were beaten,
+      that the son was a thief. Oh, God! why couldn't he find the boy and save
+      him before it was too late? Probably Alan had already betted the money;
+      but even if that were so, he had vain visions of forcing the man who had
+      received the stolen thousand to disgorge. No one had a right to receive
+      stolen money; and if necessary, Mortimer would give him to understand that
+      he was making himself a party to the crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the mere fact that he couldn't find Alan Porter rendered him as
+      helpless as a babe; he might as well have remained in the bank that day.
+      How willingly he would have hastened back and replaced the money if he but
+      had it. For Allis's sake he would have beggared himself, would have
+      sacrificed a hundred times that sum to save her from the unutterable
+      misery that must come if her brother were denounced as a felon. The love
+      that was in him was overmastering him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was roused from his despondent train of thought by speech that struck
+      with familiar jar upon his ear. It was the voice of the man who had
+      descanted on the pleasures of betting during their journey from New York.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What dye t'ink of it, pard?&rdquo; was the first salutation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer stammered the weak information that he didn't know what to think
+      of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dere ain't no flies on us to-day&mdash;I'm knockin' 'em out in great
+      shape. Can't pick a loser, blamed if I can. I've lined up for a cash-in
+      tree times, an' I'll make it four straight, sure. Larcen'll come home all
+      alone; you see if he don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; rejoined Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Mister Morton, put down a bet on him&mdash;he's good business; put
+      a 'V' on, an' rake down fifty&mdash;dat'll pay your ex's. De talent's
+      goin' for De Dutchman, but don't make no mistake about de other, he'll
+      win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In an instant the young man knew why this persistent worrier of a tortured
+      spirit had been sent him. Fate gave him the cue; it whispered in his ear,
+      &ldquo;Put down a hundred&mdash;you have it&mdash;and win a thousand; then you
+      can save Alan Porter&mdash;can keep this misery from the girl that is to
+      you as your own life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer listened eagerly; to the babbler at his side; to the whisper in
+      his ear; to himself, that spoke within himself. Even if it were not all
+      true, if Lauzanne were beaten, what of it? He would lose a hundred
+      dollars, but that would not ruin him; it would cause him to save and pinch
+      a little, but he was accustomed to self-denial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will the betting men take a hundred dollars from me on this horse,
+      Lauzanne?&rdquo; he asked, after the minute's pause, during which these thoughts
+      had flashed through his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will dey take a hundred? Will dey take a t'ousand! Say, what you givin'
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Lauzanne won, I'd win a thousand, would I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you put it down straight; but you might play safe&mdash;split de
+      hundred, fifty each way, win an' show; Larcen'll be one, two, tree, sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to win a thousand,&rdquo; declared Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Den you've got to plump fer a win; he's ten to one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer could hardly understand himself; he was falling in with the
+      betting idea. It was an age since he stood at his desk in that bank,
+      abhorrent of all gambling methods, to the present moment, when he was
+      actually drawing from his pocket a roll of bills with which to bet on a
+      horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took a despairing look through the thicket of human beings that made a
+      living forest all about, in a last endeavor to discover Alan Porter. Not
+      three paces away a uniquely familiar figure was threading in and out the
+      changing maze-it was Mike Gaynor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer broke from his friend, and with quick steps reached the trainer's
+      side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to find Alan Porter,&rdquo; he said, in answer to Gaynor's surprised
+      salutation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was in the paddock a bit ago,&rdquo; answered Mike; &ldquo;he moight be there
+      still.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost involuntarily Mortimer, as he talked, had edged back toward his
+      friend of disconsolate raggedness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to go in there&mdash;I'd like to go now to find him, but they
+      won't let me through the gate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more they will,&rdquo; answered Mike, with untruthful readiness, for all at
+      once it occurred to him that if Mortimer got to the paddock he might run
+      up against Allis and recognize her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;De gent could buy a badge and get in,&rdquo; volunteered Old Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lid of Mike's right eye drooped like the slide of a lantern, as he
+      answered: &ldquo;He couldn't get wan now&mdash;it's too late; just wait ye here,
+      sir, and if the b'y's there wit' the nags, I'll sind him out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Bill made no comment upon Mike's diplomatic misstatement anent the
+      badge, for he had observed the wink, and held true to the masonry which
+      exists between race-course regulars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, please send him out then, Mr. Gaynor; it's important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm in a hurry meself,&rdquo; said Mike; &ldquo;I just come out fer a minute; see
+      here,&rdquo; and he nodded his head sideways to Mortimer. The latter walked by
+      his side for a few steps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's that guy?&rdquo; asked the Trainer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know; he calls himself Old Bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, ye best look out&mdash;he looks purty tough. What's he playin' ye
+      fer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He advised me to bet money on Lauzanne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The divil he did! What th' yellow moon does he know about the Chestnut;
+      did ye back him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are ye goin' to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know. Do you think Lauzanne might come in first?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A slight smile relaxed the habitually drawn muscles of Mike's grim visage;
+      it was moons since he had heard anybody talk of a horse &ldquo;coming in first;&rdquo;
+       he was indeed a green bettor, this, young man of the counting house. What
+      was he doing there betting at all, Mike wondered. It must be because of
+      his interest in the girl, his reason answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tink he'll win if he does his best for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does his best for who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike got to cover; his ungoverned tongue was always playing him tricks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Allis is managin' the horses,&rdquo; he explained, very deliberately, &ldquo;an'
+      there's a new b'y up on Lauzanne's back, d'ye onderstand; an' if the
+      Chestnut doesn't sulk, does his best fer the young misthress that'll be
+      watchin' him here in the stand wit' tears in her eyes, he moight win&mdash;d'ye
+      onderstand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, Mortimer understood; it seemed quite clear, for Mike had been to some
+      pains to cover up the slip he had made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I must go,&rdquo; he continued; &ldquo;an' ye needn't come in the paddock&mdash;if
+      the b'y is there, I'll sind him out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Alan's seeker returned to Old Bill, he said, &ldquo;Mr. Gaynor thinks your
+      choice might come in first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why was Irish steerin' you clear of de paddock?&rdquo; asked the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it was to save me the expense of buying a ticket for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other man said nothing further, but the remembrance of Mike's wink
+      convinced him that this was not the sole reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They waited for young Porter's appearance, but he did not come. &ldquo;The
+      geezer yer waitin' fer is not in dere or he'd a-showed up,&rdquo; said Old Bill;
+      &ldquo;an' if yer goin' to take de tip, we'd better skip to de ring an' see
+      what's doin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer had once visited the stock exchange in New York. He could not
+      help but think how like unto it was the betting ring with its horde of
+      pushing, struggling humans, as he wormed his way in, following close on
+      Old Bill's heels. There was a sort of mechanical aptness in his leader's
+      way of displacing men in his path. Mortimer realized that but for his
+      guide he never would have penetrated beyond the outer shell of the buzzing
+      hive. Even then he hoped that he might, by the direction of chance, see
+      Alan Porter. The issue at stake, and the prospect of its solution through
+      his unwonted betting endeavor, was dispelling his inherent antipathy to
+      gambling; he was becoming like one drunken with the glamour of a new
+      delight; his continued desire to discover young Porter was more a
+      rendering of tithes to his former god of chastity which he was about to
+      shatter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days before betting on horse races was a crime of indecent enormity;
+      now it seemed absolutely excusable, justified, almost something to be
+      eagerly approved of. Their ingress, though strenuous, was devoid of
+      rapidity; so, beyond much bracing of muscles, there was little to take
+      cognizance of except his own mental transformation. Once he had known a
+      minister, a very good man indeed, who had been forced into a fight. The
+      clergyman had acted his unwilling part with such muscular enthusiasm that
+      his brutish opponent had been reduced to the lethargic condition of
+      inanimate pulp. Mortimer compared his present exploit with that of his
+      friend, the clergyman; he felt that he was very much in the same boat. He
+      was eager to have the bet made and get out into the less congested air;
+      his companions of the betting ring were not men to tarry among in the way
+      of moral recreation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mob agitated itself in waves; sometimes he and Old Bill were carried
+      almost across the building by the wash of the living tide as it set in
+      that direction; then an undertow would sweep them back again close to
+      their starting point. The individual members of the throng were certainly
+      possessed of innumerable elbows, and large jointed knees, and boots that
+      were forever raking at his heels or his corns. They seemed taller, too,
+      than men in the open; strive as he might he could see nothing&mdash;nothing
+      but heads that topped him in every direction. Once the proud possessor of
+      a dreadful cigar of unrivaled odor became sandwiched between him and his
+      fellow-pilgrim; he was down wind from the weed and its worker, and the
+      result was all but asphyxiation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last they reached some sort of a harbor; it was evidently an inlet for
+      which his pilot had been sailing. A much composed man in a tweed suit,
+      across which screamed lines of gaudy color, sat on a camp stool, with a
+      weary, tolerant look on his browned face; in his hand was a card on which
+      was penciled the names of the Derby runners with their commercial standing
+      in the betting mart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Bill craned his neck over the shoulder of the sitting man, scanned the
+      book, and turning to Mortimer said, &ldquo;Larcen's nine to one now; dey're
+      cuttin' him&mdash;wish I'd took tens; let's go down de line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They pushed out into the sea again, and were buffeted of the human waves;
+      from time to time Old Bill anchored for a few seconds in the tiny harbor
+      which surrounded each bookmaker; but it was as though they were all in
+      league&mdash;the same odds on every list.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's same as a 'sociation book,&rdquo; he grunted; &ldquo;de cut holds in every
+      blasted one of 'em. Here's Jakey Faust,&rdquo; he added, suddenly; &ldquo;let's try
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What price's Laxcen?&rdquo; he asked of the fat bookmaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What race is he in?&rdquo; questioned the penciler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Din race; what you givin' me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know the horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer interposed. &ldquo;The gentleman means Lauzanne,&rdquo; he explained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust glared in the speaker's face. &ldquo;Why th' 'll don't he talk English
+      then; I'm no Chinaman, or a mind reader, to guess what he wants. Lauzanne
+      is nine to one; how much dye want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lay me ten?&rdquo; asked Old Bill of the bookmaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To how much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hun'red; an' me frien' wants a hun'red on, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll do it,&rdquo; declared Faust, impatiently. &ldquo;Ten hundred to one, Lauzanne!&rdquo;
+       he called over his shoulder to his clerk, taking the bettor's money; &ldquo;an'
+      the number is&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-five, tree-four-six!&rdquo; answered Old Bill. &ldquo;Pass him yer dust,&rdquo; he
+      continued, turning to his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter handed his money to Faust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lauzanne!&rdquo; advised Old Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A thousand-to-hundred-Lauzanne, win; an' the number is&rdquo; he stretched out
+      his hand, and turning over Mortimer's dangling badge, read aloud,
+      &ldquo;Twenty-five, three-five-seven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took a sharp look at the two men; his practised eye told him they were
+      not plungers, more of the class that usually bet ten dollars at the
+      outside; they were evidently betting on information; two
+      one-hundred-dollar bets coming together on Lauzanne probably meant stable
+      money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's git out, mister,&rdquo; cried Old Bill, clutching Mortimer's arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't I get anything&mdash;a receipt, or&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust heard this and laughed derisively. &ldquo;You won't need nothin' to show
+      for this money,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll be roun' at de back in a few minutes fer a couple of t'ou',&rdquo;
+       retorted Old Bill. &ldquo;Let's cut trough here,&rdquo; he added to his companion,
+      making a passage between the bookmakers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill's knowledge of the local geography was good, and skirting the crowd
+      they were soon out on the lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's watch de parade,&rdquo; Mortimer's adjutant suggested, and he led the way
+      down to the course, where they stood against the rail, waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0035" id="link2H_4_0035">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      During this time there was a bustle of much interest in the paddock.
+      Allis, ready dressed in the Porter colors, had been driven to the course
+      half an hour before the time set for the Derby. Her face was as
+      satisfactorily disguised with dust as though she had ridden three races.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike assiduously attended to every detail; even the weighing, thanks to
+      his officious care, was a matter of not more than one minute. The girl's
+      weight was one hundred and ten pounds, the saddle brought it up to one
+      hundred and thirteen. She would have to ride at least two pounds
+      overweight, for the horse's impost was one hundred and eleven. Lauzanne
+      was being led in a circle by a boy, so Allis shielded herself from the
+      general gaze in his empty stall. She felt quite sure that nobody there
+      would recognize her, unless, perhaps, Philip Crane. He was rarely seen in
+      the paddock, but might this day come out to view The Dutchman. The latter
+      horse came in for a great deal of attention, for he had been steadily
+      backed down to the position of equal favorite with White Moth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last there was the summons to saddle, and Lauzanne was brought into the
+      stall by Dixon. Then the door was shrouded by an ever-changing semicircle
+      of curious observers. Allis gave a little start and turned her head away
+      as Crane, pushing through the others, stood just inside the stall and
+      spoke to Dixon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your horse looks very well; I hope you win, if I don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's as good as we could make him,&rdquo; answered the Trainer, as he adjusted
+      the weight cloth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Miss Porter here?&rdquo; were Crane's next words, quite in the tone of a
+      casually interested friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She may be in the stand,&rdquo; Dixon answered, without turning his head. Mike
+      had deliberately interposed his body between Allis and the doorway. To the
+      girl's relief, without further comment, Crane quietly moved away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, Al, fer standin' in front av ye,&rdquo; said Mike, &ldquo;but these
+      outsiders is enough to make a b'y narvous the way they stare at him. Alan
+      Porter was in the paddock a minute ago askin' fer his sister, but I
+      hustled him out, telling him ye&mdash;I mean she&mdash;was in the stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Mike; you're a good friend,&rdquo; replied the girl, gratefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dixon had never taken so much care over the preparation of a horse for a
+      race in all his life; and at last everything was as perfect as it could
+      possibly be made. Lauzanne's behavior gladdened the girl's heart; he was
+      as supremely indifferent to the saddling, to the staring of the people, to
+      the scent of battle that was in the soft summer air, as though he were in
+      his own stable at home. Not a muscle of his huge flank trembled. Once, as
+      the bridle rein was loosened for an instant, he half turned in the stall,
+      curved his neck and stretched his golden nozzle toward the small figure in
+      blue silk, as though he fain would make sure by scent that one of his
+      natural enemies, a man jockey, had not been thrust upon him. Allis
+      understood this questioning movement, and reaching out her hand rubbed the
+      gray velvet of his nose. But for the restraining rein, tightened quickly
+      by the boy who held him, Lauzanne would have snuggled his head against his
+      little mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They understand each other,&rdquo; said Dixon to Mike, in an undertone; &ldquo;we'll
+      get all that's in him this trip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bot' t'umbs up! if he doesn't come home alone I'll eat me hat. The
+      sharks'll get a knock this journey, that'll make 'em take a tumble to
+      themselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dixon stepped back to the corner where Allis was and said: &ldquo;I guess I
+      can't give you no orders. He's a bit sluggish at the post, an' a few false
+      breaks won't hurt him none. Just don't be afraid, that's all. A mile an' a
+      half's a long journey, an' you'll have plenty of time to take their
+      measure. He's sure to get away last, but that won't matter; there'll be
+      plenty of openin's to get through after you've gone a mile. Just keep your
+      eye on The Dutchman&mdash;he's a stayer from 'way back; an' Westley may
+      kid you that he's beat comin' up the stretch, for he's slick as they make
+      them, an' then come with a rattle at the finish an' nose you out on the
+      post. Don't never let up once you're into the stretch; if you're ten
+      lengths ahead don't let the Chestnut down, but keep a good holt on him,
+      an' finish as though they was all lapped on your quarter. There's a horse
+      in the race I don't understand; he can no more get a mile an' a half than
+      I could; it's the Indian, an' why they're puttin' up the startin' price
+      beats me, unless&rdquo;&mdash;and he lowered his voice to a whisper&mdash;&ldquo;there's
+      a job to carry Lauzanne, or White Moth, or somethin' off their feet. Just
+      watch the Indian, an' don't let him shut you in on the rail if you can
+      help it. They've put up Redpath, an' that beats me, too, for I think he's
+      straight. But the Indian hasn't a ghost of a chance to win. You'd better
+      take a whip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't want either whip or spurs,&rdquo; answered the girl. &ldquo;Lauzanne will do
+      better without them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that, but take a whip&mdash;something else in the race might need
+      it; an' if you have to use it, use it good an' strong. If Langdon lodges
+      an objection I can make him quit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Over at The Dutchman's stall there was a very confident party. Their horse
+      would go to the post as fit as any thoroughbred had ever stripped. Langdon
+      was a great trainer&mdash;there was no doubt about that; if there had been
+      Crane would have discovered it and changed his executive officer. The tall
+      son of Hanover was lean of flesh, but gross in muscle. He was as though an
+      Angelo had chiseled with sure hand from his neck, and ribs, and buttocks
+      all the marble of useless waste, and left untouched in sinewy beauty layer
+      on layer, each muscle, and thew, and cord. Flat-boned and wide the
+      black-glossed legs, and over the corded form a silken skin of dull
+      fire-red. From the big eyes gleamed an expectant delight of the struggle;
+      not sluggishly indifferent, as was Lauzanne's, but knowing of the fray and
+      joyous in its welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He'll win on a tight rein,&rdquo; confided Langdon to Jockey Westley; &ldquo;he's the
+      greatest Hanover in the land. There's a dozen races bottled up in that
+      carcass&rdquo;&mdash;and he slapped the big Bay lovingly on the rump&rdquo;&mdash;but
+      if you're put to it, Bill, you can call on him fer the full dozen today.
+      There's nothin' to it but yourself and White Moth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carelessly he stepped to the back of the stall, touching Westley as he
+      passed. Kicking the loose dirt with his toes, and bending his head to bury
+      his voice, Langdon continued in a subdued tone: &ldquo;The Indian'll cut out the
+      pace so fast that it'll choke off Lauzanne. The Chestnut's a plugger an'
+      ain't no good when it comes to gallopin'. If you was to all loaf aroun' he
+      might hang on an' finish in front; but the pace'll kill him&mdash;it'll
+      break his heart; the fast goin'll lay out White Moth, too, for she'll go
+      to the front an' die away after a mile an' a quarter. Just nurse the Bay,
+      an' let the others fight the Indian. But don't loaf an' let Lauzanne get
+      near you, fer he can keep up a puddlin' gait all day. There ain't nothin'
+      else in the race I'm afraid of; there ain't one of them can last a mile
+      an' a half.&rdquo; Then he added, with a disagreeable chuckle&mdash;it was like
+      the slobbering laugh of a hyena&mdash;&ldquo;I miss my guess if the boy on
+      Lauzanne kills himself tryin' to win anyway. He seems a fair lad, but you
+      can ride rings 'round him, Bill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll put up a good ride on The Dutchman, an' I think we'll ketch the
+      Judge's eye,&rdquo; replied Westley. &ldquo;It doesn't seem to stand for it that a
+      stable-boy on a bad horse like Lauzanne is goin' to beat me out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The boss says you're to have two thousand fer winnin', Westley, so don't
+      make no mistake. I wasn't goin' to tell you this afore you went out, fer
+      fear it'd make you too eager. Many a race's been thrown away by a boy
+      bein' too keen, an' makin' his run too early in the game; but you've a
+      good head and might as well know what you're to have. There's the bugle;
+      get up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Eager hands stripped the blanket that had been thrown over The Dutchman;
+      Westley was lifted into the saddle, and the gallant Bay led out by
+      Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In front strode White Moth; one by one the others, and last, seventh,
+      Allis's fatal number, lagged Lauzanne, lazily loafing along as though he
+      regretted leaving the stall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the horses passed to the course, Crane, who had followed The Dutchman
+      to the gate, raised his eyes from scanning Lauzanne to the rider on his
+      back. It was just a look of languid interest in the apprentice boy Dixon
+      had put up instead of such a good jockey as Redpath. The face rivetted his
+      attention; something in the line of the cheek recalled a face he had
+      constantly in view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For an instant I thought that was Alan Porter on Lauzanne,&rdquo; he said to
+      Langdon, who was at his elbow. &ldquo;A strange fancy&mdash;I'm going up to the
+      stand to watch the race:&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all roight but the win now,&rdquo; said Mike to Dixon. &ldquo;I'm goin' in be
+      the Judges' box to watch the finish. You'll be helpin' the b'y pass the
+      scales, Andy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Allis passed the Judges' Stand in the parade she cast a quick, furtive
+      look toward the people on the lawn. She seemed pilloried on an eminence,
+      lifted up in pitiless prominence; would anyone detect her at the last
+      moment? Hanging over the rail in the very front she saw a pale face that
+      struck a chill of fear to her heart&mdash;it was Mortimer's. She had not
+      even thought of his being there. She had eluded the close scrutiny of all
+      the others who were likely to recognize her, but there, within ten yards
+      were eyes almost certain to penetrate her disguise. The girl turned her
+      face away; she knew Mortimer well enough to think that if he did recognize
+      her he would make no sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's our horse,&rdquo; declared Old Bill, as Lauzanne passed. &ldquo;He's all
+      right, bet yer life; he's fit ter go all day. De geezer as trains him
+      ain't no mug. Let's go up in de stand, where we can see de whole show; den
+      we'll come down an' cash in. Say, pard, if dis goes through I'll blow you
+      off to a bottle of de best; wine ain't none too good fer dis coop.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Altogether it was as though Destiny had found pleasant domicile in the
+      ancient clothing of Old Bill, and was using their unique wearer as a
+      protective agent to ward off evil from both Mortimer and the girl. As they
+      jogged toward the starting post Allis allowed Lauzanne to lag; she wished
+      to avoid Redpath. But the Indian was a horse of uncertain temperament, and
+      presently, with a foolish side rush, he cannoned fair into Lauzanne. In
+      the melee Redpath looked full into Allis's eyes at short range. His face
+      went white in an instant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You!&rdquo; he cried, pulling hard at his horse's mouth; &ldquo;it's you, Miss&mdash;&rdquo;
+       He stopped suddenly. &ldquo;God! I'm glad I know this,&rdquo; he jerked between set
+      teeth, as he fought the Indian, who was nearly pulling him out of the
+      saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's because he'll gallop for you, isn't it? You didn't think I was a
+      wrong one&mdash;it wasn't because you couldn't trust me you took the mount
+      away, was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indian, quieted by the sleepy Chestnut, was going steadier. &ldquo;No; it's
+      because Lauzanne won't give his running for anyone but me,&rdquo; the girl
+      answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy remained silent, thinking over why he was on the Indian. There was
+      a moral obliquity about his present position; the new light of his
+      discovery showed him this strongly. His feelings had been played upon by
+      the owner of the Indian, at Langdon's instigation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been told that the Porters had not given him the mount on Lauzanne
+      because they distrusted him. He had been put on the horse to make running
+      for The Dutchman. There was nothing really patently dishonest about this
+      arrangement, and Redpath's mind had been dulled to fine discrimination by
+      the idea that he was falsely distrusted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently the boy spoke with sharp decision, in quick broken sentences,
+      for they were nearing the Starter. &ldquo;I'm in to make the running; this
+      crock's got no license to win. Don't you bother about him&mdash;he'll come
+      back to the others fast enough when he's done. When you want an opening to
+      get through just come bang into me&mdash;I'll be next the rail; yell
+      'Lauzanne,' an' I'll pull out. I'll give them blasted crooks something to
+      stare at. Don't gallop your mount's head off chasing this sprinter; he'll
+      be beat when we swing into the stretch. Don't go wide at the turn; you can
+      have my place; I'll make it wide for something else though.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were at the post. Allis had not spoken; she had listened gratefully
+      to Redpath's string of kindly directions. The presence of a friend in the
+      race cheered her; the discovery she had dreaded had come as a blessing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0036" id="link2H_4_0036">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Crane's words had started a train of thought in Langdon's mind. All at
+      once he remembered that the face of Lauzanne's rider had a dream-like
+      familiarity. He had not given it much thought before; but his owner's
+      suggestion that the boy was like Alan Porter echoed in his ears. He had
+      wondered where Dixon had got this new boy; why he was putting him up on
+      Lauzanne instead of Redpath; it seemed a foolish thing to give the mount
+      to an apprentice when a good jockey was to be had. Could it be that it
+      really was Alan. The whole family were natural-born jockeys, father and
+      son, even the girl, Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon knew nothing of Alan Porter's movements&mdash;had not been
+      interested enough to know. He had heard derogatory remarks about Redpath's
+      riding of Lucretia in the Brooklyn Handicap; the Porters, no doubt
+      dissatisfied&mdash;suspicious of the jockey&mdash;had put up Alan to
+      insure an honest ride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon had thought these thoughts as he passed swiftly from the paddock
+      to the stand inclosure, where he stood not far from the rail, trying to
+      get a good look at the lad on Lauzanne. Allis's persistently averted face
+      thwarted this. The boy was inscribed on the jockey board &ldquo;Al Mayne;&rdquo; the
+      permit to ride must be under that name. If it were really Alan Porter, why
+      had he been called Mayne? But the boy had retained the name &ldquo;Al&rdquo;&mdash;that
+      was a contraction of Alan, no doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While Langdon labored over the problem of Mayne's Identity he had watched
+      the horses at the post through his glasses. The Dutchman was behaving
+      well, his trifle of eagerness to break away was even better than
+      Lauzanne's indolent indifference. The other five were acting as
+      three-year-olds are wont to act&mdash;with erratic indecision; one minute
+      violent desire, and the next obstinate reluctance characterizing their
+      interminable twistings, backings, and plungings. It was not for long; a
+      neck or a length at the start meant little when a mile and a half
+      stretched its tiring length between them and the finish post.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Langdon's perplexity was cut short by the cry, &ldquo;They're off!&rdquo; the jingle
+      of a bell, and the scurrying of many feet, as eager men rushed for higher
+      points of observation in the stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the seven horses came thundering by, pulling double in eager ignorance
+      of the long journey that lay before them, Langdon saw with evil
+      satisfaction that the Indian was well out in the lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Dutchman was sixth, and behind, with a short awkward strength in his
+      gallop, loafed Lauzanne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was smoothness in the stride of Hanover's big son, The Dutchman; and
+      his trainer, as he watched him swing with strong grace around the first
+      turn, mentally fingered the ten thousand dollars that would shortly be
+      his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That skate win!&rdquo; he sneered, as Lauzanne followed; &ldquo;he gallops like a fat
+      pig. He can't live the pace&mdash;he can't live the pace,&rdquo; he repeated,
+      and his voice was mellow with a cheerful exultation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His observations seemed eminently truthful; Allis's horse trailed farther
+      and farther behind the others. Out in front galloped with unseeming haste
+      the Indian&mdash;a brown blotch of swift-gliding color. Two lengths from
+      his glinting heels raced four horses in a bunch&mdash;two bays, a gray,
+      and a black; so close together that they formed a small mosaic of mottled
+      hue against the drab-gray background of the course stables beyond. Then
+      The Dutchman, with his powerful stride, full of easy motion&mdash;a
+      tireless gallop that would surely land him the winner, Langdon thought, as
+      he hung with breathless interest on every move of Westley's body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up in the stand Old Bill was expressing in florid racetrack speech to
+      Mortimer his deductions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Days a good kid on Larcen. See what he's doin'; he's trailin' 'em. Dat's
+      where our horse gits it; he's a stretch runner, he is. Dey'll have bellows
+      to mend when he tackles 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mortimer it appeared very much as though the other horses were too fast
+      for Lauzanne. &ldquo;Isn't he losing?&rdquo; he asked of his exuberant friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Losin' nut'in'! De kid ain't moved on him yet. De others is gallopin' der
+      heads off; dey're chasm' de crazy skate in front. Dere's only two jocks in
+      de race worth a damn&mdash;Bill Westley an' de kid on our horse. He knows
+      he's got to beat Dutchy, an' he's lyin' handy by. When you see Dutchy move
+      up Larcen'll come away, or I'm a goat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike Gaynor had taken his place on the little platform at the top of the
+      steps leading to the stand. He was watching the race with intense
+      interest. Would Lauzanne do his best for the girl&mdash;or would he sulk?
+      He saw the terrific pace that the Indian had set the others. Would it
+      discourage their horse. His judgment told him that this fast pace could
+      not last, and that Lauzanne could gallop as he was going from end to end
+      of the mile and a half; even faster if he so wished. Would his rider have
+      the patient steadiness of nerve to wait for this fulfillment of the
+      inevitable or would she become rattled and urge the horse. Mike set his
+      teeth, and his nails were driven hard into his rough palms as he strained
+      in sympathy with the girl's quietude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How long the Indian held on in his mad lead! Perhaps even he might upset
+      all clever calculation and last long enough to win. Already the gray,
+      White Moth, had drawn out from the bunch and was second; the other three
+      were dropping back in straggling order to The Dutchman, who was still
+      running as he had been, strong. That was at the mile. At the mile and an
+      eighth, White Moth was at the Indian's heels; The Dutchman had moved up
+      into third place, two lengths away; and Lauzanne had become merged in the
+      three that were already beaten. At the mile and a quarter a half thrill of
+      hope came to Mike, for Lauzanne was clear of the ruck, and surely gaining
+      on the leaders. And still his rider was lying low on the withers, just a
+      blue blur on the dark gold of the Chestnut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bot' t'umbs! but they're a pair,&rdquo; muttered the Irishman; &ldquo;be me soul, I
+      t'ink they'll win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the bottom turn into the stretch Mike could see that White Moth and The
+      Dutchman had closed up on the Indian, so that they swung around the corner
+      as one horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gad, she's shut off!&rdquo; he muttered. It was a living wall, and through
+      little chinks in its quivering face he could see specks of blue close up
+      where raced Lauzanne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor gurl!&rdquo; he gasped, &ldquo;they've got her in a pocket. Damn them b'ys. Why
+      did she hug the rail&mdash;she's fair t'rowed away the last chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Halfway up the steps stood Langdon, and his coarse, evil face took on a
+      look of unholy joy as Lauzanne was blotted into oblivion by the horses in
+      front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pocketed, by God! Clever Mister Dixon to put up a kid like that ag'in
+      Westley an' the others,&rdquo; he sneered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a deafening roar went up from the stand. Somebody thrust a pair of
+      broad shoulders in front of Mike's face; he leaned out far past the
+      intruder, and saw the Indian sway drunkenly in his stride away from the
+      rail, carrying White Moth and The Dutchman out; and into the opening he
+      had left, glued to the rail, crept the chestnut form of Lauzanne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wild yell of Irish joy escaped Mike; then he waited. Now it would be a
+      race; but Lauzanne was trying, trying all by himself, for the rider was as
+      still as death. Already the clamor of many voices was splitting the air;
+      all over the stand it was, &ldquo;The favorite wins! The Dutchman wins!&rdquo; Even
+      yet there was no beckoning call for Lauzanne; but Mike knew. He had said
+      to Allis before she went out, &ldquo;If ye ever get level wit' 'em in the
+      straight, ye can win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now Lauzanne's yellow head was even with the others; and soon it was
+      in front. And then there were only two battling&mdash;Lauzanne and The
+      Dutchman; and on the Bay, Westley was riding with whip and spur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a walk&mdash;in a walk, I tell you!&rdquo; fairly screamed Old Bill,
+      clutching at Mortimer's arm; &ldquo;didn't I tell you? We're a tousand to de
+      good. Look at him, look at him!&rdquo; He had climbed halfway up Mortimer's
+      strong back in his excitement. &ldquo;Look at de kid! Never moved&mdash;in a
+      walk, in a walk! Larcen all the way for a million!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice generally weak and tattered like his clothes; had risen to a
+      shrill scream of exultation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was past all doubt. Lauzanne, a length in front of The Dutchman, was
+      opposite the stand; in two seconds they had flashed by the Judges' box,
+      and Lauzanne had won.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wave of humanity that swept down the steps carried Mike in its front
+      wash. He took his stand close to the Judges' box; there he would be handy
+      for whatever might be needed. He saw Langdon with a face dark and
+      lowering, full of an evil discontent, standing there too. Back the seven
+      runners cantered. Lauzanne's rider saluted the judge with whip, and
+      slipping from the horse stripped him of the saddle with deft fingers, and
+      passed quickly into the scales. The weight was right. One after another
+      the boys weighed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Watching, Mike saw Langdon pass up to the Stewards. There was a short
+      consultation, the hush of something wrong, and a murmur of an objection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; a voice questioned in Mike's ear. It was Alan Porter
+      that had spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike pushed his way to the small gate, even through it, that led up to the
+      Stewards' Stand. As he did so Langdon came back down the steps. One of the
+      Stewards, following him with quick eyes, saw Mike and beckoned with a
+      finger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's an objection to the rider of Lauzanne,&rdquo; said the official;
+      &ldquo;Trainer Langdon says Alan Porter rode the horse under a permit belonging
+      to a boy named Mayne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's mistook, sir.&rdquo; answered Mike, respectfully; &ldquo;there's Alan Porter
+      standin' down there in the crowd. I'll sind him up, sir, an' ye can ask
+      him yerself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gaynor passed hurriedly down the steps, seized Porter by the arm, and
+      whispered in his ear, &ldquo;Tell the judge yer name&mdash;that a b'y named
+      Mayne rode Lauzanne. Quick now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he stepped up to Langdon. The latter had seen Alan Porter go up the
+      steps, and realized he had made a mistake. Mike drew him inside the little
+      enclosure that surrounded the stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's Alan Porter wit' the Stewards,&rdquo; Gaynor whispered close to the
+      man's face; &ldquo;an' ye'll withdraw the objection at once. If ye don't ye'll
+      have to settle wit' the Stewards fer tryin' to bribe the b'y Mayne to pull
+      Lauzanne. And Shandy has owned up that he was to get five hundred dollars
+      fer dosin' Lucretia. Ye'll withdraw now, or get ruled off fer life;
+      besides, p'isinin' a horse is jail business; an' I'll take me oath before
+      God I can prove this, too. Now go an' withdraw quick. Ye're a damn
+      blackguard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mike had meant to restrict himself to diplomatic pressure, but his Irish
+      was up like a flash, and he couldn't resist the final expression of wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A crowd of silent men had gathered about the box in a breathless wait.
+      Fortunes depended upon the brief consultation that was being held between
+      the Stewards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Alan Porter came down Langdon went up the steps with nervous haste.
+      &ldquo;I've made a mistake, gentlemen,&rdquo; he said to the Stewards, &ldquo;with your
+      permission I'll withdraw the objection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it's better that way,&rdquo; returned one of the Stewards; &ldquo;the best horse
+      won, and that's what racing's for. It would be a pity to spoil such a
+      grand race on a technicality.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0037" id="link2H_4_0037">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXVII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      After his first burst of aboriginal glee, ecstatically uncouth as it was,
+      Old Bill's joy over the victory of Lauzanne took on a milder form of
+      expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's line up fer a cash-in,&rdquo; he exclaimed to Mortimer, making a break
+      down the steps to the lawn. On the ground he stopped, his mind working at
+      fever heat, changing its methods quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's wait till de kid's passed de scales; dere's no hurry. Dere won't be
+      many drawin' down money over Larcen; he's an outsider.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were still waiting when the rumor of an objection floated like an
+      impalpable shadow of evil through the enclosure. Old Bill's seamed face
+      shed its mask of juvenile hilarity, and furrowed back into its normal
+      condition of disgruntled bitterness. He had seen the slight mix-up when
+      the Indian swerved in the straight. The objection must have to do with
+      that, he thought. &ldquo;What th' 'ell's th, difference,&rdquo; he said in fierce,
+      imprecating anger; &ldquo;de kid on Larcen didn't do no interferin', he jes come
+      t'rough de openin' an' won-dey can't disqualify him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does it mean?&rdquo; asked Mortimer; &ldquo;what's wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;De push's tryin' to steal de race; de favorite's beat, an' it's win, tie,
+      or wrangle wit' 'em. If dey take de race away from Larcen we don't get de
+      goods, see? Our t'ou's up de spout. Dere he goes, dere he goes; look at de
+      knocker,&rdquo; as Langdon came down from the Stewards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer's heart sank. An exultation such as he had never experienced in
+      his life had flushed his breast hot; the back of his scalp had tickled in
+      a creepy way as Lauzanne flashed first past the winning post. He had felt
+      pride in the horse, in the boy on his back, in himself at having overcome
+      his scruples; he would be able to save Alan Porter from dishonor. His
+      heart had warmed to the tattered outcast at his side, who had been the
+      means to this glorious end. It had been all over, accomplished; now it was
+      again thrust back into the scales, where it dangled as insecure as ever.
+      It wasn't the money alone that teetered in the balance, but the honor of
+      Allis Porter's brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave a sharp cry of astonishment, for going up the steps in front of
+      them was the boy himself, Alan. Presently he came down again, his face
+      looking drawn and perplexed. In his ignorance of everything pertaining to
+      racing Mortimer feared for an instant the theft of the thousand dollars
+      had been discovered, and the present inquiry had something to do with
+      that, else why was Alan mixed up in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the boy came through the little gate Mortimer accosted him. &ldquo;Hello,
+      Alan!&rdquo; he exclaimed, very gently, &ldquo;what's the trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a silly mistake,&rdquo; answered Porter, a weak laugh following his words;
+      &ldquo;Langdon has claimed that I rode Lauzanne.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is dat it?&rdquo; interposed Old Bill; &ldquo;an' did you tell dem dey was wrong-de
+      stiffs! Dere's cutt'roat Langdon up again; here he comes back, looking as
+      tough he'd been fired fer splint&mdash;de crook! Hello! it's all right
+      Hoo-ray! Lauzanne gits de race!&rdquo; For already the cry of &ldquo;All right!&rdquo; was
+      ringing through the betting ring. &ldquo;Come on, pard,&rdquo; called Old Bill,
+      eagerly, to Mortimer; &ldquo;let's go an' rake down de dough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a minute,&rdquo; the other answered; and turning to Alan Porter, took him by
+      the arm and led him to one side. &ldquo;I suppose you lost over The Dutchman,&rdquo;
+       he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'm broke,&rdquo; answered the boy, with a plaintive smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I've won.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You betting!&rdquo; exclaimed Alan, in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;strange, isn't it? But I'm going to put that money of your
+      father's back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy said nothing, and Mortimer fancied that his face flushed guiltily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I can put it back now that Lauzanne's won,&rdquo; continued Mortimer; &ldquo;but
+      don't say a word to a soul about it, I don't want anybody to know I was
+      betting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what money?&rdquo; began Alan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've won a thousand dollars on Lauzanne&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, pard,&rdquo; said Old Bill, impatiently interrupting them, &ldquo;let's get
+      our rake off, an' den you kin buck to yer chum after.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer yielded to the tattered one's command, for without his guidance
+      he never would be able to find the man that held the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll be back in a little while,&rdquo; he said to young Porter; &ldquo;don't go
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was delay over the cashing in; being late, they found a line of
+      Lauzanne men in front of them at the bookmaker's stand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mortimer returned to the lawn with eleven hundred dollars in his
+      pocket Alan Porter had gone. He had dreaded that perhaps the boy might do
+      something desperate, fearing discovery of the theft; he had thought even
+      of taking Alan back to Brookfield with him; however, he had told him that
+      the money would be replaced, the boy would understand that nothing could
+      happen him and would go back, Mortimer felt sure. He spent a short time
+      searching for Alan, but his former fruitless quest had shown him the
+      hopelessness of trying to find a person in that immense throng. He thought
+      kindly of the enveloping mob that had kept him hidden from Allis, as he
+      thought. He had feared to meet her&mdash;something in his presence might
+      cause her to suspect that something was wrong. The whole episode was like
+      a fairy dream. It was a queer twist of Fate's web, his winning enough over
+      Lauzanne&mdash;he, a man who had never betted in his life&mdash;to replace
+      the money the brother had stolen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All at once it occurred to him that some reward was due the instigator of
+      his success. The thousand he must keep intact. He had a few loose dollars
+      in his pocket beyond his original hundred, quite sufficient to take him
+      back to Brookfield. Taking the hundred from his pocket and turning to Old
+      Bill, who was still with him, he said: &ldquo;I'm going home, I've had enough
+      horse racing for one day; you've done me a great kindness&mdash;will you
+      take this hundred&mdash;I need the thousand badly, so can't spare more
+      than this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not on yer life, pard. I give you de tip first, but you got de office
+      straight from Irish, an' we're quits, see? I wasn't playin' you fer a
+      sucker, an' yer straight goods. Jes' shove de boodle in yer breast pocket,
+      an' don't show it to no one. Dere's some here as would take it off you
+      quick enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dere ain't no buts in dis game&mdash;it's a straight deal, an' we've
+      split even. If you'd been a crook, well, God knows how we'd a-panned out.
+      But you ain't no geezer of dat sort&mdash;yer square, an' Old Bill wishes
+      you good luck till de robins nest again. Yer goin', eh? Say, pard, I'd
+      a-been wearin' diamon's if I could quit when I was 'head of de game. Yer
+      dead onto it. Here's my hand, Mr. Morton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mortimer&mdash;George Mortimer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, shake, George. Where do you hang out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brookfield.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My address is New York. Dat's as close a fit as I knows at present. If de
+      run o' luck keeps up p'r'aps I'll write you from de Waldorf. Good-bye, of
+      man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a light heart Mortimer hastened from Gravesend, not waiting for the
+      other races, and took his way to Brookfield. A genuine admiration of
+      buffeted Old Bill filled his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning he would be at the bank bright and early, and replace the
+      stolen thousand dollars; nobody would know that it had been taken. The
+      narrow escape that had come to Alan Porter might prove his salvation.
+      Surely it would cure him of his desire to bet. Out of all this evil
+      positive good would accrue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0038" id="link2H_4_0038">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXVIII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      After winning on Lauzanne Allis had dodged the admiring crowd of paddock
+      regulars that followed her. As Lauzanne was being blanketed she had kissed
+      the horse's cheek and given him a mighty squeeze of thankfulness. How
+      nobly he had done his part; good, dear old despised, misjudged Lauzanne.
+      He had veritably saved her father from disaster; had saved her from&mdash;from
+      many things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had slipped into her long coat and stood waiting for Mike to drive her
+      to Dixon's cottage when the rumor came of an objection. Then there had
+      been the misery of terrible suspense, a wait of uncertainty. Was her
+      sacrifice of womanly instinct to go for nothing? Dixon had hurried to the
+      scene of investigation; then he had come back after a little with Mike,
+      and the good news that they had been given the race. If it had not been
+      for prying eyes she would have knelt there at Lauzanne's feet and offered
+      up a prayer of thankfulness. She had done all a woman could do, almost
+      more; Providence had not forsaken her and her stricken father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mike had hurried her to the buggy just as Crane, leaving the beaten
+      Dutchman and Langdon, had come, asking Dixon where Miss Porter was, that
+      he might tender congratulations. He wanted to see the boy that had ridden
+      Lauzanne, also&mdash;wanted to take his hand and tell him what a grand
+      race he had ridden. But Dixon had been ready with excuses; the boy was
+      dead beat after the race&mdash;he was only a kid&mdash;and had gone to
+      Dixon's home. Miss Porter was perhaps in the stand, or perhaps she had
+      gone home also. Crane knew of Langdon's objection. It was a silly thing,
+      he said, due to overeagerness. He had taken no part in it, he assured
+      Dixon. Alan Porter, too, came into the paddock, asking for his sister; but
+      fared pretty much as Crane had. He would certainly find her at the
+      cottage, Dixon assured him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night Allis wired the joyful tidings to her father, and that she
+      would be home in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Rathbone's prophecy as to the proper medication for John Porter stood
+      a chance of being fulfilled in one day. Allis's telegram proved that the
+      doctor had understood the pathology of Porter's treatment, for he became
+      as a cripple who had touched the garment of a magic healer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was thus that Allis found him when she reached Ringwood. Oh, but she
+      was glad; and small wonder. What she had done was as nothing; it shrank
+      into insignificance under the glamourous light of the change that had come
+      over the home. What a magic wand was deserved success; how it touched with
+      fairy aspect all that drooped with the fearsome blight of anticipated
+      decay! And even then they did not know the full extent of her endeavor.
+      Mingled with her mother's gentle welcome, and her father's full-throated
+      thanks, was praise for the, to him unknown, boy that had ridden Lauzanne
+      so gallantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl found tears of thankfulness glistening in her eyes as she
+      listened to the praise that was wholly hers, though given in part to the
+      jockey. They had not even heard his name&mdash;it had not mattered before;
+      and now when her father asked for it, she answered that Mike called him Al
+      something. Her father, generous in his salvation, was most solicitous as
+      to a fitting present; a thousand dollars, or perhaps two, or even more, if
+      Dixon advised so. What had he promised the lad? But there were so many
+      things to talk over and settle, and laugh about, and congratulate each
+      other upon. Good fortune was a generous dame. They were all like children
+      in their happiness. \ &ldquo;Yes, Alan had been there,&rdquo; the girl answered to a
+      question from her father. Also it was a strange happening, a distortion of
+      fate that Crane had beaten them in the Brooklyn with Diablo, and now they
+      had beaten his horse, The Dutchman, with Lauzanne the Despised. All was
+      content after the turmoil of endeavor. And of the horses, Lauzanne, who
+      would gallop for no one but Allis, would be brought back to Ringwood, to
+      be petted and spoiled of his young mistress for the good he had done.
+      Lucretia, when convalescent, would also come to the farm to rest and get
+      strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of it all Dr. Rathbone came in, and of course, man-like and
+      doctor-like, with pretended pomposity, said: &ldquo;I told you so. What did I
+      say? Now Mrs. Porter, no more scolding over the ways of horses, a good
+      horse is a delight, and a good daughter a joy forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dear old Dr. Rathbone, wise in his generation and big of heart!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0039" id="link2H_4_0039">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XXXIX
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      At the bank down in the village&mdash;well, at nine o'clock Mortimer,
+      feeling the virtue of early effort, with the money of redemption in his
+      pocket, entered into the resumption of his duties. At the earliest moment
+      after the vault was opened he made his way to the box that contained the
+      Porter payment. One thing troubled him slightly. It was a thousand-dollar
+      bill that had been taken; the money he had to replace was in hundreds and
+      fifties. As he slipped them quietly into the box he thought it wouldn't
+      really matter; he would transfer the three thousand to the account
+      himself, and nobody would know of the change. Leaving the box where it was
+      for a little, in the way of subtle strategy, he came out and busied
+      himself over other matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Mortimer's slight astonishment, presently the cashier, Mr. Lane, came
+      out from his office, and speaking somewhat carelessly, said: &ldquo;Mr.
+      Mortimer, you have that Porter note and money in charge. It is due today,
+      isn't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking up, Mortimer saw Lane's eye fixed upon his face with piercing
+      intensity. He flushed out of sheer nervousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;it is. I'll attend to it at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; there was a peculiar drawl in the cashier's voice as he spoke; &ldquo;ah,
+      I had a communication from Mr. Porter yesterday, asking if the note had
+      been paid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer felt his knees shake-something was choking hire. Had the devil of
+      mischance taken the salvation of Alan's good name out of his hands&mdash;had
+      his work been for nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't understand it,&rdquo; went on the cashier. His voice sounded like
+      the clang of a fire bell to the listening man, though it was evenly
+      modulated, cold and steady in its methodical precision. &ldquo;I thought Porter
+      knew the money was here to meet the note,&rdquo; said Lane, still speaking, &ldquo;but
+      my attention being called to the matter, I looked up the papers. I found
+      one thousand dollars missing!&rdquo; He was looking steadily at Mortimer; his
+      eyes were searching the young man's very soul. There was accusation,
+      denunciation, abhorrence in the cashier's gaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer did not speak. He was trying to think. His brain worked in
+      erratic futility. The slangy babble of Old Bill thrust itself upon him;
+      the roar of the race course was in his ears, deadening his senses; not a
+      sane, relevant word rose to his lips. He was like a child stricken by
+      fear. In an indistinct way he felt the dishonor that was Alan Porter's
+      being given to him. The cashier waited for Mortimer to say something; then
+      he spoke again, with reproach in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I at once sent a messenger to ask you to return from your home at Emerson
+      to clear up this matter; he discovered that you had not been there; that
+      your mother was not ill. May I ask where you were yesterday?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was at Gravesend, sir&mdash;at the races,&rdquo; answered Mortimer,
+      defiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This speech broke the lethargy that was over him; his mind cleared&mdash;he
+      commenced to think sanely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you tell me,&rdquo; proceeded Lane, &ldquo;where the balance of Mr. Porter's
+      three thousand dollars is?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's in the box.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a&mdash;it is not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's in the box,&rdquo; repeated Mortimer, firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can soon settle that point,&rdquo; declared the cashier, going hurriedly
+      into the vault and reappearing instantly with the box in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He opened it and stared at the package of bills that rose up when freed
+      from the pressure of the lid. With nervous fingers he counted the
+      contents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he exclaimed in a quick, jerky way. &ldquo;The three
+      thousand dollars is here, but these bills have been put in the box this
+      morning; they were not there last night. It is not the money that was
+      taken away, either. That was one bill, a thousand-dollar note; and here
+      are&rdquo;&mdash;he counted them again&mdash;&ldquo;six one hundreds and eight
+      fifties, besides the original two of one thousand. You put those notes
+      back, Mr. Mortimer,&rdquo; he said, tapping the desk with two fingers of the
+      right hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you took the money yesterday or the day before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I did not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; Lane repeated in a drier, more severe tone than he had used before.
+      This &ldquo;Ah&rdquo; of the cashier's, with its many gradations of tone, had been a
+      most useful weapon in his innumerable financial battles. It could be made
+      to mean anything&mdash;everything; flung out at haphazard it always caught
+      his opponent off guard; it was a subtle thrust, and while one pondered
+      over its possible meaning, Lane could formulate in his mind more decisive
+      expressions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he repeated, adding, &ldquo;if you did not steal the money, who did? And
+      if you did not take it, why did you put it back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With an expressive sweep of the hand outward the cashier stood waiting,
+      his tall, narrow head, topped by carefully brushed gray hair, thrust
+      forward in the attitude of a parrot about to strike with its beak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't answer those questions,&rdquo; answered the man he was grilling. &ldquo;The
+      money to pay Mr. Porter's note is here; and I fancy that is all the bank
+      needs to concern itself about. It was entrusted to me, and now I am
+      prepared to turn it over.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite true; ah, yes, quite true; but it might have been vastly different.
+      That is the point that most concerns the bank. Whoever took the money&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      he bowed, deprecatingly, with ironical consideration to Mortimer&mdash;&ldquo;must
+      have needed a thousand dollars for&mdash;well, some speculative purpose,
+      perhaps. Good fortune has enabled the some one to make good, and the money
+      has been replaced.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cashier straightened up, threw his head back, and actually smiled. He
+      had scored linguistically&mdash;by a clever manipulation of the sentence
+      he had made the some one who had stolen the money the some one who who had
+      replaced it. That was accusation by inference, if you like. As the other
+      did not speak, Lane added: &ldquo;I will wire for Mr. Crane to come at once;
+      this is a matter for investigation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer bowed his head in acquiesence; what could he say&mdash;what other
+      stand could the bank take?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You might remain at your desk,&rdquo; the cashier said, &ldquo;if there is any
+      mistake we'll discover it, no doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer felt like one dead, indeed as a dishonored man he were better
+      dead. The bank was like a mausoleum, and he a lost spirit haunting its
+      precincts in quest of the undefiled body that had been his but yesterday.
+      Cass, the teller, certainly shunned him as he would a leper. Lane,
+      vindictively pleased that he had unearthed the villain, drew his small
+      soul into a shell of cold, studious politeness; much as a sea spider might
+      house his unpleasant body in a discarded castle of pink and white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alan Porter was late&mdash;he had not come yet. Mortimer waited in
+      suffering suspense for his appearance. What would come of it all. Now that
+      the money was replaced, if the boy admitted his guilt to Crane, probably
+      no further action would be taken, but he would be dishonored in the sight
+      of his employer. Mortimer had sought to avert this; had not denounced Alan
+      in the first instance; by good fortune had been able to replace the money;
+      even now had refused to divulge the name of the thief. He was well aware
+      of the mass of circumstantial evidence, the outcome of his own hurried
+      actions, that pointed to himself as the guilty one. Better this than that
+      he should denounce the boy. Dishonor to the lad might kill his father; for
+      Mortimer was well aware of the doctor's edict. And Allis, the girl he
+      loved as his life, would hang her head in shame for evermore. He was
+      anxious to see Alan before the cashier did; he did not want the boy to
+      deny taking the money at first, as he might do if he were unaware of the
+      circumstances; it would place him in a wrong light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just before twelve Alan Porter came hurriedly in. He had missed his train
+      the night before, he explained in a general way to all. Mortimer stepped
+      up to him almost at once, speaking with low, earnest rapidity; the cashier
+      was in his own office and Mr. Cass was not within earshot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I put the money back, but its loss had been discovered yesterday. I have
+      been accused of taking it, but have denied it, accusing no one. I want you
+      to say that you borrowed it, thinking it no great harm, as it was your
+      father's money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Alan would have interrupted him, but Mortimer said, &ldquo;Wait till I finish;&rdquo;
+       and then continued: &ldquo;There will be nothing done to you, I feel sure, if
+      you will take this stand, because of your father's connection with Crane.
+      It will save me from dishonor&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Porter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the cashier's voice of Damascus steel cutting in on Mortimer's low,
+      pleading tones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alan turned his head, and Mr. Lane, beckoning, said, &ldquo;Will you step into
+      my office for a minute?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cashier's one minute drew its weary length into thirty; and when Alan
+      Porter came out again, Mortimer saw the boy sought to avoid him. Had he
+      denied taking the money? My God! the full horror of Mortimer's hopeless
+      position flashed upon him like the lurid light of a destroying forest
+      fire. He could read in every line of the boy's face an accusation of
+      himself. He had trembled when it was a question of Alan's dishonor; now
+      that the ignominy was being thrust upon him, the bravery that he possessed
+      in great part made him a hero. If through his endeavor to save the boy he
+      was to shoulder the guilt, not of his own volition, but without hope of
+      escape, he would stand to it like a man. What would it profit him to
+      denounce the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Harking back with rapidity over his actions, and Alan's, he saw that
+      everything implicated him. Once he thought of his mother and wavered; but
+      she would believe him if he said he had not committed this dreadful crime.
+      But all the world of Brookfield would despise the name of her son if it
+      were thought that he had sought to testify falsely against his friend. And
+      was not Alan the brother of Allis?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mentally his argument, his analysis of the proper course to pursue was
+      tortuous, not definable, or to be explained in concise phraseology; but
+      the one thought that rose paramount over all others was, that he must take
+      his iniquitous punishment like a man. He had fought so strongly to shield
+      the brother of the girl he loved that the cause in all its degradation had
+      accrued to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At one o'clock the president, Crane, arrived from New York, and in him was
+      bitterness because of his yesterday's defeat. He had sat nearly the whole
+      night through mentally submerged in the double happening that had swept
+      many men from the chess board. Lauzanne, the despised, had kept from his
+      hand a small fortune, even when his fingers seemed tightening on the coin,
+      too. That was one happening. John Porter had gained over twenty thousand
+      dollars. This made him quite independent of Crane's financial bolstering.
+      The Banker's diplomacy of love had been weakened. That was the other
+      happening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane was closeted with the cashier not more than ten minutes when
+      Mortimer was asked to join the two men who had so suddenly become deeply
+      interested in his affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cashier's hand had been strengthened by Crane's contribution of
+      evidence. Mortimer had told the same falsehood about his mother being ill
+      to him at the race course. From Alan the cashier had learned that Mortimer
+      had been betting heavily; he had admitted to the boy that he had won
+      enough to replace the thousand dollars he had stolen. Mortimer's words had
+      been contorted into that reading in their journey through two
+      personalities. He had even begged young Porter not to speak of his betting
+      transactions. He had denied taking the money&mdash;that was but natural;
+      he had been forced to admit replacing it&mdash;that was conclusive. Indeed
+      it seemed a waste of time to investigate further; it was utterly
+      impossible to doubt his guilt. Mesh by mesh, like an enthralling net, all
+      the different threads of convicting circumstances were drawn about the
+      accused man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us question him?&rdquo; said Crane; and in his heart was not sorrow, nor
+      hate, nor compassion, nor anything but just joy. Greater than the
+      influence of money in his love ambition would be this degradation, this
+      reducing to a felon a man he felt stood between him and Allis Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yesterday they had won; to-day victory, almost, to him had come. Yes,
+      bring the deliverer in; he would feast his eyes, the narrow-lidded eyes,
+      upon the man whose young love might have conquered over all his diplomacy,
+      and who would go forth from his hands branded as a felon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The probing of the already condemned man elicited nothing beyond a
+      repeated denial of theft. With the precision of Mam'selle Guillotine,
+      Cashier Lane lopped off everything that could possibly stand in Mortimer's
+      defense, grafting into the cleaved places individual facts which confirmed
+      his guilt. Mortimer contended nothing, threw suspicion upon no one. Was it
+      Alan Porter? Was it Cass?&mdash;but that was impossible. Was it the
+      cashier himself? Still more impossible. Mortimer answered nothing. He had
+      not taken the money. Yes, he had replaced it&mdash;because he was
+      responsible for its custody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you see,&rdquo; cried Crane, impatiently, &ldquo;that this simple denial of
+      yours is of no value as against so much that points to your&mdash;&rdquo; he
+      hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;your implication?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0040" id="link2H_4_0040">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XL
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      While Mortimer was still in the cashier's improvised inquisition room,
+      Allis Porter came into the bank to arrange the payment of her father's
+      note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sunshine seemed to come with her into the counting house that was all
+      gloom. Her glorious success, the consequent improvement in her father, the
+      power to pay off his indebtedness&mdash;all these had turned that day into
+      a day of thankfulness. The happiness that was in her rippled her face into
+      smiles. When the door creaked on its hinges as it swung open, she laughed.
+      It was a thriftless old door, such as bachelors kept, she murmured. Her
+      brother's face, gloomy behind the iron screen, tickled her fancy. &ldquo;You're
+      like a caged bear, Alan,&rdquo; she cried, with a smile of impertinence; &ldquo;I
+      should hate to be shut up a day like this&mdash;no wonder you're cross,
+      brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm busy,&rdquo; he answered, curtly. &ldquo;I'll see you after bank hours, Sis; I
+      want to see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've come to pay father's note, busy-man-of-importance,&rdquo; she flung back,
+      with the swagger of a capitalist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's paid, Allis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Paid! I thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait, I'll come out;&rdquo; and opening a door in the rail, he passed around to
+      the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Father's note is paid,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;but there's fierce trouble over it.
+      Crane left the money, three thousand dollars, with Mortimer, and he stole&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      boy's voice lowered to a hoarse whisper&mdash;&ldquo;a thousand of it to bet at
+      Gravesend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not true, Alan; God knows it's not true. Mortimer wouldn't steal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he did,&rdquo; persisted the brother, &ldquo;and he begged of me to take the
+      blame. He said it would ruin him, but that Crane wouldn't do anything to
+      me. He's a vile, sneaking thief, Allis!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush, Alan; don't say that. It's all some dreadful mistake. The money
+      will be found somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been found; Mortimer put it back. Why should he replace the money
+      if he had not stolen it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is Mr. Mortimer, Alan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy pointed with his thumb to the door of the cashier's office.
+      &ldquo;Crane's in there, too. I hope Mortimer owns up. He can't do anything
+      else; they caught him putting the money back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis remembered that she had seen Mortimer on the race course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Mortimer doesn't bet,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he does; he did yesterday, anyway; and when he saw that I knew about
+      it, he begged me to say nothing&mdash;practically admitted that he had
+      taken the money, and was going to put it back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why should he tell you that, Alan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know, unless he feared it might be found out while he was away;
+      or, perhaps he was so excited over winning a thousand dollars that he
+      didn't know what he was saying. At any rate, he took it right enough,
+      Allis, and you ought to cut him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shan't do that. He's innocent, I know he is&mdash;I don't care what
+      they say. If he replaced the money, it was to shield the man who took it.&rdquo;
+       She was looking searchingly into her brother's eyes&mdash;not that she was
+      accusing him of the theft, she was just searching for the truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean it was to shield me&mdash;that I took it? No one could have
+      taken the money except Mortimer or myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; answered the girl, wearily; &ldquo;it's all so terribly new; I
+      only know that Mortimer did not steal it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While she was still speaking, the accused man came from the cashier's
+      office, holding his head as erect as an Indian, not at all as a
+      half-convicted felon should have slunk through the door; yet withal in his
+      face was a look of troubled gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mortimer saw Allis his face flushed, then went pale in an instant. He
+      felt that she knew; he had seen her talking earnestly to her brother.
+      Probably she, too, would think him a thief. He admitted to himself that
+      the evidence was sufficient to destroy anyone's faith in his innocence,
+      and he was helpless, quite helpless; he was limited to simple denial,
+      unless he accused her brother; even had he been so disposed, there was
+      nothing to back up a denunciation of the boy. He felt a twinge of pain
+      over Alan's ingratitude; the latter must know that he had put his neck in
+      a noose to save him. Now that one of them needs be dishonored, why did not
+      Alan prove himself a man, a Porter&mdash;they were a hero breed&mdash;and
+      accept the gage of equity. Even worse, Alan was shielding himself behind
+      this terrible bulwark of circumstantial evidence which topped him, the
+      innocent one, on every side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he resumed his place at his desk close to the brother and sister, Alan
+      looked defiantly at him. He could see in the boy's eyes malignant
+      detestation, a glimmer of triumph, as though he felt that Mortimer was
+      irrevocably in the toils. The lad was like a strippling Judas; his
+      attitude filled Mortimer with loathing. He stole a look into the girl's
+      face. Would she, too, say with her, eyes, &ldquo;Behold, here is Barabbas!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A thrill of ecstatic comfort warmed his being. In Allis's eyes was the
+      first touch of kindness he had known in this hour of trial; faith, and
+      sorrow, and cheer, and love were all there, striving for mastery; no
+      furtive weakening, no uncertain questioning, no remonstrance of reproval&mdash;nothing
+      but just unlimited faith and love. If the boy's look had angered him, had
+      caused him to waver, had made the self-sacrifice seem too great when
+      repaid with ingratitude, all these thoughts vanished in an instant,
+      obliterated by that one look of unalterable love. In the hour of darkness
+      the girl stood by him, and he would also stand firm. She would believe in
+      him, and his sacrifice would be as nothing. He had undertaken to avert the
+      sorrow of dishonor from her, from her brother, from her parents, and he
+      would continue to the end. He would tell no one on earth but his mother
+      the full truth; she must know. Then with the faith of the two women he
+      loved, still his, he could brave the judgment of all others. Perhaps not
+      willingly in the first place would he have taken upon himself the brand of
+      Barrabas, but out of good motive he had incurred it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer heard the brother say, &ldquo;I think you had better not,&rdquo; then the
+      girl's voice, clear and decisive, answering, &ldquo;I will, I must.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In anger Alan left his sister's side, and she, stepping up to the wicket,
+      said, &ldquo;Will you please come out for a minute, Mr. Mortimer, I want to
+      speak with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He passed around to her side. Crane and the cashier were still closeted in
+      the latter's office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go out into the sunshine,&rdquo; Allis said. &ldquo;Can you&mdash;will it make
+      any difference?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think it matters much,&rdquo; he answered, despondently; &ldquo;things are as
+      bad as they can be, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took it for granted that she knew everything; but he was possessed of
+      no shame, no diffidence, no reserve; he was innocent, and her eyes had
+      assured him that she knew it. As they passed through the door it creaked
+      again on its dry hinges. Before she had laughed at the weird complaining;
+      now it sounded like a moan of misery. Outside the village street was
+      deserted; there was no one to listen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this dreadful thing all about?&rdquo; and she laid her hand on his arm
+      in a gesture of amity, of association. Her touch thrilled him; she had
+      never gone that length in friendly demonstration before. He marveled at
+      her generous faith. All but dishonored, the small, strong hand lifted him
+      to a pedestal-her eyes deified him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A thousand dollars was stolen from the bank, and I am accused of taking
+      it,&rdquo; he answered, bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't, did you? I know you didn't, but I want to hear you say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked full into the girl's eye, and answered with deliberate
+      earnestness, &ldquo;I did not steal the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some one took it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you know who it was?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you suspect some one?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you put the money back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To protect somebody's good name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because it had been in my charge. I can't talk about it,&rdquo; he broke in,
+      vehemently; &ldquo;all I can say is, that I am innocent. If you believe that I
+      don't care what they do. They'll be able to prove by circumstantial
+      evidence that I took it,&rdquo; he added, bitterly, &ldquo;and nothing that I can say
+      will make any difference. My mother won't believe me guilty, and, thank
+      God, you don't; and I am not; God knows I am not. Beyond that I will say
+      nothing; it is useless&mdash;worse than useless; it would be criminal&mdash;would
+      only cast suspicion on others, perhaps innocent. I don't know what they'll
+      do about it; the money has been repaid. They may arrest me as a felon&mdash;at
+      any rate I shall be forced to leave the bank and go away. It won't make
+      much difference.&mdash;I am as I was before, an honest man, and I shall
+      find other openings. It's not half so hard as I thought it would be; I
+      feared perhaps that you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped him with an imploring gesture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me finish,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I must go back to the office. I thought that
+      you might believe me a thief, and that would have been too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cared for my poor opinion?&rdquo; she asked. The quiver in her voice caused
+      him to look into her face; he saw the gray eyes shrouded in tears. He was
+      a queer thief, trembling with joy because of his sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I care,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;and it seemed all so dark before you brought
+      the sunlight in with you; now I'm glad that they've accused me; somebody
+      else might have suffered and had no one to believe in him. But I must go
+      back to&mdash;my prison it seems like now&mdash;when I leave you;&rdquo; this
+      with a weary attempt at brave mockery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis laid a detaining hand on his arm, the small gloved hand that had
+      guided Lauzanne to victory. &ldquo;If anything happens, if you are going away&mdash;I
+      think you are right to go if they distrust you&mdash;you will see me
+      before you leave, won't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you care to see me if I stand branded as a thief?&rdquo; The word came
+      very hard, but in his acridity he felt like not sparing himself; he wanted
+      to get accustomed to the full obloquy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Promise me to come to Ringwood before going away,&rdquo; she answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I will; and I thank you. No matter how dark the shadow may make my
+      life your kindness will be a hope light. No man is utterly lost when a
+      good woman believes in him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The creaking bank door wailed tremulously, irritably; somebody was pushing
+      it open from the inside. With a whine of remonstrance it swung wider, and
+      Crane stepped out on the sidewalk. He stared in astonishment at Mortimer
+      and Allis, his brow wrinkled in anger. Only for an instant; the forehead
+      smoothed back into its normal placidity and his voice, well in hand, said,
+      in even tones: &ldquo;Good afternoon, Miss Porter. Are you going back to
+      Ringwood?&rdquo; and he nodded toward Allis's buggy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I am. I'm going now. Good day, Mr. Mortimer,&rdquo; and she held out her
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer hesitated, and then, flushing, took the gloved fingers in his
+      own. Without speaking, he turned and passed into the bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;May I go with you?&rdquo; asked Crane; &ldquo;I want to see your father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I shall be glad to drive you over,&rdquo; the girl answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0041" id="link2H_4_0041">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XLI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When they had passed the edge of the village the Banker said: &ldquo;I doubt if
+      you would have shaken hands with Mr. Mortimer if you knew&mdash;I mean, he
+      is under strong suspicion, more than strong suspicion, for he is
+      practically self-accused of having stolen a sum of money from the bank. In
+      fact, I'm not sure that it wasn't from your father he really stole it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do know of this terrible thing,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;I shook hands with him
+      because I believe him innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know more than we do?&rdquo; It was not a sneer; if so, too delicately
+      veiled for detection; the words were uttered in a tone of hopeful inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Mortimer could not steal&mdash;it is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you sufficient grounds for your faith&mdash;do you happen to know
+      who took the money, for it was stolen?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl did not answer at once. At first her stand had simply been one of
+      implicit faith in the man she had conjured into a hero of all that was
+      good and noble. She had not cast about for extenuating evidence; she had
+      not asked herself who the guilty man was; her faith told her it was
+      morally impossible for Mortimer to become a thief. Now Crane's questions,
+      more material than the first deadening effects of Alan's accusation,
+      started her mind on a train of thought dealing with motive possibilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She knitted her small brows, and tapping the jogging horse's quarter with
+      the whip sat for many minutes silently absorbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her companion waited for an answer with his usual well-bred patience.
+      Perhaps the girl had not heard him. Perhaps she did not wish to answer a
+      question so unanswerable. He waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer, being innocent, replaced the stolen money, Allis's mind
+      tabulated&mdash;she tickled this thought off on the horse with her whip&mdash;it
+      was to shield some one. Her heart told her, his eyes had told her, that he
+      would have taken upon himself this great risk but for one person, her
+      brother. Yes, Mortimer was a hero! The horse, lazily going, jumped a
+      little in the traces; she had struck him a harder tap with the whip. Allis
+      continued her mental summing up. Why did Mortimer go to Gravesend? It must
+      have been to see Alan&mdash;the boy was there. If he had discovered that
+      the money was missing, and thought Alan had taken it, he would do this; if
+      he had suspected some other person he would have made the matter known to
+      the cashier. He did not replace the money at once, because he hadn't it.
+      She knew that Mortimer was poor. He had failed to find Alan until after
+      Lauzanne's victory; her brother had told her this much, and that Mortimer
+      had won a lot of money over the horse. Why he had bet on Lauzanne she knew
+      not; perhaps Providence had guided, had helped him that much. But surely
+      that was the money, his winnings, with which he had replaced the thousand
+      dollars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl's mind had worked methodically, following sequence of action to
+      sequence, until finally the conviction that Mortimer had sought to shield
+      her brother, and chance or Providence working through herself and Lauzanne
+      had placed in his hands the necessary funds, came to her as fixedly as
+      though the whole past panorama of events lay pictured before her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw all this mentally; but would it avail anything in actuality? If
+      the boy disclaimed guilt, as he had; if Mortimer limited his defense to a
+      simple denial, refusing to implicate her brother, what could she do except
+      give her moral support? To her it seemed such a small reward for his
+      heroism; her faith would not save him from the brand of felony, and to
+      follow out her convictions publicly she must denounce her brother, cast
+      upon him the odium of theft. Truly her position was one of extreme
+      hopelessness. Two men she loved stood before her mentally, one accused of
+      others as a thief, and one&mdash;her own brother&mdash;charged by her
+      reason with the crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under the continued silence Crane grew restless; the girl, almost
+      oblivious of his presence, deep in the intricacies of the crime, gave no
+      sign of a desire to pursue the discussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I am anxious to clear the young man if he is innocent,&rdquo;
+       hazarded the banker, to draw her gently back into the influence that he
+      felt must be of profit to himself. This assertion of Crane's was only
+      assimilatively truthful. As president of the bank, naturally he should
+      wish to punish none other than the guilty man; as a rival to Mortimer for
+      the girl's affection, he could not but be pleased to see the younger man
+      removed from his path, and in a way which would forever preclude his
+      aspiring to Allis's hand. Believe in Mortimer as she might, he felt sure
+      that she would not run counter to the inevitable wishes of her mother and
+      marry a man who stood publicly branded as a thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis answered his observation&mdash;he distinctly felt the vibration of
+      pain in her voice&mdash;with a startling depth of analytical discernment:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;While I believe in Mortimer's innocence, and will always believe in it, I
+      am afraid that he has drawn such a web of circumstantial evidence about
+      him, trying to shield some one else, that&mdash;that&mdash;it is too
+      terrible!&rdquo; she broke off, passionately&mdash;&ldquo;he is innocent. For God's
+      sake, Mr. Crane&rdquo;&mdash;she took the reins in her whip hand, and put her
+      left on his arm, pleadingly&mdash;&ldquo;for God's sake, for his mother's sake,
+      save him. You can do it&mdash;you can believe that he is innocent, and
+      stop everything. The money has been paid back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It isn't that, Miss Allis&rdquo;&mdash;his voice was so cuttingly even after
+      the erratic pump of her own&mdash;&ldquo;in a bank one must not have a dishonest
+      person. We must investigate to the end, and if Mortimer can clear himself
+      by fastening the crime upon the perpetrator&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will never do that; he cannot if he would.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can I do then, Miss Allis? But why shouldn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't you see&mdash;don't you understand the man? He commenced by
+      shielding some one, and he will carry it through to the bitter end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid there was no one to shield but himself&mdash;everything
+      points to this conclusion. The money was locked up, he had the keys, no
+      one touched them&mdash;except your brother, and that but for a minute&mdash;but
+      if any suspicion could attach to your brother it is all dissipated by
+      Mortimer's subsequent actions. It's unpleasant to even hint at such a
+      contingency, but if Mortimer is innocent, then your brother must be the
+      guilty one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He expected the girl to denounce indignantly such a possibility; he was
+      surprised that she remained silent. Her non-refutation of this deduction
+      told him as conclusively as though she had uttered the accusation that she
+      thought Alan had taken the money and Mortimer was shielding him. It was
+      but a phase of blind love; it was the faith women place in men they love,
+      of which he had read and scoffed at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Against all evidence she was holding this man honest, believing her
+      brother the thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surely a love like that was worth winning; no price was too great to pay.
+      Her very faith in Mortimer, through which she sought to save him by
+      inspiring Crane, determined the latter to crush utterly the man who stood
+      between him and this great love. Intensity of hate, or love, or cupidity,
+      never drew Crane out of his inherent diplomacy; he took refuge behind the
+      brother of Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he said, and his voice was modulated with kindness, &ldquo;I can't
+      save Mortimer except at the expense of Alan; you would not have me do
+      that. Besides, it is impossible&mdash;the evidence shines as clear as
+      noonday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you bring this home to Mr. Mortimer you will punish him, arrest him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That would be the usual course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had taken her hand off his arm; now she replaced it, and he could feel
+      the strong fingers press as though she would hold him to her wishes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not do this,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;for my sake you will not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ask this of me, and it is for your sake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if there is no other way; if Mr. Mortimer, innocent, must take upon
+      himself this crime, then for my sake you will not punish him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gray eyes were violet-black in their intensity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I promise&mdash;&rdquo; He had been going to ask for reward, but she broke
+      in, saying: &ldquo;You will keep your word, and I will bless you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing more&mdash;is that all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The magnetism of the intense eyes broke down his reserve; he slipped back
+      twenty years in a second. Love touched him with a fire-wand, and his soul
+      ignited. Cold, passionless Philip Crane spoke in a tongue, unfamiliar as
+      it was to him, that carried conviction to the girl&mdash;just the
+      conviction that he was in earnest, that he was possessed of a humanizing
+      love. She listened patiently while he pleaded his cause with much mastery.
+      It was beyond her understanding, that, though Mortimer through all time
+      had spoken not at all of love to her&mdash;at least not in the passionate
+      words that came from this man's lips&mdash;yet she now heard as though it
+      were his voice and not Crane's. Love was a glorious thing&mdash;with
+      Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane's intensity availed nothing. When he asked why she held faith to a
+      man who must be known for all time as a thief, her soul answered, &ldquo;It is
+      nothing&mdash;because he is innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Because of her Crane would do anything; the matter should be dropped as
+      though it were all a hideous mistake. Mortimer might remain in the bank;
+      his employer would even try to believe him innocent, taking the girl's
+      protestation m conclusive proof. Her mother, her father, everyone would
+      demand of her, however, that she give the dishonest one up as a
+      possibility. Even in his vehemence he lost no delicacy of touch. Why
+      should she chain herself to an impossibility? It would but ruin the man
+      she professed to regard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The banker made no threat, but Allis shuddered. She knew. The
+      narrow-lidded eyes had closed perceptibly when their owner talked of the
+      alternative. He, Crane, loved her&mdash;she felt that was true. He was
+      rich; for her father, for her brother, for herself, even for Mortimer, he
+      would use his wealth. He pleaded his cause like a strong man, and when he
+      spoke of failure because of her preference for Mortimer, an acridity crept
+      into his voice that meant relentless prosecution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not hold this full power over Crane without feeling its value.
+      To pledge herself to him as wife was impossible; she could not do it; she
+      would not. Fate played into his hands without doubt, but Fate was not
+      Providence. A decree of this sort, iniquitous, was not a higher command,
+      else she would not feel utter abhorrence of the alliance. Paradoxically
+      the more vehemently Crane's love obtruded itself the more obnoxious it
+      became; it was something quite distinct from the man's own personality.
+      She did not detest him individually, for the honesty of his love impressed
+      her; mentally she separated Crane from his affection, anal while rejecting
+      his love absolutely as a compelling factor, appealed to him as a man
+      having regard for her, a woman he believed in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a most delicate cleavage, yet unerringly she attained to its utmost
+      point of discrimination. Perhaps it was the strength of her love for
+      Mortimer that enabled her to view so calmly this passionate declaration. A
+      year before, unsophisticated as she had been, it would have thrown her
+      into an agitated confusion, but she was developing rapidly; responsibility
+      had tempered fine the great will power which was hers in such a marked
+      degree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am sorry, Mr. Crane,&rdquo; she began, conventionally enough, &ldquo;I am, sorry; I
+      couldn't marry a man without loving him. What you have just told me must
+      win regard for you, because I know that you feel strongly, and I think any
+      woman should take an offer of honest love as the greatest of all
+      compliments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I don't even ask for your love now,&rdquo; he interrupted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, but you should. You shouldn't marry a woman unless she loves you. At
+      any rate I feel that way about it. Of course, if there were a chance of my
+      coming to care for you in that way we could wait, but it would be
+      deceiving you to give hope.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it because you care for&mdash;Mortimer?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is. I suppose if I am to help him I must be quite honest with
+      you. I do not want to talk about it&mdash;it seems too sacred. I have even
+      spoken less to Mr. Mortimer of love,&rdquo; she added, with a painful attempt at
+      a smile. &ldquo;You have said that you care for me, Mr. Crane, and I believe
+      you; you have been generous to my father, also. Now won't you promise me
+      something, just for the sake of this regard? I suppose it is impossible to
+      prove Mr. Mortimer's innocence&rdquo;&mdash;she felt her own helplessness, and
+      who else could or would care to accomplish it &ldquo;but it is in your power to
+      lessen the evil. Won't you take my word that he is innocent and stop
+      everything? As you say, either he or Alan must be suspected, and if it
+      were brought home to my brother it would crush me, and my mother and
+      father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can I do?&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just nothing. I know Mr. Mortimer has determined to accept the disgrace,
+      and he will go away. You can make his load as light as possible, for my
+      sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The small hand on his arm was drawing him to acquiesence. He did not
+      answer at once, but sat moodily diagnosing his position. If he refused and
+      prosecuted Mortimer, the girl, more determined than many men, would change
+      from a state of possibility, from simply not loving him, to a vigorous
+      hate. If he hushed the matter up Mortimer would go away under a cloud, and
+      his removal from the presence of Allis might effect a change in her
+      regard. He would accelerate this wished-for elision of love by procuring
+      absolutely indisputable proof of Mortimer's dishonesty. He saw his opening
+      to that end; he could do it under the guise of clearing the innocent one
+      of the suspected two; for Allis alone this would be. To him there was not
+      the slightest ground for supposing Alan had taken the money, but blinded
+      by her love, evidently Allis thought Mortimer was shielding her brother.
+      Though it was to Crane's best interests, he pretended to consent out of
+      pure chivalry. &ldquo;What you ask,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is very little; I would do a
+      thousand times more for you. There is nothing you could ask of me that
+      would not give me more pleasure than anything else in my barren life. But
+      I could not bear to see you wedded to Mortimer; he is not worthy&mdash;you
+      are too good for him. I don't say this because he is more fortunate, but I
+      love you and want to see you happy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl was like a slim poplar. The strong wind of Crane's clever
+      pleading and seeming generosity swayed her from her rigid attitude only to
+      spring back again, to stand straight and beautiful, true to her love and
+      faith in Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are kind to me,&rdquo; she said, simply; &ldquo;I wish I could repay you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps some day I may get a reward out of all proportion to this small
+      service.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked fair into his eyes, and on her lips hovered a weak, plaintive,
+      wistful smile, as though she were wishing he could accept the inevitable
+      and take her regard, her gratitude, her good opinion of him and not wed
+      himself to a chimera which would bring only weariness of spirit in return
+      for his goodness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be repaid some day,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;for I feel that Mr.
+      Mortimer's name will be cleared, and you will be glad that you acted
+      generously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, this will give him a better chance,&rdquo; he said, evasively; &ldquo;it's not
+      good to crush a man when he's down. I will see that no one connected with
+      the bank shows him the slightest disrespect. Of course he'll have to go,
+      he couldn't remain under the circumstances&mdash;he wouldn't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse had jogged slowly. Allis had purposely allowed the old Bay to
+      take his time. Unused to such a tolerance he had scandalously abused the
+      privilege; once or twice he had even cast longing glances at a succulent
+      bunch of grass growing by the roadside, as though it were a pure waste of
+      opportunity to neglect the delicacy for work when he had to do with such
+      indifferent overseers. But now Ringwood was in sight, and there was still
+      the matter of the money that had been paid on her father's note to speak
+      of. She asked Crane where it had come from.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won it over Diablo in the Brooklyn Handicap,&rdquo; he answered, bluntly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You won it,&rdquo; she corrected him; &ldquo;I refused to accept it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I remember that eccentricity,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;I'm a busy man, and having
+      the money thrown back on my hands, as it was not mine, caused me
+      considerable inconvenience. I deposited three thousand of it against the
+      note to save both your father and myself needless worry. There are still
+      some hundreds due you, and I wish you would please tell me what I am to do
+      with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd rather pay you back the three thousand now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't accept it. I have enough money of my own to worry along on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I wash my hands of the whole affair. When father gets stronger he
+      must settle it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had turned into the drive to Ringwood House.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are home now,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;and I want to say again that I'll never
+      forget your kind promise. I know you will not repent of your goodness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Porter saw Allis and Crane together in the buggy; it pleased the good
+      woman vastly. Allis's success with Lauzanne had taken a load from her
+      spirits. She was not mercenary, but there had been so much at stake. Now
+      in one day Providence had averted disaster, and she had awakened from a
+      terrible nightmare of debt. The sunshine of success had warmed her
+      husband's being into hopeful activity, a brightness was over his spirits
+      that had not been there for months. It was like an augury of completed
+      desire that Crane should come the day of their good fortune with Allis. If
+      she would but marry him there would be little left to worry about. So it
+      was that Crane, perplexed by his recent love check, and Allis, mired in
+      gloom over her hero's misfortune, stepped into a radiancy of exotic
+      cheerfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl bravely sought to shake off her gloom, chiding her heavy heart
+      for its unfilial lack of response. Crane, accustomed to mental athletics,
+      tutored his mind into a seeming exuberance, and playfully alluded to his
+      own defeat at the hands of Allis and the erratic Lausanne. There was no
+      word of the bank episode, nothing but a paean of victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane's statement to Allis that he was going out to Ringwood to see her
+      father was only an excuse. He soon took his departure, a stableboy driving
+      him back to the village. There he had a talk with the cashier. Mortimer
+      was to be asked to resign his position as soon as his place in the bank
+      could be filled. No further prosecution was to be taken against him unless
+      Crane decided upon such a course, &ldquo;In the meantime you can investigate
+      cautiously,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and keep quite to yourself any new evidence that
+      may turn up. So far as Mr. Mortimer is concerned, the matter is quite
+      closed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cashier had always considered his employer a hard man, and, in truth,
+      who hadn't? He could scarcely understand this leniency; he had expected a
+      vigorous prosecution of Mortimer; had almost dreaded its severity.
+      Personally he had no taste for it; still, he would feel insecure if the
+      suspected man, undeniably guilty, were to remain permanently in the bank.
+      His dismissal from the staff was a wise move, tempered by unexpected
+      clemency. If there were not something behind it all&mdash;this contingency
+      always attached itself to Crane's acts&mdash;his employer had acted with
+      fine, wise discrimination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br /><a name="link42" id="link42"></a> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      XLII
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Crane returned to New York, his mind working smoothly to the hum of the
+      busy wheels beneath his coach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This degrading humiliation of his rival must certainly be turned to
+      account. With Allis Porter still believing in Mortimer's innocence the
+      gain to him was very little; he must bring the crime absolutely home to
+      the accused man, but in a manner not savoring of persecution, else the
+      girl's present friendly regard would be turned into abhorrence. In
+      addition to this motive he felt an inclination to probe the matter to its
+      utmost depths. It was not his nature to leave anything to conjecture; in
+      all his transactions each link in the chain of preparation for execution
+      was welded whole. He felt that it would be but a matter of manipulation to
+      environ Mortimer completely with the elements of his folly. He firmly
+      believed him guilty; Allis, misled by her infatuation, mentally attributed
+      the peculation to her brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Banker would go quietly to work and settle this point beyond dispute.
+      He might have hesitated, leaving well enough alone, had he been possessed
+      of any doubts as to the ultimate results of his investigation, but he
+      wasn't. He reasoned that Mortimer had taken the thousand-dollar note
+      thinking to win three or four thousand at least over his horse, The
+      Dutchman, and then replace the abstracted money. Crane was aware that Alan
+      Porter had told Mortimer of The Dutchman's almost certain prospect of
+      winning; in fact, the boy had suggested that Mortimer had taken it for
+      this purpose. Mortimer would not have changed the note; would have taken
+      it straight to the race course. He must have lost it to some bookmaker
+      over The Dutchman. Crane knew the number of the stolen note. The three
+      one-thousand-dollar bills were new, running in consecutive numbers, B
+      67,482-83-84; he had noticed that quite by chance at the time; it was the
+      middle one, B 67,483, that was missing. So he had a possible means of
+      identifying the man who had taken the money. Mentally he followed Mortimer
+      during the day at Gravesend. From Alan he knew of his winnings over
+      Lauzanne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane reasoned that Mortimer, having risked the thousand on his horse, had
+      been told that Lauzanne might win. This had perhaps frightened him, and
+      being unfamiliar with the folly of such a course had backed two horses in
+      the same race&mdash;had put a hundred on Lauzanne at ten to one to cover
+      his risk on The Dutchman, feeling this made him more secure. He would
+      either win a considerable stake or have sufficient in hand to cover up his
+      defalcation. The first thing to do was to find the note if possible. Faust
+      would be the man for this commission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately upon his arrival in New York, Crane telephoned for Faust,
+      asking him to bring his betting sheet for the second last day of the
+      Brooklyn Meet. When Faust arrived at Crane's quarters the latter said, &ldquo;I
+      want to trace a thousand-dollar note, number B 67,483. I think it was
+      betted on the Brooklyn Derby, probably on my horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faust consulted his betting sheet, Crane looking over his shoulder. &ldquo;I
+      didn't have no thousand in one bet on that race,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are those flgures,&rdquo; asked the other, pointing to two consecutive
+      numbers of one thousand each.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was the other way about,&rdquo; answered the Bookmaker; &ldquo;that was pay. A
+      thousand to one hundred twice over Lauzanne. I think it must have been
+      stable money, for one of the guys was like a big kid; he didn't know
+      'nough to pick a winner in a thousand years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The coincidence of this amount with the win attributed to Mortimer,
+      appealed to Crane's fancy. &ldquo;You remember the man who made this bet, then?&rdquo;
+       he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sure thing. There was two of 'em, as you see. I remember him because
+      it took some explainin' to get the bet through his noddle. He was a soft
+      mark for a bunco steerer. I've seen some fresh kids playin' the horses,
+      but he had 'em all beat to a standstill. It must abeen first-time luck
+      with him, for he cashed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you describe him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Cherub drew an ornate verbal picture, florid in its descriptive
+      phraseology, but cognate enough to convince Crane it was Mortimer who had
+      made one of the bets. His preconceived plan of the suspected man's
+      operations was working out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now find this thousand-dollar note for me,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;take trouble over
+      it; get help if necessary; go to every bookmaker that was in line that
+      day. If you find the note, exchange other money for it and bring it to
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There may be a chance,&rdquo; commented Faust, scratching his fat poll
+      meditatively; &ldquo;the fellows like to keep these big bills, they're easier in
+      the pocket than a whole bundle of flimsies. The next day was getaway-day,
+      an' they wouldn't be payin' out much. I'll make a play fer it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next afternoon Faust reported at Crane's rooms with the rescued note
+      in his possession. He had been successful. &ldquo;I give a dozen of 'em a turn,&rdquo;
+       he said, &ldquo;before I run again' Jimmie Farrell. He had it snuggled away next
+      his chest among a lot of yellow-backs, good Dutchman money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does he know who bet it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not his name&mdash;some stranger; he'd know him if he saw him, he says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane grasped this new idea with avidity, the scent was indeed getting
+      hot. Why not take Farrell down to Brookfield to identify Mortimer. He had
+      expected the searching for evidence would be a tedious matter; his
+      fortunate star was guiding him straight and with rapidity to the goal he
+      sought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm much obliged to you,&rdquo; he said to Faust. &ldquo;I won't trouble you further;
+      I'll see Farrell myself. Give me his address.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening the Banker saw Farrell. &ldquo;There was a little crooked work over
+      that thousand Faust got from you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;an' if you could find time to
+      go with me for an hour's run into the country, I think you could identify
+      the guilty party.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can go with you,&rdquo; Farrell answered, &ldquo;but it's just a chance in a
+      thousand. I should be on the block down at Sheepshead, but, to tell you
+      the truth, the hot pace the backers set me at Brooklyn knocked me out a
+      bit. I'm goin' to take a breather for a few days an' lay again' 'em next
+      week. Yes, I'll go with you, Mr. Crane.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning the two journeyed to Brookfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't go to the bank with you,&rdquo; Crane said; &ldquo;I wish you would go in
+      alone. You may make any excuse you like, or none at all. Just see if the
+      man you got this note from is behind the rail. I'll wait at the hotel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In fifteen minutes he was rejoined by Farrell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; he asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's there, right enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A short dark little chap?&rdquo; questioned Crane, hesitatingly, putting Alan
+      Porter forward as a feeler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. A tall fellow with a mustache.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are sure?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead sure, unless he's got a double, or a twin brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane felt that at last he had got indisputable proof; evidence that would
+      satisfy even Allis Porter. He experienced little exhilaration over the
+      discovery&mdash;he had been so sure before&mdash;yet his hand was
+      strengthened vastly. Whatever might be the result of his suit with Allis,
+      this must convince her that Mortimer was guilty, and unworthy of her love.
+      There was also satisfaction in the thought that it quite cleared Alan of
+      his sister's suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How he would use this confirmation Crane hardly knew; it would come up in
+      its own proper place at the right time, no doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can go back now,&rdquo; he said to Farrell; &ldquo;we may as well walk leisurely
+      to the station; we can get a train&rdquo;&mdash;he pulled out his watch&mdash;&ldquo;in
+      twenty minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane had made up his mind not to show himself at the bank that day. He
+      wished to bold his discovery quite close within himself&mdash;plan his
+      course of action with habitual caution. It meant no increased aggression
+      against Mortimer's liberty; it was of value only in his pursuit of Allis
+      Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they walked slowly toward the station Crane met abruptly the girl who
+      was just then so much in his thoughts. Her sudden appearance quite
+      startled him, though it was quite accidental. She had gone in to do some
+      shopping, she explained, after Crane's greeting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farrell continued on when his companion stopped. A sudden determination to
+      tell the girl what he had unearthed took quick possession of Crane. His
+      fine sense of reasoning told him that though she professed positive faith
+      in Mortimer, she must have moments of wavering; it seemed only human.
+      Perhaps his presiding deity had put this new weapon in his hands to turn
+      the battle. He began by assuring her that he had prosecuted the inquiry
+      simply through a desire to establish the innocence of either Mortimer or
+      her brother, or, if possible, both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You understand,&rdquo; he said, quite simply, &ldquo;that Alan is like a brother&mdash;&rdquo;
+       he was going to say &ldquo;son,&rdquo; but it struck him as being unadvisable, it aged
+      him. He related how he had traced the stolen note, how he had discovered
+      it, how he had brought the bookmaker down, and how, without guidance from
+      him, Farrell had gone into the bank and identified Mortimer as the man who
+      had betted the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It clears Alan,&rdquo; he said, seeking furtively for a look into the drooping
+      face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bright sun struck a sparkle of light from something that shot downward
+      and splashed in the dust. The girl was crying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sorry,&rdquo; he offered as atonement. &ldquo;Perhaps I shouldn't have told you;
+      it's too brutal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The head drooped still lower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't have spoken had it not been for your brother's sake. I didn't
+      mean to. It was chance drew you across my path just now. Though it is
+      cruel, it is better that you should know. No man has a right to deceive
+      you, you are too good. It is this very constancy and goodness that has
+      taught me to love you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't,&rdquo; she pleaded; &ldquo;I can't bear it just now. Please don't talk of
+      love, don't talk of anything. Can't you see&mdash;can't you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know&mdash;you are suffering, but it is unjust; you are not fair
+      to yourself. If this man would steal money, what difference would your
+      love make to him? He would be as unfaithful to you as he has been to his
+      trust in the bank. You must consider yourself&mdash;you must give him up;
+      you can't link your young, beautiful life to a man who is only saved from
+      the penitentiary because of your influence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't talk that way, Mr. Crane, please don't. I know you think that what
+      you say is right, but what difference does it all make to me? You know
+      what love is like, you say it has come to you now. My heart tells me that
+      Mortimer is guiltless. The time has been so short that he has had no
+      chance to clear himself. If I didn't believe in him I wouldn't love him;
+      but I still love him, and so I believe in him. I can't help it&mdash;I
+      don't want to help it; I simply go on having faith in him, and my love
+      doesn't falter. Can't you understand what a terrible thing it would be
+      even if I were to consent to become your wife? I know it would please my
+      mother. But if afterward this other man was found to be innocent, wouldn't
+      your life be embittered&mdash;wouldn't it be terrible for you to be tied
+      to a woman who loved another man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it is impossible that he is innocent, or will ever be thought so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I know that he is innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your judgment must tell you that this is only fancy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My heart tells me that he is not guilty of this crime. My heart is still
+      true to him; so, shall I decide against myself? Don't&mdash;don't stab me
+      to death with words of Mortimer's guilt; it has no effect, and only gives
+      me pain. I must wait&mdash;we must all wait, just wait. There is no harm
+      in waiting, the truth will come out at last. But you will keep your
+      promise?&rdquo; she said, lifting her eyes to his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I meant no harm to Mortimer in searching for this evidence; it was
+      only to clear your brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had come to the station by now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like to speak to Mr. Farrell?&rdquo; Crane asked. &ldquo;You are taking my
+      word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it is useless. I can do nothing but wait; that I can and will do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't think me cruel,&rdquo; Crane said, &ldquo;but the wait will be so long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be forever, but I will wait. And I thank you again for your&mdash;for
+      your goodness to me. I'm sorry that I've given you trouble. If you can&mdash;if
+      you can&mdash;make it easier for Mortimer&mdash;I know he'll feel it if
+      you could make him think that you didn't altogether believe him as&mdash;dishonest&mdash;will
+      you, for my sake?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was generally supposed that Crane's heart had been mislaid at his
+      inception and the void filled with a piece of chiseled marble; for years
+      he was a convert to this belief himself; but as he stood on the platform
+      of the primitive little station and looked into the soft luminous gray
+      eyes, swimming moist in the hard-restrained tears of the pleading girl, he
+      became a child. What a wondrous thing love was! Mountains were as
+      mole-hills before such faith. In the unlimited power of her magnetism,
+      what a trifle she had asked of him! With an influence so great she had
+      simply said, &ldquo;Spare of censure this man for my sake.&rdquo; In thankfulness
+      rather than in condescension he promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even in disgrace&mdash;a felon&mdash;how Mortimer was to be envied! Above
+      all else was such abiding love. In his, Crane's, victory was the
+      bitterness of defeat; the other, beaten down, triumphed in the gain of
+      this priceless love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sharp material whistle, screeching through its brass dome on the
+      incoming train, cut short these fantastically chaotic thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, and thank you,&rdquo; said the girl, holding out her hand to Crane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; he repeated, mechanically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had he accomplished? He had beaten lower his rival and wedded firmer
+      to the beaten man the love he prized above all else. In his ears rang the
+      girl's words, &ldquo;Wait, wait, wait.&rdquo; Irresponsibly he repeated to himself,
+      &ldquo;All things come to them that wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Seated in the car swift whirled toward the city, he was almost surprised
+      to find Farrell by his side. He was like a man in a dream. A vision of
+      gray eyes, blurred in tears of regret, had obliterated all that was
+      material. In defeat his adversary had the victory. He, Philip Crane, the
+      man of calculation, was but a creature of emotion. Bah! At forty if a man
+      chooses to assume the role of Orlando he does it to perfection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With an effort he swept away the cobweb of dreams and sat upright&mdash;Philip
+      Crane, the careful planner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You nearly missed the train,&rdquo; said Farrell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did I?&rdquo; questioned Crane, perplexedly. &ldquo;I thought I got on in plenty of
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Farrell smiled knowingly, as befitted a man of his occupation&mdash;a New
+      Yorker, up to snuff. The veiled insinuation disgusted Crane. Was
+      everything in the world vile? He had left a young life swimming hopelessly
+      in the breakers of disaster, buoyed only by faith and love; and at his
+      side sat a man who winked complacently, and beamed upon him with senile
+      admiration because of his supposed gallantry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps a year before this moral angularity would not have affected him;
+      it would not have appealed to him as being either clever or objectionable;
+      he would simply not have noticed it at all. But Allis Porter had
+      originated a revolution in his manner of thought. He even fought against
+      the softer awakening; it was like destroying the lifelong habits of a man.
+      His callousness had been a shield that had saved him troublous misgivings;
+      behind this shield, even in rapacity, he had experienced peace of mind,
+      absence of remorse. If he could have put away from him his love for the
+      girl he would have done so willingly. Why should he battle and strive for
+      an unattainable something as intangible as a dream? It was so paradoxical
+      that Allis's love for Mortimer seemed hopeless because of the latter's
+      defeat, while his, Crane's love, was equally hopeless in his hour of
+      victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farrell's voice drew him from this psychological muddle in tones that
+      sounded harsh as the cawing of homing ravens at eventime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will it be a court case?&rdquo; he queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; asked Crane, from his tangled elysium.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That high roller in the bank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I can't say yet what it will lead to.&rdquo; Crane's caution always
+      asserted itself first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I've been thinking it over. That's the guy, right enough, but when
+      it comes to swearing to a man's identity in court, it's just a bit
+      ticklish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane frowned. He disliked men who hedged. He always planned first, then
+      plunged; evidently his companion had plunged first, and was now verifying
+      his plans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farrell continued, &ldquo;You see what I mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't,&rdquo; answered Crane, shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will if you wait,&rdquo; advised Farrell, a tinge of asperity in his tone.
+      &ldquo;I'm makin' a book, say. All the blazin' idiots in Christendom is climbin'
+      over me wantin' to know what I'll lay this and what I'll lay that. They're
+      like a lot of blasted mosquitos. A rounder comes up an' makes a bet; if
+      it's small p'r'aps I don't twig his mug at all, just grabs the dough an'
+      calls his number. He may be Rockefeller, or a tough from the Bowery, it
+      don't make no difference to me; all I want is his goods an' his number,
+      see? But a bettor of the right sort slips in an' taps me for odds to a
+      thousand. Nat'rally I'm interested, because he parts with the thousand as
+      though it was his heart's blood. I size him up. There ain't no time fer
+      the writin' down of earmarks, though most like I could point him out in a
+      crowd, an' say, 'That's the rooster.' But sposin' a judge stood up another
+      man that looked pretty much like him, an' asked me to swear one of the
+      guys into ten years in Sing Sing, pr'aps I'd weaken. Mistaken identity is
+      like grabbin' up two kings an' a jack, an' playin' 'em fer threes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Which means, if I understand it, that you're guessing at the man&mdash;that
+      I've given you all this trouble for nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane wished that Farrell had kept his doubts to himself; the case had
+      been made strong by his first decision, and now the devil of uncertainty
+      would destroy the value of identification.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not by a jugful!&rdquo; ejaculated Farrell. &ldquo;I'm just tellin' you this to show
+      you that we've got to make it complete&mdash;we've got to get collateral
+      to back up my pickin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean some one else to identify him also?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not just that; but that's not a bad thought. My clerk, Ned Hagen,
+      must have noticed him too. I mean that the bettor's badge number will be
+      in line with that bet, an' you can probably find out the number of the
+      badge this rooster wore.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An inspiration came with Farrell's words&mdash;came to Crane. Why had he
+      not thought of that before? Still it didn't matter. The badge number,
+      Mortimer's number, would be in Faust's book where had been entered the
+      hundred dollars Mortimer put on Lauzanne. He could compare this with the
+      number in Farrell's book; no doubt they would agree; then, indeed, the
+      chain would be completed to the last link. No man on earth could question
+      that evidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a good idea, Farrell,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bet yer life, it's clear Pinkerton. You'd better come round to my place
+      to-morrow about ten, an' we'll look it up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will,&rdquo; Crane answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0042" id="link2H_4_0042">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XLIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The old bay horse that crawled back to Ringwood with Allis Porter after
+      her interview with Crane must have thought that the millennium for driving
+      horses had surely come. Even the ambition to urge the patriarch beyond his
+      complacent, irritating dog trot was crushed out of her by the terrible new
+      evidence the banker had brought in testimony against her lover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't need this,&rdquo; the girl moaned to herself. In her intensity of
+      grief her thoughts became audible in expressed words. &ldquo;Oh, God!&rdquo; she
+      pleaded to the fields that lay in the silent rapture of summer content,
+      &ldquo;strengthen me against all this falseness. You didn't do it, George&mdash;you
+      couldn't&mdash;you couldn't! And Alan! my poor, weak brother; why can't
+      you have courage and clear your friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her heart rose in angry rebellion against her brother, against Crane,
+      against Providence, even against the man she loved. Why should he
+      sacrifice both their lives, become an outcast himself to shield a boy, who
+      in a moment of weakness had committed an act which might surely be
+      forgiven if he would but admit his mistake? yes, it might even be called a
+      mistake. The punishment accepted in heroic silence by Mortimer was out of
+      all proportion to the wrong-doing. It meant the utter ruin of two lives.
+      Firmly as she believed in his innocence, a conviction was forced upon her
+      that unless Alan stood forth and boldly proclaimed the truth the
+      accumulated guilt&mdash;proof would cloud Mortimer's name, perhaps until
+      his death. Even after that his memory might linger as that of a thief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening before Alan had been at Ringwood and Allis had made a final
+      endeavor to get him to clear the other's name by confessing the truth to
+      Crane. On her knees she had pleaded with her brother. The boy had fiercely
+      disclaimed all complicity, protested his own innocence with vehemence, and
+      denounced Mortimer as worse than a thief in having poisoned her mind
+      against him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In anger Alan had disclosed Mortimer's treachery&mdash;as he called it&mdash;and
+      crime to their mother. Small wonder that Allis's hour of trial was a dark
+      one. The courage that had enabled her to carry Lauzanne to victory was now
+      tried a thousandfold more severely. It seemed all that was left her, just
+      her courage and faith; they had stood out successfully against all
+      denunciation of Lauzanne, and, with God's help, they would hold her true
+      to the man she loved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the pace of a snail lands him somewhere finally, and the unassailed
+      Bay, with a premonition of supper hovering obscurely in his lazy mind, at
+      last consented to arrive at Ringwood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis crept to her father like a fearsome child avoiding goblins.
+      Providentially he had not been initiated into the moral crusade against
+      the iniquitous Mortimer, so the girl clung to him as a drowning person
+      might to a plank of salvation. She longed to tell him everything&mdash;of
+      her love for Mortimer, perhaps he had guessed it, for he spoke brave words
+      often of the sturdy young man who had saved her from Diablo. Perhaps she
+      would tell him if she felt her spirit giving way&mdash;it was cruel to
+      stand quite alone&mdash;and beseech him, as he had faith in her, to
+      believe in her lover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis went to the tea table by her father's side, fearing to get beyond
+      his hearing; she dreaded her mother's questioning eyes. What could be said
+      in the accused man's defense, or in her own? Nothing; she could only wait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A square old-fashioned wooden clock on the mantelpiece of the sitting room
+      had just droned off seven mellow hours, when the faint echo of its music
+      was drowned by the crunch of gravel; there was the quick step of somebody
+      coming up the drive; then the wooden steps gave hollow notice. The
+      visitor's advent was announced again by the brass knocker on the front
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll go,&rdquo; said Allis, as her mother rose. The girl knew who it was that
+      knocked, not because of any sane reason; she simply knew it was Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she opened the door he stepped back hesitatingly. Was he not a
+      criminal&mdash;was he not about to leave his position because of theft?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; she said, quietly; &ldquo;I am glad you have come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shall I? I just want to speak to you for a minute. I said I would come.
+      But I can't see anybody&mdash;just you, alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;Come inside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going away,&rdquo; he began; &ldquo;I can't stand it here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have done nothing&mdash;nothing to clear yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you won't?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this wise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the inevitable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were silent for a little; they were both standing. The girl broke the
+      stillness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad you have come, because I can tell you again that I know you are
+      innocent. I know it, because my heart repeats it a thousand times a day. I
+      listen to the small voice and I hear nothing else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never waver&mdash;you never doubt?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You never will?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I care not. Other men have had misfortune thrust upon them and have
+      borne it without complaint, have had less to solace them than you have
+      given me now, and I should be a coward if I faltered. Some day perhaps,
+      you will know that I am worthy of your faith: God grant that the knowledge
+      brings you no fresh misery&mdash;there, forgive me, I have said too much;
+      I am even now a coward. If you will say good-bye I'll go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, my hero.&rdquo; She raised her eyes, blurred with tears, and held out
+      her hand gropingly, as one searches in the dark, for the room whirled like
+      a storm cloud, and just faintly she could see the man's strong face coming
+      to her out of the gloom like the face of a god. He took her hand.
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; his voice vibrated brokenly; &ldquo;if&mdash;if Justice wills that
+      my innocence be known some day, may I come back? Will you wait, believing
+      in me for a little?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew her to him by the hand he still clasped, and put his strong arms
+      about her. What mattered it now that he had been falsely accused&mdash;what
+      mattered it to either of them that he must accept the grim penalty of his
+      endeavor? With them in the soft gloom was nothing but love, and faith, and
+      innocence; and within the strong arms a sense of absolute security, as
+      though the false accusing world had been baffled, beaten down, and the
+      victory theirs&mdash;love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He raised the girl's face and kissed her. &ldquo;Let God witness that I press
+      your brave lips in innocence,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;and in this pledge I love you
+      forever and ever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen,&rdquo; came from Allis involuntarily; it sounded to them both like the
+      benediction of a high priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen,&mdash;&rdquo; he responded. To speak again would have been sacrilege.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He put her from him gently, turned away and walked quickly from the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl sat for a long time a gray shadow in the gathering darkness. He
+      was gone from her. It seemed as though she had scarce spoken the
+      encouragement she wished to give him. It had been a meeting almost without
+      words; but she felt strangely satisfied. The accusing revelation that had
+      come from Crane in the afternoon had been a crushing blow. It was a
+      mistake, of course; it wasn't true&mdash;somehow it wasn't true, but still
+      it had stunned. Now in the gloaming she sat with an angel of peace; big,
+      steadfast, honest eyes, full of thankfulness, looked lovingly at her from
+      where he had stood. If she could sit there forever, with the echo of his
+      deep &ldquo;Amen&rdquo; to their love lingering in her ears, she would ask no further
+      gift of the gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer, as with swinging stride he hurried toward the village, let his
+      mind flit back to the room of gray shadows. How little he had said! Had
+      there been aught spoken at all? The strong arms still tingled with tender
+      warmth where the impress of an angel had set them thrilling ecstatically.
+      Yes, what mattered their speech? There had been little of the future&mdash;no
+      promise to send word of his well-being&mdash;but let the future look to
+      itself. In the present he was king of a love realm that was greater than
+      all the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Field after field flitted by, studded here and there by square, gray
+      specters of ghost-like houses that blinked at him with red dragon eyes.
+      Sub-consciously he knew the eyes were searching out the secret that made
+      him in all his misery of misfortune so happy. And he would answer to the
+      eyes, dragon or human, without fear and without shame&mdash;because he was
+      innocent&mdash;that it was love, the greatest thing in all the world, the
+      love and faith sublime of a good, true woman. Woman had he said?&mdash;an
+      angel!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0043" id="link2H_4_0043">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XLIV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As Farrell had suggested, Crane sought him at the office the next day at
+      ten o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farrell and his clerk were busy planning an enterprising campaign against
+      men who had faith in fast horses for the coming week at Sheepshead Bay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; the Bookmaker exclaimed when Crane entered, &ldquo;you want that badge
+      number. Hagen, get the betting sheet for the second last day at Gravesend,
+      and look up a bet of one thousand dollars we roped in over Mr. Crane's
+      horse. I want the number to locate the man that parted&mdash;I wish
+      there'd been more like him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean Billy Cass?&rdquo; queried the clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who the devil's Billy Cass?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why the stiff that played The Dutchman for a thou'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know him?&rdquo; This query from Farrell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should say! He's a reg'lar. Used to bet in Mullen's book last year when
+      I penciled for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clerk brought the betting sheet and ran his finger down a long row of
+      figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the bet. A thousand calls three on The Dutchman. His badge number
+      was 11,785. Yes, that's the bet; I remember Billy Cass takin' it. You
+      see,&rdquo; he continued, explanatory of his vivid memory, &ldquo;he's gen'rally a
+      piker&mdash;plays a long shot&mdash;an' his limit's twenty dollars; so,
+      when he comes next a favorite that day with a cool thou' it give me
+      stoppage of the heart. Damn'd if I didn't get cold feet. Bet yer life it
+      wasn't Billy's money&mdash;not a plunk of it; he had worked an angel, an'
+      was playin' the farmer's stuff for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sure, Mr. Hagen&mdash;did you know the man?&rdquo; Crane asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know him? All the way&mdash;tall, slim, blue eyes, light mustache, hand
+      like a woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the man,&rdquo; affirmed Farrell; &ldquo;that's the man&mdash;I saw him
+      yesterday in your place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane stared. For once in his life the confusion of an unexpected event
+      momentarily unsettled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you identified&mdash;which man in the bank did you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I saw three: a short, dark, hairless kid&rdquo;&mdash;Alan Porter, mentally
+      ticked off Crane; &ldquo;a tall, dark, heavy-shouldered chap, that, judged by
+      his mug, would have made a fair record with the gloves&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Was not that the man you identified as having made the bet?&rdquo; interrupted
+      Crane, taking a step forward in his intense eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not on your life; it was the slippery-looking cove with fishy eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cass,&rdquo; muttered Crane to himself; &ldquo;but that's impossible&mdash;he never
+      left the bank that day; there's some devilish queer mistake here.&rdquo; Farrell
+      had identified David Cass in the bank as the man who had bet with him,
+      while the clerk asserted that one &ldquo;Billy&rdquo; Cass had made the same wager.
+      Hagen's description of &ldquo;Billy&rdquo; Cass fitted David Cass in a general way.
+      Again the badge number&mdash;11,785&mdash;was not Mortimer's, as
+      registered in Faust's book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane stood pondering over the complication. He saw that until further
+      investigation disproved it there could be but one solution of this
+      intricate riddle. Billy Cass, the maker of the bet, was a race track
+      frequenter; David Cass was not. They must be separate personalities; but
+      they resembled each other; they were of the same name&mdash;they might be
+      brothers. Billy Cass had been in possession of the stolen note; he must
+      have got it from some one having access to it in the bank&mdash;Mortimer,
+      Alan Porter, or Cass&mdash;the cashier was quite out of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next move was to trace back through Billy Cass the man who had
+      delivered to him the stolen money. There was still a chance that Mortimer,
+      unfamiliar with betting and possibly knowing of Billy Cass through his
+      brother in the bank&mdash;if they were brothers&mdash;had used this
+      practical racing man as a commission agent. This seemed a plausible
+      deduction. It was practically impossible that David Cass could have got
+      possession of the bill, for it was locked in a compartment of which
+      Mortimer had the key; the latter had admitted that the keys were not out
+      of his possession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This far in his hurried mental retrospect Crane spoke to Farrell: &ldquo;I think
+      this is all we can do at present. I may find it necessary to ask you to
+      identify this Cass, but I hope not to trouble you any further in the
+      matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang the trouble!&rdquo; energetically responded Farrell, with huge disclaiming
+      of obligation; &ldquo;I'll spend time and money to down a crook any day; I've no
+      use for 'em; a few of that kidney gives the racin' game a black eye. If
+      you need me or Hagen, just squeak, an' we'll hop onto the chap if he's a
+      wrong one with both feet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane said nothing about the other number he had culled from Faust's book;
+      he said nothing about his suspicions of a brotherhood; he wanted to go
+      back to his quarters and think this new problem out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What if in seeking for conclusive evidence against Mortimer he should
+      prove him innocent? He was treading upon dangerous ground, pushing out of
+      his path with a firebrand a fuse closely attached to a mine that might
+      explode and shatter the carefully constructed fabric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sitting in his own chamber he once more went over the whole extraordinary
+      entanglement. Mistaken as it was, Farrell's identification at Brookfield
+      must have strongly affected the mind of Allis Porter. At the time Crane
+      had played an honest part in recounting it to the girl. He had firmly
+      believed that Farrell, owing to his ambiguous report, had meant Mortimer;
+      in fact, Cass had not entered his mind at all. Even yet Mortimer might be
+      the guilty man&mdash;probably was. Why should he, Crane, pursue this
+      investigation that might turn, boomerang-like, and act disastrously.
+      Mortimer was either a thief or a hero; there could be no question about
+      that. As a hero, in this case, he was pretty much of a fool in Crane's
+      eyes; but Allis Porter would not look upon it in that light&mdash;she
+      would deify him. Crane would commit diplomatic suicide in developing
+      Mortimer's innocence. Again he asked himself why he should proceed.
+      Mortimer was guilty in the strong, convicting light of the apparent
+      evidence; better let it rest that happy way&mdash;happy for Crane. But
+      still would he rest satisfied himself? He was not accustomed to doing
+      things by halves. If Cass had stolen the money it would never do to retain
+      him in a position of trust. Then the devil of subtle diplomacy, familiar
+      at all times to Crane, whispered in his ear that he need not blazen to the
+      world the result of his further investigation; he might satisfy himself,
+      and then if Mortimer were found still deeper in the toils it might be
+      spoken of; but if he were found innocent&mdash;well, was Crane his
+      brother's keeper? He could adopt one of two plans to get at the truth; he
+      could trace out Billy Cass and extort from him the name of his principal;
+      but if startled, the latter might refuse to divulge anything. Police
+      pressure meant publicity. There was a better plan&mdash;Crane always found
+      a better plan in everything. If David Cass had stolen the money he must
+      have sent it to his brother; if that fact were established it would show a
+      connection between the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That afternoon Crane took a train to Brookfield. A visit to the village
+      post office disclosed a hidden jewel. As far as Crane was concerned the
+      fate of the two men was held in the hollow of the postmaster's hand. The
+      latter, with little hesitation, allowed him to delve into official
+      secrets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He learned that David Cass had sent a letter, with a quick-delivery stamp
+      on it, to William Cass, at A B C, East Fourteenth Street, New York, at
+      3:30 p.m., on June 12. So far as guilt or innocence was concerned there
+      was nothing left to discover; the connection between these two men was
+      demonstrated. Farrell's misidentification established another truth&mdash;they
+      were brothers. The letter, hastening to its destination, had contained the
+      stolen money. Mortimer would not give it to Cass to send away; even if he
+      had done so he would not then have gone to Gravesend. Alan Porter had also
+      gone to Gravesend; if he had stolen the money he would have taken it with
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David Cass, the unsuspected, was the thief. Mortimer, condemned, having
+      restored the money&mdash;having taken upon himself with almost silent
+      resignation the disgrace&mdash;was innocent. And all this knowledge was in
+      Crane's possession alone, to use as he wished. The fate of his rival was
+      given into his hands; and if he turned down his thumb, so, better for
+      Mortimer that he had been torn of wild beasts in a Roman arena than to be
+      cast, good name and all, to the wolves of righteous humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a dog carries home a bone too large for immediate consumption, Crane
+      took back this new finding to his den of solitude in New York. At eight
+      o'clock he turned the key in his door, and arm in arm with his now
+      constant companion walked fitfully up and down, up and down, the floor.
+      Sometimes he sat in a big chair that beckoned to him to rest; sometimes he
+      raced with swift speed; once he threw himself upon his bed, and lay
+      staring wide-eyed at the ceiling for hours. What mockery&mdash;hours! on
+      the mantelpiece the clock told him that he had ceased his strides for a
+      bare five minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he thrust himself back into a chair, and across the table opposite
+      sat Wrong, huge&mdash;grinning with a devilish temptation; not gold, but a
+      perfume of lilacs, and the music of soft laughter like the tinkle of
+      silver bells, the bejeweled light of sweet eyes that were gray, and all
+      the temptation that Wrong held in itself was the possession of Allis
+      Porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Crane need commit no crime, unless inaction were a crime&mdash;just
+      leave things as they were. In the eyes of the world Mortimer was a thief;
+      he would never claim Allis so branded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane with a word could clear the accused man; he could go to David Cass
+      and force him to confess. But why should he do it&mdash;sacrifice all he
+      held dear in life? Everything that he had valued before became obliterated
+      by the blindness of his love for the girl. Yet still the love seemed to
+      soften him. Into his life had come new, strange emotions. The sensuous
+      odor of stephanotis, that had not repelled in the old life, had come to
+      suggest a pestilence in his nostrils, made clean by the purity of lilac.
+      As he swayed in contention, the face of Wrong fronting him became the face
+      of Sin&mdash;repellent, abhorrent; how could he ruin her life, and by a
+      criminal act?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hour by hour the struggle went on, until, exhausted, Crane flung himself
+      upon his bed to rest a few minutes, and sleep, unsought, came and hushed
+      the turmoil of his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without decision he had cast himself down; his mind, tortured in its
+      perplexity, was unequal to the task of guiding him. So wearied he should
+      have slept for hours, but, as the first glint of sunlight came through the
+      uncurtained window, he sprang from his couch with the call of an
+      uncompleted something in his ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But calm had come to him in his sleep; the question of right or wrong had
+      been settled. He tried to remember how he had come to the conclusion that
+      was alone in his rested mind. It must have been before he slept, though
+      his memory failed him, for as he slumbered Allis Porter had come with the
+      big gray eyes full of tears and asked him once again to spare Mortimer
+      humiliation for her sake. And he had answered, &ldquo;He is innocent.&rdquo; God! he
+      remembered it, even now it thrilled through his frame&mdash;she had bent
+      over and kissed him on the forehead. Yes, that was what had wakened him.
+      What foolish things dreams were. He had won just a kiss and had paid the
+      price of his love; and now waking, and in the calm of a conflict passed,
+      he had won over the demon that had tempted him with the perfume of lilacs.
+      He had striven to the point when further strife became a crime. He had
+      lost; but he would prove himself a good loser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0044" id="link2H_4_0044">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XLV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      That day Crane went to Brookfield.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spirit he was like a man that had been cast into an angry sea, and had
+      battled his way through hungry waves to shore. Saved, the utter weariness
+      of fierce strife hung heavy over his soul, and exhaustion deadened his joy
+      of escape. Just saved, bereft of everything, he looked back over the dark
+      waters and shuddered. And before him a dreary waste of desert shore-land
+      stretched out interminably, and he must wander alone over its vast expanse
+      forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane in all things was strong. It was strength drawn to right by the
+      influence of the woman he loved that had saved him from the waters that
+      were worse than the broad sands of a desolate life. But he still had
+      something to do, the final act made possible by his redemption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Brookfield he went to the hotel, secured an isolated sitting room
+      upstairs, and with this as a hall of justice, followed out with his usual
+      carefulness a plan he had conceived. First he wrote a brief note to Allis
+      Porter asking her to come and see him at once. One line he wrote made
+      certain the girl's coming, &ldquo;I have important news to communicate
+      concerning Mr. Mortimer.&rdquo; Then he sent the note off with a man. Next he
+      despatched a messenger for David Cass. He pulled out his watch and looked
+      at it. It was three o'clock. &ldquo;I think five will do,&rdquo; he muttered; &ldquo;it
+      should be all over by that time.&rdquo; Another note addressed to Mortimer,
+      asking him to call at the hotel at five o'clock, went forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The village hotel throbbed with the pressure of unwonted business. The
+      proprietor surmised that a financial matter of huge magnitude was afloat&mdash;another
+      farm was being mortgaged, most like; more money for Ringwood probably, for
+      had not a buggy gone out there to bring some one in to the great
+      financier. Those race horses were the devil to put a man in a hole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      David Cass came, treading on the heels of a much-whiskied howler who had
+      summoned him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sent for me, sir?&rdquo; he asked of Crane. It may have been the stairs&mdash;for
+      he had come up hurriedly&mdash;that put a waver in his voice; or it may
+      have been a premonition of trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take a seat, Mr. Cass,&rdquo; Crane answered, arranging a chair so that a
+      strong light from the one window fell across the visitor's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hostler who had shown Cass to where the big man awaited him lingered,
+      a jagged wobble of humanity, leaning against the door jamb. He expected an
+      order for &ldquo;Red Eye,&rdquo; as he had baptized strong drink since it had grown
+      familiarly into his being. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; exclaimed Crane, &ldquo;I'd forgotten; here's a
+      quarter; much obliged. That's all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hostler's unjointed legs, unstable because of recurrent debauchery,
+      carried him disconsolately to lower levels. The Banker must be sure of his
+      business, must have it well in hand, when he ignored the usual diplomatic
+      mollifying preparation of a drink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hostler had left the sitting-room door open; Crane closed it
+      carefully, and, sitting with his back to the window, said to the bank
+      clerk: &ldquo;Mr. Cass, I am going to be very candid with you; I am going to
+      tell you that I have discovered you stole the thousand dollars Mortimer
+      has been accused of taking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cass's face blanched a bluish white; his jaw dropped loosely like the jaw
+      of a man who had been suddenly struck a savage blow. His weak, watery,
+      blue eyes opened wide in terror; he gasped for breath; he essayed to speak&mdash;to
+      give even a cry of pain, but the muscles of his tongue were paralyzed. His
+      right hand resting on the arm of his chair, as Crane ceased speaking, fell
+      hopelessly by his side, where it dangled like the cloth limb of a dummy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane saw all this with fierce satisfaction. He had planned this sudden
+      accusation with subtle forethought. It even gave him relief to feel his
+      suffering shifted to another; he was no longer the assailed by evil
+      fortune, he was the assailant. Already the sustaining force of right was
+      on his side; what a dreadful thing it was to squirm and shrink in the
+      toils of crime. A thought that he might have been like this had he allowed
+      Mortimer to stand accused flashed through his mind. He waited for his
+      victim to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Cass found strength to say: &ldquo;Mr. Crane, this is a terrible
+      accusation; there is some dreadful mistake&mdash;I did not&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The other interrupted him. The man's defense must be so abjectly hopeless,
+      such a cowardly weak string of lies, that out of pity, as he might have
+      ceased to beat a hound, Crane continued, speaking rapidly, holding the
+      guilty man tight in the grasp of his fierce denunciation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You stole that note. You sent it, with a quick-delivery stamp to your
+      brother, Billy Cass, in New York, and he bet it for you on my horse, The
+      Dutchman, on the 13th, and lost it. Mortimer, thinking that Alan Porter
+      had taken the money, replaced it, and you nearly committed a greater crime
+      than stealing when you allowed him to be dishonored, allowed him to be
+      accused and all but convicted of your foolish sin. It is useless to deny
+      it, all this can be proved in court. I have weighed the matter carefully,
+      and if you confess you will not be prosecuted; if you do not, you will be
+      sent to the penitentiary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cass, stricken beyond the hope of defense, rose from his chair, steadying
+      himself with his hands on the table, leaned far over it, as though he were
+      drawn physically by the fierce magnetism of his accuser, and spoke in a
+      voice scarce stronger than the treble of a child's: &ldquo;My God! Mr. Crane! Do
+      you mean it, that you won't prosecute me? Did you say that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if you confess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God&mdash;thank you, sir. I'm glad, I'm glad; I've been in hell for
+      days. I haven't slept. Mortimer's eyes have stared at me all through the
+      night, for I liked him&mdash;everybody liked him&mdash;he was good to me.
+      Oh, God! I should have gone out of my mind with more of it. I didn't steal
+      the money&mdash;no, no! I didn't mean to steal it; the Devil put it into
+      my hands. Before God, I never stole a dollar in my life. But it wasn't
+      that&mdash;it wasn't the money&mdash;it was to think that an innocent man
+      was to suffer&mdash;to have his life wrecked because of my folly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How it was coming home to Crane. Had he not dabbled his hands in the same
+      sin, almost committed it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have never known what it is to suffer in that way. But let me tell
+      you all. I must. Then perhaps you will understand how I was tempted. For
+      years I have been ground in poverty. My mother and my sister, even my
+      brother have all looked to me. My brother should have supported them, but
+      all his money went on the race course, gambling. When I heard Alan Porter
+      tell Mortimer that your horse was sure to win, for the first time in my
+      life I felt a desire to get money that way. But I had no money to bet.
+      That day as I went into the vault I saw under a lower shelf&mdash;the
+      Devil drew my eyes that way&mdash;a bank note. I hardly knew it was a bank
+      note, for I saw but a piece of paper indistinctly in the dim light. I
+      picked it up. Oh, God! if I hadn't touched it! I looked at it. My heart
+      jumped in my throat and choked me; my head swam. In my ears were strange
+      voices, saying: 'Take it! Put it in your pocket!' Perhaps it was because
+      it was so large&mdash;a thousand dollars&mdash;perhaps it was because it
+      seemed lost, out of place, I don't know. I had handled thousands and
+      thousands before, and never felt that way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The devil voices that were in my ears said: 'This is your chance. Take
+      it, borrow it, no one will know. Bet it on the horse that will surely win,
+      and you will get many thousands; then you can replace it, and for once in
+      your life you will know what it is to have something of your own.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I tried to put it back. I couldn't. The voices called me a fool, a
+      coward. I thought of my mother, my sister, what I could do if I had the
+      courage. I tried to take it in to Mr. Lane and say that I had found it. I
+      couldn't. Oh, my God! you don't know what it is to be tempted! You have
+      been successful, and don't know how miserably weak ill-fortune makes a
+      man. I yielded&mdash;I took it; then when its loss was discovered, and
+      Mortimer was accused, I tried to confess&mdash;I couldn't; I was a coward,
+      a traitor, a Judas. Oh, God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The overwrought man threw himself face down on the table in front of his
+      grim accuser, like a child's broken doll, and wept with great sobs that
+      shook his frame as the wind lashes the waters into turmoil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An exultation of righteous victory swept through Crane's soul. He might
+      have been like that; he had been saved from it by his love for a good
+      woman. He could not despise the poor broken creature who confessed so
+      abjectly, because all but in deed he also had sinned. The deepest cry of
+      despair from Cass was because of the sin he had committed against his
+      friend&mdash;against Mortimer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane waited until Cass's misery had exhausted itself a little, and when
+      he spoke his voice was soft in pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand. Sit in your chair there and be a man. Half an hour ago I
+      thought you a thief&mdash;I don't now. You had your time of weakness,
+      perhaps all men have that; you fell by the wayside. I don't think you'll
+      do it again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no! I wouldn't go through the hell I've lived in again for all
+      the money in the world. And I'm so glad that it is known; I feel relief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it is better that the truth has come out, because everything can be
+      put right. I was going to make you pay back the thousand dollars to
+      Mortimer&mdash;I was going to drive you from the bank&mdash;I was going to
+      let it be known that you had stolen the money, but now, I must think. You
+      must have another chance. It's a dangerous thing to wreck lives&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God! it is; that's what haunted me night and day. I felt as though I
+      had murdered a man who had been my friend. I knew he thought young Porter
+      had taken it and was shielding him. The memory of the misery in Mortimer's
+      face at being counted a thief would have stuck to me if I had lived a
+      hundred years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cass had interrupted Crane. When he ceased again out of exhaustion, Crane
+      proceeded, &ldquo;Mortimer must be paid back the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll save and work my fingers off till I do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't. Those dependent upon you would starve. I'll attend to that
+      myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you will let me go without&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you can't go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God! I'm to be prosecuted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you can stay in the bank. I don't think you'll ever listen to the
+      voices again; it's bad business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cass sat and stared at the strange man who said these things out of silly
+      expressionless eyes that were blurred full of tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you can go right on as you have been. It will be understood that the
+      money was found, had been mislaid; I'll think that out. It's nobody's
+      business just now; I run the bank and you take orders from me. Go back to
+      your desk and stay there. I've got to tell Mortimer and Miss Porter that
+      you made this mistake, and Lane, too, I suppose, but nobody else will ever
+      know of it. I was going to make you sign a confession, but it's not
+      needed. You may go now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cass rose, his thin legs seeming hopelessly inadequate to the task of
+      carrying his body, and said, &ldquo;Will you take my hand, sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I will. Just do right from this on, and forget-no, better not
+      forget; remember that there is no crime like weakness; all crime comes
+      from weakness. Be strong, and listen to no more voices. But I needn't tell
+      you. I know from this out I can trust you further than a man who has never
+      been tried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door Cass turned and looked back at the man who had reached down
+      into the abyss, pulled him up, and stood him on his feet. The man was
+      sitting quite still, his back to the light, his head drooped, and Cass
+      could not see his face. He strove futilely for some adequate expression of
+      gratitude, but his senses were numb from the shock of what he had escaped;
+      he simply nodded twice toward the sitting figure, turned, and passed out
+      into the street, where the sunlight baptized him with warmth as though he
+      had been born again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor, weak devil!&rdquo; muttered Crane; then he shivered. Had the imbecile's
+      talk of voices got on to his nerves? Surely a voice had whispered
+      derisively in his ear, &ldquo;Which one is the poor, weak devil?&rdquo; And in answer
+      within his soul Crane knew that the margin was indeed of infinitesimal
+      narrowness. Cass, hastened in his temptation, yielding to the first insane
+      impulse, not knowing that the damnation of a friend hung on his act, had
+      fallen. He, Crane, in full knowledge that two innocent lives might be
+      wrecked by his doing, had been kept to the right only after hours of
+      struggle, and by the supporting influence of a supreme love. To have
+      gained Allis Porter by the strategy of a villain could not be the method
+      of holy passion. To sacrifice his desire and give her back her lover was
+      love, love worthy of the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an hour he waited; then there was turmoil on the stairway; horses were
+      surely coming up. At the door a thick voice explained the diversion. The
+      hostler had again arrived, with an hour of increased drunkenness pulling
+      mercilessly at his erratic legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John Porter's gal 'sh here, an'&mdash;an'&mdash;&rdquo; the hostler wrestled
+      with the mental exercise that had been entrusted to his muddled brain.
+      He'd swear that she was there, for his eyes had seen her, two of her; and
+      also he had a hazy idea that when he essayed the stairs she had entrusted
+      to him some message. He groped fitfully among the wheels that buzzed in
+      his skull for the elusive something connected with her advent. The
+      heredity of habit came to his assistance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;D'ye want a drink?&rdquo; he asked, with a sudden brightening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drink!&rdquo; a voice cried. &ldquo;I don't want any drink&rdquo; A strong hand had him by
+      the collar, and the house was rocking violently to and fro; he could
+      scarcely keep his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wake up, you're drunk. Is Miss Porter down stairs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Porter, Porter, yesh, Portersh gal; thatsh what I said. Whatsh matter
+      with you?&mdash;leg-go. Keep cool, don't get excited.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, get out&mdash;go down stairs!&rdquo; And he did, hurriedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane had followed him down. Allis was standing just within the hall door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good afternoon, Miss Porter,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It was good of you to come. I've
+      got something very important to tell you, and it's better that we have
+      quiet&mdash;it doesn't seem quite the usual order of things here. Should
+      you mind coming upstairs to the sitting room, where we shall be
+      undisturbed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't mind,&rdquo; answered the girl, simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have a chair,&rdquo; he said, motioning to the one Cass had lately sat in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane did not take the other seat, but paced restlessly up and down the
+      room; it cooled the fever of his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope it isn't more bad news, Mr. Crane,&rdquo; Allis said; for her companion
+      seemed indisposed to break the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is&mdash;&rdquo; the girl started&mdash;&ldquo;for me,&rdquo; Crane added, after a
+      little pause; &ldquo;and yet I am glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That sounds strange,&rdquo; Allis commented, wonderingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What I am going to say to you means the destruction of the dearest hope I
+      have in life, but it can't be helped. Now I wouldn't have it any other
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he stopped in his swift pace, faced the girl, and asked, &ldquo;You are
+      quite sure you can't love me?&rdquo; He was waiting for an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I can't&mdash;I hate to cause you misery, but I must speak the truth;
+      you have asked for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you've answered honestly. I know it was foolish in me to ask the
+      impossible. Just one more question and then I will tell you why I brought
+      you here. Do you still believe in Mortimer's innocence&mdash;do you love
+      Mortimer?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I were to tell you that he is innocent, that I have discovered the
+      guilty one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my God!&rdquo; It was a cry of sudden joy, incapable of exact expression,
+      irrelevant in its naming of the Deity, but full in its exultation of soul.
+      Then, in quick transformation, the girl collapsed, as Cass had done, and
+      huddled in her chair, stricken by the sudden conviction that the crime had
+      been brought home to her brother. Her lover was guiltless; but to joy over
+      it was a sin, inhuman, for was not Alan the thief, if Mortimer were
+      innocent?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane understood. He had forgotten. He stepped quickly to the girl's side,
+      put his hand tenderly on her head; her big gray eyes stared up at him full
+      of a shrinking horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor little woman!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;your big, tender heart will be the death of
+      you yet. But I've got only good news for you this time. Neither Mortimer
+      nor Alan took the money&mdash;it was Cass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are both innocent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, both.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my God, I thank Thee.&rdquo; She pulled herself up from the chair, holding
+      to Crane's arm, and looking in his face, said, &ldquo;You did this; you found
+      the guilty man for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane nodded his head; and it came to the girl as she looked, that the
+      eyes she had thought narrow in evil grew big and round and full of
+      honesty, and soft with gentleness for her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I thank you&mdash;what can I do or say to repay you?&rdquo; She knew
+      what it must have cost the man to clear his rival's name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was your doing, Miss Allis; it is I who must thank you. You made a man
+      of me, brought more good into my life than had been there for forty years.
+      I will be honest. I did not do this of myself, my own free will. In my
+      love for you, and desire to have you with me always, I almost committed a
+      crime. I was tempted to conceal the discovery I had made; I knew that if I
+      cleared Mortimer you were lost to me. I struggled with temptation and fell
+      asleep still not conquering it. In my sleep I dreamed&mdash;I don't think
+      it was a dream&mdash;it was like a vision&mdash;you came to me, and when I
+      said that Mortimer was innocent, you kissed me on the forehead. I woke
+      then, and the struggle had ceased&mdash;the temptation had passed. I came
+      down here, and Cass has confessed that he took the money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like it&mdash;would you think it wrong&mdash;it seems so little
+      for me to do&mdash;may I kiss you now, as I did in your dream, and thank
+      you from the bottom of my heart for making me so happy? It all seems like
+      a dream to me now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer Crane inclined his head, and Allis, putting her hand upon his
+      shoulder, kissed him on the forehead, and through him went a thrill of
+      great thankfulness, of joy such as he knew would never have come to him
+      had he gained through treachery even this small token of conquest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; he said, taking Allis by the arm, and gently drawing her back to
+      the chair; &ldquo;now I am repaid a thousandfold for not doing a great wrong.
+      You have beaten me twice within a few days. I fancy I should almost be
+      afraid to be your husband, you master me so easily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's Mortimer coming,&rdquo; Crane said, suddenly, as a step with more
+      consistency in its endeavor than pertained to the hostler's, sounded,
+      coming up the stairs. &ldquo;I sent for him,&rdquo; he added, seeing the look of happy
+      confusion in Allis's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; he called cheerily, in answer to a knock on the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You sent for me&mdash;&rdquo; Then Mortimer stopped suddenly, and stood staring
+      first at Allis, then at Crane, alternately, back and forth from one to the
+      other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane turned his back upon the younger man and busied himself wondrously
+      over the manipulation of a chair. A strange dread crept into Mortimer's
+      heart; it smothered him; he felt dizzy. Why did Allis look so happy&mdash;why
+      were there smiles on her lips when she must know there were ashes of gloom
+      in his soul? Why was she alone there with Crane? Was it but another
+      devilish trick of the misfortune that pursued him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good afternoon, Miss&rdquo; the words stuck in Mortimer's throat, and he
+      completed his greeting with a most dreadfully formal bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl laughed outright; how droll it was to see a man trying to make
+      himself unhappy when there was nothing but happiness in the world. Through
+      the open window she could hear the birds singing, and through it came the
+      perfume of clover-buried fields; across the floor streamed warm, bright
+      sunlight from a blue sky in which was no cloud. And from their lives,
+      Mortimer's and her own, had been swept the dark cloud&mdash;and here, in
+      the midst of all this joy was her lover with a long, sad face, trying to
+      reproach her with a stiff, awkward bow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her laugh twirled Crane about like a top. He saw the odd situation; there
+      was something incongruous in Mortimer's stiff attitude. Crane had a big
+      cloud of his own not quite driven from his sky, but a smile hovered on his
+      thin lips. This happiness was worth catching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer noticed the distasteful mirth reflected in the other man's face,
+      and he repeated with asperity, &ldquo;You sent for me, sir&mdash;may I ask&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you take a chair,&rdquo; said Crane, and he pushed the one he had been
+      toying with toward Mortimer. The latter remained standing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis sprang forward and caught him by the arm&mdash;Crane turned away,
+      suddenly discovering that from the window the main street of Brookfield
+      was a most absorbing study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm so happy,&rdquo; began Allis. Mortimer shivered in apprehension. Why had
+      Crane turned his face away&mdash;what was coming? How could she be happy,
+      how could anyone in the world be happy? But evidently she was. She stole a
+      quick look at Crane&mdash;to be exact, Crane's back, for his head and
+      shoulders were through the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the girl&mdash;she had to raise on her tiptoes&mdash;kissed the sad
+      man on the cheek. I'm ashamed to say that he stared. Were they all mad&mdash;was
+      he not standing with one foot in the penitentiary?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew him toward the chair, calling to Crane: &ldquo;Will you please tell Mr.
+      Mortimer the good news. I am too happy; I can't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A fierce anger surged in Mortimer's heart; it was true, then&mdash;his
+      disgrace had been too much for Allis. The other had won; but it was too
+      cruel to kiss him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane faced about, and coming forward, held out his hand to the man of
+      distrust. &ldquo;I hope you'll forgive me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer sprang to his feet, shoving back his chair violently, and stood
+      erect, drawn to his full height, his right hand clenched fiercely at his
+      side. &ldquo;Shake hands? No, a thousand times no!&rdquo; he muttered to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane saw the action, and his own hand dropped. &ldquo;Perhaps I ask too much,&rdquo;
+       he said, quietly; &ldquo;I wronged you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer set his teeth and waited. There were great beads of perspiration
+      on his forehead, and his broad chest set his breath whistling through
+      contracted nostrils. A pretty misdirected passion was playing him. This
+      was why they had sent for him&mdash;the girl he would have staked his life
+      on had been brought to believe in his guilt, and had been won over to his
+      rival. Ah&mdash;a new thought; his mind, almost diseased by unjust
+      accusation, prompted it&mdash;perhaps it was to save him from punishment
+      that Allis had consented to become Crane's wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I believed you guilty&mdash;&rdquo; Mortimer started as Crane said this
+      &ldquo;now I know that you are innocent, I ask&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mortimer staggered back a step and caught at the chair to steady himself.
+      He repeated mechanically the other's words: &ldquo;You know I'm innocent?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I've found the guilty man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Alan&mdash;oh, the poor lad! It's a mistake&mdash;you are wrong. The
+      boy didn't take the money&mdash;I took it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane looked at him in admiration, an indulgent smile on his lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, my dear sir!&rdquo; he exclaimed, dryly; &ldquo;Alan did not take the money&mdash;neither
+      did you. Cass took it, and you wasted a day of the bank's time covering
+      the crime for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cass took it?&rdquo; asked Mortimer in a dazed way, looking from Crane to
+      Allis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; he has confessed, so you see he's ahead of you in that line&rdquo; He went
+      on, speaking hurriedly: &ldquo;I ask you to forgive me now for my suspicions.
+      Your innocence is completely established. You acted like a hero in trying
+      to shield Alan Porter, and I like men of that stamp. The thousand dollars
+      you paid in will be restored to you; it is yours. We will devise some
+      scheme for clearing up the matter as far as your good name is concerned
+      that will shield poor Cass from people who have no business in this
+      affair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how did Cass manage to get the note?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Found it on the floor of the vault, he says.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't see how it could have fallen out of the box, because the three
+      bills were pinned to the note.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crane drew forth a pocket book, and opening it took out the bill that had
+      been stolen. He examined it closely, holding it up in front of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you are mistaken,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;there are no pin holes in this bill;
+      I see,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;the pin had not gone through this one; being
+      detached, in handling the box, it has slipped out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It must have,&rdquo; concurred Mortimer. &ldquo;I remember in putting the box in the
+      compartment once I had to turn it on its edge; the bill being loose, as
+      you say, has slipped to the floor, and as the vault was dark I did not
+      notice it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn't matter,&rdquo; added Crane. &ldquo;I must go now. Good-bye, Miss Allis.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning to Mortimer he held out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, and long happiness to you both,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I trust you will
+      think kindly of me and poor Cass. I am sure we are sorry for what has been
+      done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Crane went down the stairs he wondered why he had coupled himself with
+      Cass. Was the difference so slight&mdash;had they been together in the
+      same boat up to the point of that silly, fantastic dream. Perhaps they
+      had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0045" id="link2H_4_0045">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      XLVI
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      With the going of Crane an awkward restraint came over the two who were
+      left; the man who had suffered so much for the woman's sake, and the girl
+      who had endeavored so much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was like a man suddenly thrust into a new world of freedom; he indulged
+      in a physical manifestation of its exhilaration, drinking in a long, deep
+      draught of the clover-scented air, until his great lungs sighed with the
+      plethora. It seemed a lifetime that he had lived in the noisome atmosphere
+      of a felon's cell. But now the crime had dropped from him; a free man in
+      every sense of the word, he could straighten himself up and drink of the
+      air that was without taint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Allis watched Mortimer curiously; she was too happy to speak&mdash;just to
+      look upon him standing there, her undefiled god, her hero, with his
+      heroism known and applauded, was a suffusing ecstasy. He was so great, so
+      noble, that anything she might say would be inane, tawdry, inconsequent;
+      so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time, nor the sunshine,
+      nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of conventionality in
+      the unsupervised tete-a-tete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ecstatic magnetism of congenial silence has always a potency, and its
+      spell crept into Mortimer's soul and laid embargo on his tongue. He
+      crossed over to Allis, and taking her slender hand in his own, crouched
+      down on the floor beside her chair, and looked up into her face, just as a
+      great St. Bernard might have done, incapable of articulating the wealth of
+      love and gratitude and faithfulness that was in his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even then the girl did not speak. She drew the man's strong rugged head
+      close up to her face, and nestled her cheek against his. Love without
+      words; love greater than words. It was like a fairy dream; if either spoke
+      the gentle gossamer web of it would float away like mist, and of needs
+      they must talk of the misery that had passed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the end the girl spoke first, saying like a child having a range of but
+      few words, &ldquo;You are happy now, my hero?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too happy&mdash;I almost fear to wake and find that I've been dreaming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She kissed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it's real,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;in dreams happiness is not so positive as
+      this. You did not doubt?&rdquo; he queried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would have waited?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now&mdash;and now, we must still wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not forever.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They talked of the wonderful necromancy the gods had used to set their
+      lives to the sweet music of happiness. How Lauzanne the Despised had saved
+      Ringwood to her father; how he had won Alan's supposed price of redemption
+      for Mortimer; how he had stood sturdy and true to the girl of much faith
+      and all gentleness. And the room became a crypt of confessional when she,
+      in penitence, told of her ride on the gallant Chestnut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just a span of Fate's hand from these two happy mortals, and twice the
+      sand had sifted through the hour glass, sat a man all alone in his
+      chamber. On his table was the dust of solitariness; and with his finger he
+      wrote in it &ldquo;Forever.&rdquo; But he looked fearlessly across the board, for
+      there sat no grinning demon of temptation, nor remorse, nor fear. But a
+      fragrance as of lilacs and of sweet clover coming through an open window
+      was in his nostrils; and in his memory was the picture of a face he loved,
+      made like unto an angel's with gratitude, and on his forehead still
+      burned, like a purifying fire, a kiss that reached down into his soul and
+      filled him with the joy of thankfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thoroughbreds, by W. A. Fraser
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Thoroughbreds
+
+Author: W. A. Fraser
+
+Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9088]
+Posting Date: July 23, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOROUGHBREDS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THOROUGHBREDS
+
+by W. A. Fraser
+
+
+
+Dedicated to a THOROUGHBRED MY WIFE
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Less than a hundred miles from the city of Gotham, across broad green
+fields, dotted into squares and oblong valleys by full-leafed maple,
+and elm, and mulberry, was the village of Brookfield. A hundred years
+of expansion in the surrounding land had acted inversely with the little
+hamlet, and had pinched it into a hermitical isolation.
+
+The Brookfieldians had discovered a huge beetle in the amber of their
+serene existence; it was really the Reverend Dolman who had unearthed
+the monster. The beetle in the amber was horse racing, and the prime
+offender, practically the sole culprit, was John Porter.
+
+By an inconsistent twist of fate he was known as Honest John. His father
+before him had raced in old Kentucky to considerable purpose, and with
+the full vigor of a man who races for sport; and so to the son John,
+in consequence, had come little beyond a not-to-be-eradicated love
+of thoroughbreds. To race squarely, honestly, and to the glory of
+high-couraged horses was to him as much a matter of religion as the
+consistent guardianship of parish morals was to the Reverend George
+Dolman. Therefore, two men of strong beliefs were set on opposite sides
+of the fence.
+
+Even in the Porter household, which was at Ringwood Farm, was divided
+allegiance. Mrs. Porter was possessed of an abhorrent detestation of
+horse racing; also an assertive Christianity. The daughter, Allison, had
+inherited the horse taint. The swinging gallop of a striving horse was
+to her the obliteration of everything but sunshine, and the smile of
+fields, and the blur of swift-gliding hedges, and the driving perfume
+of clover-laden winds that passed strong into spread nostrils. For
+Alan Porter, the son, there were columns of figures and musty-smelling
+bundles of tattered paper money where he clerked in the bank. There had
+been great unison in the Porter household over the placing of Alan. In
+addition to horse lore, John Porter was a fair judge of human nature,
+and, beyond doubt, there was a streak of velvet in Alan which would have
+twisted easily in the compressive grip of the race course.
+
+The Porter family were not the only dwellers of Brookfield who took
+part in racing. Philip Crane, the banker, wandering from the respectable
+highway of finance, had allowed himself to become interested in race
+horses. But this fact was all but unknown in Brookfield, so the full
+resentment of the place was effusively tendered to John Porter.
+
+In his younger days some money had come to Philip Crane. The gambler
+spirit, that was his of inheritance, had an instinctive truth as
+allied to finance; but, unfortunately for Philip Crane, chance and a
+speculative restlessness led him amongst men who commenced with the
+sport of kings. With acute precipitancy he was separated from the
+currency that had come to him. The process was so rapid that his racing
+experience was of little avail as an asset, so he committed the first
+great wise act of his life-turned his back upon the race course and
+marched into finance, so strongly, so persistently, that at forty he was
+wealthy and the banker of Brookfield.
+
+Twenty years of deliberate reminiscence convinced him that he could
+gratify the desire that had been his in those immature days, and
+possibly work out a paying revenge. Thus it was that he had got together
+a small stable of useful horses; and, of far greater moment, secured a
+clever trainer, Dick Langdon.
+
+Crane's latter-day racing had been successful--he made money at it.
+No man was ever more naturally endowed to succeed on the turf than was
+Banker Philip Crane. Cold, passionless, more given to deep concentrated
+thought than expression, holding silence as a golden gift--even as a
+gift of rare rubies--nothing drew from him an unguarded word, no sudden
+turmoil quivered his nerve. It was characteristic of the man that he had
+waited nearly twenty years to resume racing, which really came as near
+to being a passion with him as was possible for anything to be. There is
+a saying in England that it takes two years of preparation to win a
+big handicap; and these were the lines upon which Philip Crane, by
+instinctive adaptation, worked.
+
+Quite by chance Dick Langdon had come into his hands over a matter of
+borrowed money. It ended by the banker virtually owning every horse that
+raced in the trainer's name. In addition, two or three horses ran in
+Philip Crane's own name. If there had been any distinctive project in
+the scheme of creation that gave Dick Langdon to the world, it probably
+was that he might serve as the useful tool of a subtle thinker. Now
+it did seem that Langdon had come into his own--that he had found his
+predestined master.
+
+John Porter had not been successful; ill fortune had set in, and there
+was always something going wrong. Horses would break down, or get beaten
+by accident--there was always something. The steady financial drain had
+progressed even to an encumbrance on Ringwood.
+
+Ringwood was simply a training farm, located close to an old disused
+race course, for there had been no racing in Brookfield for years.
+
+      *         *         *         *         *         *
+
+Inadvertently the Reverend Mr. Dolman had intensified the strained
+relationship that existed between the good people who frowned upon all
+racing endeavor and those who saw but little sinfulness in John Porter's
+way of life.
+
+The church was in debt--everything in Brookfield was, except the town
+pump. The pastor was a nervous, zealous worker, and it occurred to
+him that a concert might lighten the financial load. The idea was not
+alarmingly original, and the carrying out of it was on conventional
+lines: local volunteer talent, and a strong appeal to the people of
+Brookfield for their patronage.
+
+The concert in the little old clap-boarded church, it's sides faded
+and blistered by many seasons of tempest and scorching sun, was an
+unqualified success up to the fifth number. Nothing could have been more
+successful, or even evoked greater applause, than the fourth effort,
+"Anchored," as rendered by the village pride in the matter of baritone
+singing; even De Reszke never experienced a more genuine triumph. The
+applause gradually fell away, and programmes were consulted preparatory
+to a correct readiness for the fifth offering. The programmes confided
+that "The Death of Crusader," by Miss Allis Porter, was the next item.
+
+In the front row of seats a prim little body, full of a severe
+quaintness in every quirk of dress, tilted her head toward a neighbor,
+and whispered, "It's that racin' gal of John Porter's."
+
+The neighbor answered in a creak meant for a whisper: "I'm right glad
+she's took to religion for onct, an' is givin' us somethin' about them
+Crusaders. They was in Palestine, you know. She's been away to boardin'
+school all winter, an' I guess it'll be a high-falutin' account of the
+war."
+
+The quaint little old lady jerked her head up and down with
+decisive bobbiness. On the third upward bob her eyes opened wide in
+astonishment--a small, slim figure in a glaring red coat stood in the
+center of the improvised platform.
+
+From beneath the coat fell away in long graceful lines a black riding
+skirt; a dark oval face, set with large wondrous gray eyes--the Porter
+eyes--confronted the quaint little old lady.
+
+"That's the Porter gal," her neighbor squeaked; "I've seen her a-top
+them race horses more'n a hundred times. My! you'd think butter wouldn't
+melt in her mouth, she's that prim now."
+
+"The coat would melt it," commented the quaint one.
+
+Then a clear, soft girlish voice, with just a tremble of apprehensive
+nervousness, giving it a lilt like a robin's, said:--
+
+
+                   THE RUN OF CRUSADER
+
+                              I
+
+    Full weight they had given the gallant big Black--a hundred
+        and sixty he carried;
+    And the run for the "Hunt Cup" was over three miles, with
+      mud-wall and water-jump studded.
+    The best racing days of the old horse were past--there'd
+          never been better nor braver
+    But now once again he must carry the silk I was needing the
+       help of Crusader.
+    Could he win at the weight, I whisperingly asked, as I
+       cinched up the saddle girt' tight;
+    He snuggled my hand as I gathered the rein, and I laughed
+       when they talked of defeat.
+    To the call of the bugle I swung to his back--like a rock was
+        the strength of his quarters.
+    At sight of the people he arched his lean neck, and they,
+        cheered for my King of all Hunters.
+
+                              II
+
+    Ten horses would strive for the prize--a big field, and the
+        pace would be killing.
+    From the West came Sweet Silver, a gray, gallant, and
+        fearless in jumping.
+    A rakish old nag who walked over the sticks, had been sent
+        for the Cup from Kentucky;
+    On a bay, Little Jack, who was fast, they had put but a
+        hundred and thirty.
+    But I knew that North Star, a big brown--even the Black was
+        no gamer-
+    With a pull of ten pounds in the weight, was almost a match
+        for Crusader.
+    We made a brave troop, long-striding and strong, with the
+        pick of cross-country riders,
+    As we filed past the Stand in stately parade, with its
+        thousands of eager admirers,
+    And down to the turn on the lower far side, where a red flag
+        was flicking the sunlight;
+    For twice we must circle the green-swarded field, and finish
+        close under the paddock.
+
+                              III
+
+    Just once we lined up; then down cut the flag, and "Go!"
+        hoarse-voiced the Starter;
+    And the thunder of hoofs, and the clanking of bits, made
+        music to me on Crusader.
+    Quick to the front, like a deer, sped a mare, a chestnut,
+        making the running;
+    But I steadied my mount, and took him far back--with his
+        weight he would need all my nursing.
+    They took the first hedge like sheep in a bunch, bit to bit,
+        and stirrups a-jingle;
+    And so past the Stand to the broad water-jump, where three
+        went down, in a tangle.
+    I trailed at the heels of the Silver Gray--but Crusader was
+        begging for halter
+    And flew the wide ditch with the swoop of a bird, and on
+        again, lapped on his quarter.
+    Then over the Liverpool, racing like mad,--where Sweet
+        Silver fell fighting for lead,
+    And his rider lay crushed, white-faced to the sky; and to
+        miss him Crusader jumped wide.
+
+                              IV
+
+    At the bank something struck, and a cloud of white dust hid
+        the wall as though it were shrouded;
+    But the big gallant Black took off with a swing--full thirty
+        feet ere we had landed.
+    As we rounded the turn I could see Little Jack go up to the
+         mare that was leading;
+    Then I let out a wrap, and quickened my pace, to work clear
+         of those that were tiring.
+    Once again past the Stand we drove at the ditch that some
+         would never get over;
+    And a cheer shook the air as the Bay landed safe; with the
+         mare on her back in the water.
+    Then over went North Star--though he pecked, and nearly
+         emptied his saddle.
+    As I lifted the Black at his heels, he frothed the Brown's
+         flank with his nozzle.
+
+                              V
+
+    Then down the back stretch, o'er hedge and o'er bank, we
+         three were racing together;
+    Till at the next rail the Bay jostled the Brown, and
+         riderless crashed through the timber.
+    So we rounded the turn, and into the straight--North Star's
+         lean flank we were lapping
+    But we shot to the front when I gave the Black head, and I
+         saw that the other was stopping.
+    We raced as one horse at the very last hedge--just a nose in
+         front was Crusader;
+    I felt the big Brown bump twice at my side, and knew he was
+         ready to blunder.
+    With stirrups a-ding, empty-saddled the Bay, stride for
+         stride, galloped and floundered.
+    Just missing his swerve, I called on the Black, and drew out
+         as he bravely responded.
+
+                              VI
+
+    Just the last jump! and Crusader took off twenty feet from
+         the brush-covered timber.
+    Then the Bay jumped--too short for his stride--and fell,
+         with his head on my wither.
+    Down, down! almost to earth,--brought to his knees in the
+         struggle,
+    The Black lost a length, the Brown forged ahead, and I was
+         half out of the saddle.
+    How I sat down and rode! how the old horse strove! and the
+         Brown rolling tired in his gallop.
+    On, gallant Black! on, my brave pet!  We were almost under
+         the paddock.
+    Then we nosed the Brown's dank; then we reached to his girt';
+         neck and neck I rode at his shoulder.
+    As we flashed past the post I had won by a head. How they
+         cheered, "Bravo, Crusader!"
+
+                              VII
+
+    But Crusader stopped short; gave a sigh and fell dead; I
+         stood all alone in the winning.
+    And a hush came over the clamorous mob; like a babe on his
+         neck I was sobbing.
+    He had run his last race; game to the end, his brave heart
+         broke in the striving.
+
+The girl's voice faltered and died away to a broken whisper as she told
+of the death of Crusader. For a full minute there was a noiseless hush.
+The full pathos of the gallant horse's striving had crept into the
+hearts that were flesh and blood; and, carried away by their feelings,
+the people had forgotten all about their tortured convictions of the
+sinfulness of making a horse go faster than a sharp trot. Gradually
+into their awakening senses stole a conviction that somehow they were
+countenancing the sin of racing.
+
+Before the complete horror of the situation had mastered the audience,
+a strong pair of hands, far back in the church, came together with
+an explosive clap. Like the rat-rat-tat of a quick-firing gun was the
+appreciative volley of recognition from the solitary applauder. It
+went rolling and crackling through the church defiantly, derisively,
+appreciatively. Halfway up the aisle a softer pair of hands touched
+the rattle with what sounded like a faint echo; then there was
+sudden silence. The entire audience turned and looked disparagingly,
+discouragingly, at the man who had figuratively risen as a champion
+of the scandalous recitation. Resentment had taken hold of the good
+Christians. That Crusader had enlisted their sympathies for a few
+minutes showed the dangerous subtlety of this "horseracin' business."
+
+The rest of the programme might just as well have been eliminated; the
+concert, as a concert, would be discussed for all time to come as having
+projected "The Death of Crusader."
+
+The people flowed from the church full of an expressive contentiousness,
+seeking by exuberant condemnation of the sacrilege to square themselves
+somehow with their consciences for the brief backsliding.
+
+Where the church path turned into the road a group of men had drawn
+together, attracted by the magnet of discussion. They quite blocked the
+pathway, oblivious to everything but their outraged feelings. Like a
+great dark blotch in the night the group stood; and presently two
+slight gray shadows slipping up the path, coming to the human barricade,
+stopped, wavered, and circled out on the grass to pass. The shadows were
+Allis Porter and her brother Alan.
+
+One of the men, overfilled with his exceeding wrath, seeing the girl,
+gave expression to a most unchristian opinion of her modesty. The sharp
+ears of the boy heard the words of the man of harsh instinct, and his
+face flushed hot with resentment. He half turned, bitter reproach rising
+to his lips. How could men be so brutish? How could they be so base? To
+speak ill of his sister Allis, who was just the purest, sweetest little
+woman that ever lived--too brave and true to be anything else but good!
+
+As he turned he saw something that checked his futile anger. A tall
+shadow that had come up the path behind them stretched out an arm, and
+he heard the vilifier's words gurgle and die away, as one of the strong
+hands that had beat the tattoo of approbation clutched him by the
+throat. The boy would have rushed to the assistance of this executive
+friend if the girl had not clasped his arm in detention.
+
+"It's Mortimer!" he cried, as a voice from the strong-armed figure cut
+the night air with sharp decision.
+
+Then the shadowy forms twisted up grotesquely, weaving in and out. There
+were voices of expostulation and strong words of anger; but the new
+serious business that had materialized had most effectually put a stop
+to reflections upon the innocent girl who had so unwittingly offended.
+
+"It's George Mortimer--he's in our bank," Alan confided to his sister,
+as they moved away. "He's all right--he's strong as a horse; and I bet
+Crandal'll have a kink in his neck to-morrow, where George pinched him."
+
+"What was it about?" the girl asked.
+
+"Crandal was jawing about people who own race horses," the boy answered,
+evasively. "It's Crandal, the butcher."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It was the May meeting at Morris Park, and Morris Park is the most
+beautiful race course in all America.
+
+John Porter, walking up the steps of the Grand Stand, heard some one
+call him by name. Turning his head, he saw it was James Danby, an owner,
+sitting in his private box. Porter turned into the box, and taking the
+chair the other pushed toward him, sat down.
+
+"What about Lucretia?" asked Danby, with the air of an established
+friendship which permitted the asking of such questions.
+
+"She's ready to the minute," replied Porter.
+
+"Can she get the five furlongs?" queried Danby. "She's by Assassin, and
+some of them were quitters."
+
+"She'll quit if she falls dead," replied the other man, quietly. "I've
+worked her good enough to win, and I'm backing her."
+
+"That'll do for me," declared Danby. "To tell you the truth, John,
+I like the little mare myself; but I hear that Langdon, who trained
+Lauzanne, expects to win."
+
+"The mare'll be there, or thereabouts," asserted her owner; "I never
+knew a Lazzarone yet much good as a two-year-old. They're sulky brutes,
+like the old horse; and if Lucretia's beat, it won't be Lauzanne that'll
+turn the trick."
+
+The bell clanged imperiously at the Judges' Stand. Porter pulled out his
+watch and looked at it.
+
+"That's saddling," he remarked, laconically; "I must go and have a bit
+on the mare, and then take a look at her before she goes out."
+
+As Porter went down the steps his companion leaned over the rail and
+crooked his fingers at a thin-faced man with a blond mustache who had
+been keeping a corner of his eye on the box.
+
+"What are they making favorite, Lewis?" queried Danby, as the thin-faced
+man stood beside him.
+
+"Lucretia."
+
+"What's her price?"
+
+"Two to one."
+
+"What's second favorite?"
+
+"Lauzanne--five to two."
+
+"Porter tells me Lucretia is good business," said Danby, in a tentative
+tone.
+
+"Langdon thinks it's all over bar the shouting; he says Lauzanne
+outclasses his field," retorted Lewis.
+
+"Langdon's a betting man; Porter's an owner, and a good judge," objected
+Danby; "and he's got a good boy up, too, McKay," he added, slowly
+focusing his field glasses on the jockey board opposite the Stand.
+
+"Crooked as a dog's hind legs," snarled Lewis, biting viciously at his
+cigar.
+
+"Bob, it's damned hard to find a straight-legged dog," laughed Danby.
+"And when John Porter starts a horse, there's never anything doing.
+Here's six hundred; put' it on the mare--straight."
+
+As Lewis pushed his way into the shoving, seething, elbowing crowd in
+the betting ring, he was suddenly struck in the chest by something which
+apparently had the momentum of an eight-inch shell; but it was only John
+Porter, who, in breaking through the outer crust of the living mass, had
+been ejected with more speed than was of his own volition.
+
+Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who
+the unwitting offender was, and asked, "What are they doin' to the mare
+in the ring?"
+
+"Not much," answered his assailant, catching his breath; "there's a
+strong play on Langdon's horse, and if I didn't know my boy pretty well,
+and Lucretia better, I'd have weakened a bit. But she can't lose, she
+can't lose!" he repeated in the tone of a man who is reassuring himself.
+
+Lewis battled his way along till he stood in front of a bookmaker with
+a face cast very much on the lines of a Rubens' cherub; but the
+cherub-type ended abruptly with the plump frontispiece of "Jakey" Faust,
+the bookmaker. Lewis knew that. "If there's anythin' doin', I'm up
+against it here," he muttered to himself. "What's Lauzanne's price?" he
+asked, in an indifferent voice, for the bookmaker's assistant was busy
+changing the figures on his list.
+
+Faust pretended not to hear him.
+
+"Sure thing!" whispered Lewis to himself. Then aloud he repeated the
+question, touching the bookmaker on the elbow.
+
+The Cherub smiled blandly. "Not takin' any," he answered, nodding his
+head in the pleasant manner of a man who knows when he's got a good
+thing.
+
+"What's Lucretia?" persisted Lewis.
+
+"Oh! that's it, is it? I'll lay you two to one."
+
+The questioner edged away, shaking his head solemnly.
+
+"Here! five to two--how much--" but Lewis was gone.
+
+He burrowed like a mole most industriously, regardless of people's
+toes, their ribs, their dark looks, and even angry expressions of strong
+disapproval, and when he gained the green sward of the lawn, hurried to
+his friend's box.
+
+"Did you get it on?" queried the latter.
+
+"No; I don't like the look of it. Faust is holding out Lauzanne, and
+stretched me half a point about the mare. He and Langdon are in the same
+boat."
+
+"But that won't win the race," remonstrated Danby. "Lauzanne is a
+maiden, and Porter doesn't often make a mistake about any of his own
+stock."
+
+"I thought I'd come back and tell you," said Bob Lewis, apologetically.
+
+"And you did right; but if the mare wins, and I'm not on, after getting
+it straight from Porter, I'd want to go out and kick myself good and
+hard. But put it on straight and place; then if Lauzanne's the goods
+we'll save."
+
+Lewis was gone about four minutes.
+
+"You're on," he said, when he returned; "I've two hundred on the
+Chestnut for myself."
+
+"Lauzanne?"
+
+"It's booked that way; but I'm backin' the Trainer, Langdon. I went on
+my uppers two years ago backing horses; I'm following men now."
+
+"Bad business," objected his stout friend; "it's bad business to back
+anything that talks."
+
+When John Porter reached the saddling paddock, his brown mare, Lucretia,
+was being led around in a circle in the lower corner. As he walked down
+toward her his trainer, Andy Dixon, came forward a few paces to meet
+him.
+
+"Are they hammerin' Crane's horse in the ring, sir?" he asked, smoothing
+down the grass with the toe of one foot, watching this physical process
+with extreme interest.
+
+"Just what you'd notice," replied Porter. "Why?"
+
+"Well, I don't like the look of it a little bit. Here's this Lauzanne
+runs like a dog the last time out--last by the length of a street--and
+now I've got it pretty straight they're out for the stuff."
+
+"They'd a stable-boy up on him that time."
+
+"That's just it," cried Dixon. "Grant comes to me that day--you know
+Grant, he works the commission for Dick Langdon--and tells me to leave
+the horse alone; and to-day he comes and--" he hesitated.
+
+"And what?"
+
+"Tells me to go light on our mare."
+
+"Isn't Grant broke?" asked Porter, with seeming irrelevance.
+
+"He's close next it," answered the Trainer.
+
+"Aren't his friends that follow him all broke?"
+
+"A good many of them have their address in Queer Street."
+
+"Look here, Andy," said the owner, "there isn't a man with a horse in
+this stake that doesn't think he's going to win; and when it's all over
+we'll see Lucretia's number go up. Grant's a fool," he added, viciously.
+"Didn't he break Fisher-didn't he break every other man that ever stuck
+to him?"
+
+"It's not Grant at all," replied Dixon, rubbing the palms of his hands
+together thoughtfully--a way he had when he wished to concentrate in
+concrete form the result of some deep cogitation--"it's Langdon, an'
+he's several blocks away from an asylum."
+
+"Langdon makes mistakes too."
+
+"He cashes in often when he's credited with a mistake," retorted the
+other.
+
+"Well, I've played the little mare," asserted Porter.
+
+"Much, sir?" asked Dixon, solicitously.
+
+"All I can stand--and a little more," he added, falteringly; "I needed a
+win, a good win," he offered, in an explanatory voice. "I want to clear
+Ringwood--but never mind about that, Andy. The mare's well--ain't she?
+There can't be anything doing with McKay--we've only put him up a few
+times, but he seems all right."
+
+"I think we'll win," answered the Trainer; "I didn't get anythin'
+straight--just that there seemed a deuced strong tip on Lauzanne,
+considerin' that he'd never showed any form to warrant it. Yonder he is,
+sir, in number five--go and have a look at him."
+
+As John Porter walked across the paddock a horseman touched the fingers
+of his right hand to his cap. There was a half-concealed look of
+interest in the man's eye that Porter knew from experience meant
+something.
+
+"What do you know, Mike?" he asked, carelessly, only half halting in his
+stride.
+
+"Nottin' sir; but dere's somebody in de know dis trip. Yer mare's a good
+little filly, w'en she's right, but ye'r up against it."
+
+Porter stopped and looked at the horseman. He was Mike Gaynor, a
+trainer, and more than once Porter had stood his friend. Mike always had
+on hand three or four horses of inconceivable slowness, and uncertainty
+of wind and limb; consequently there was an ever-recurring inability to
+pay feed bills, so he had every chance to know just who was his friend
+and who was not, for he tried them most sorely.
+
+Porter knew all this quite well; also that in spite of Mike's chronic
+impecuniosity he was honest, and true as steel to a benefactor. He
+waited, feeling sure that Gaynor had something to tell.
+
+"There's a strong play on Lauzanne, ain't there, sir?"
+
+Porter nodded.
+
+"Sure t'ing! That Langdon's a crook. I knowed him when he was ridin' on
+freight cars; now he's a swell, though he's a long sprint from bein'
+a gentleman. I got de tip dat dere was a killin' on, an' I axed Dick
+Langdon if dere was anyt'ing doin'; an' Dick says to me, says he,
+puttin' hot' t'umbs up"--and Mike held both hands out horizontally with
+the thumbs stiff and vertical to illustrate this form of oath--"'there's
+nottin' doin', Mike,' says he. What d'ye t'ink of that, sir, an' me
+knowin' there was?" asked Mike, tragically.
+
+"It's the biggest tip that always falls down, Gaynor; and they've got to
+be pretty swift to beat Lucretia."
+
+"That filly's all right; she's worked out well enough to do up that
+field of stiffs. I ain't no rail bird, but I've hed me eye on her. But I
+ain't doin' no stunt about horses, Mister Porter; I'm talkin' about men.
+Th' filly's honest, and ye'r honest sir, but ye don't roide th' mare
+yerself, do ye?"
+
+"You think, Mike--" began Mr. Porter, questioningly; but Gaynor
+interrupted him with: "I don't think nothin', sir, an' I ain't sayin'
+nothin. I ain't never been before the Stewards yet for crooked work, or
+crooked talk; but there's a boy ridin' in dat bunch to-day w'at got six
+hundred for t'rowing me down once, see? S'elp me God! he pulled Blue
+Smoke to a standstill on me, knowin' that it would break me. That was at
+Coney Island, two years ago."
+
+"And you don't remember his name, I suppose, Mike?"
+
+"I don't remember not'in' but that I got it in th' neck. But ye keep yer
+eye open, sir. Ye t'ink that none of the b'ys would t'row ye down cause
+ye've been good to 'em; but some of 'em are that mean they'd steal th'
+sugar from a fly. I know 'em. I hears 'em talk, cause they don't mind
+me--t'ink I'm one of th' gang."
+
+"Thank you very much, Gaynor; I appreciate your kindly warning; but I
+hope you're mistaken, all the same," said Porter. Then he proceeded on
+his way toward stall five, in which was Lauzanne.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Porter?"
+
+It was Philip Crane, standing just outside of the stall, who thus
+addressed him. "Got something running today?" he continued, with vague
+innocence.
+
+Langdon, just inside the box, chuckled softly. Surely Crane was a past
+master in duplicity.
+
+"I'm starting Lucretia in this race," replied Honest John.
+
+"Oh!" Then Crane took Porter gently by the sleeve and drew him half
+within the stall. "Mr. Langdon, who trains a horse or two for me,
+says this one'll win;" and he indicated the big chestnut colt that the
+Trainer was binding tight to a light racing saddle. "You'd better have a
+bit on, Mr. Porter," Crane added.
+
+"Lucretia carries my money," answered Porter in loyalty.
+
+Langdon looked up, having cinched the girth tight, and took a step
+toward the two men.
+
+"Well, we both can't win," he said, half insolently; "an' I don't think
+there's anything out to-day'll beat Lauzanne."
+
+"That mare'll beat him," retorted Porter, curtly, nettled by the other's
+cocksureness.
+
+"I'll bet you one horse against the other, the winner to take both,"
+cried Langdon in a sneering, defiant tone.
+
+"I've made my bets," said Lucretia's owner, quietly.
+
+"I hear you had an offer of five thousand for your filly, Mr. Porter,"
+half queried Crane.
+
+"I did, and I refused it."
+
+"And here's the one that'll beat her to-day, an' I'll sell him for half
+that," asserted the Trainer, putting his hand on Lauzanne's neck.
+
+Exasperated by the persistent boastfulness of Langdon, Porter was
+angered into saying, "If he beats my mare, I'll give you that for him
+myself."
+
+"Done!" snapped Langdon. "I've said it, an' I'll stick to it."
+
+"I don't want the horse--" began Porter; but Langdon interrupted him.
+
+"Oh, if you want to crawl."
+
+"I never crawl," said Porter fiercely. "I don't want your horse, but
+just to show you what I think of your chance of winning, I'll give you
+two thousand and a half if you beat my mare, no matter what wins the
+race."
+
+"I think you'd better call this bargain off, Mr. Porter," remonstrated
+Crane.
+
+"Oh, the bargain will be off," answered John Porter; "if I'm any judge,
+Lauzanne's running his race right here in the stall."
+
+His practiced eye had summed up Lauzanne as chicken-hearted; the sweat
+was running in little streams down the big Chestnut's legs, and dripping
+from his belly into the drinking earth spit-spit, drip-drip; his head
+was high held in nervous apprehension; his lips twitched, his flanks
+trembled like wind-distressed water, and the white of his eye was
+showing ominously.
+
+Langdon cast a quick, significant, cautioning look at Crane as Porter
+spoke of the horse; then he said, "You're a fair judge, an' if you're
+right you get all the stuff an' no horse."
+
+"I stand to my bargain whatever happens," Porter retorted.
+
+At that instant the bugle sounded.
+
+"Get up, Westley," Langdon said to his jockey, "they're going out."
+
+As he lifted the boy to the saddle, the Trainer whispered a few concise
+directions.
+
+"Hold him steady at the post," he muttered; "I've got him a bit on edge
+to-day. Get off in front and stay there; he's feelin' good enough to
+leave the earth. This'll be a matter of a couple of hundred to you if
+you win."
+
+"All out! all out!" called the voice, of the paddock offcial. "Number
+one!" then, "Come on you, Wesltey! they're all out."
+
+The ten starters passed in stately procession from the green-swarded
+paddock through an open gate to the soft harrowed earth, gleaming
+pink-brown in the sunlight, of the course. How consciously beautiful
+the thoroughbreds looked! The long sweeping step; the supple bend of the
+fetlock as it gave like a wire spring under the weight of great broad
+quarters, all sinewy strength and tapered perfection; the stretch of
+gentle-curved neck, sweet-lined as a greyhound's, bearing a lean, bony
+head, set with two great jewels of eyes, in which were honesty and
+courage, and eager longing for the battle of strength and stamina, and
+stoutness of heart; even the nostrils, with a red transparency as of
+silk, spread and drank eagerly the warm summer air that was full of the
+perfume of new-growing clover and green pasture-land.
+
+Surely the spectacle of these lovely creatures, nearest to man in their
+thoughts and their desires, and superior in their honesty and truth, was
+a sight to gladden the hearts of kings. Of a great certainty it was a
+sport of kings; and also most certainly had it at times come into the
+hands of highway robbers.
+
+Some such bitter thought as this came into the heart of John Porter as
+he stood and watched his beautiful brown mare, Lucretia, trailing with
+stately step behind the others. He loved good horses with all the fervor
+of his own strong, simple, honest nature. Their walk was a delight to
+him, their roaring gallop a frenzy of eager sensation. There was nothing
+in the world he loved so well. Yes--his daughter Allis. But just now
+he was thinking of Lucretia--Lucretia and her rival, the golden-haired
+chestnut, Lauzanne.
+
+He passed through the narrow gate leading from the paddock to the Grand
+Stand. The gate keeper nodded pleasantly to him and said: "Hope
+you'll do the trick with the little mare, sir. I'm twenty years at the
+business, and I haven't got over my likin' for an honest horse and an
+honest owner yet."
+
+There was covert insinuation of suspicion, albeit a kindly one, in the
+man's voice. The very air was full of the taint of crookedness; else
+why should the official speak of honesty at all? Everyone knew that John
+Porter raced to win.
+
+He crossed the lawn and leaned against the course fence, to take a
+deciding look at the mare and the Chestnut as they circled past the
+stand in the little view-promenade which preceded the race.
+
+His trained eye told him that Lauzanne was a grand-looking horse; big,
+well-developed shoulders reached back toward the huge quarters until the
+small racing saddle almost covered the short back. What great promise of
+weight-carrying was there!
+
+He laughed a little at the irrelevance of this thought, for it was not a
+question of weight-carrying at all; two-year-olds at a hundred pounds
+in a sprint of only five furlongs. Speed was the great factor to be
+considered, and surely Lucretia outclassed the other in that way. The
+long, well-ribbed-up body, with just a trace of gauntness in the flank;
+the slim neck; the deep chest; the broad, flat canon bones, and the
+well-let-down hocks, giving a length of thigh like a greyhound's--and
+the thighs themselves, as John Porter looked at them under the tucked-up
+belly of the gentle mare, big, and strong, and full of a driving force
+that should make the others break a record to beat her.
+
+From the inquisition of the owner's study Lucretia stood forth
+triumphant; neither the Chestnut nor anything else in the race could
+beat her. And Jockey McKay--Porter raised his eyes involuntarily,
+seeking for some occult refutation of the implied dishonesty of the boy
+he had trusted. He found himself gazing straight into the small shifty
+eyes of Lucretia's midget rider, and such a hungry, wolfish look of
+mingled cunning and cupidity was there that Porter almost shuddered. The
+insinuations of Mike Gaynor, and the other things that pointed at a job
+being on, hadn't half the force of the dishonesty that was so apparent
+in the tell-tale look of the morally, irresponsible boy in whose hands
+he was so completely helpless. All the careful preparation of the mare,
+the economical saving, even to the self-denial of almost necessary
+things to the end that he might have funds to back her heavily when she
+ran; and the high trials she had given him when asked the question, and
+which had gladdened his heart and brought an exclamation of satisfaction
+from his phlegmatic trainer; the girlish interest of his daughter in
+the expected triumph--all these contingencies were as less than nothing
+should the boy, with the look of a demon in his eyes, not ride straight
+and honest.
+
+Even then it was not too late to ask the Stewards to set McKay down, but
+what proof had he to offer that there was anything wrong? The boy's good
+name would be blasted should he, John Porter, say at the last minute
+that he did not trust him; and perhaps the lad was innocent. Race people
+were ready to cry out that a jockey was fixed-that there was something
+wrong, when their own judgment was at fault and they lost.
+
+Suddenly Porter gave a cry of astonishment. "My God!" he muttered, "the
+boy has got spurs on. That'll set the mare clean crazy."
+
+He turned to Dixon, who was at his elbow: "Why did you let McKay put on
+the steels?"
+
+"I told him not to." "He's got them on."
+
+"They've got to come off," and the Trainer dashed up the steps to the
+Stewards. In two minutes he returned, a heavy frown on his face.
+
+"Well?" queried Porter.
+
+"I've made a mess of it," answered Dixon, sullenly. "It seems there's
+hints of a job on, an' the Stewards have got the wrong end of the
+stick."
+
+"They refused to let the mare go back to the paddock?" queried Porter.
+
+"Yes; an' one of them said that if trainers would stick closer to their
+horses, an' keep out of the bettin' ring, that the public'd get a better
+run for their money."
+
+"I'm sorry, Andy," said Porter, consolingly.
+
+"It's pretty tough on me, but it's worse on you, sir. That boy hadn't
+spurs when he weighed, an' there's the rankest kind of a job on, I'll
+take me oath."
+
+"We've got to stand to it, Andy."
+
+"That we have; we've just got to take our medicine like little men. Even
+if we make a break an' take McKay off there isn't another good boy left.
+If he jabs the little mare with them steels she'll go clean crazy."
+
+"It's my fault, Andy. I guess I've saved and petted her a bit too much.
+But she never needed spurs--she'd break her heart trying without them."
+
+
+"By God!" muttered Dixon as he went back to the paddock, "if the boy
+stops the mare he'll never get another mount, if I can help it. It's
+this sort of thing that kills the whole business of racing. Here's a
+stable that's straight from owner to exercise boy, and now likely to
+throw down the public and stand a chance of getting ruled off ourselves
+because of a gambling little thief that can spend the income of a
+prince. But after all it isn't his fault. I know who ought to be warned
+off if this race is fixed; but they won't be able to touch a hair of
+him; he's too damn slick. But his time'll come--God knows how many men
+he'll break in the meantime, though."
+
+As John Porter passed Danby's box going up into the stand, the latter
+leaned over in his chair, touched him on the arm and said, "Come in and
+take a seat."
+
+"I can't," replied the other man, "my daughter is up there somewhere."
+
+"I've played the mare," declared Danby, showing Porter a memo written in
+a small betting book.
+
+The latter started and a frown crossed his brown face.
+
+"I'm sorry--I'm afraid it's no cinch."
+
+"Five to two never is," laughed his friend. "But she's a right smart
+filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a
+fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him over to
+me, John."
+
+"The mare's good enough," said Porter, "and I've played her myself--a
+stiffish bit, too; but all the same, if you asked me now, I'd tell
+you to keep your money in your pocket. I must go," he added, his eye
+catching the flutter of a race card which was waving to him three seats
+up.
+
+"Here's a seat, Dad," cried the girl, cheeringly, lifting her coat from
+a chair she had kept for her father.
+
+For an instant John Porter forgot all about Lucretia and her troubles.
+The winsome little woman had the faculty of always making him forget his
+trials; she had to the fullest extent that power so often found in
+plain faces. Strictly speaking, she wasn't beautiful--any man would have
+passed that opinion if suddenly asked the question upon first seeing
+her. Doubt of the excellence of this judgment might have crept into his
+mind after he had felt the converting influence of the blue-gray eyes
+that were so much like her father's; in them was the most beautiful
+thing in the world, an undoubted evidence of truth and honesty and
+sympathy. She was small and slender, but no one had ever likened her
+to a flower. There was apparent sinewy strength and vigor in the small
+form. Her life, claimed by the open air, had its reward--the saddle is
+no cradle for weaklings. Bred in an atmosphere of racing, and surrounded
+as she had always been by thoroughbreds, Allis had grown up full of
+admiration for their honesty, and courage, and sweet temper.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+In John Porter's home horse racing had no debasing effect. If a man
+couldn't race squarely--run to win every time--he had better quit the
+game, Porter had always asserted. He raced honestly and bet openly,
+without cant and without hypocrisy; just as a financier might have
+traded in stocks in Wall Street; or a farmer might plant his crops and
+trust to the future and fair weather to yield him a harvest in return.
+
+So much of the racing life was on honor--so much of the working out of
+it was in the open, where purple-clovered fields gave rest, and health,
+and strength, that the home atmosphere was impregnated with moral truth,
+and courage, and frankness, in its influence on the girl's development.
+
+Every twist of her sinewy figure bore mute testimony to this; every
+glance from her wondrous eyes was an eloquent substantiating argument
+in favor of the life she affected. John Porter looked down at the small,
+rather dark, upturned face, and a half-amused smile of content came to
+his lips. "Did you see Lucretia?" he asked. "Isn't she a beauty? Hasn't
+Dixon got her in the pink of condition?"
+
+"I saw nothing else, father." She beckoned to him with her eyes, tipped
+her head forward, and whispered: "Those people behind us have backed
+Lauzanne. I think they're racing folks."
+
+The father smiled as an uncultured woman's voice from one row back
+jarred on his ear. Allis noticed the smile and its provocation, and
+said, speaking hastily, "I don't mean like you, father--"
+
+"Like us," he corrected.
+
+"Well, perhaps; they're more like betting or training people, though."
+She put her hand on his arm warningly, as a high-pitched falsetto
+penetrated the drone of their half-whispered words, saying, "I tell you
+Dick knows all about this Porter mare, Lucretia."
+
+"But I like her," a baritone voice answered. "She looks a rattlin'
+filly."
+
+"You'll dine off zwieback and by your lonely, Ned, if you play horses on
+their looks--"
+
+"Or women either," the baritone cut in.
+
+"You're a fair judge, Ned. But Dick told me to go the limit on Lauzanne,
+and to leave the filly alone."
+
+"On form Lucretia ought to win," the man persisted; "an' there's never
+anythin' doin' with Porter."
+
+"Perhaps not;" the unpleasant feminine voice sneered mockingly, with
+an ill-conditioned drawl on the "perhaps"; "but he doesn't ride his own
+mare, does he?"
+
+John Porter started. Again that distasteful expression fraught with
+distrust and insinuation. There was a strong evil odor of stephanotis
+wafted to his nostrils as the speaker shook her fan with impatient
+decision. The perfume affected him disagreeably; it was like the
+exhalation of some noisome drug; quite in keeping with the covert
+insinuation of her words that Dick, as she called him--it must be Dick
+Langdon, the trainer of Lauzanne, Porter mused--had given her advice
+based on a knowledge quite irrespective of the galloping powers of the
+two horses.
+
+"Did you hear that, father?" Allis whispered.
+
+He nodded his head.
+
+"What does it all mean?"
+
+"It means, girl," he said, slowly, "that all the trouble and pains I
+have taken over Lucretia since she was foaled, two years ago, and her
+dam, the old mare, Maid of Rome, died, even to raising the little filly
+on a bottle, and watching over her temper that it should not be ruined
+by brutal savages of stable-boys, whose one idea of a horse is that
+he must be clubbed into submission--that all the care taken in her
+training, and the money spent for her keep and entries goes for nothing
+in this race, if Jockey McKay is the rascal I fear he is."
+
+"You think some one has got at him, Dad?"
+
+Her father nodded again.
+
+"I wish I'd been a boy, so that I could have ridden Lucretia for you
+to-day," Allis exclaimed with sudden emphasis.
+
+"I almost wish you had, Little Woman; you'd have ridden straight
+anyway--there never was a crooked one of our blood."
+
+"I don't see why a jockey or anybody else should be dishonest--I'm sure
+it must take too much valuable time to cover up crooked ways."
+
+"Yes, you'd have made a great jock, Little Woman;" the father went on,
+musingly, as he watched the horses lining up for the start. "Men think
+if a boy is a featherweight, and tough as a Bowery loafer, he's sure
+to be a success in the saddle. That's what beats me--a boy of that sort
+wouldn't be trusted to carry a letter with ten dollars in it, and on the
+back of a good horse he's, piloting thousands. Unless a jockey has the
+instincts of a gentleman, naturally, he's almost certain to turn out a
+blackguard sooner or later, and throw down his owner. He'll have more
+temptations in a week to violate his trust than a bank clerk would have
+in a lifetime."
+
+"Is that why you put Alan in the bank, father?"
+
+Porter went on as though he had not heard the daughter's query. "To make
+a first-class jock, a boy must have nerves of steel, the courage of a
+bulldog, the self-controlling honesty of a monk. You've got all these
+right enough, Allis, only you're a girl, don't you see--just a good
+little woman," and he patted her hand affectionately.
+
+"They're off!" exclaimed the baritone.
+
+"Not this trip," objected the falsetto.
+
+"The spurs--the young fiend!" fiercely ejaculated John Porter.
+
+"What is it, father?"
+
+"The boy on Lucretia is jabbing her with the spurs, and she's cutting
+up."
+
+"That's the fourth false start," said Ned, the baritone. "I don't think
+much of your Lauzanne, he's like a crazy horse."
+
+Allis heard the woman's shrill voice, smothered to a hissing whisper,
+answer something. Two distinct words, "the hop," carried to her ears.
+There was a long-drawnout baritone, "Oh-h!" then, in the same key, "I
+knew Lauzanne was a sluggard, and couldn't make out why he was so frisky
+to-day."
+
+"Dick's got it down fine"--just audibly from the woman; "Lauzanne'll try
+right enough this time out."
+
+"The mare's actin' as if she'd a cup of tea, too," muttered her
+companion, Ned.
+
+This elicited a dry chuckle from the woman.
+
+Allis pinched her father's arm again, and looked up in his face
+inquiringly, as from the seat behind them the jumbled conversation came
+to their ears. Porter nodded his head understandingly, and frowned. The
+stephanotis was choking his nostrils, and an occasional word was filling
+his heart with confirmation of his suspicions.
+
+"I don't like it," he muttered to Allis. "They've had four breaks, and
+the mare's been left each time. The Chestnut's the worst actor I ever
+saw at the post. But I'm thinking he'll leave the race right there, the
+way he's cutting up."
+
+"My God!" he exclaimed in the next breath. He had startled the girl with
+the fierce emphasis he threw into the words; she sprang to her feet in
+excitement.
+
+A bell had clanged noisily, there was the shuffle of thousands of eager
+feet; a hoarse cry, "They're off!" went rolling from tier to tier, from
+seat to seat, to the topmost row of the huge stand.
+
+"Lauzanne is off with a flying lead of three lengths, and the mare is
+left absolutely-absolutely last. The boy whipped her about just as the
+flag fell." There was the dreary monotone of crushed hope in Porter's
+voice as he spoke.
+
+"Yes, we're out of it, Little Woman," he continued; and there was almost
+a tone of relief, of resignation. Suspense was gone; realization of the
+disaster seemed to have steadied his nerves again. Allis attempted to
+speak, but her low voice was hushed to a whisper by the exultant cries
+that were all about them.
+
+"Didn't I tell you--Lauzanne wins in a walk!" the falsetto voice was an
+exultant squeak of hilarious excitement.
+
+"You called the turn." Even Ned's baritone had risen to a false-keyed
+tenor; he was standing on his toes, peering over the heads of taller men
+in front.
+
+Allis brushed from her eyes the tears of sympathy that had welled into
+them, and, raising her voice, spoke bravely, clinging to the vain hope:
+"Lucretia is game, father--she may win yet--the race is not lost till
+they're past the post."
+
+Then her voice died away, and she kept pleading over and over in her
+heart, "Come on Lucretia--come on, brave little mare! Is she gaining,
+father--can you see?"
+
+"She'll never make it up," Porter replied, as he watched the jumble
+of red, and yellow, and black patterned into a trailing banner, which
+waved, and vibrated, and streamed in the glittering sunlight, a furlong
+down the Course--and the tail of it was his own blue, whitestarred
+jacket. In front, still a good two lengths in front, gleamed scarlet,
+like an evil eye, the all red of Lauzanne's colors.
+
+"Where is Lucretia, father?" the girl asked again, stretching her slight
+figure up in a vain endeavor to see over the shoulders of those in
+front.
+
+"She had an opening there," Porter replied, speaking his thoughts more
+than answering the girl, "but the boy pulled her into the bunch on the
+rail. He doesn't want to get through. Oh!" he exclaimed, as though some
+one had struck him in the face.
+
+"What's wrong? Has she--"
+
+"It's the Minstrel. His boy threw him fair across Lucretia, and knocked
+her to her knees." He lowered his glasses listlessly. "It's Lauzanne all
+the way, if he lasts out. He's dying fast though, and Westley's gone to
+the whip."
+
+He was looking through his glasses again. Though beaten, his racing
+blood was up. "If Lauzanne wins it will be Westley's riding; the Hanover
+colt, The Dutchman, is at his quarter. He'll beat him out, for the
+Hanovers are all game."
+
+"Come on you, Lauzanne!" Even the exotic stephanotis failed to
+obliterate the harsh, mercenary intensity of the feminine cry at the
+back of Allis.
+
+"He's beat!" a deep discordant voice groaned. "I knew he was a quitter;"
+the woman's companion was pessimistic.
+
+Like trees of a forest, swayed by strong compelling winds, the people
+rocked in excitement, tiptoed and craned eager necks, as they watched
+the magnificent struggle that was drawing to a climax in the stretch.
+Inch by inch the brave son of Hanover was creeping up on Lauzanne. How
+loosely the big Chestnut galloped--rolling like a drunken man in the
+hour of his distress. Close pressed to his neck, flat over his wither
+lay the intense form of his rider--a camel's hump--a part of the racing
+mechanism, unimpeding the weary horse in the masterly rigidity of his
+body and legs; but the arms, even the shoulders of the great jockey
+thrust his mount forward, always forward--forward at each stride; fairly
+lifting him, till the very lurches of Lauzanne carried him toward the
+goal. And at his girth raced the compact bay son of Hanover; galloping,
+galloping with a stout heart and eager reaching head; straining every
+sinew, and muscle, and nerve; in his eye the brave desire, not to be
+denied.
+
+Ah, gallant little bay! On his back was the offspring of unthinking
+parents--a pin-head. Perhaps the Evil One had ordained him to the
+completion of Langdon's villainy with Lauzanne. At the pinch his
+judgment had flown--he was become an instrument of torture; with whip
+and spur he was throwing away the race. Each time he raised his arm and
+lashed, his poor foolish body swayed in the saddle, and The Dutchman was
+checked.
+
+"Oh, if he would but sit still!" Porter cried, as he watched the equine
+battle.
+
+The stand mob clamored as though Nero sat there and lions had been
+loosed in the arena. The strange medley of cries smote on the ears of
+Allis. How like wild beasts they were, how like wolves! She closed her
+eyes, for she was weary of the struggle, and listened. Yes, they were
+wolves leaping at the throat of her father, and joying in the defeat of
+Lucretia. Deep-throated howls from full-chested wolves: "Come on you,
+Lauzanne! On, Westley, on! The Bay wins! The Dutchman--The Dutchman for
+a thousand!"
+
+"I'll take--"
+
+But the new voice was stilled into nothingness by the shrill,
+reawakening falsetto. "Go on, Westley! Lauzanne wins--wins--wins!" it
+seemed to repeat. Allis sank back into her seat. She knew it was all
+over. The shuffle of many feet hastening madly, the crash of eager heels
+down the wooden steps, a surging, pushing, as the wolf-pack blocked each
+passage in its thirstful rush for the gold it had won, told her that the
+race was over.
+
+No one knew which horse had won. Presently a quiet came over the mob
+like a lull in a storm. Silently they waited for the winning number to
+go up.
+
+"I believe it's a dead heat," said Porter; and Allis noted how calm
+and restful his voice sounded after the exultant babel of the
+hoarse-throated watchers.
+
+"Where was Lucretia, father?"
+
+"Third," he answered, laconically, schooling his voice to indifference.
+"I hope it's a dead heat, for if Lauzanne gets the verdict I've got to
+take him. I don't want him after that run; they made him a present of
+the race at the start, and he only just squeezed home."
+
+"Why must you take the horse, father, if you don't want him? I don't
+understand."
+
+"I suppose there's no law for it--I said I would, that's all. The whole
+thing is crooked though; they stole the race from Lucretia and planted
+me with a dope horse, and hanged if I don't feel like backing out. Let
+Langdon go before the Stewards about the sale if he dare."
+
+"Did you give your word that you'd buy the horse, father?"
+
+"I did; but it was a plant."
+
+"Then you'll take him, father. People say that John Porter's word is as
+good as his bond; and that sounds sweeter in my ears than if I were to
+hear them say that you were rich, or clever, or almost anything."
+
+"Lauzanne gets it!" called the eager grating voice behind them. "There
+go the numbers, Ned--three, five, ten; Lauzanne, The Dutchman, Lucretia.
+I knew it. Dick don't make no mistakes when he's out for blood."
+
+"He drew it a bit fine that time," growled Ned, still in opposition; "it
+was the closest sort of a shave."
+
+"Hurrah, Lauzanne!"
+
+Again there was more hurrying of feet as the Chestnut's backers who had
+waited in the stand for the Judge's decision, hurried down to the gold
+mart.
+
+"You'll take Lauzanne, father," Allis said, when the tumult had stilled;
+"it will come out right somehow--I know it will--he'll win again."
+
+John Porter stood irresolutely for a minute, not answering the girl,
+as though he were loath to go close to the contaminating influence that
+seemed part and parcel of Lauzanne, and which was stretching out to
+envelop him. He was thinking moodily that he had played against a man
+who used loaded dice, and had lost through his own rashness. He had
+staked so much on the race that the loss would cut cripplingly into his
+affairs.
+
+"I guess you're right, Allis," he said; "a man's got to keep his word,
+no matter what happens. I never owned a dope horse yet, and unless I'm
+mistaken this yellow skate is one to-day. I'll take him though, girl;
+but he'll get nothing but oats from me to make him gallop."
+
+Then Porter went resolutely down the steps, smothering in his heart the
+just rebellion that was tempting him to repudiate his bargain.
+
+As he reached the lawn, a lad swung eagerly up the steps, threw his eye
+inquiringly along row after row of seats until it stopped at Allis. Then
+he darted to her side.
+
+"Hello, Sis--been looking for you. Where's Dad?"
+
+"Gone to get Lauzanne."
+
+"Lauzanne!" and the boy's eyes that were exactly like her own, opened
+wide in astonishment.
+
+"Yes; father bought him."
+
+"The deuce! I say, Allis, that won't do. Don't you know there's
+something wrong about this race? I just saved myself. I backed the
+little mare for a V--then I heard something. This Langdon's a deuce of a
+queer fish, I can tell you. I wonder Crane has anything to do with him,
+for the Boss is straight as they make them."
+
+"Did you back Lauzanne then, Alan?"
+
+"You bet I did; quick, too; and was hunting all over for the gov'nor to
+tell him. You see, I know Langdon--he comes to the bank sometimes. He's
+that slick he'll hardly say 'Good-day,' for fear of giving something
+away."
+
+"Then how did you--how did people know there was something wrong?"
+
+"Oh, a woman, of course--she blabbed. I think she's Dick Langdon's
+sister, and--"
+
+"Hush-hh!" and Allis laid her hand on the boy's arm, indicating with her
+eyes the woman in the seat behind.
+
+"I'd better go and tell father--"
+
+"You needn't bother; he knows. It's a question of honor. Father said
+he'd buy the horse, and he's gone to make good."
+
+"I wouldn't; that sort of thing will break a man."
+
+"It's a good way to go broke, Alan. Perhaps we'd all be richer if it
+wasn't so strong in the Porter blood; but all the same, brother, you do
+just as father is doing to-day--always keep your word. I tell you
+what it is, boy"--and her face lighted up as she spoke--"father is a
+hero--that's what he is; he's just the biggest, bravest man ever lived.
+He couldn't do a mean act. How did you get away from the bank, Alan?"
+she said, changing the subject; "I didn't know you were coming to-day."
+
+"Mortimer was light, and took on my work. He's a good sort."
+
+"Does he bet?"
+
+The boy laughed. "Mortimer bet? That's rich. We call him 'Old Solemnity'
+in the bank; but he doesn't mean any harm by it--he just can't help it,
+that's all. If he had a stiff ruff about his neck, you could pose him
+for a picture of one of those old Dutch burgomasters."
+
+"He's doing your work, and you're making fun of him, boy."
+
+"You can't make fun of him, at him, or with him; he's a grave digger;
+but you can trust him."
+
+"That's better."
+
+"If I'd killed a man and needed a friend to help me out, I'd go straight
+to Mortimer; he's got that kind of eyes. Do you know why he's doing my
+work to-day?"
+
+"Because you're away, I suppose."
+
+"Because you recited that doggerel about The Run of Crusader."
+
+"Alan! I've never spoken to Mr. Mortimer."
+
+"That's why he choked the butcher the night of the concert--I mean--"
+
+"You're talking nonsense, Alan."
+
+"I'm not, I know when a man's interested. Hello. Blest if the Boss isn't
+coming this way--there's Crane. See, Allis? I've a notion to tell him
+that his trainer is a crook."
+
+"No, you won't, Alan--you're too young to gabble."
+
+Philip Crane had evidently intended going higher up in the stand, but
+his eye lighting on the brother and sister, he stopped, and turned in to
+where they were sitting.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Porter."
+
+Allis started. Was the stand possessed of unpleasant voices? There was
+a metallic ring in Crane's voice that affected her disagreeably. He was
+almost a stranger to her; she hardly remembered ever having spoken to
+him.
+
+He turned and nodded pleasantly to Alan, saying, "May I take this seat?
+I'm tired. The Cashier let you oft for the day, eh?" he continued. "Came
+up to see your father's mare run, I suppose--I'm deuced sorry she was
+beaten."
+
+"What are they waiting for--why have they taken the horses' numbers down
+again? Are they trying to steal the race from Lauzanne now?" It was the
+woman's voice behind them, petulantly exclaiming.
+
+Crane turned in his seat, looked over his shoulder, and raised his hat.
+
+"The impatient lady is my trainer's sister," he explained in a modulated
+tone to Allis. "A trainer is quite an autocrat, I assure you, and one
+must be very careful not to forget any of the obvious courtesies."
+
+Allis wondered why he should find it necessary to make any explanation
+at all.
+
+"I want to thank you, Miss Porter, for that reading about Crusader."
+
+Allis's eyes opened wide.
+
+"Yes, I was there," Crane added, answering the question that was in
+them.
+
+As he said this a man came hurriedly up the steps, spoke to a policeman
+on guard, and searched the faces with his eyes. Catching sight of Crane,
+he came quickly forward and whispered something in his ear.
+
+"Excuse me, I must go--I'm wanted," Crane said to Allis.
+
+As he turned, the Trainer's sister spoke to him.
+
+"What's the matter, Mr. Crane--there's something going on up in the
+Stewards' Stand?"
+
+"I fancy there's an objection, though I don't know anything about it,"
+he answered, as he went down the steps with the messenger.
+
+Allis breathed more freely when he had gone. Somehow his presence had
+oppressed her; perhaps it was the fierce stephanotis that came in
+clouds from the lady behind that smothered her senses. Crane had said
+nothing--just an ordinary compliment. Like an inspiration it came to the
+girl what had affected her so disagreeably in Crane--it was his eyes.
+They were hard, cold, glittering gray eyes, looking out from between
+partly closed eyelids. Allis could see them still. The lower lids cut
+straight across; it was as though the eyes were peeping at her over a
+stone wall.
+
+"What did I tell you about Crusader?" Alan said, triumphantly. "There's
+another."
+
+"Alan!"
+
+"I wondered why Mr. Crane was so deuced friendly; but there's nothing to
+get cross about, girl, he's a fine old chap, and got lots of wealth."
+
+He leaned forward till he was close to his sister's ear, and added, in
+a whisper, "Her ladyship behind, Belle Langdon, is trying to hook him.
+Phew!--but she's loud. But I'm off--I'm going to see what the row is
+about."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+When John Porter left the stand, the horses had just cantered back
+to weigh in. The jockeys, one after another, with upraised whip, had
+saluted the Judge, received his nod to dismount, pulled the saddles
+from their steeds, and, in Indian file, were passing over the scales.
+As Lucretia was led away, Porter turned into the paddock. He saw that
+Langdon was waiting for him.
+
+"Well, he won, just as I said he would," declared the latter; "you've
+got a good horse cheap. You'd ought to've had a bet down on him, an' won
+him out."
+
+"He won," answered Porter, looking straight into the other's shifty
+eyes, "but he's a long way from being a good horse--no dope horse is a
+good horse."
+
+"What're you givin' me?" demanded Langdon, angrily.
+
+"Just what every blackguard ought to have--the truth."
+
+"By God!" the Trainer began, in fierce blasphemy, but John Porter took
+a step nearer, and his gray eyes pierced the other man's soul until it
+shriveled like a dried leaf, and turned its anger into fear.
+
+"Oh, if you want to crawl--if you don't want to take Lauzanne--"
+
+But Porter again interrupted Langdon---"I said I'd take the horse, and
+I will; but don't think that you're fooling me, Mr. Langdon. You're a
+blackguard of the first water. Thank God, there are only a few parasites
+such as you are racing--it's creatures like you that give the sport a
+black eye. If I can only get at the bottom of what has been done to-day,
+you'll get ruled off, and you'll stay ruled off. Now turn Lauzanne over
+to Andy Dixon, and come into the Secretary's office, where I'll give you
+a check for him."
+
+"Well, we'll settle about the horse now, an' there'll be somethin'
+to settle between us, John Porter, at some other time and some other
+place," blustered Langdon, threateningly.
+
+Porter looked at him with a half-amused, half-tolerant expression on his
+square face, and said, speaking in a very dry convincing voice: "I guess
+the check will close out all deals between us; it will pay you to keep
+out of my way, I think."
+
+As they moved toward the Secretary's office, Porter was accosted by his
+trainer.
+
+"The Stewards want to speak to you, sir," said Dixon.
+
+"All right. Send a boy over to this man's stable for Lauzanne--I've
+bought him."
+
+The Trainer stared in amazement.
+
+"I'll give you the check when I come back," Porter continued, speaking
+to Langdon.
+
+"There's trouble on, sir," said Dixon, as they moved toward the
+Stewards' box.
+
+"There always is," commented Porter, dryly.
+
+"The Stewards think Lucretia didn't run up to her form. They've had me
+up, an' her jock, McKay, is there now. Starter Carson swears he couldn't
+get her away from the post--says McKay fair anchored the mare. He fined
+the boy fifty dollars at the start."
+
+"I think they've got the wrong pig by the ear--why don't they yank
+Langdon? he's at the bottom of it. It a pretty rich, Andy, isn't it?
+They hit me heavy over the race, and now they'd like to rule me off for
+that thief's work," and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the
+direction of Langdon.
+
+"Yes, racin's hell now," commented Dixon with laconic directness. "It
+seems just no use workin' over a good horse when any mut of a crook who
+is takin' a turn at plungin' can get at the boy. I believe Boston Bill's
+game of gettin' a straight boy to play, an' lettin' the horses go hang,
+is the proper racket."
+
+"Yes, a good boy is better than a good horse nowadays; but they're like
+North Poles--hard to come by."
+
+"Some mug give the Stewards a yarn that you'd bought Lauzanne, sir, an'
+sez that's why you didn't win with the mare."
+
+Porter stopped, and gasped in astonishment. What next?
+
+"You see," continued Dixon, apologetically, "I didn't know you was
+meanin' to buy that skate, so I says it was all a damned lie."
+
+"Things are mixed, Andy, ain't they?"
+
+"I didn't know, sir."
+
+"Of course not--I didn't mention it to you--it was all a fluke. But I
+don't blame you, Andy. I'll go and talk to the Stewards--they're all
+right; they only want to get at the truth of it."
+
+As Porter went up the steps of the Stewards' Stand, he felt how like a
+man mounting a scaffold he was, an innocent man condemned to be hanged
+for another's crime.
+
+The investigation had been brought about by a note one of the Stewards
+had received. The sender of the missive stated in it that he had backed
+Lucretia heavily, but had strong reasons for believing there was a
+job on. The backer was a reliable man and asked for a fair run for his
+money. The note had come too late--just as the horses were starting--to
+be of avail, except as a corroboration of the suspicious features of
+the race. Starter Carson's evidence as to McKay's handling of the mare
+coincided with the contents of the note. Then there was the fact of
+Porter's having bought Lauzanne. The Stewards did not know the actual
+circumstances of the sale, but had been told that Lucretia's owner had
+acquired the Chestnut before the race. Where all was suspicion, every
+trivial happening was laid hold of; and Alan's trifling bet on Lauzanne
+had been magnified into a heavy plunge--no doubt the father's money had
+been put up by the boy. A race course is like a household, everything is
+known, absolutely everything.
+
+Porter was aghast. Were all the Furies in league against him? He was
+more or less a believer in lucky and unlucky days, but he had never
+experienced anything quite so bad as this. He, the one innocent man in
+the transaction, having lost almost his last dollar, and having been
+saddled with a bad horse, was now accused of being the perpetrator
+of the villainy; and the insinuation was backed up by such a mass of
+circumstantial evidence. No wonder he flushed and stood silent, lost for
+words to express his indignation.
+
+"Speak up, Mr. Porter," said the Steward, kindly. "Those that lost on
+Lucretia are swearing the mare was pulled."
+
+"And they're right," blurted out Porter. "I know what the mare can do;
+she can make hacks of that bunch. She was stopped, and interfered with,
+and given all the worst of it from start to finish; but my money was
+burnt up with the public's. I never pulled a horse in my life, and I'm
+too old to begin now."
+
+"I believe that," declared the Steward, emphatically. "I've known you,
+John Porter, for forty years, man and boy, and there never was anything
+crooked. But we've got to clear this up. Racing isn't what it used to
+be--it's on the square now, and we want the public to understand that."
+
+"What does the boy say," asked Porter; "you've had him up?"
+
+"He says the mare was 'helped;' that she ran like a drunken man--swayed
+all over the course, and he couldn't pull her together at all."
+
+"Does he mean she was doped?"
+
+"You've guessed it," answered the Steward, laconically.
+
+"That's nonsense, sir; and he knows it. Why, the little mare is as sweet
+as a lamb, and as game a beast as ever looked through a bridle. Somebody
+got at the boy. I can prove by Dixon that Lucretia never had a grain of
+cocaine in her life--never even a bracer of whiskey--she doesn't need
+it; and as for the race, I hadn't a cent on Lauzanne."
+
+"But your son."
+
+"He had a small bet; I didn't know that, even, until they were running."
+
+"Did you tell him not to back Lucretia, for he did Lauzanne?"
+
+"I told him not to bet at all."
+
+"And you played the mare yourself?"
+
+For answer Porter showed the Steward his race programme, on which was
+written the wager he had made on Lucretia, and the bookmaker's name.
+
+"Ask Ullmer to bring his betting sheet," the Steward said to an
+assistant.
+
+On the sheet, opposite John Porter's badge number, was a bet, $10,000 to
+$4,000, in the Lucretia column.
+
+"Did this gentleman make that bet with you?" the Steward asked of
+Ullmer.
+
+"He carries the number; besides I know Mr. Porter, I remember laying it
+to him."
+
+"Thank you, that will do. Hit you pretty hard," he said, turning to
+Porter. "And you hadn't a saver on Lauzanne?"
+
+"Not a dollar."
+
+"What about your buying him--is there anything in that story?"
+
+Porter explained the purchase. The Steward nodded his head.
+
+"They seem to have been pretty sure of winning, those other people,"
+he commented; "but we can't do anything to them for winning; nor about
+selling you the horse, I fear; and as far as you're concerned, Lucretia
+was supposed to be trying. Who gave your jockey orders?"
+
+"Dixon. I don't interfere; he trains the horses."
+
+"We'd like to have Dixon up here again for a minute. I'm sorry we've
+had to trouble you, Mr. Porter; I can see there is not the slightest
+suspicion attaches to you."
+
+In answer to the Steward's query about the order to McKay, Dixon said:
+"I told McKay the boss had a big bet down, and to make no mistake--no
+Grand Stand finish for me. I told him to get to the front as soon as he
+could, and stay there, and win by as far as he liked. I got the office
+that there'd be somethin' doin' in the race, an' I told him to get out
+by himself."
+
+After Dixon was dismissed, the Stewards consulted for a minute, with the
+result that McKay was suspended for the balance of the meeting, pending
+a further investigation into his methods.
+
+* * * * * * * * * * *
+
+During the carpeting of Porter and Dixon, a sea of upturned faces,
+furrowed by lines of anxious interest, had surrounded the Judge's box.
+Wave on wave the living waters reached back over the grassed lawn to the
+betting ring. An indefinable feeling that something was wrong had crept
+into the minds of the waiting people, tense with excitement.
+
+As the horses had flashed past the post, and, after a brief wait for
+decision, Lauzanne's number had gone up, his backers had hastened
+eagerly to the money mart, and lined up in waiting rows behind the
+bookmakers' stands. There they waited, fighting their impatient souls
+into submission, for the brief wait would end in the acquiring of gold.
+Why did not the stentorian-voiced crier send through the ring the joyful
+cry of "All right!" The minutes went by, and the delay became an age.
+A whisper vibrated the throng, as a breeze stirs slender branches, that
+the winner had been disqualified--that there had been an objection.
+First one dropped out of line; then another; one by one, until all
+stood, an army of expectant speculators, waiting for the verdict that
+had its birthplace up in that tiny square building, the Stewards' Stand.
+
+"It's over the pulling of Lucretia," a man said, simply to relieve his
+strained feelings.
+
+"It was the most barefaced job I ever saw," declared another; "it's even
+betting the stable gets ruled off." He had backed Porter's mare, and was
+vindictive.
+
+"Not on your life," sneered a Tout, wolfishly; "a big owner always gets
+off. The jock'll get it in the neck if they've been caught."
+
+"Why don't they pay?" whined the fourth. "What's the pulling of the mare
+got to do with it? The best horse won." He was a backer of Lauzanne.
+
+"Bet yer life the bookies won't part till the numbers of the placed
+horses an' riders are up on that board again. They've run them down,
+don't you see?" chimed in the Tout.
+
+"I'll take two to one The Dutchman gets it," said a backer of that
+horse. "There's a job on, and they'll both get disqualified. Porter's
+kid won ten thousand over Lauzanne, and that's why they stiffened the
+mare."
+
+"That's what the Public are up against in this game," sneered the backer
+of Lucretia.
+
+"And the jock'll have to stand the shot; I know how it goes," asserted
+the Tout.
+
+"You ought to know," drawled Lauzanne's backer. The racing men within
+earshot smiled, for the Tout had been a jockey before his license had
+been taken away for crooked work.
+
+"Hello! here it comes," cried Lauzanne's backer, as a fat, red-faced man
+came swiftly down from the Stewards' Stand, ran to the betting ring, and
+pushing his way through the crowd, called with the roar of a gorilla:
+"Al-l-l right! Lauzanne, first! The Dutchman, second! Lucretia, third!
+They're al-l-l weighed in!"
+
+A Niagara of human beings poured from the lawn to the ring; they ran as
+though the course was on fire and they sought to escape.
+
+"What about Lucretia?" some one asked.
+
+"They've broke McKay," the red-faced crier answered; "suspended him."
+
+"What did I tell you?" sneered the Tout, maliciously; "it's the under
+dog gets the worst of it every time."
+
+* * * * * * * * * * *
+
+A Celt, is an outspoken man when the prod of his hot temper has loosened
+his tongue, and Mike Gaynor was a Celt in excess.
+
+The injustice that had come to his benefactor, John Porter, had stirred
+a tempest in his Irish soul. A fierce exclamation of profane wrath had
+gone up from him as he watched the bad start from over the paddock rail.
+
+A misguided retribution led Starter Carson to pass from the Judges'
+Stand after the race, along the narrow passage between the Club Stand
+and the course, to the paddock gate. There he met Mike, who forthwith
+set to flailing him.
+
+"Did ye notice a little mare called Lucretia in that race, Mr.
+Carson--did ye see anythin' av her at all down at the post?"
+
+Carson's eyes twinkled uneasily. Years of starting had taught him that
+self-control was nine out of ten rules which should govern the Starter's
+actions.
+
+"Was there anythin' th' mather wit' yer ancestor's eyes that ye come by,
+Mister Carson?"
+
+The Starter made answer with a smile of good-humored tolerance. But Mike
+was only warming up; the hot blood was stinging his quick brain, and his
+sharp tongue galloped on with unbridled irresponsibility. With the deep
+pathos of scorn he continued:
+
+"Ye'r Carson the Stharter--Mister Carson! S'help me, Bob! ye couldn't
+sthart a sthreet car down hill wit' bot' brakes off!"
+
+Carson ceased to smile; the smile had passed to other faces, the owners
+of which were listening with fiendish delight to the castigation.
+
+Some one touched Mike on the arm, saying, "Come over into the paddock,
+Gaynor; you're barkin' up the wrong tree." It was Dixon.
+
+"Bot' t'umbs up! This game's too tough fer me--I'll ship me plugs to
+Gravesend. Whin a straight man like Porther gets a deal av this kind."
+
+"Never mind, Mike," interrupted Dixon; "let it drop."
+
+Carson opened his lips to retort, then closed them tight, set his square
+jaw firmly, turned on his heel, and walked away.
+
+"What d' ye think av it, b'ys?" appealed Mike to the others.
+
+"You're wrong, Gaynor," declared a thin, tall, hawkfaced man, who was in
+his shirt sleeves; "my boy was in that run, and it isn't Carson's fault
+at all. It's dope, Mike. Lauzanne was fair crazy with it at the post;
+and McKay was dead to the world on the little mare--the Starter couldn't
+get him away."
+
+"That's right, Mike," added Dixon; "Carson fined the boy fifty, an' the
+Stewards set him down."
+
+"Is that straight goods?" asked Gaynor, losing confidence in the justice
+of his wordy assault.
+
+"Yes, you're wrong, Mike," they all asserted.
+
+In five minutes Gaynor had found Carson, and apologized with the full
+warmth of a penitent Irishman.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+For a week John Porter brooded over Lucretia's defeat, and, worse still,
+over the unjust suspicion of the unthinking public. Touched in its
+pocket, the public responded in unsavory references to Lucretia's race.
+Porter loved a good horse, and liked to see him win. The confidence
+of the public in his honesty was as great a reward as the stakes. The
+avowed principle of racing, that it improved the breed of horses, was
+but a silent sentiment with him. He believed in it, but not being rich,
+raced as a profession, honestly and squarely. He had asserted more than
+once that if he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But
+his income must be derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and
+just at this time he was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad
+luck; financially, he was in a hole; morally, he stood ill with the
+public.
+
+His reason told him that the ill-fortune could not last; he had one
+great little mare, good enough to win, an honest trainer--there the
+inventory stopped short; his stock in trade was incomplete--he had not a
+trusty jockey. In his dilemma he threshed it out with Dixon.
+
+"How's the mare doing, Andy?" he asked. "What did the race do to her?"
+
+"She never was better in her life," the Trainer answered, proudly. Then
+he added, to ease the troubled look that was in the gray eyes of his
+master, "She'll win next time out, sir--I'll gamble my shirt on that."
+
+"Not with another McKay up."
+
+"I think she's good enough for the 'Eclipse,' sir, dashed if I don't. I
+worked her the distance, and she shaded the time they made last year."
+
+"What's the use," said Porter, dejectedly; "where'll we get a boy?"
+
+"Oh, lots of the boys are straight."
+
+"I know that," Porter answered, "but all the straight ones are tied hand
+and foot to the big stables."
+
+"I've been thinkin' it over," hazarded Dixon, tentatively--"Boston
+Bill's got a good lad--there's none of them can put it over him, an' his
+boss ain't got nothin' in the 'Eclipse,' I know."
+
+"That means the same old game, Andy; we nurse the horse, get him into
+condition, place him where he can win, and then turn him over to a
+plunger and take the small end of the divide. Boston Bill would back her
+off the boards.
+
+"The stake'd mount up to seven or eight thousand, an' the win would
+square the little mare with the public."
+
+"And I'd do that, if I didn't land a dollar," said Porter. "Andy, it
+hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did
+giving up the money."
+
+The Trainer smiled. With him this was unusual; there was a popular
+superstition that he never smiled except when one of his horses won.
+But his heart expanded at Porter's words, for he, too, was fond of the
+little mare.
+
+Then Porter spoke again, abruptly, and fast, as though he feared he
+might change his mind: "They downed me last trip, Dixon--I guess I'm
+getting a bit slow in my paces; and you do just as you like--arrange
+with Boston Bill if you think it's good business. He makes a specialty
+of winning races--not pulling horses, and we need a win, too, I guess."
+
+"Thank you, sir. We'll land that stake; an' p'raps the sharp division'll
+take a tumble. I'll bet a dollar they'll go for The Dutchman--he ran a
+great race the other day, an' he's in the Eclipse--if they start him.
+Lurcetia's right on edge, she's lookin' for the key hole, an' may go
+back if we don't give her a race. We'd better get the money for the oat
+bill while it's in sight. She oughter be a long price in the bettin',
+too," continued Dixon, meditatively; "the public soon sour on a beaten
+horse. You'll have a chance to get even."
+
+"I don't like that part of it," muttered Porter; "I'm in the black books
+now. People have no reason at all--no sense; they've got it into their
+heads that dirty job was of my making, and if the filly starts at ten to
+one, and I win a bit, they'll howl."
+
+"You can't make a success of racin', sir, an' run your stable for the
+public--they don't pay the feed bill."
+
+"Perhaps you're right, Dixon," answered Porter.
+
+For immediate financial relief Porter knew that he must look to
+Lucretia--no other horse in his stable was ready to win; but more
+immediately he must arrange certain money matters with his banker, who
+was Philip Crane. To Porter, Crane had been a tolerant financier, taking
+the man's honesty liberally as a security; not but what Ringwood
+had been called upon as a tangible asset. So that day, following his
+conversation with Dixin, the master of Ringwood had an interview with
+his banker. It was natural that he should speak of his prospects--his
+hopes of winning the Eclipse with Lucretia, and, corroboratively,
+mention her good trial.
+
+"I think that's a good mare of yours, Mr. Porter," said Crane,
+sympathetically. "I only race, myself in a small way, just for the
+outdoor relaxation it gives me, you know, so I'm not much of a
+judge. The other horse you bought--the winner of the race, I mean,
+Lauzanne--will also help put you right, I should say."
+
+Porter hesitated, uneasily. He disliked to talk about a man behind his
+back, but he knew that Langdon trained for Crane, and longed to give
+the banker a friendly word of warning; he knew nothing of the latter's
+manipulation of the trainer.
+
+With a touch of rustic quaintness he said, with seeming irrelevance to
+the subject, "Have you ever picked wild strawberries in the fields, Mr.
+Crane?"
+
+"I have," answered the other man, showing no surprise at the break, for
+life in Brookfield had accustomed him to disjointed deals.
+
+"Did you ever notice that going down wind you could see the berries
+better?"
+
+Crane thought for a moment. "Yes, that's right; coming up wind the
+leaves hid them."
+
+"Just so," commented Porter; "and when a man's got a trainer he's nearly
+always working up wind with him."
+
+"The trainer hides things?" queried Crane.
+
+"Some do. But the outsiders walking down wind see the berries."
+
+And the Banker pondered for a minute, then he said, "Whose garden are
+the berries in, Mr. Porter, yours or mine?"
+
+"Well, you've always been a good friend of mine, Mr. Crane," Porter
+answered, evasively.
+
+"I see," said the other, meditatively; "I understand. I'm much obliged.
+If I thought for an instant that any trainer wasn't dealing perfectly
+straightforward with me, I'd have nothing more to do with him--nothing
+whatever."
+
+Crane sat looking through the open window at John Porter as the latter
+went down the street. About his thin-lipped, square-framed mouth hovered
+an expression that might have been a smile, or an intense look of
+interest, or a touch of avaricious ferocity. The gray eyes peeped over
+the wall of their lower lids, and in them, too, was the unfathomable
+something.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, as though Porter still stood beside him, "if Langdon
+tried to deceive me, I'd crush him. Poor old Porter with his story of
+the strawberries! If he were as clever as he is honest, he wouldn't have
+been stuck with a horse like Lauzanne. I told Langdon to get rid of that
+quitter, but I almost wish he'd found another buyer for him. The horse
+taint is pretty strong in that Porter blood. How the girl said that
+line,
+
+        'And a hush came over the clamorous mob;
+        Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing.'
+
+She's cleverer than her father."
+
+Crane sat for an hour. Porter had vanished from the landscape, but still
+the Banker's thoughts clung to his personality as though the peeping
+eyes saw nothing else.
+
+From the time of the first loan obtained upon Ringwood, Crane had
+coveted the place. It appealed to him with its elm-bordered, sweeping
+driveway, leading from gate to old colonial residence. Its thick-grassed
+fields and running water made it just the place for a man who tempered
+his passion for racing with common sense. And it would pass from
+Porter's hands right enough--Crane knew that. Porter might call it ill
+luck, but he, Crane the Banker, knew it was the lack of something, the
+inability to make money.
+
+"Made music to me on Crusader." Yes, that was it. With the Porters it
+was jingle of spurs, and stride of the horse. All very fine in theory,
+but racing, as he looked at it, was a question of proper odds, and many
+other things connected with the betting ring.
+
+Why did the girl, Allis, with her jingling verse creep into his mind.
+Perhaps it was because she was so different from the woman who was
+always steeped in stephanotis. Of the one there was only the memory
+of an unmodulated voice and oppressive perfume; in truth, of the other
+there was not much more--just a pair of big, blue-gray, honest
+eyes, that somehow stared at him fearlessly, and withal with a great
+sweetness.
+
+Crane suddenly chuckled in dry disapprobation of himself. Grotesquely
+enough, all at once he remembered that he was forty--that very day
+forty. He ran his hand over his waistcoat, dipped two fingers into the
+pocket and drew out a cigar. Ordinarily the face of an alabaster Buddha
+was mobile and full of expression compared with Crane's. His mind worked
+behind a mask, but it worked with the clean-cut precision of clockwork.
+When his thoughts had crystallized into a form of expression, Crane was
+very apt to be exactly right in his deductions.
+
+Save for the curling smoke that streamed lazily upward from his cigar
+one might have thought the banker fast asleep in his chair, so still he
+sat, while his mind labored with the quiescent velocity of a spinning
+top. He had won a big stake over Lauzanne's victory. The race had helped
+beggar Porter, and brought Ringwood nearer his covetous grasp. If Porter
+failed to win the Eclipse, his finances would be in a pitiable state; he
+might even have to sell his good filly Lucretia. That would be a golden
+opportunity.
+
+From desiring the farm, insensibly Crane drifted into coveting the mare.
+He fell to wondering whether The Dutchman might not beat Lucretia. A
+question of this sort was one of the few he discussed with Langdon.
+Crane had smoked his cigar out, had settled the trend of many things,
+and developed the routine for his chessmen.
+
+"I'll give Porter rope enough, in the way of funds, to tangle himself,
+and in the meantime I'll run up to New York and see what Langdon thinks
+about The Dutchman," was the shorthand record of his thoughts as he
+threw away the end of his cigar, took his hat, and passed out of the
+bank.
+
+That evening he talked with his trainer.
+
+"What should win the Eclipse, Langdon?" he asked.
+
+"Well, I don't know what'll start," began the Trainer, with diplomatic
+caution, running over in his mind the most likely twoyear-olds.
+
+"Would Porter's mare have a chance?"
+
+"I think she would. I hear somethin' about a trial she gave them good
+enough to win--if I could find out her time--Porter don't talk much, an'
+Andy Dixon's like a clam. There's a boy in the stable, Shandy, that I
+might pump--"
+
+"Don't bother, Mr. Langdon; I dislike prying into anybody's business."
+
+The Trainer stared, but he didn't know that Porter had told Crane all
+about the trial, and so the latter could afford to take a virtuous pose.
+
+"Has The Dutchman a look in?" continued Crane.
+
+"On his runnin' he has; he wasn't half fit, an' got as bad a ride as
+ever I see in my life. The race ought to be between 'em--I ain't seen no
+two-year-olds out to beat that pair."
+
+"If I thought The Dutchman would win I'd buy him. I like game horses,
+and men, too--that'll take the gaff and try."
+
+"I don't know as the owner'd sell him."
+
+"Do you remember the buying of Silver Foot, Langdon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He was a good horse."
+
+"The best handicap horse in the country, an' he was sold for a
+song--seven thousand."
+
+"Less than that, the first time," corrected Crane.
+
+"Yes, they stole him from old Walters; made him believe the horse was no
+good."
+
+"Just so," commented Crane; "I've heard that story," and his smooth,
+putty-like face remained blank and devoid of all meaning, as his eyes
+peered vacantly over their lower lids at the Trainer.
+
+Langdon waited for the other to continue, but the Banker seemed wrapped
+up in a retrospect of the Silver Foot deal.
+
+"I know Billy Smith, that trains The Dutchman," hazarded Langdon; "he's
+a boozer."
+
+"I'm glad of that--I mean, that you know Smith," declared Crane. "I
+happen to know the owner--his name is Baker. His racing is what might be
+called indiscriminate, and like men of that class he sometimes blunders
+upon a good horse without knowing it; and I doubt very much but that if
+he knew all about the other race--how bad Lauzanne really is; how the
+mare, Lucretia--well--got shut off, and couldn't get through her horses,
+say--of course his own trainer, Smith, would have to tell these things,
+you understand. In fact, if he knew the exact truth, he might take a
+reasonable offer for The Dutchman."
+
+Langdon nodded approvingly. He loved his subtle master; cards up his
+sleeves tingled his nerves, and loaded dice were a joy for evermore.
+
+Crane proceeded to unwind the silken cord. "Naturally Smith would hate
+to lose a fair horse out of his stable, and would, perhaps, attempt to
+thwart any deal; so I think you might remunerate him for his loss."
+
+"When Silver Foot was sold, they gave him a bad trial before the sale--"
+
+"I'm not interested in Silver Foot," interrupted Crane; "and I shouldn't
+like to have anything--well, I don't want my name associated with
+anything shady, you understand, Langdon? You are to buy The Dutchman as
+cheap as you can, and run him as your own horse in the Eclipse. I
+think Porter's mare will win it, so we needn't lose anything over The
+Dutchman."
+
+Langdon started. With all his racing finesse he was a babe. The smooth,
+complacent-faced man in front of him made him realize this.
+
+"But," he gasped, "there was a row over Lauzanne's race. If The Dutchman
+runs in my name, an' a lot o' mugs play him--it's dollars to doughnuts
+they will--an' he gets beat, there'll be a kick. I can't take no chances
+of bein' had up by the Stewards."
+
+"Wait a bit," replied Crane, calmly. "Supposing Porter's mare worked
+five and a half furlongs in 1.07, how would she go in the Eclipse?"
+
+"She'd win in a walk; unless The Dutchman was at his best when he might
+give her an argument."
+
+"Well, if I thought The Dutchman could beat the mare, I'd make him win,
+if he never carried the saddle again," declared Crane, almost fiercely.
+Then he interrupted himself, breaking off abruptly. Very seldom indeed
+it was that Crane gave expression to sentiment; his words were simply
+a motor for carrying the impact of his well-thought-out plans to the
+executive agents. "It will be doing Porter a good turn to-to-that is, if
+Lucretia wins. I fancy he needs a win. Bad racing luck will hardly stop
+the mare this time--not twice in succession you know, Langdon," and he
+looked meaningly at his jackal. "You buy The Dutchman, and be good to
+him."
+
+He laid marked emphasis on the words "be good to him." The trainer
+understood. It meant that he was to send The Dutchman to the post half
+fit, eased up in his work; then the horse could try, and the jockey
+could try, and, in spite of it all, the fast filly of Porter's would
+win, and his subtle master, Crane, would have turned the result to his
+own benefit. Why should he reason, or object, or counterplot, or do
+anything but just follow blindly the dictates of this past master in the
+oblique game he loved so well? Crane wanted The Dutchman because he was
+a good horse; he also wanted to have a heavy plunge on Lucretia; but
+with the son of Hanover in other hands the good thing might not come
+off. Somehow Langdon felt miserably inefficient in the presence
+of Crane--his self-respect suffered; the other man's mind was so
+overmastering, even to detail. The Trainer felt a sudden desire to
+right himself in Crane's estimation, give some evidence of ordinary
+intelligence, or capability to carry out his mission. "If The Dutchman's
+owner was made to think that the horse was likely to break down, throw a
+splint, or--"
+
+But Crane interrupted him in his quiet, masterful way, saying: "I know
+nothing of horse trading; I simply furnish the money, loan it to you, my
+dear Mr. Langdon, and you buy the animal in your own best way. You
+will pay for him with a check on my bank." No man could close out an
+interview so effectually as Crane. As Langdon slipped away as though he
+had been thrust bodily from the room, there was in his mind nothing but
+admiration of his master--the man who backed up his delicate diplomacy
+with liberal capital.
+
+In spite of what he had said to Langdon, there was little doubt in
+Crane's mind but that the son of Hanover was a better horse than
+Lucretia. A sanguine owner--even Porter was one at times--was so apt
+to overrate everything in his own stable, especially if he had bred the
+animal himself, as Porter had Lucretia. To buy The Dutchman and back him
+on such short ownership to beat Lucretia would have been the policy of
+a very ordinary mind indeed; he would simply be fencing, with rapiers of
+equal length, with John Porter.
+
+Crane had attained to his success by thinking a little deeper than other
+men, going a little beyond them in the carefulness of his plans. He
+knew intuitively--in fact Porter's unguarded conversation had suggested
+it--that Lucretia's owner meant to win himself out of his difficult
+position by backing the little mare heavily for the Eclipse, expecting
+to get his money on at good odds. By owning The Dutchman Crane could
+whipsaw the situation; forestall Porter in the betting by backing
+Lucretia down to a short price himself, and have Jakey Faust lay with
+a full vigor against the Hanover colt. He would thus confine Porter to
+stake money, and Ringwood would still lie chained to his bank by the
+golden links he had forged on the place.
+
+Almost insensibly, side by side with this weed of villainy there was
+growing in Crane's mind a most peculiar flower of sentiment, a love
+blossom. Strive as he would--though the apathy of his rebellion somewhat
+startled him--Crane could not obliterate from his thoughts the wondrous
+gray eyes of Allis Porter. Even after Langdon was gone, the atmosphere
+of the room still smirched by unholy underplay, thoughts of the girl
+came to Crane, jostling and elbowing the evil conceptions of his
+restless mind. Grotesquely incongruous as it was, Crane was actually
+in love; but the love flower, pure enough in itself, had rooted in
+marvelous ground. His passion was absolutely love, nothing else--love at
+first sight. But he was forty, and the methods of that many years must
+still govern his actions. Instinctively he felt that he must win the
+girl by diplomacy; and Crane's idea of diplomacy was to get a man
+irrevocably in his power. If John Porter were indebted to him beyond
+redemption, if he practically owned Ringwood, why should he not succeed
+with Allis? All his life he had gone on in just that way, breaking men,
+for broken men were beyond doubt but potter's clay.
+
+Langdon bought The Dutchman. What methods he employed Crane took no
+pains to discover; in fact, stopped Langdon abruptly when he sought to
+enlarge on the difficulties he had overcome in the purchase. The price
+was the only item that interested Crane--seven thousand dollars; that
+included everything--even the secret service money.
+
+The horse acquired, Crane had one more move to make; he sent for Jakey
+Faust, the Bookmaker. Faust and Crane had a reciprocal understanding.
+When the Bookmaker needed financial assistance he got it from the
+Banker; when Crane needed a missionary among the other bookmakers, Faust
+acted for him.
+
+"I want to back Lucretia for the 'Eclipse,"' Crane said to the
+bookmaker.
+
+"Lucretia," ejaculated Faust. "She'll have a rosy time beatin' Dutchy on
+their last race. They'll put a better boy up on the colt next time, an'
+he ought to come home all by himself" "Yes, a fairish sort of a jock
+will have the mount I think-Westley's a good enough boy."
+
+"Westley?" came wonderingly from Faust.
+
+"Yes; Langdon owns The Dutchman now."
+
+The Cherub pursed his fat round lips in a soft whistle of enlightenment.
+It had staggered him at first that Crane, for whose acumen he had a
+profound respect, should have intended such a hazardous gamble; now he
+saw light.
+
+"Then my book is full on the Porter mare?" he said, inquiringly. Crane
+nodded his head.
+
+"An' I lay against the Hanover colt?"
+
+Again Crane nodded.
+
+"It's not bookmaking," continued Faust.
+
+"I'm not a bookmaker," retorted Crane. "And see here, Faust," he
+continued, "when you've got my money on the Porter mare--when and how I
+leave to you--I want you to cut her price short--do you understand? Make
+her go to the post two to one on, if you can; don't forget that."
+
+"If the mare goes wrong?" objected Faust.
+
+"I don't think she will, but you needn't be in a hurry--there's plenty
+of time."
+
+"What's the limit?" asked Faust.
+
+"I want her backed down to even money at least," Crane answered;
+"probably ten thousand will do it. At any rate you can go that far."
+
+Then for a few days Langdon prepared his new horse for the Eclipse
+according to his idea of Crane's idea; and Dixon rounded Lucretia to
+in a manner that gladdened John Porter's heart. They knew nothing of
+anything but that Lucretia was very fit, that they had Boston Bill's
+jockey to ride straight and honest for them, and that with a good price
+against the mare they would recoup all their losses.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The day of the race when John Porter went into the betting ring he was
+confronted with even money about his mare. If he had read on the ring
+blackboard a notice that she was dead, he would not have been more
+astonished. He fought his way back to the open of the paddock without
+making a bet.
+
+"Even money!" ejaculated Dixon when his owner told him of the ring
+situation, "why, they're crazy. Who's doin' it?"
+
+"Not the public," declared Porter, "for I was there just after the first
+betting. It must be your friend Boston Bill that has forestalled us;
+nobody else knew of the mare's trial."
+
+"Not on your life, Mr. Porter; Boston plays fair. D'ye think he could
+live at this game if he threw down his friends?"
+
+"But nobody else even knew that we'd got a good boy for the mare."
+
+"It don't make no difference," curtly answered Dixon; "it's a million
+dollars to a penny whistle that Boston hasn't a dollar on yet. Our
+agreement was that he'd send in his commission when they were at the
+post, an' his word's like your own, sir, as solid as a judge's decision.
+It's some one else. There's somebody behind that damned Langdon--he's
+not clever enough for all this. D'you know that The Dutchman's runnin'
+in Langdon's name to-day?"
+
+"He is?'
+
+"Yes; he's supposed to own him."
+
+"But what's that got to do with Lucretia's price?"
+
+"It means that we're goin' to be allowed to win. The other day they
+laid against her, an' she got beat; to-day they're holdin' her out, so I
+suppose she'll win, but somebody else gets the benefit."
+
+"Gad! that Langdon must be a crook," muttered Porter. "I'm going to
+speak to my friend Crane about him again. No honest man should have
+horses in his stable."
+
+"That they shouldn't," asserted Dixon. "But we've got our own troubles
+to-day. From what I see of this thing, I'd rather back the mare at even
+money than I would if she was ten to one. If I'm any judge we're being
+buncoed good and plenty."
+
+"I think you're right Dixon. I'll go back and have a good bet down on
+her at evens."
+
+But in five minutes Lucretia's owner was back in the paddock with the
+cheerful intelligence that the mare was now three to five.
+
+"I wouldn't back 'Salvator' among a lot of cart horses at that price,"
+commented Dixon; "leave it alone, an' we'll go for the Stake. We're
+up against it good and hard; somebody seems to know more about our own
+horse than we do ourselves."
+
+"I think myself that the gods are angry with us, Dixon," said Porter
+moodily; "and the mortals will be furious, too, whichever way the race
+goes. They've backed the little mare at this short price no doubt, an'
+if she's beaten they'll howl; if she wins they'll swear my money was on
+to-day, and that I pulled her in her last race."
+
+John Porter sat in the Grand Stand with his usual companion, Allis,
+beside him, as The Dutchman, Lucretia, and the other Eclipse horses
+passed down the broad spread of the straight Eclipse course to the
+five-and-a-half furlong post.
+
+Though Porter had missed his betting, he intuitively felt the joy of an
+anticipated win. Only a true lover of thoroughbreds can know anything of
+the mad tumult of exultation that vibrates the heart strings as a
+loved horse comes bravely, gallantly out from the surging throng of his
+rivals, peerless and king of them all, stretching his tapered neck with
+eager striving, and goes onward, past the tribunal, first and alone, the
+leader, the winner, the one to be cheered of the many thousands wrought
+to frenzy by his conquest.
+
+"Surely Lucretia will win to-day, father--don't you think so?" asked
+Allis; "I feel that she will."
+
+"She's got a big weight up," he answered. "She's a little bit of a
+thing, and it may drive her into the ground coming down the Eclipse
+hill. I expect they'll come at a terrible jog, too; they don't often
+hang back on that course."
+
+Now that the betting worry and the labor of getting an honest boy were
+over--that the horses had gone to the post, and that the race rested
+with Lucretia herself, Porter's mind had relaxed. Even at the time
+of the very struggle itself tension had gone from him; he was in a
+meditative mood, and spoke on, weighing the chances, with Allis as
+audience.
+
+"But they'll have to move some to beat the little mare's trial--they'll
+make it in record time if they head her, I think."
+
+"Isn't the horse that beat her the other day in, too, father?"
+
+"The Dutchman-yes, but I fancy his owner is backing my mare."
+
+"Father!"
+
+"It wouldn't make any difference, though; she'd beat him anyway. If I'm
+any judge, he's short."
+
+Allis felt a rustle at her elbow as though someone wished to pass
+between the seats. The faintest whiff of stephanotis came to her on the
+lazy summer air. Involuntarily she turned her head and looked for the
+harsh-voiced woman who had been verily steeped in the aggressive odor
+the day of Lauzanne's triumph. Two burly men sat behind her. They,
+surely, did not affect perfumery. Higher up the stand her eye
+searched--four rows back sat the woman Alan had said was Langdon's
+sister. There was no forgetting the flamboyant brilliancy of her
+apparel. But the almost fancied zephyr of stephanotis was mingling
+with the rustle at her elbow; she turned her head inquiringly in that
+direction, and Crane's eyes peeped at her over the stone wall of their
+narrow lids. He was standing in the passage just beyond her father, now
+looking wistfully at the vacant seat on her left.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Porter--how are you, Porter? May I sit here with
+you and see Lucretia win?"
+
+"Come in, come in!" answered Porter, frankly.
+
+"I was sitting with some friends higher up in the stand, when I saw you
+here, and thought I'd like to make one of the victorious party."
+
+Allis knew who the friends were; the clinging touch of stephanotis had
+come with him. The discrepancy in Crane's sentiments jarred on Allis.
+That other day this woman had been his trainer's sister, recognized for
+politic purposes; to-day he had been sitting with "friends."
+
+Topping the rail in the distance, just where the course kinked a little
+to the left, Allis could see the blur of many colored silks in the
+sunlight. Then it seemed to flatten down almost level with the rail, as
+the horses broadened out to the earth in racing spread and the riders
+clung low to the galloping colts, for they had started.
+
+"There they come," said Crane. "What's in the lead, Porter?" Porter
+did not answer. A man could have counted thirty before he said, "The
+Dutchman's out in front--a length, and they're coming down the hill like
+mad."
+
+Allis felt her heart sink. Was it to be the same old story--was there
+always to be something in front of Lucretia?
+
+"Where is your mare?" Crane asked.
+
+His own glass lay idly in his lap. Though he spoke of the race, it was
+curious that his eyes were watching the play of Allis's features, as
+hope and Despair fought their old human-torturing fight over again in
+her heart.
+
+"Now she's coming!" Porter's voice made Crane jump; he had almost
+forgotten the race. To the close-calculating mind it had been settled
+days before. The Dutchman would not win, and Lucretia was the best of
+the others--why worry?
+
+They were standing now--everybody was.
+
+"Now, my beauty, they'll have to gallop," Porter was saying. They were
+close up, and Crane could see that Lucretia had got to the bay colt's
+head, and he was dying away. He smiled cynically as he watched Westley
+go to the whip on The Dutchman, with Lucretia half a length in the lead.
+Most certainly Langdon was an excellent trainer; The Dutchman was just
+good enough to last into second place, and Lucretia had won handily.
+What a win Crane had had!
+
+A little smothered gasp distracted his momentary thought of success,
+and, turning quickly, he saw tears in a pair of gray eyes that were set
+in a smiling face.
+
+"Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing," came back to Crane out of the
+poem Allis had recited.
+
+"I congratulate you, Miss Porter," he said, raising his hat. Then he
+turned, and held out his hand to her father, saying: "I'm glad you've
+won, Porter--I thought you would. The Dutchman quit when he was
+pinched."
+
+"It wasn't the colt's fault--he was short," said Porter. "I shouldn't
+like to have horses in that man's stable--he's too good a trainer for
+me."
+
+There was a marked emphasis on Porter's words; he was trying to give
+Crane a friendly hint.
+
+"You mean it's a case of strawberries?" questioned Crane.
+
+"Well I know it takes a lot of candles to find a lost quarter," remarked
+Porter, somewhat ambiguously. Then he added, "I must go down to thank
+Dixon; I guess this is his annual day for smiling."
+
+"I'm coming, too, father," said Allis; "I want to thank Lucretia, and
+give her a kiss, brave little sweetheart."
+
+After Allis and her father had left Crane, he sat for a minute or two
+waiting for the crowd of people that blocked the passageway after each
+race to filter down on the lawn. The way seemed clearer presently,
+and Crane fell in behind a knot of loud-talking men. The two of large
+proportions who had sat behind Allis, were like huge gate posts jammed
+there in the narrow way. As he moved along slowly he presently had
+knowledge of a presence at his side--a familiar presence. Raising his
+eyes from a contemplation of the heels in front of him, he saw Belle
+Langdon. She nodded with patronizing freedom.
+
+"I lost you," she said.
+
+"I was sitting with some friends here," he explained.
+
+"Yes, I saw her," she commented pointedly.
+
+At that instant one of the stout men in front said, with a bear's snarl,
+"Well that's the worst ever; I've seen some jobs in my time, but this
+puts it over anything yet."
+
+"Didn't you back the little mare?" a thin voice squealed. It was the
+'Pout.
+
+"Back nothin'! The last time out she couldn't untrack herself; an' today
+she comes, without any pull in the weight, and wins in a walk from The
+Dutchman; and didn't he beat her just as easy the other day?"
+
+Belle Langdon looked into Crane's face, and her eyes were charged with
+a look of reciprocal meaning. Crane winched. How aggressively obnoxious
+this half-tutored girl, mistress of many gay frocks, could make herself!
+There was an implied crime-partnership in her glance which revolted him.
+Dick Langdon must have talked in his own home. Crane's conscience--well,
+he hardly had one perhaps, at least it was always subevident; to put
+it in another way, the retrospect of his manipulated diplomacy never
+bothered him; but this gratuitous sharing in his evil triumph was
+disquieting. The malicious glitter of the girl's small black eyes
+contrasted strongly with the honest, unaffected look that was forever in
+the big tranquil eyes of Allis.
+
+They were just at the head of the steps, and the Tout was saying to the
+fat expostulator: "I could have put you next; I steered a big bettor
+on--he won a thousand over the mare. I saw Boston's betting man havin'
+an old-time play, an' I knew it was a lead-pipe cinch. He's a sure thing
+bettor, he is; odds don't make no difference to him, the shorter the
+better--that's when his own boy's got the mount."
+
+"It's all right to be wise after the race," grunted the fat man.
+
+"G'wan! the stable didn't have a penny on Lucretia last time; an' what
+do you suppose made her favorite to-day?" queried the Tout, derisively.
+"It took a bar'l of money," he continued, full of his own logical
+deductions, "an' I'll bet Porter cleaned up twenty thousand. He's a
+pretty slick cove, is old 'Honest John,' if you ask me."
+
+The girl at Crane's side cackled a laugh. "He's funny, isn't he?" she
+said, nodding her big plumed hat in the direction of the man-group.
+
+"He's a talkative fool!" muttered the Banker, shortly. "The steps are
+clear on the other side, Miss Langdon, you can get down there. I've got
+to go into the paddock; you'll excuse me."
+
+Being vicious for the fun of the thing had never appealed to Crane; he
+raced as he did everything else--to win. If other men suffered, that
+was the play of fate. He never talked about these things himself, almost
+disliked to think of them. He turned his back on Belle Langdon and went
+down the right-hand steps. On the grass sward at the bottom he stopped
+for an instant to look across at the jockey board.
+
+Three men had just came out of the refreshment bar under the stand. They
+were possessed of many things; gold of the bookmakers in their pockets,
+and it's ever-attendant exhilaration in their hearts. One of them
+had cracked a bottle of wine at the bar, as tribute to the exceeding
+swiftness of Lucretia, for he had won plentifully. At that particular
+stage there was nothing left but to talk it over, and they talked.
+Crane, avaricious, unhesitating in his fighting, devoid of sympathy, was
+not of the eavesdropping class, but as he stood there he was as much
+a part of the other men's conversation as though he had been a fourth
+member of the brotherhood.
+
+"I tell you none of these trainers ain't in it with a gentleman
+owner--when he takes to racin'. When a man of brains takes to runnin'
+horses as a profesh, he's gen'rally a Jim Dandy." It was he of the
+wine-opening who let fall these words of wise value.
+
+"D'you mean Porter, Jim?" asked number two of the trio.
+
+"Maybe that's his name. An' he put it all over Mister Langdon this
+trip."
+
+"As how?" queried the other.
+
+"Last time he runs his mare she's got corns in her feet the whole
+journey, an' all the time he owns the winner, Lauzanne, see?--buys him
+before they go out. Then Langdon thinks The Dutchman's the goods, an'
+buys him at a fancy price--gives a bale of long goods for him--I've got
+it straight that he parted with fifteen thousand. Then the gentleman
+owner, Honest John, turns the trick with Lucretia, an' makes The
+Dutchman look like a sellin' plater."
+
+"I guess Langdon'll feel pretty sick," hazarded number three.
+
+"I'd been watchin' the game," continued the wine man, "an' soon's I saw
+a move to-day from the wise guys in the ring, I plumped for the mare
+'toot sweet."'
+
+What an extraordinary thing manipulation was, Crane mused, as he
+listened; also how considerable of an ass the public was in its
+theoretical wisdom.
+
+Then the three men drifted away to follow some new toy balloon of
+erratic possibilities, and Crane wound through the narrow passage which
+led to the paddock. There he encountered Langdon.
+
+"He didn't run a very good horse, sir," began the Trainer.
+
+"I thought otherwise," replied Crane, measuring the immediate vicinity
+of listeners.
+
+"I had to draw it a bit fine," declared Langdon, with apologetic
+remonstrance.
+
+"Running second is always bad business, except in a selling race,"
+retorted his master.
+
+"I've got to think of myself," growled Langdon. "If he'd been beat off,
+there'd been trouble; the Stewards have got the other race in their crop
+a bit yet."
+
+"I'm not blaming you, Langdon, only I was just a trifle afraid that you
+were going to beat Porter's mare. He's a friend of mine, and needed a
+win badly. I'm not exactly his father confessor, but I'm his banker,
+which amounts to pretty much the same thing."
+
+"What about the horse, sir," asked the Trainer.
+
+"We'll see later on. Let him go easy for the present."
+
+"I wonder what he meant by that," Langdon mused to himself, as Crane
+moved away. "He don't make nobody a present of a race for love."
+Suddenly he stumbled upon a solution of the enigma. "Well, I'm damned
+if that wasn't slick; he give me the straight tip to leave Porter to
+him--to let him do the plannin'; I see."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Porter was an easy man with his horses. Though he could not afford,
+because of his needs, to work out his theory that two-year-olds should
+not be raced, yet he utilized it as far as possible by running them at
+longer intervals than was general.
+
+"I'll start the little mare about once more this season," he told Dixon.
+"The babes can't cut teeth, and grow, and fight it out in punishing
+races on dusty hay and hard-shelled oats, when they ought to be picking
+grass in an open field. She's too good a beast to do up in her young
+days. The Assassins made good three-year-olds, and the little mare's
+dam, Maid of Rome, wasn't much her first year out--only won once--but as
+a three-year-old she won three out of four starts, and the fourth year
+never lost a race. Lucretia ought to be a great mare next year if I lay
+her by early this season. She's in a couple of stakes at Gravesend and
+Sheepshead, and we'll just fit her into the softest spot."
+
+"What about Lauzanne?" asked the Trainer, "I'm afraid he's a bad horse."
+
+"How is he doing?"
+
+"He's stale. He's a bad doer--doesn't clean up his oats, an' mopes."
+
+"I guess that killing finish with The Dutchman took the life out of him.
+That sort of thing often settles a soft-hearted horse for all time."
+
+"I don't think it was the race, sir," Dixon replied; "they just pumped
+the cocaine into him till he was fair blind drunk; he must a' swallowed
+the bottle. I give him a ball, a bran mash, and Lord knows what all, an'
+the poison's workin' out of him. He's all breakin' out in lumps; you'd
+think he'd been stung by bees."
+
+"I never heard of such a thing," commented Porter. "A man that would
+dope a two-year-old ought to be ruled off, sure."
+
+"I think you oughter make a kick, sir," said Dixon, hesitatingly.
+
+"I don't. When I squeal, Andy, it'll be when there's nothing but
+the voice left. I bought a horse from a man once just as he stood.
+I happened to know the horse, and said I didn't want any
+inspection--didn't want to see him, but bought him, as I say, just as
+he stood. When I went to the stable to get him he wasn't worth much,
+Andy--he was dead. Perhaps I might have made a kick about his not
+standing up, but I didn't."
+
+"Well, sir, I'm thinkin' Lauzanne's a deuced sight worse'n a dead horse;
+he'll cost more tryin' to win with him."
+
+"I dare say you're right, but he can gallop a bit."
+
+"When he's primed."
+
+"No dope for me, Andy. I never ran a dope horse and never will--I'm too
+fond of them to poison them."
+
+"I'll freshen him up a bit, sir, and we'll give him a try in a day or
+two. Would you mind puttin' him in a sellin' race?--he cost a bit."
+
+"He couldn't win anything else, and if anybody wants to claim him they
+can."
+
+"I thought of starting Diablo in that mile handicap; he's in pretty
+light. He's about all we've got ready."
+
+"All right, Dixon," Porter replied. "It may be that we've broke our bad
+luck with the little mare."
+
+They were standing in the paddock during this conversation. It was in
+the forenoon; Dixon had come over to the Secretary's office to see about
+some entries before twelve o'clock. When the Trainer had finished his
+business, the two men walked across the course and infield to Stable 12,
+where Dixon had his horses. As they passed over the "Withers Course," as
+the circular track was called, Dixon pointed to the dip near the lower
+far turn.
+
+"It's a deuced funny thing," he said, speaking reminiscently, "but that
+little hollow there settles more horses than the last fifty yards of
+the finish; it seems to make the soft ones remember that they're runnin'
+when they get that change, an' they stop. I bet Diablo'll quit right
+there, he's done it three or four times."
+
+"He was the making of a great horse as a two-year-old, wasn't he, Andy?"
+
+"They paid a long price for him, if that's any line; but I think he
+never was no good. It don't matter how fast a horse is if he won't try."
+
+"I've an idea Diablo'll be a good horse yet," mused Porter. "You can't
+make a slow horse gallop, but there's a chance of curing a horse's
+temper by kind treatment. I've noticed that a squealing pig generally
+runs like the devil when he takes it into his head."
+
+"Diablo's a squealing pig if there ever was one," growled Dixon.
+
+They reached the track stable, and, as if by a mutual instinct, the two
+men walked on till they stood in front of Lauzanne's stall.
+
+"He's a good enough looker, ain't he?" commented Dixon, as he dipped
+under the door bar, went into the stall, and turned the horse about.
+"He's the picture of his old sire, Lazzarone," he continued, looking the
+horse over critically; "an' a damned sight bigger rogue, though the
+old one was bad enough. Lazzarone won the Suburban with blinkers on his
+head, bandages on his legs, an' God knows what in his stomach. He was
+second in the Brooklyn that same year. I've always heard he was a mule,
+an' I guess this one got it all, an' none of the gallopin'."
+
+"How does he work with the others?" queried Porter.
+
+"Runs a bit, an' then cuts it--won't try a yard. Of course he's sick
+from the dope, an' the others are a bit fast for him. If we put him in a
+sellin' race, cheap, he'd have a light weight, an' might do better."
+
+Porter walked on to Lucretia's stall, and the trainer continued in a
+monologue to Lauzanne: "You big slob! you're a counterfeit, if there
+ever was one. But I'll stand you a drink just to get rid of you; I'll
+put a bottle of whisky inside of your vest day after to-morrow, an' if
+you win p'raps somebody'll buy you."
+
+Lauzanne did not answer-it's a way horses have. It is doubtful if his
+mind quite grasped the situation, even. That neither Dixon, nor
+Langdon, nor the jockey boys understood him he knew--not clearly,
+but approximately enough to increase his stubbornness, to rouse his
+resentment. They had not even studied out the pathology of his descent
+sufficiently well to give him a fair show, to train him intelligently.
+They remembered that his sire, Lazzarone, had a bad temper; but they
+forgot that he was a stayer, not 'given to sprinting. Even Lauzanne's
+dam, Bric-a-brac, was fond of a long route, was better at a
+mile-and-a-half than five furlongs.
+
+Lauzanne knew what had come to him of genealogy, not in his mind so
+much as in his muscles. They were strong but sluggish, not active but
+non-tiring. Langdon had raced Lauzanne with sprinting colts, and when
+they ran away from him at the start he had been unequal to the task of
+overhauling them in the short two-year-old run of half-a-mile. Then the
+wise man had said that Lauzanne's courage was at fault; the jockeys
+had called it laziness, and applied the whip. And out of all this
+uselessness, this unthinking philosophy, the colt had come with a soured
+temper, a broken belief in his masters--"Lauzanne the Despised."
+
+Porter's trust that his ill luck had been changed by a win was a faith
+of short life, for Diablo was most emphatically beaten in his race.
+
+And then came the day of forlorn hope, the day of Lauzanne's disgrace,
+inasmuch as it de-graduated him into the selling-platter class.
+
+Bad horse as Langdon knew Lauzanne to be, it occurred to him that Porter
+had planned a clever coup. He had an interview with Crane over the
+subject, but his master did not at all share the Trainer's belief.
+
+"What price would Lucretia, or The Dutchman, be in with the same lot?"
+Langdon asked, argumentatively.
+
+"About one to ten," Crane replied. "But the Chestnut's beating them had
+no bearing on this race. From what I see of Mr. Dixon, I don't at all
+class him with you as a trainer--he hasn't the same resource."
+
+Langdon stood silent, sullenly turning over in his mind this doubtful
+compliment.
+
+"I'm not sure," continued the Banker, "but that having stuck Porter with
+Lauzanne, you shouldn't give him a hint about--well, as to what course
+of preparation would make Lauzanne win a race for him. The ordinary diet
+of oats is hardly stimulating enough for such a sluggish animal."
+
+Langdon frowned. If Crane had not been quite so strong, quite so full of
+unexpressed power, he would have rebelled at the assertion that he had
+stuck Porter; but he answered, and his voice struggled between asperity
+and deprecation, "There ain't no call for me to give that stable any
+pointers; Porter put it to me pretty straight that the horse had been
+helped."
+
+"And what did you say?" blandly inquired Crane.
+
+"Told him to go to hell."
+
+This wasn't exactly truthful as we remember the interview, but its
+terseness appealed to Crane, and he smiled as he said: "Porter probably
+won't take your advice, Langdon; he's stubborn enough at times. And even
+if he does know that--that--Lauzanne' requires special treatment, he
+won't indulge him--he's got a lot of old-fashioned ideas about racing.
+So you see Lauzanne is a bad betting proposition."
+
+After Langdon had left Crane's thoughts dwelt on the subject they had
+just discussed.
+
+"From a backer's point of view Lauzanne is certainly bad business," he
+mused; "but the public will reason just as Langdon does. And what's bad
+for the backers is good for the layers; I must see Faust."
+
+"You had better make a book to beat Lauzanne," Crane said to Jakey
+Faust, just before business had commenced in the ring that afternoon.
+
+The Cherub stared in astonishment; his eyes opened wide. That was
+nearly the limit of his fat little face's expression, no matter what the
+occasion.
+
+"You don't own him now, do you, sir?" he blurted out, with unthinking
+candor.
+
+"I do not."
+
+"He's dropped into a soft spot--he rates best in the percentage card."
+
+"Figures sometimes lie," commented Crane.
+
+"Every handicapper tips him to win."
+
+"They're all broke because of their knowledge."
+
+"The books'll mark him up first choice."
+
+"That's why it will be worth while playing the field to beat him."
+
+"He's in with a gang of muts to-day, an' he beat some cracker-jacks last
+time out."
+
+"You were hypnotized that day, Mr. Faust; so was the Judge. Lauzanne
+didn't beat anything."
+
+"Didn't beat--what the hell--didn't the Chestnut get the verdict?"
+
+"He did; but--" and Crane looked at Faust, with patient toleration of
+his lack of perception.
+
+The Cherub waited for an explanation of these contradictory remarks. But
+he might have waited indefinitely--Crane had quite finished. The Cherub
+raised his little round eyes, that were like glass alleys, green and red
+and blue-streaked, to the other's face inquiringly, and encountered a
+pair of penetrating orbs peering at him over some sort of a mask--the
+face that sustained the eyes was certainly a mask--as expressionless.
+Then it came to Jakey Faust that there was nothing left to do but fill
+the Lauzanne column in his book with the many bets that would come his
+way and make much money.
+
+Crane watched Lauzanne go lazily, sluggishly down to the post for
+his race. He knew the horse's moods; the walk of the Chestnut was the
+indifferent stroll of a horse that is thinking only of his dinner.
+
+"They've given him nothing," the Banker muttered to himself; "the
+heavy-headed brute won't try a yard. But he'll fight the boy when he
+tries to ride him out."
+
+The whisky that Dixon had surreptitiously given Lauzanne had been as
+inefficacious as so much ginger beer; and in the race Lauzanne drew
+back out of the bustle and clash of the striving horses as quickly as
+he could. In vain his jockey used whip and spur; Lauzanne simply put his
+ears back, switched his tail, and loafed along, a dozen lengths behind
+his field.
+
+In the straight he made up a little of the lost ground, but he was
+securely out of the money at the finish. Fate still sat and threw the
+dice as he had for many moons--a deuce for John Porter, and a six for
+Philip Crane.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+It was late autumn; the legitimate racing season had closed. In August
+Porter had taken his horses back to Ringwood for the winter.
+
+When a man strives against Fate, when realization laughs mockingly
+at his expectations, there comes to him a time when he longs for a
+breathing spell, when he knows that he must rest, and wait until the
+wheel of life, slow-turning, has passed a little through the groove
+of his existence. John Porter had been beaten down at every point.
+Disastrous years come to all men, whether they race horses or point the
+truthful way, and this year had been but a series of disappointments to
+the master of Ringwood. After Lucretia's win in the Eclipse, Porter
+did not land another race. Lucretia caught cold and went off. He tried
+Lauzanne twice again, but the Chestnut seemed thoroughly soured. Now
+he was back at Ringwood, a dark cloud of indebtedness hanging over
+the beautiful place, and prospect of relief very shadowy. If Lucretia
+wintered well and grew big and strong she might extricate him from
+his difficulties by winning one or two of the big races the following
+summer. About any of the other horses there was not even this much of
+promise.
+
+Thoroughly distrusting Lauzanne, embittered by his cowardice, Porter
+had given him away--but to Allis. Strangely enough, the girl had taken
+a strong liking to the son of Lazzarone; it may have been because of
+the feeling that she was indirectly responsible for his presence
+at Ringwood. Allis Porter's perceptions had been developed to an
+extraordinary degree. All her life she had lived surrounded by
+thoroughbreds, and her sensitive nature went out to them, in their
+courage and loyalty, in a manner quite beyond possibility in a
+practical, routine-following horseman. To her they were almost human;
+the play of their minds was as attractive and interesting as the
+development of their muscles was to a trainer. When the stable had been
+taken back to Ringwood, she had asked for Lauzanne as a riding horse.
+
+"I'm going to give him away," her father had replied; "I can't sell
+him--nobody would buy a brute with such a reputation." This word brought
+to Porter's mind his chief cause of resentment against the Chestnut.
+The public having got into its head that Porter was playing coups,
+generously suggested that he was pulling Lauzanne to get him in some big
+handicap light.
+
+"I won't feed such a skate all winter," he declared angrily, after a
+little pause.
+
+"Well, give him to me, father," the girl had pleaded; "I am certain that
+he'll make good some day; you'll see that he'll pay you for keeping your
+word."
+
+As Allis rode Lauzanne she discovered many things about the horse;
+that instead of being a stupid, morose brute, his intelligence was
+extraordinary, and, with her at least, his temper perfect.
+
+Allis's relationship with her father was unusual. They were chums; in
+all his trouble, in all his moments of wavering, buffeted by the waves
+of disaster, Allis was the one who cheered him, who regirt him in
+his armor:--Allis, the slight olive-faced little woman, with the big,
+fearless Joan-of-Arc eyes.
+
+"You'll see what we'll do next summer, Dad," she said cheerily. "You'll
+win with Lucretia as often as you did with her mother; and I'll win with
+Lauzanne. We'll just keep quiet till spring, then we'll show them."
+
+Langdon's horses, so silently controlled by Philip Crane, Banker, had
+been put in winter quarters at Gravesend, where Langdon had a cottage.
+Crane's racing season had been as successful as the Master of
+Ringwood's had been disastrous. He had won a fair-class race with The
+Dutchman--ostensibly Langdon's horse--and then, holding true to his
+nature, which was to hasten slowly, threw him out of training and
+deliberately planned a big coup for the next year. The colt was engaged
+in several three-year-old stakes, and Crane set Langdon to work to find
+out his capabilities. As his owner expected, he showed them in a severe
+trial gallop the true Hanover staying-power.
+
+Although Crane had said nothing about it at the time, he had his eye on
+the Eastern Derby when he commissioned Langdon to purchase this gallant
+son of Hanover. It was a long way ahead to look, to lay plans to win a
+race the following June, but that was the essence of Crane's existence,
+careful planning. He loved it. He was a master at it. And, after all,
+given a good stayer, such as he had in The Dutchman, the mile-and-a-half
+run of the Derby left less to chance than any other stake he could have
+pitched upon; the result would depend absolutely upon the class and
+stamina of the horses. No bad start could upset his calculations, no
+little interference in the race could destroy his horse's chance if he
+were good enough to win. The Dutchman's races as a two-year-old would
+not warrant his being made a favorite, and Langdon, properly directed,
+was clever enough to see that The Dutchman was at a comfortable price
+for betting purposes.
+
+Many things had crowded into this year of Crane's life. The bank, doing
+but a modest business always, was running so smoothly that it required
+little attention from the owner. This was one reason why he had thrown
+so much subtle energy into his racing; its speculation appealed to him.
+The plucking he had received as a moneyed youth rankled in his heart.
+The possession of such a faithful jackal as Langdon carried him to
+greater lengths than he would have gone had the obnoxious details been
+subject to his own execution. Though conscienceless, he was more or less
+fastidious. Had a horse broken down and become utterly useless, he would
+have ordered him to be destroyed without experiencing any feeling of
+compassion--he would have dismissed the matter entirely from his mind
+with the passing of the command; but rather than destroy the horse
+himself, he probably would have fed him. And so it was with men. If they
+were driven to the wall because of his plans, that was their own look
+out; it did not trouble Philip Crane.
+
+Porter he had known simply in a business way. From the first he had felt
+that Ringwood would pass out of its owner's possession, and he had begun
+to covet it. The Lauzanne race had been Langdon's planning altogether.
+Crane, cold-blooded as he was, would not have robbed a man he had
+business dealings with deliberately. He had told his trainer to win,
+if possible, a race with Lauzanne, and get rid of him. That Langdon's
+villainous scheme had borne evil fruit for John Porter was purely a
+matter of chance selection. There was a Mephistophelean restitution in
+not striving to wrest the Eclipse from Lucretia with The Dutchman.
+
+And now, in this year, had come the entirely new experience of an
+affection--his admiration for Allis Porter. It conflicted with every
+other emotion that governed his being. All his life he had been
+selfish--considering only Philip Crane, his mind unharrassed by anything
+but business obstacles in his ambitious career. Love for this quiet,
+self-contained girl, unadorned by anything but the truth, and honesty,
+and fearlessness that were in her big steadfast eyes, had come upon him
+suddenly and with an assertive force that completely mastered him. By
+a mere chance he had heard Allis give her recitation, "The Run of
+Crusader," in the little church at Brookfield. Crane was not an
+agnostic, but he had interested himself little in church matters; and
+the Reverend Dolman's concert, that was meant to top down many weeds
+of debt that were choking the church, had claimed him simply because an
+evening in Brookfield had come to hang heavily on his hands. Now when
+the Reverend Dolman received Philip Crane's check for fifty dollars the
+next day, to be applied to the church encumbrance, he sought to allay
+his surprise by attributing the gift to his own special pleading that
+evening, of course backed up by Providence. If anybody had stated that
+the mainspring of the gift had been the wicked horse-racing poem of
+their denunciation he would have been scandalized and full of righteous
+disbelief. It is quite likely that even Crane would have denied that
+Allis's poem had inspired him to the check; but nevertheless it had.
+
+The world of feeling and sympathy and goodness that had hung in her
+voice had set a new window in his soul slightly ajar--so slightly ajar
+that even now, months afterward, the lovelight was only beginning to
+stream through. When love comes to a man at forty he is apt to play the
+game very badly indeed; he turns it into a very anxious business, and
+moves through the light-tripping measure with the pedantic dignity of
+a minuet dancer. But Philip Crane was not given to making mistakes; he
+knew that, like Crusader, "His best racing days (in the love stakes)
+were over"--especially where the woman was but a girl. So he sat down
+and planned it all out as he planned to win the Brooklyn Derby months
+later. And all the time he was as sincerely in love as if he had
+blundered into many foolishness; but his love making was to be
+diplomatic. Even now all the gods of Fate stood ranged on his side;
+Allis's brother was in his bank, more or less dependent upon him;
+Ringwood itself was all but in the bank; he stood fairly well with John
+Porter, and much better with Allis's mother, for already he had begun to
+ingratitate himself with Mrs. Porter. He would cast from the shoulders
+of the Reverend Dolman a trifle more of the load he was carrying. He
+would send the reverend gentleman another check.
+
+Why he should think it necessary to prepare his suit with so much
+subtlety he hardly knew; in all reason he should be considered a fair
+match for Allis Porter. He was not a bad man as the world understood
+him; he did not profess Christianity, but, on the other hand, his life
+was extremely respectable; he did not drink; he was not given to
+profane language; even in racing his presence seemed to lend an air of
+respectability to the sport, and it was generally supposed that he raced
+purely for relaxation. In truth, it seemed to him that his marriage with
+Allis would be a deuced good thing for the Porters.
+
+In actuality there were just two things that stood in the way--two
+things which his position and wealth could not obviate--his age, and the
+Porter pride. If Porter had not been dubbed "Honest John" early in life,
+he might have been saddled with "Proud Porter" later on. The pride
+had come up out of old Kentucky with all the other useless things--the
+horse-racing, and the inability to make money, and the fancy for keeping
+a promise. Something whispered to Crane that Allis would never come to
+him simply out of love; it might be regard, esteem, a desire to please
+her parents, a bowing to the evident decree of fate. Perhaps even the
+very difficulty of conquest made Crane the more determined to win, and
+made him hasten slowly.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+As a rule few visitors went to Ringwood.
+
+John Porter had been too interested in his horses and his home life to
+care much for social matters. Mrs. Porter was a home-body, too, caring
+nothing at all for society--at best there was but little of it in
+Brookfield--except where it was connected with church work. Perhaps that
+was one reason why Allis had grown so close into her father's life. It
+was a very small, self-contained household.
+
+Mike Gaynor had become attached to the staff at Ringwood this winter as
+a sort of assistant trainer to Porter. Dixon only trained the Ringwood
+horses during the racing season, Porter always supervising them in
+winter quarters. Perhaps it was Porter's great cloud of evil fortune
+which had cast its sinister influence over Mike because of his sympathy
+for the master of Ringwood; certain it is that the autumn found him
+quite "on his uppers," as he graphically described his financial
+standing. An arrangement was made by which Mike's disconsolate horses
+were fed at Ringwood, and he took care of both strings. This delighted
+Allis, for she had full confidence in Gaynor's integrity and good sense.
+
+The early winter brought two visitors to Ringwood--Crane, who came quite
+often, and Mortimer, who went out to the farm a couple of times with
+Alan.
+
+George Mortimer might be described as an angular young man. His face,
+large-featured, square-jawed, and bold-topped by broad forehead,
+suggested the solemnity Alan had found so trying. Of course a young man
+of his make-up was sure to have notions, and Mortimer's mind was knotted
+with them; there seemed no soft nor smooth places in his timber. That
+was why he had reasoned with the butcher by energetically grasping his
+windpipe the evening that worthy gentleman had expressed himself so
+distastefully over Allis Porter's contribution to the Reverend Dolman's
+concert. Perhaps a young man of more subtle grace would have received
+some grateful recognition for this office, but the matter had been quite
+closed out so far as Mortimer was concerned; Alan tried to refer to it
+afterward, but had been curtly stopped.
+
+George Mortimer's chief notion was that work was a great thing,
+seemingly the chief end of man. Another notion almost equally
+prominent--he had derived it from his mother--was, that all forms
+of gambling were extremely bad business. First and foremost in this
+interdiction stood horse racing. The touch of it that hung like a small
+cloud over the Brookfield horizon had inspired Mrs. Mortimer, as it had
+other good people of the surrounding country, with the restricted
+idea that those who had to do with thoroughbred horses were simply
+gamblers--betting people. Her home was in Emerson, a dozen miles from
+Brookfield.
+
+Quite paradoxically, if Allis Porter had not given "The Run of
+Crusader"--most certainly a racing poem--in the little church, this
+angular young man with stringent ideas about running horses probably
+would have never visited Ringwood. Something of the wide sympathy that
+emanated from her as she told of the gallant horse's death struck into
+his strong nature, and there commenced to creep into his thoughts at
+odd intervals a sort of gratuitous pity that she should be inextricably
+mixed up with race horses. His original honesty of thought and the
+narrowness of his tuition were apt to make him egotistically sure
+that the things which appealed to him as being right were incapable of
+variation.
+
+At first he had liked Alan Porter, with no tremendous amount of
+unbending; now, because of the interest Allis had excited in him, the
+liking began to take on a supervisory form, and it was not without a
+touch of irritation in his voice that Alan informed his sister that he
+had acquired a second father, and with juvenile malignity attributed the
+incumbrance to her seductive influence.
+
+With all these cross purposes at work it can be readily understood that
+Mortimer's visits to Ringwood were not exactly rose-leaved. In truth,
+the actors were all too conventionally honest, too unsocialized, to
+subvert their underlying motives. Allis, with her fine intuition, would
+have unearthed Mortimer's disapprobation of racing--though he awkwardly
+strove to hide it--even if Alan had not enlarged upon this point. This
+knowledge constrained the girl, even drove her into rebellion. She took
+his misunderstanding as a fault, almost as a weakness, and shocked
+the young man with carefully prepared racing expressions; reveled with
+strange abandon in talks of gallops, and trials, and work-outs, and
+breathers; threw ironmouthed horses, pullers, skates, and divers other
+equine wonders at his head until he revolted in sullen irritation. In
+fact they misunderstood each other finely; in truth their different
+natures were more in harmony two miles apart, the distance that lay
+between the bank and Ringwood.
+
+By comparison Crane's visits to Ringwood were utopianly complacent.
+Strangely enough, Mrs. Porter, opposed to racing as she was, came
+quite readily under the glamor of his artistic unobtrusiveness. He had
+complete mastery over the science of waiting. His admission to the good
+lady of a passing interest in horses was an apology; there seemed such
+an utter absence of the betting spirit that the recreation it afforded
+him condoned the offense.
+
+There was this difference between the two men, the old and the young:
+Crane knew exactly why he went there, while Mortimer had asked himself
+more than once, coming back from Ringwood feeling that he had been
+misunderstood--perhaps even laughed at--why he had gone there at all.
+He had no definite plan, even desire; he was impelled to it out of some
+unrecognized force. It was because of these conditions that the one
+potter turned his images so perfectly, and the other formed only poor,
+distorted, often broken, dishes of inferior clay.
+
+It stood in the reason of things, however, that Mortimer, in spite of
+his uncompromising attitude toward racing, should be touched by its
+tentacles if he visited at Ringwood.
+
+His first baptism came with much precipitancy on the occasion of his
+fourth visit to the Porters. He had driven out with Alan to spend his
+Saturday afternoon at Ringwood. An afternoon is not exactly like an
+evening in the matter of entertaining a guest; something must be done;
+cigars, or music, or small chatter are insufficient. If one is on
+the western slope of life's Sierra perhaps a nap may kill the time
+profitably enough, but this was a case where a young man had to
+be entertained, a young man difficult of entertainment under the
+circumstances.
+
+Alan had some barbarous expedition of juvenile interest on hand; the
+unearthing of a woodchuck, or it might have been a groundhog, in a back
+field; but Allis would not become a party to the destruction of animal
+life for the sport of the thing. She had a much better programme
+mapped out for Mortimer. Some way she felt that if he could see
+the thoroughbred horses in their stalls, could come to know them
+individually, casually though it might be, he would perhaps catch a
+glimmer of their beautiful characters. So she asked Mr. Mortimer to go
+and have a look at her pets. Alan would none of it; he was off to his
+woodchuck or groundhog.
+
+"I'm glad you don't want to go and kill anything," she said, turning
+gratefully to Mortimer when he refused Alan's invitation, saying that
+he preferred to look at the horses. "I'll show you Diablo, and Lucretia,
+and Lauzanne the Despised--he's my horse, and I'm to win a big race
+with him next year. Gaynor is down at the stables; and I'll give you a
+tip"-Mortimer winced--"if you want to stand well in with Mike, let him
+suspect that you're fond of horses."
+
+At the stable door they met Mike Gaynor. Mike usually vacillated between
+a condition of chronic anger at somebody or something, and an Irish
+drollery that made people who were sick at heart laugh. Allis was as
+familiar with his moods as she was with the phases of Lauzanne's temper.
+On Mike's face was a map of disaster; the disaster might be trivial or
+great. That something was wrong the girl knew, but whether it was that a
+valuable horse was dead, or that a mouse had eaten a hole in a grain
+bag she could only discover by questioning Gaynor, for there were never
+degrees of expressed emotion in Mike's facile countenance; either a deep
+scowl or a broad grin were the two normal conditions.
+
+"What's the matter, Mike?" questioned Allis.
+
+"Mather, is it?" began Gaynor, "it's just this, Miss Allis; if yer
+father thinks I'm goin' to stand by an' see good colts spiled in their
+timper just because a rapscallion b'y has got the evil intints av ould
+Nick himself, thin he's mistook, that's all."
+
+"Who is it Mike--Shandy?"
+
+"That's him, Miss. He's the divil on wheels, bangin' thim horses about
+as though he was King Juba."
+
+Allis saw that Gaynor was indeed angry.
+
+"I'll speak to father about him, Mike," she answered; "I won't have the
+horses abused."
+
+"Mark my words, Miss Allis, Diablo'll take it out of his hide some
+day. The b'y'll monkey wit' him once too often, then there'll be no b'y
+left."
+
+"May we see the horses, Mike--are they having their lie-down, or
+anything?"
+
+"Not yet, Miss; they're gettin' the rub-down now; don't ye hear Diablo
+bastin' the boords av his stall wid that handy off hind-foot av his?"
+
+"There's a filly for yer life," exclaimed the Trainer, rapturously,
+as he opened gently the door of Lucretia's box stall. "There's the
+straightest filly iver looked through a halter," he continued, putting
+his arm with the gentleness of a woman over the brown mare's beautiful
+neck. "Come here, ould girl," he said, coaxingly, as he drew the
+haltered head toward the visitors.
+
+Mortimer looked with interest at the big, comfortable box stall,
+littered a foot deep with bright, clean, yellow straw. How contented and
+at home the mare appeared! It seemed almost a complete recompense, this
+attentive care, for the cruelty he imagined race horses suffered.
+
+"You don't tie her up?" he asked.
+
+"Tie her up!" ejaculated Mike, a fine Celtic scorn in his voice; "I'd
+rather tie up a wife--if I had one," he added by way of extenuation.
+"No man would tie up a mare worth tin thousand dollars if she's worth a
+cent, an' take chances av her throwin' hersilf in the halter; av coorse
+she's hitched fer a bit after a gallop while she's havin' a rub-down,
+but that's all."
+
+Lucretia's black nozzle came timidly forward, and the soft, velvety
+upper lip snuggled Allis's cheek.
+
+"She knows ye, Miss," said Mike. "That's the way wit' horses--they're
+like children; they know friends, an' ye can't fool thim. Now she's
+sizin' ye up, Mister," as Lucretia sniffed suspiciously at Mortimer's
+chin, keeping a wary eye on him. "She'll know if ye like horses or not,
+an' I'd back her opinion agin fifty min's oaths."
+
+Allis watched with nervous interest the investigation. She almost felt
+that if Lucretia liked her companion--well, it would be something less
+to dislike in him, at all events. Lucretia seemed turning the thing over
+in her mind, trying to think it out. There was some mystery about this
+new comer. Evidently she did not distrust him entirely, else she would
+have put her ears back a trifle and turned away with a little impatient
+warning shake of her delicate head. She always turned in that cross
+manner from Shandy, the stable boy. She had also discovered that the
+visitor was not completely a horseman; she did not investigate his
+pockets, nor put her head over his shoulder, as she would have done
+with Mr. Porter or Mike, or even with one who was a stranger, as was
+Mortimer, had she felt the unmistakable something which conveyed to her
+mind that he was of the equine brotherhood.
+
+"Lucretia has found you out," said Allis, presently. "You do like
+horses; she knows it."
+
+"Oh, I like animals, I don't deny," Mortimer answered, "but I know very
+little about them--nothing about race horses."
+
+Mike frowned and looked disparagingly at the visitor. "He must be a
+quare duck," he muttered to himself. That a man should know nothing of
+thoroughbreds was perfectly inexplicable to Gaynor. He knew many racing
+men whose knowledge of horseflesh was a subject for ridicule, but then
+they never proclaimed their ignorance, rather posed as good judges than
+otherwise.
+
+But with startling inconsistency Mike explained: "There's many like ye,
+sir, only they don't know it, that's all; the woods is full av thim.
+Would ye like to give the filly a carrot, Miss?" he added, turning to
+Allis. "I'll bring some."
+
+When he returned Allis gave one to Lucretia, then they passed to the
+next stall.
+
+"That's a useful horse," explained the Trainer; "he's won some races in
+his 'time."
+
+"What's his name?" asked Mortimer.
+
+"Game Boy. He's by the Juggler. Ye remember him, don't ye?"
+
+Mortimer was forced to confess that he didn't quite remember Juggler.
+
+"That's strange," commented Mike, turning the big bay about with evident
+pride; "he won the 'Belmont,' at Jerome Park, did the ould Juggler. Ye
+must av heerd av that."
+
+Mortimer compromised by admitting that he had probably forgotten it.
+
+"Well, I haven't," declared Mike, reproachfully. "If Game Boy stands a
+prep this summer ye'll hear from him," he confided to Mortimer, as they
+left the stall. "Jist remember Game Boy; see, ye can't forget--a big bay
+wit' a white nigh fore leg, an' a bit rat-tailed. Yes, Game Boy's all
+right," monologued Mike; "but here's a better; this is Diablo. He must
+have tabasco in his head, fer he's got the divil's own timper. But he
+can gallop a bit; he can go like a quarterhorse, an' stay till the cows
+come home; but he's like Lauzanne acrost yonder, he's got a bee in his
+bonnet an' it takes a divil to ride him."
+
+"That's hard on me, Mike," expostulated Allis. "You see, Lauzanne goes
+better with me in the saddle than any of the boys," she explained to
+Mortimer.
+
+"The divil or angels, I was going to say, Miss, when ye interrupted me,"
+gallantly responded Mike.
+
+Diablo's head was tied high in a corner of the stall, for Shandy, the
+boy, was hard at work on him with a double hand of straw, rubbing him
+down. The boy kept up a peculiar whistling noise through his parted lips
+as he rubbed, and Diablo snapped impatiently at the halter-shank with
+his great white teeth as though he resented the operation.
+
+Mortimer gazed with enthusiasm at the shining black skin that glistened
+like satin, or watered silk. Surely there was excuse for people loving
+thoroughbreds. It was an exhilaration even to look at that embodiment
+of physical development. It was an animate statue to the excellence
+of good, clean living. Somehow or other Mortimer felt that though the
+living creature before him was only a horse, yet nature's laws were
+being adhered to, and the result was a reward of physical perfection and
+enjoyment of life. He began to feel that a man, or even a woman--it was
+the subtle presence of the woman at his side that made him involuntarily
+interject this clause into his inaudible thoughts--yes, even a woman
+of high moral attributes might find the most healthy form of interested
+amusement in watching the superb development of horses that were
+destined for no other purpose than to race and beget sons and daughters
+of the same wondrous stamina and courage and speed. His detestation of
+racing had been in reality an untutored prejudice; he had looked upon
+but one phase of the question, and that quite casually, as it introduced
+itself into his life by means of sensational betting incidents in the
+daily papers. To him all forms of betting were highly disastrous--most
+immoral. But here, like a revelation, came to him, in all its
+fascination, the perfect picture of the animal, which he was forced to
+admit stood next to man in its adornment of God's scheme of creation.
+
+As Shandy swept his wisp of straw along the sensitive skin of Diablo's
+stomach, the latter shrunk from the tickling sensation, and lashed out
+impatiently with a powerful hind leg as though he would demolish his
+tormentor.
+
+"He's not cross at all just," explained Mike; "he's bluffin', that's
+all. Shure a child could handle him if they'd only go the right way
+about it."
+
+Then he leaned over and whispered in an aside to the visitors--"Bot'
+t'umbs up!" (this was Mike's favorite oath). "Diablo hates that b'y an'
+some day he'll do him up, mark my words."
+
+"Here, Shandy," he cried, turning to the rubber, "loose the Black's head
+an' turn him 'round."
+
+Mortimer almost shrank with apprehension for the boy, for Diablo's ears
+were back on his flat, tapering neck, and his eyes looking back at them,
+were all white, save for the intense blue-shimmered pupil. To Mortimer
+that look was the incarnation of evil hatred. But the boy unsnapped
+the halter-shank without hesitation, and Diablo, more inquisitive than
+angry, came mincingly toward them, nodding his head somewhat defiantly,
+as much as to say that the nature of the interview would depend
+altogether upon their good behavior.
+
+"See that!" ejaculated Mike, a pleasant smile of satisfaction rippling
+the furrows of his face; "see how he picks out the best friend the
+stable's got."
+
+Diablo had stretched his lean head down, and was trying to nibble with
+gentle lip the carrot Allis held half hidden behind her skirt. There
+was none of Lucretia's timidity in Diablo's approach; it was full of an
+assumption of equality, of trust in the intentions of the stranger who
+had come with the mistress he hart faith in.
+
+"They're all like that when Miss Allis is about," explained Mike; "there
+never would be a bad horse if the stable-b'ys worked the same way. Tie
+him up, Shandy," he added. "Even the jockeys spoil their mounts," Gaynor
+continued in a monotone; "the horse'll gallop better for women any
+time--they treat thim gentler, that's why."
+
+"Most interesting," hazarded Mortimer, feeling some acknowledgment of
+Mike's information was due.
+
+"It's the trut'. Miss Allis'd take Lauzanne, or the Black, or the little
+mare, an' get a better race out av thim than any jock I've seen ridin'
+hereabout."
+
+"Mike," exclaimed Allis, "you flatter me; you almost make me wish that I
+were a jockey."
+
+"Well, bot' t'umbs up! Ye'd av made a good un, Miss, an' that's no
+disrespect to ye, I'm sayin'."
+
+Mortimer smiled condescendingly. Allis's quick eye caught his expression
+of amused discontent; it angered her. Mike's praise had been practically
+honest. To him a good jockey was the embodiment of courage and honesty
+and intelligence; but she knew that to Mortimer it simply meant a
+phase of life he considered quite outside the pale of recognized
+respectability. Somehow she felt that Mike's encomium had lowered her
+perceptibly in the opinion of this man whom she herself affected to look
+upon with but toleration.
+
+They visited all the other stalls, eight of them, and listened to Mike's
+eulogies on the inmates. Coming down the other side of the passage, the
+last occupied box stall contained Lauzanne.
+
+"Miss Porter'll tell ye about this wan," said Mike, diplomatically.
+"He's shaped like a good horse, an' his sire, old Lazzarone, landed many
+a purse, an' the 'Suburban,' too--won it on three legs, fer he was clean
+gone in his pins, I'll take me oath to that. He was a good horse--whin
+he liked. Perhaps Lauzanne'll do the same some day, fer all I know."
+
+There was such a tone of doubt in the Trainer's voice that even Mortimer
+noticed it. Neither was there much praise of the big Chestnut; evidently
+Mike did not quite approve of him, though hesitating to say so in the
+presence of his mistress.
+
+"Yes, Lauzanne is my horse," volunteered Allis. "I even ride him in all
+his work now, since he took to eating the stable-boy."
+
+"And you're not afraid?" asked Mortimer.
+
+For answer the girl slipped quietly into the stall, and going up beside
+the Chestnut, who was standing sulkily with his head in the corner of
+his box, took him by the ear and turned him gently around.
+
+"He's just a quiet-mannered chap, that's all," she said. "He's a
+big, lazy, contented old boy," and she laid her cheek against his
+fawn-colored nozzle. "You see," she explained, "he's got more brains
+than any of the other horses, and when he's abused he knows it."
+
+"But he's grateful when he's kindly treated," commented Mortimer.
+
+"Yes; that's why I like horses better than men."
+
+"Oh!" the exclamation slipped from Mortimer's lips.
+
+"Most men, I mean," she explained. "Of course, father, and Alan, and--"
+she hesitated; "you see," she went on to explain, "the number of my men
+friends is limited; but except these, and Mike, and Mr. Dixon, I like
+the horses best."
+
+"I almost believe you're right, Miss Porter," concurred Mortimer; "I've
+known men myself that I fancy were much worse than even Diablo."
+
+"Mike thinks Lauzanne is a bad horse," the girl said, changing the
+subject, "but he'll win a big race this coming season. You just keep
+your eye on Lauzanne. Here's your carrot, old chap," she said, stroking
+the horse's neck, "and we must go if we're to have that drive. Will you
+hitch the gray to the buggy for us, Mike?" she asked of Gaynor, as they
+came out of the stable, "we'll wait here."
+
+As Mike started off there came to their ears a sound of turmoil from
+Diablo's box; impatient kicks against the boards from the horse, and
+smothered imprecations from the boy.
+
+"Hear that fiend!" the girl exclaimed, and there was wrath in her voice.
+
+"He does seem a bad horse," concurred Mortimer.
+
+"I didn't mean Diablo; it's the boy. It's all his evil doing. Oh,
+I've only one glove," she exclaimed. "I know where it is, though; that
+mischievous rascal, Lauzanne, nibbled it from the front of my jacket; I
+saw him do it, but forgot to pick it up."
+
+"Allow me, Miss Porter; I'll get it for you."
+
+"No; please don't!" with emphasis. As he started back, she laid a
+detaining hand on his arm. "I'd much prefer to go myself; Lauzanne
+distrusts strangers and might make trouble."
+
+As the girl entered the stable, Mortimer sauntered on in the direction
+Mike had gone.
+
+Allis opened the door of Lauzanne's stall, passed in, and searched in
+the straw for the lost glove.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+The noise of strife in Diablo's box had increased. There came the sound
+of blows on the horse's ribs; a muttered oath, and suddenly a scream of
+terror from the boy, drowned in an instant by the ferocious battlecry
+of the enraged stallion. Mortimer, thirty yards away, heard it, and felt
+his heart stand still; he had never heard anything so demoniac in his
+life. He turned in such haste that his foot slipped on the frozen earth,
+and he fell heavily.
+
+At the first sound of blows Allis had started angrily toward Diablo's
+box. She was at the door when Shandy's cry of terror rang out. For an
+instant the girl hesitated; what she saw was enough to make a strong man
+quail. The black stallion was loose; with crunching jaws he had fastened
+on the arm of Shandy, in the corner of the stall, and was trying to pull
+the boy down that he might trample him to death. But for a second she
+faltered; if ever quick action were needed, it was now.
+
+"Back--back, Diablo! back!" she cried, as pushing past the black demon
+she brought her hunting-crop down with full force between his ears.
+
+Whether it was the sound of his mistress's voice, or the staggering
+blow, Diablo dropped the boy like a crushed rat, and, half rearing,
+looked viciously at the brave girl.
+
+"Quick! through the hay window!" commanded Allis, standing between
+Shandy and the horse, and drawing the whip back over her left shoulder,
+ready to give it to Diablo full in the throat should he charge again.
+
+Cowed, the boy clambered through the opening. Enraged at the sight of
+his assailant's escape, the horse gave another scream of defiance and
+sought with striking forefeet and spread jaws to pull down this new
+enemy. Not until then had Allis thought of calling for help; her one
+idea had been for the boy's safety.
+
+Like a flash the full peril of the situation dawned upon her; perhaps
+her life would be given for the boy who well deserved his punishment.
+She had seen two stallions fight, and knew that their ferocious
+natures, once roused, could only be quelled by a force stronger than she
+possessed. Yes, surely she would be killed-her young life trampled
+out by the frenzied animal. Incoherently but altogether these thoughts
+filled her mind; also the knowledge that Mike was beyond hearing.
+
+"Help, Mortimer!" she called.
+
+He heard it as he reached the stable door. Even then he would have been
+too late had not other rescue come more quickly.
+
+In rushing from Lauzanne's stall Allis had left the door swinging on its
+hinges. At the first cry of defiance from the black stallion Lauzanne
+had stretched high his head and sent back, with curled nostril, an
+answering challenge. Then with ears cocked he had waited for a charge
+from his natural enemy. When the mingled call of his mistress and
+Diablo's bugle note came to him he waited no longer, but rushed across
+the passage and seized the black horse by the crest just as he was
+overpowering the girl.
+
+It was at that instant Mortimer reached the scene--in his hand a stable
+fork he had grabbed as he raced down the passage. Even Lauzanne's
+attack, though it gave Allis a respite, would not have saved her life;
+the madly fighting horses would have kicked and trampled her to death.
+
+"My God! Back, back, you devils!" And pushing, crowding, hugging the
+side of the stall, Mortimer fought his way to the girl.
+
+Once Diablo's hoof shot out and the man's left arm, snapping like a
+pistol, dropped useless at his side. His brain reeled with the shock.
+The oddly swinging arm, dangling like a doll's, with the palm turned
+backward, seemed to fascinate him. Why was he there? What was he doing?
+Why was he hammering the horses over the head with a stable fork held
+tightly in his right hand? He hardly knew; his mind was clouded; he
+was fighting by instinct, and always crowding along the wall toward the
+farther corner. The girl had quite faded from his sight. Somehow he felt
+that he must drive the horses back, back, out of the stall.
+
+Allis, too, was fighting; bringing the crop down with cutting force over
+the withers, neck, head, any part of the plunging mass in front of her.
+She could escape now through the opening where the boy had gone; but was
+not Mortimer in the same position she had been? She had seen him drop
+to his knees when Diablo lashed out; he must be sorely hurt; now he was
+reeling like a drunken man as he fought the mad brutes.
+
+"This way," she panted, catching him by the coat, and pulling him toward
+the window.
+
+Ah, that was it! He saw her now. It steadied his senses. It was the
+girl, and she had called him--"Mortimer!"
+
+"Back," he yelled irrelevantly, in answer, cutting Diablo across the
+face with the fork. It was pandemonium.
+
+"Get through the window!" the girl screamed in his ear. "Quick! Now!"
+and she pushed him toward it.
+
+"You--first--back, you devils!" and he pressed away from her, closer to
+the horses, thrusting and striking with the steel-pointed fork.
+
+The horses were giving way; Diablo was fighting half through the door,
+weakening before the onslaught of the powerful chestnut. Even in battle,
+as in a race, the stamina of the Lazzarone blood was telling; the
+bulldog courage of the strain was strong upon Lauzanne, now that he was
+roused.
+
+"Quick! You can get out!" again called the girl.
+
+"You first!"
+
+This drear, repetition was the only expression Mortimer's numbed senses
+were equal to; but he fought with the ferocity of a tiger--his wound but
+enraged him.
+
+They could both escape, Allis knew, if she could bring Mortimer to
+understand; but they must do it quick, if at all. It was useless. He
+seemed conscious of but the one idea that he must drive the fighting
+animals out into the passage to save her. She was not afraid now; the
+man's presence had driven that all away. It was useless to speak to
+him of the window, neither would go first; so, with her riding whip she
+fought side by side with Mortimer; springing back from the swift-cutting
+forefeet; sometimes even hugging close to the side of a horse as he
+lashed out from behind; and once saving her companion from being cut
+down by pulling him swiftly from under a raised foot. In the end the
+stallions were forced out into the passage, just as Mike came rushing
+upon the scene.
+
+But the battle had waned. Twice Diablo had been pulled to his knees,
+forced down by the fierce strength that was Lauzanne's; the Black was
+all but conquered. The Trainer's voice checked Lauzanne's fury; even the
+boy had plucked up courage to return; and between them the Chestnut was
+driven into his stall. All the fight had been taken out of Diablo. He
+struggled to his feet, and stood trembling like a horse that had come
+out of a fierce cutting race. On his neck were the marks of Lauzanne's
+teeth, where they had snapped like the jaws of a trap; from his crest
+trickled a red stream that dripped to the floor like water from a
+running eave. All the fierce fire of hate had gone from his eyes. He
+hung his head dejectedly, and his flanks quivered. Lauzanne, too, bore
+evidence of the vicious strife. On one quarter, where Diablo's sharp
+hoof had ripped, was a cut as though he had been lashed with a sickle,
+and his withers were torn.
+
+Mortimer and Allis had come out of the stall. The man, exhausted by the
+struggle, leaned wearily, with pale, drawn face, against the wall; the
+floor seemed slipping from under him; he felt a sensation of swiftly
+passing off into nothingness. He was sleepy, that was all; but a
+sleepiness to fight against--he must still fight.
+
+"You are badly hurt." It was the girl's voice. He was almost surprised
+that he recognized it, everything was so confused. He answered heavily,
+"Yes, I'm--I'm--I want--to lie down."
+
+"Here, lean on my shoulder." It was Mike's voice this time. "This is bad
+business," the Trainer was saying; "we must get him out of this; he's
+nearly knocked out. Are ye all right, Miss?" turning to Allis.
+
+The wounded man turned guiltily; he had forgotten the girl. Yes, surely
+she had been in that hell of noises with him--fighting too.
+
+"I'm just frightened, that's all," answered Allis. "Mr. Mortimer saved
+me."
+
+Had he? he wondered. How had he come in there, anyway? His mind refused
+to work out the problem; his side was so sore.
+
+"Yer arm's broke," said Mike, passing to Mortimer's right side. "Come,
+lean on me, sir. Can ye walk? I'll put ye in the buggy and drive ye to
+the house."
+
+At the first step Mortimer staggered and swayed like a drunken man. In
+his side were many sharp things pulling him down like grappling irons;
+on his head was a great weight that crushed his feet into the hard
+planks; his knees gave under this load, and he would have fallen but for
+Mike's strong arm.
+
+"I'm--afraid;" then he set his teeth hard, his voice had sought to end
+the sentence in a groan of anguish; the thing that was tearing at his
+side had whistled in his lungs.
+
+Allis stepped forward swiftly, and passing her arm about his waist,
+helped Mike lead him to the door. Twice she put her left hand up
+and brushed tears from her eyes; the struggle had unnerved her. Very
+helplessly against her swayed the man she had laughed at half an hour
+before. And he had been crushed saving her! But that was not why the
+tears came--not at all. She was unstrung. "And he's got grit," she kept
+muttering to herself; "he has never even groaned."
+
+Together they succeeded in getting him into the buggy; then, gently,
+Mike drove to the house.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Mrs. Porter, reading a book on the veranda, heard the crunch of wheels
+as a buggy, slow-moving, turned into the drive. She raised her eyes
+leisurely, the matter of the story still in her mind; but with a quick
+cry of "John!" she sprang to her feet, the volume, left to itself,
+rustling from her lap to the floor. The mother eyes saw that something
+was wrong, and the mother heart felt that some evil had come to Allis.
+Mrs. Porter had gone white in an instant. Over her hung heavy at all
+times the dread of some terrible accident coming to Allis through the
+horses.
+
+"Did you call, wife?" Porter asked as he came to the door. Then he
+sprang quickly across the veranda at sight of his wife's blanched face,
+and made to catch her in his arms. But she stopped him, pointing down
+the drive. "It's Allis, John; oh, my God!"
+
+"No, no," he answered, "they're just coming back; here, sit down again,
+I'll see," and he raced down the steps just as Mike pulled up.
+
+"What's the matter, girl?" he began.
+
+"The young gentleman's got a bit shook up, sir; nothin' bad loike," Mike
+broke in hastily. The diplomatic rider, "nothin' bad," was added for
+Mrs. Porter's benefit, his quick eye having seen her white face.
+
+"Miss Allis 's not hurt at all," he continued. "We'll help the young
+gintleman in, an' I'd best go for the docthor, I'm thinkin."
+
+Even as he was speaking they had helped Mortimer from the rig. He had
+not uttered a sound; his teeth were set hard against the agony that
+was in his side, and the queer dizziness that was over him left little
+beyond a consciousness that he was being looked after, and that if he
+could only keep going for a little, just use his legs a trifle, he would
+presently be allowed to sleep. Yes, that was what he wanted; he was
+so drowsy. As he went up the steps between the two men, a haggard
+face peered at him over the rail. It was familiar; he felt that some
+recognition was due, for it was a woman's face. He tried to smile. Then
+he was on a bed, and--and--sleep at last.
+
+When the three men with the silence of disaster over them passed
+struggling into the house, Mrs. Porter threw herself on Allis's neck,
+and a passion of tears flooded down and damped the girl's shoulder.
+
+"God be thanked, God be thanked!" gasped the troubled woman, and one
+hand that was over the girl's shoulder patted her with erratic rapidity.
+Then she interrupted herself. "What am I saying--it's wicked, and Mr.
+Mortimer like that. But I can't help it--I can't help it. Oh, Allis!
+my heart was in my mouth; I feel that some day you will come home like
+this."
+
+At that instant Gaynor dashed by them, leaped into the buggy, and
+called, as he drove off: "I'll have the docthor in a jiffy; the young
+man's all right!" He was still talking as the whirr of swift-rushing
+wheels smothered out his voice, and the dust rose like a steam-cloud,
+almost blotting him from the landscape.
+
+"Oh, girl! I thought you'd been killed."
+
+"Here, sit down, mother; you're all worked up," and Allis put a cool
+hand on her mother's hot forehead.
+
+But the shock to her feelings had loosed the good woman's vocabulary.
+At all times smouldered in her heart a hatred of racing, even of the
+horses. "It's the anger of God," Mrs. Porter denounced vehemently. "This
+gambling and racing is contrary to His law. Never a night passes, Allis,
+that I do not pray to God that He may open your father's eyes to the sin
+of racing. No good can come of it--no good has ever come of it--nothing
+but disaster and trouble. In a day the substance of a year is wasted.
+There never can be prosperity living in sin."
+
+"Hush, mother," crooned Allis, softly. This outburst from Mrs. Porter
+startled the girl; it was so passionate, so vehement. When they had
+talked of racing in the home life the mother had nearly always preserved
+a reproachful silence; her attitude was understood and respected.
+
+"I must speak, girl," she said again; "this sinful life is crushing me.
+Do you think I feel no shame when I sit in meeting and hear our good
+minister denounce gambling and racing? I can feel his eyes on me, and I
+cannot raise my voice in protest, for do not I countenance it? My
+people were all church people," she continued, almost apologetically,
+"tolerating no sin in the household. Living in sin there can be no hope
+for eternal life."
+
+"I know, mother," soothed the girl; "I know just how you feel, but we
+can't desert father. He does not look upon it as a sin, as carrying any
+dishonor; he may be cheated, but he cheats no man. It can't be so sinful
+if there is no evil intent. And listen, mother; no matter what anybody
+may say, even the minister, we must both stick to father if he chooses
+to race horses all his life."
+
+"Ah, sweetheart!" John Porter cried out in a pleased voice, as he came
+out to them, "looking after mother; that's right. Cynthia has helped
+me fix up Mortimer. He'll be all right as soon as Mike gets back with
+Rathbone. I think we'd better have a cup of tea; these horses are trying
+on the nerves, aren't they, little woman?" and he nestled his wife's
+head against his side. "How did it happen, Allis? Did Mortimer slip into
+Diablo's box, or--"
+
+"It was all over that rascally boy, Shandy. Diablo was just paying him
+back for his ill-treatment, and I went in to rescue him, and Mortimer
+risked his life to save mine."
+
+"He was plucky; eh, girl?"
+
+"He fought the Black like a hero, father. But, father, you must never
+think bad of Lauzanne again; if he hadn't come Mr. Mortimer would have
+been too late."
+
+"It's dreadful, dreadful," moaned the mother.
+
+Allis shot a quick look at her father. He changed the subject, and
+commenced talking about Alan--wondering where he was, and other
+irrelevant matters.
+
+Then there was fresh divertisement as Mike rattled up, and Doctor
+Rathbone, who was of a great size, bustled in to where Mortimer lay.
+
+Three smashed ribs and a broken arm was his inventory of the damage
+inflicted by Diablo's kick, when he came out again with Porter, in an
+hour.
+
+"I'm afraid one of the splintered ribs is tickling his lung," he added,
+"but the fellow has got such a good nerve that I hardly discovered this
+unpleasant fact. He'll be all right, however; he's young, and healthy as
+a peach. Good nursing is the idea, and he'll get that here, of course.
+He doesn't want much medicine; that we keep for our enemies,--ha! ha!"
+and he laughed cheerily, as if it were all a joke on the battered man.
+
+"Thim docthers is cold-blooded divils," was Mike's comment. "Ye'd a
+thought they'd been throwin' dice, an' it was a horse on the other
+gintleman. Bot' t'umbs! it was, too. Still, if ould Saw-bones had been
+in the box yonder wit' Diablo, he wouldn't a-felt so funny."
+
+"Mortimer behaved well; didn't he, Mike?" asked Porter.
+
+"Behaved well; is it? He was like a live divil; punched thim two big
+stallions till they took water an' backed out. My word! whin first I
+see him come to the stable wit' Miss Allis, thinks I, here's wan av
+thim city chumps; he made me tired. An' whin he talked about Lauzanne's
+knees, m'aning his hocks, I had to hide me head in a grain bag. But if
+ye'd seen him handle that fork, bastin' the Black, ye'd a thought it was
+single sticks he was at, wit' a thousand dollars fer a knock-out."
+
+"One can't always tell how a colt will shape, can they, Mike?" spoke
+Porter, for Mike's fanciful description was almost bringing a smile to
+Mrs. Porter's troubled face.
+
+"Ye can't, sor, an' yer next the trut' there. I've seen a herrin'-gutted
+weed av a two-year-old--I remember wan now; he was a Lexington. It
+was at Saratoga; an' bot' t'umbs! he just made hacks av iverythin' in
+soight--spread-eagled his field. Ye wouldn't a-give two dollars fer him,
+an' he come out an' cleaned up the Troy Stake, like the great horse he
+was."
+
+"And you think Mortimer has turned out something like that; eh, Mike?"
+
+"Well, fer a man that knows no more av horses than I know av the
+strology av stars, he's a hot wan, an' that's the God's trut'."
+
+Mortimer's gallant act had roused the Irishman's admiration. He would
+have done as much himself, but that would have been expected of a
+horseman, constantly encountering danger; that an office man, to be
+pitied in his ignorance, should have fearlessly entered the stall with
+the fighting stallions was quite a different matter.
+
+Even Allis, with her more highly developed sense of character
+analyzation, felt something of this same influence. She had needed some
+such manifestation of Mortimer's integral force, and this had come with
+romantic intensity in the tragic box-stall scene. This drama of the
+stable had aroused no polished rhetoric; Mortimer's declamation had been
+unconventional in the extreme. "Back, you devils!" he had rendered with
+explosive fierceness, oblivious of everything but that he must save the
+girl. The words still rang in the ears of Allis, and also the echo
+of her own cry when in peril, "Mortimer!" There must have been a
+foreshadowing in her soul of the man's reliability, though she knew it
+not.
+
+Even without the doctor's orders, it was patent that Mortimer must
+remain at Ringwood for a few days.
+
+It was as if Philip Crane, playing with all his intense subtlety,
+had met his master in Fate; the grim arbiter of man's ways had pushed
+forward a chessman to occupy a certain square on the board for a time.
+
+Mortimer had been most decisively smashed up, but his immense physique
+had wonderful recuperative powers. The bone-setting and the attendant
+fever were discounted by his vitality, and his progress toward recovery,
+was marvelous.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Crane heard of the accident on one of his visits to Brookfield a couple
+of days later, and of course must hurry to Ringwood to see his employee.
+It happened that the Reverend Mr. Dolman graced the Porter home with his
+presence the same evening that Crane was there.
+
+Naturally the paramount subject of interest was the narrow escape of
+Miss Allis; but the individuality of discussion gradually merged into a
+crusade against racing, led by the zealous clergyman. John Porter viewed
+this trend with no little trepidation of feeling.
+
+It was Mrs. Porter who precipitated matters by piously attributing
+Allis's escape to Providence.
+
+"Undoubtedly, undoubtedly!" Mr. Dolman said, putting the points of his
+fingers together in front of his lean chest. He paused a moment,
+and Porter groaned inwardly; he knew that attitude. The fingers were
+rapiers, stilettos; presently their owner would thrust, with cutting
+phrase, proving that they were all indeed a very bad lot. Perhaps
+John Porter would have resented this angrily had he not felt that the
+Reverend Inquisitor was really honest in his beliefs, albeit intolerably
+narrow in his conclusions.
+
+Dolman broke the temporary silence. "But we shouldn't tempt
+Providence by worshiping false images. Love of animals is
+commendable--commendable"--he emphasized this slight concession--"but
+race horses always appeal to me as instruments of the Evil One."
+
+"It wasn't the horse's fault at all, Mr. Dolman," Allis interposed, "but
+just a depraved human's. It was the boy Shandy's fault."
+
+"I wasn't thinking of one horse," continued the minister, airily; "I
+meant race horses in general."
+
+"I think Mr. Dolman is right," ventured Mrs. Porter, hesitatingly; "it's
+flying in the face of Providence for a girl to go amongst those race
+horses."
+
+"Bad-tempered men make them vicious, mother," Allis said; "and I believe
+that Shandy's punishment was the visitation of Providence, if there was
+any."
+
+The Reverend Dolman's face took on an austere look. It was an insult
+to the divine powers to assert that they had taken the part of a race
+horse. But he turned the point to his own ends. "It's quite wrong to
+abuse the noble animal; and that's one reason why I hold that racing is
+contrary to the Creator's intentions, quite apart from the evil effect
+it has on morals."
+
+"Are all men immoral who race, Mr. Dolman?" John Porter asked.
+
+His question forced Dolman to define his position. Porter always liked
+things simplified; racing was either wrong in principle or right. Dolman
+found him rather a difficult man to tackle. He had this irritating way
+of brushing aside generalization and forcing the speaker to get back to
+first principles.
+
+The reverend gentleman proceeded cautiously. "I should hardly care to
+go so far as that--to make the rule absolute; a very strong man might
+escape contamination, perhaps."
+
+Mrs. Porter sighed audibly. The minister was weakening most lamentably,
+giving her husband a loophole to escape.
+
+"I hardly think racing quite so bad as it is generally supposed to be,"
+interposed Crane, feeling that Porter was being pilloried somewhat. He
+received a reproachful look from Mrs. Porter for his pains.
+
+"I've never seen any good come of it," retorted Dolman. "A Christian man
+must feel that he is encouraging gambling if he countenances racing, for
+they contend that without betting racing is impossible."
+
+"Everything in life is pretty much of a gamble," Porter drawled, lazily;
+"there aren't any such things. The ships that go to sea, the farmer's
+crop--everything is more or less a matter of chance. If a man goes
+straight he has a fairly easy time with his conscience, no matter what
+he's at; but if he doesn't, well, he'd better go hungry."
+
+"A great many very honorable men are racing today," added Crane; "men
+who have built up large fortunes through honest dealing, and wouldn't be
+racing if they felt that it was either unchristian or dishonorable."
+
+"They can't be Christians if they countenance gambling," asserted the
+minister, doggedly.
+
+It occurred to Mortimer that whenever the discussion took broader lines,
+Dolman drew it back into the narrow cell of his own convictions.
+
+Porter scratched his head perplexedly. They had been discussing the
+moral influence of racing; this seemed more like theology. "It is
+certainly unchristian," commented Mrs. Porter, severely. "I haven't seen
+much Christian spirit in any business," said Porter, quietly; "they all
+seem more a matter of written agreements. In fact there's more done
+on honor in racing than in any of the business gambles. A man that's
+crooked in racing is sure to come to grief in the long run."
+
+Crane shifted in his chair, and Dolman coughed deprecatingly. "For my
+part," continued Porter, "I've never found it necessary to do anything
+I'm ashamed of in racing."
+
+His wife saw an opening. "But, John dear, you were treated most
+shamefully last year; a dishonest boy hauled your horse--"
+
+"Pulled, mother," interposed Allis; "pulled father's horse, you mean."
+
+"Perhaps, though I fail to see where the difference can be, if the horse
+ran the other way and your father lost."
+
+Porter smiled indulgently. "The boy was punished, Helen," he said.
+"Dishonesty is not tolerated on the race course."
+
+"Yes, but something is always happening," she continued in lament. "It's
+contrary to the law of the church, John. It seems just like a visitation
+of divine wrath the way things happen. And you're so sanguine, John;
+last year you were going to win a big race with Diablo when he threw his
+leg--"
+
+"Threw a splint, mother," prompted Allis.
+
+"I thought your father said it was his leg had something the matter with
+it," argued Mrs. Porter.
+
+"The splint was on his leg, mother dear."
+
+"Well, I'm not familiar with racing phrases, I must say, though I should
+be, goodness knows; I hear little else. And talk of cruelty to animals!"
+she turned to Mr. Dolman; "they burned the poor beast's leg with hot
+irons--"
+
+The minister held up his hands in horror.
+
+"It didn't give him as much pain as the doctor gave Mr. Mortimer setting
+his arm," declared Allis.
+
+"But it was racing injured the horse's leg," interposed Dolman.
+
+"But your horse has got a ringbone, Mr. Dolman," said Allis, "and a
+spavin, too. I've been looking at him. That's because you drive him too
+fast on hard roads. And his feet are contracted from neglect in shoeing.
+It's just cruel the way that poor old horse has been neglected. Race
+horses are much better taken care of."
+
+Allis's sudden onslaught switched Mr. Dolman from the aggressive to the
+defensive with great celerity.
+
+"I confess I know very little about horses," he was forced to apologize;
+then, with something of asperity, "the spiritual welfare of my
+congregation takes up my entire time."
+
+This rebuke caused a momentary silence, and Dolman, turning to Mortimer,
+said, "I hope you don't approve of racing, sir."
+
+Mortimer didn't, but a look from Allis's eyes inexplicably enough caused
+him to hedge very considerably in his reply.
+
+"I know nothing about the race course," he said, "but from what I see of
+the thoroughbreds I believe a man would have to be of very low order
+if their noble natures did not appeal to him. I think that courage, and
+honesty, and gentleness--they all seem to have it--must always have a
+good influence. Why, sir," he continued, with a touch of excitement, "I
+think a man would be ashamed to feel that he was making himself lower
+than the horses he had to do with."
+
+Allis looked grateful. Even Porter turned half about in his chair,
+and gazed with a touch of wonderment at the battered young man who had
+substituted common sense for sophistical reasoning.
+
+The reverend gentleman frowned. "It's not the horses at all," he said,
+"it's the men who are disreputable."
+
+Mrs. Porter gave a little warning cough. In his zealousness Mr. Dolman
+might anger her husband, then his logic would avail little.
+
+"The men are like the horses," commented Porter, "some bad and some
+good. They average about the same as they do in anything else, mostly
+good, I think. Of course, when you get a bad one he stands out and
+everybody sees him."
+
+"And sometimes horses--and men, too, I suppose--get a bad name when they
+don't deserve it," added Allis. "Everybody says Lauzanne is bad, but I
+know he's not."
+
+"That was a case of this dreadful dishonesty," said Mrs. Porter,
+speaking hastily. She turned in an explanatory way to Crane. "You know,
+Mr. Crane, last summer a rascally man sold my husband a crooked horse.
+Now, John, what are you laughing at?" for her husband was shaking in his
+chair.
+
+"I was wondering what a crooked horse would look like," he answered, and
+there were sobs in his voice.
+
+"Why, John, when you brought him home you said he was crooked."
+
+As usual, Allis straightened matters out: "It was the man who was
+crooked. Mother means Lauzanne," she continued.
+
+"Yes," proceeded the good woman, "a Mr. Langdon, I remember now, treated
+my husband most shamefully over this horse."
+
+Crane winced. He would have preferred thumbscrews just then. "John is
+honest himself," went on Mrs. Porter, "and he believes other men, and
+this horse had some drug given him to make him look nice, so that my
+husband would buy him."
+
+"Shameful," protested Dolman. "Are men allowed to give horses drugs?" he
+appealed to Mr. Porter.
+
+"No; the racing law is very strict on that point."
+
+"But evidently it is done," contended Dolman.
+
+"I think there's very little of it," said Porter.
+
+This turn of the conversation made Crane feel very uneasy. "Do you
+think, Mr. Porter," he asked, "that there was anything of that sort over
+Lauzanne? Do you think Langdon would--" He hesitated.
+
+"Mr. Langdon has a tolerable idea of what I think," answered Porter.
+"I shouldn't trust that man too much if I were you. He's got cunning
+enough, though, to run straight with a man like yourself, who has a
+horse or two in his stable, and doesn't go in for betting very heavily."
+
+"I know very little about him," protested Crane; "and, as you say, he
+will probably act quite straightforward with me, at least."
+
+"Yes," continued Porter, half wearily, as though he wished to finish the
+distasteful discussion; "there are black sheep in racing as there are
+in everything else. My own opinion is that the most of the talk we hear
+about crooked racing is simply talk. At least nine out of ten races are
+honestly run--the best horse wins. I would rather cut off my right hand
+than steal a race, and yet last summer it was said that I had pulled
+Lucretia."
+
+"I never heard of that, John," cried Mrs. Porter, in astonishment.
+
+"No, you didn't," dryly answered her husband.
+
+Allis smiled; she had settled that part of it with her father at the
+time.
+
+"If you'll excuse me," began Crane, rising, "I think Mr. Wortimer is
+getting tired. I believe I'll jog back to Brookfield."
+
+Reluctantly the Reverend Dolman rose, too. He felt, somehow, that the
+atmosphere of racing had smothered his expostulation--that he had made
+little headway. The intense honesty that was John Porter's shielded him
+about almost as perfectly as, a higher form of belief might have done.
+
+But with almost a worldly cunning it occurred to the clergyman that he
+could turn the drawn battle into a victory for the church; and as they
+stood for a minute in the gentle bustle of leave-taking, he said: "The
+ever-continuing fight that I carry on against the various forms of
+gambling must necessarily take on at times almost a personal aspect--"
+he was addressing Mr. Porter, ostensibly--"but in reality it is not
+quite so. I think I understand your position, Mr. Porter, and--and--what
+shall I say--personally I feel that the wickedness of racing doesn't
+appeal to you as a great contamination; you withstand it, but you
+will forgive me saying so, thousands have not the same strength of
+character."
+
+Porter made a deprecatory gesture, but Dolman proceeded. "What I was
+going to say is, that you possibly realize this yourself. You have acted
+so wisely, with what I would call Christian forethought, in placing your
+son, Alan, in a different walk in life, and--" he turned with a grave
+bow in Crane's direction--"and in good hands, too."
+
+"His mother wished it," Porter said, simply.
+
+"Yes, John was very good about Alan's future," the mother concurred.
+"But, husband, you quite agreed that it was much better for Alan to be
+in the bank than possibly drifting into association with--well, such
+dishonorable men as this Mr. Langdon and his friends. He is so much
+better off," she continued, "with young men such as Mr. Crane would have
+about him."
+
+The Reverend Dolman smiled meekly, but it was in triumph. He had called
+attention to an act which spoke far louder than Mr. Porter's disclaiming
+words.
+
+Porter was not at all deceived by the minister; in fact, he rather
+admired the other's cleverness in beating him on the post. He gave a
+little laugh as he said: "I should not have succeeded very well in a
+bank. I am more at home with the horses than I am with figures; but I
+expect I would have gone fairly straight, and hope the boy will do the
+same. I fancy one of the great troubles about banking is to keep the men
+honest, the temptation of handling so much money being great. They seem
+to have more chances to steal than men on the race course."
+
+As usual, Porter seemed to be speaking out of his thoughts and without
+malice; no one took offense. It was simply a straightforward answer to
+Dolman's charge.
+
+Porter had simply summed up the whole business in a very small nutshell.
+That there was temptation everywhere, and that honest men and thieves
+were to be found on race courses, in banks, in every business, but that,
+like the horses, a fair share of them were honest.
+
+"Speaking materially of race horses quite outside of the moral aspect,"
+said Crane, as he was taking his leave, "you'll have to be mighty
+careful of that Diablo, Mr. Porter, when Miss Allis is about; he seems a
+vindictive brute."
+
+"Yes, John; you'll have to sell him right away; I'll be frightened to
+death while he's about the place."
+
+"I shall never be a bit afraid of him," remonstrated Allis; "Shandy, who
+made all the mischief, has been discharged."
+
+"Diablo has always been more trouble than he's worth," said Porter. "I
+thought he was going to be a good horse, but he isn't; and if he has
+taken to eating people I'll give him away some day. I wouldn't sell him
+as a good horse, and nobody'd buy a man-eater."
+
+"I'll buy him when you make up your mind, Mr. Porter," exclaimed Crane,
+somewhat eagerly. "I have nobody sweet enough to tempt his appetite. In
+the meantime, Miss Allis, if I were you I should keep away from him."
+
+Then presently, with good-nights and parting words of warning about
+Diablo, the guests were gone; and Mortimer, having declined
+Porter's proffered help, was somewhat awkwardly--having but one good
+hand--preparing to retire in Alan's room.
+
+His mind worked somewhat faster than his fingers; several new problems
+had been given it to labor over within the compass of a single moon.
+That horse racing should ever become a disturbing interest in his life
+had seemed very improbable; now it was like a gale about his soul, it
+swayed him. He was storm-tossed in the disturbing element; he could come
+to no satisfying conclusion. On the one hand the thoroughbred horses
+were to be admired; they were brave and true, creatures of love. Also
+Porter was an honest man, the one thing he admired above all else.
+
+And Miss Allis! Somehow or other his eyes wandered to a picture that
+rested on a mantelpiece in the room. He took it down, looking furtively
+over his shoulder as he did so, and taking it close under the lamp that
+was on the table sat and gazed steadfastly into the girlish face.
+
+Even in the photograph the big, wondrous eyes seemed to say, "What
+of wrong, if we are not wrong?" That was the atmosphere so thoroughly
+straightforward and honest that wrong failed of contamination.
+
+Still it was unconvincing to Mortimer. The horses might be good, the
+man honest, and the girl pure and sweet, but the life itself was
+distasteful. Reason as one might, it was allied to gambling. Mortimer
+rose with a sigh, the whole thing wearied him. Why should he distress
+his mind over the matter? As he put the photograph back on the mantel he
+held it for an instant, then suddenly; with a nervous, awkward gesture,
+brought it to his lips and kissed the eyes that seemed to command
+tribute.
+
+The movement twisted his broken-ribbed side and an agony of pain came
+to him in quick retribution. It was as though the involuntary kiss had
+lurched him forward into a futurity of misery. The spasm loosed beads
+of perspiration which stood cold on his forehead. Swift taken from the
+stimulant of his thoughts, his nerves overtaxed by the evening, jangled
+discordantly, and he crept into bed, feeling an unutterable depression
+as though the room, was filled with evil, threatening spirits.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+In coincidence the two men, Mortimer and Crane, had similar thoughts
+the day after Mr. Dolman's discussion; and, rather remarkably,
+their deductions were alike, having the same subject of mental
+retrospect--Allis Porter.
+
+It was evident that outside of her family little interested her but
+horses; certainly not a very lofty aspiration. When the conversation had
+dealt with broad principles, men and their shortcomings, the previous
+evening, she had centralized it in Lauzanne, picturing him as symbolical
+of good acts and evil repute. Patently it was difficult to become
+interested in such a young woman; actually she monopolized their
+thoughts. Inconsistently the fair offender felt no recoil of this
+somewhat distressing situation; her mind busied itself chiefly over the
+reclamation of Lauzanne.
+
+By inheritance all the qualities of a good horse had come to him except
+a submissive temper. Allis worked on the theory that his disposition
+had been set awry by injudicious handling; that unlimited patience would
+cause him to forget all that. He could gallop, else he had not won the
+race in which he beat The Dutchman. That he had needed a stimulant that
+day was because he had been soured and would not try with his wits about
+him. From the time of coming back to Ringwood Allis had ridden him in
+all his exercise gallops, and had asked Mike personally to supervise his
+stable education. It had taken all her great patience, all her youthful
+enthusiasm and faith, for the Chestnut had notions beyond all belief. At
+first, missing the abuse, he almost seemed to thirst for it; tried the
+gentle girl in every way--sulked, and loafed, and took little streaks of
+trying to cut the course, and made false breaks as though he were going
+to run with a full vigor; even laid hold of the horses with his teeth
+when opportunity offered. These antics did not break the girl's faith;
+she rode him with the gentle hand a woman knows and a horse soon learns
+to appreciate, and gave him to understand that he was to have fair
+treatment.
+
+Porter viewed this continuous performance with silent skepticism. He did
+not abuse horses himself, neither did he put up with too much nonsense
+from them. To him they were like children, needing a lot of tolerant
+kindness, but, also, at times, to be greatly improved by a sound
+whipping. Once when he suggested something of this sort to Allis,
+saying that Lauzanne was a spoiled child, she admitted he was, but that
+thoughtless cruelty and not indulgence had done the harm, therefore
+kindness was the cure. The first sign of regeneration was the implicit
+faith that Lauzanne began to place in his young mistress. At first when
+she put up a hand to pet him he would jerk his head away in affright;
+now he snuggled her shoulder, or nibbled at her glove in full spirit of
+comradarie. Then one day in a gallop came a stronger manifestation,
+a brief minute of exhilaration, with after-hours of thankfulness, and
+beyond that, alas for the uncertainty of a spoiled temper, an added
+period of wallowing in the Slough of Despond!
+
+It was on a crisp, sparkling morning, and with Shandy--it was before his
+downfall--on Lucretia, another stable lad, Ned Carter, on Game Boy, and
+Allis on Lauzanne, the three swung off for a working gallop of a mile or
+more. Lauzanne was in an inquisitive mood, as the other two raced on
+in front. What was his light-weighted rider up to anyway? Why did she
+always leave it to him to do just as he liked? Was she really deceiving
+him? Did she wish him to lie back there behind the others always? He
+fell to wondering what she would do if he were to take hold of the bit
+and spread his big muscles in one rushing gallop, and go on past the
+others and get home to the feed box first. He rattled the snaffle in his
+mouth with nervous indecision--he had a notion to try it.
+
+"Steady, my boy!" said Allis, as she slipped the reins back through her
+fingers till they stretched tight. A dozen times she had sought in vain
+to make him think she did not wish him to gallop, but something in the
+crisp air this morning threw him off his guard. Why should he be forced
+to lag behind? He stretched the arch of his neck straight till the bit
+held hard in his mouth; the ears pitched forward in eager point; the
+great frame under the girl quivered and sank closer to earth; the roar
+of his beating hoofs came up to her ears, muffled by the drive of the
+wind that was now a gale as the Chestnut raced into it with the speed
+of an express. How her heart sang! Here was speed, and with such
+stride--strong, and straight, and true! Low she crouched, and her call
+to Lauzanne was but a joyous whisper. Her small hands were framed in
+steel, strength to steady the big Chestnut as he swung round the course
+glued to the rail. On Lauzanne sped, and to the rhythm of his big
+heaving quarters the girl's soul sang a song of delight. At last, at
+last was coming her reward.
+
+And then, just when everything had been achieved, when the great
+gallop had brought them half up the stretch, something came to
+Lauzanne--perhaps the memory of the whipping finishes; at any rate, he
+curled up like a dog, threw his ears back--Allis could feel the sudden
+stiff prop of the forelegs as he set himself against the rush of
+speed--and in a dozen strides he was Lauzanne again, Lauzanne the
+Despised.
+
+And so it had gone on for weeks, Allis working out her theory up to the
+time of the trouble over Diablo. There was something in the girl's quiet
+determination that was masterful; perhaps that was why she had always
+had her own way at home. Now this mastery was spreading out wonderfully;
+Lauzanne, and Mike, and her father, and Crane, and Mortimer, all in
+different degrees of subjection, but, as Fate knew, all subject.
+
+Mrs. Porter's continual lament on the subject of racing had given Crane
+a keynote for his line of action. It was the day following her scoring
+of the tolerant husband that Crane revisited Ringwood full of his new
+idea.
+
+He had an impulse to buy back Lauzanne. For almost the first time in
+his life he experienced twinges of remorse; this was because of Allis.
+Porter's affairs were in a bad way, and he would probably accept eagerly
+an offer from Crane to lighten his load. Individually he cared little for
+Porter's financial troubles, but it was a good opportunity to prepare
+the way for a stronger pressing of his suit with the girl. With his
+usual fine discrimination he spoke to Mrs. Porter first, intimating
+never so slightly that her words had won his entire sympathy; that if
+her husband would sell any of the horses he would buy them.
+
+There was a convincing sincerity about Crane at all times; what he did
+he did with the full vigor of a man believing in its truth. One
+might almost have suspected that he deceived himself, that he had no
+conception of the unrighteousness of his acts. At any rate, he imposed
+most successfully upon the mother of Allis. Quite egotistically she
+attributed to herself the trend of his friendship. In racing phrase,
+Crane was out for a killing and playing his cards with consummate skill.
+
+With the master of Ringwood he went very straight to the point. This
+was possible, as Porter could not hesitate to discuss his financial
+condition with his banker. Crane offered to buy Lucretia; this with
+him was purely a speculation, but Porter would not part with his little
+mare. Then the banker spoke of Lauzanne, saying that he felt somewhat
+guilty since learning the previous evening that the horse had been
+doped. Porter failed to see where Crane had anything to do with it. But
+the latter insisted that he had unwittingly helped Langdon by speaking
+of Lauzanne as a good horse. He had known nothing of the matter, beyond
+that his trainer had assured him the horse would win; in fact, he had
+backed him.
+
+Porter laughed at the idea that responsibility could attach to Crane. As
+to the Chestnut, he was not worth a tenth of the three thousand he had
+cost--that was well known; and if Crane or any other man sought to
+buy him at that price it would savor too much of charity. At any rate,
+Lauzanne belonged to Allis, and Crane would have to bargain with her.
+
+Then there was Diablo, Crane said; his presence was a menace to Miss
+Porter.
+
+"I've nursed him for a good while," Porter replied, "and he's a bad
+betting proposition--he's too uncertain. You don't want such a horse as
+that--nobody does. I'll keep him a bit longer, and put him in a handicap
+or two where the purse will be worth running for, and I won't have to
+back him; he'll get in with a featherweight, and some day may take it
+into his head to gallop, though he's a rank bad one."
+
+Crane did not press the point; he understood Porter's motives
+throughout. He knew the master of Ringwood was an unchanging man, very
+set in his ways, adhering closely to his plans and opinions. So Crane
+went back to Brookfield without purchasing a horse, saying as he left,
+"I claim first privilege when you wish to sell."
+
+He had talked to Porter in the stable, and Mike, busy near by, heard
+that part of their conversation referring to the horses.
+
+"They haven't got money enough in the bank to take the little mare from
+us yet, have they, Mike?" Porter said to Gaynor, full of his pride in
+Lucretia.
+
+"That they haven't, sor," replied Mike, proudly. "But, faith, I wish th'
+gint hadn't come a-tryin' to buy her; it's bad luck to turn down a big
+offer fer any horse."
+
+Porter smiled indulgently. This stable superstition did not appeal to
+him.
+
+"It would a-broke the bad luck, sor, to have let him took the Black."
+
+"It would have broken his bank, you mean, Mike."
+
+"Well, he'll break somewan's back here yet, an' I'm tellin' you that
+sthraight. They say a black cat's full av th! divil, but Diablo's ould
+Nick hisself, though I'm sayin'it was th' b'y Shandy's fault sp'ilin'
+him. An' if it wasn't fer Miss Allis it's a pity you couldn't a-sold
+him the Chestnut. He's a sawhorse--he's as heavy in th' head as a bag of
+salt; he'll never do no good to nobody. Them's the kind as kapes a man
+poor, eatin' their heads off, an' wan horse, or maybe two, in the
+stable earnin' th' oats fer them. It's chaper to cut th' t'roats av such
+cattle."
+
+"I believe you're right, Mike," Porter answered, quietly, as he left the
+stable.
+
+Crane, driving back to Brookfield, turned over in his mind the matter
+of his mission. He was satisfied. He had succeeded in the main objective
+point. It would have been a good move to have acquired Lucretia, to have
+tempted her owner to part with her for ready money in sight. The money
+would soon have disappeared; then Porter, with a lot of bad horses on
+his hand, would almost certainly have come more firmly into the grasp
+of Crane. The offer to buy Lauzanne had been a bit of saving grace, a
+faint, generous impulse, begot of Allis's regenerating influence; but
+Crane had discovered that Porter did not at all suspect him of interest
+in the fraud--that was a great something. He had also established
+himself firmly in Mrs. Porter's good graces, he could see. It would be
+indeed strange if in the end he did not succeed completely.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Shandy's escapade with Diablo had brought a new trouble to Mike Gaynor.
+
+The boy had been discharged with a severe reprimand from Mr. Porter, and
+a punctuation mark of disapproval from the Trainer's horn-like hand.
+He had departed from Ringwood inwardly swearing revenge upon everybody
+connected with that place; against Diablo he was particularly virulent.
+
+Mike tried to secure a boy in the Brookfield neighborhood to ride Diablo
+in his work, but Shandy's evil tongue wagged so blatantly about the
+horse's bad temper that no lad could be found to take on in the stables.
+Ned Carter might have ridden Diablo at work, but the big Black was
+indeed a horse of many ideas. He had taken a notion to gallop kindly
+while accompanied by Lucretia and Lauzanne; worked alone he sulked
+and was as awkward as a broncho of the plains. Also he disliked
+Carter--seemed to associate his personality with that of Shandy's.
+
+Mike's discontent over the hitch spread to John Porter. It was too bad;
+the horses had been doing so well. For three days Diablo had no gallop.
+On the fourth Porter determined to ride the horse himself; he would not
+be beaten out by an ungrateful whelp like Shandy. In his day he had been
+a famous gentleman jock, and still light enough to ride work.
+
+"I don't like the idea, sor; it's not good enough," remonstrated Mike.
+
+But his master was obdurate. If Allis rode Lauzanne, why shouldn't he
+ride Diablo?
+
+Gaynor would have ridden the horse himself rather than have his master
+do so, but he had a bad leg. Once upon a time it had been crushed
+against the rail. Somebody must ride Diablo; the horse, naturally
+highstrung, was becoming wild with nervousness through being knocked out
+of his work.
+
+For three days after his discharge Shandy sat brooding with the low
+cunning of a forest animal over his fancied ill-treatment. More than
+once he had received money from Langdon for touting off to him Porter's
+stable matters; now in his unreasoning bitterness he contrasted Langdon
+and Porter.
+
+"Dick's white, he is, an' I'll go git a job from him. I gits half eat
+by that crazy skate, an' fired without a cent fer it. God drat 'em!"
+he muttered; "I'll get even, or know why. They'll put Ned up on Diablo,
+will they? The sneak! He split on me fer beltin' the Black, I know, damn
+him! They ain't got another boy an' they won't git one. I'll fix that
+stiff, Carter, too; then they won't have no boy."
+
+He drank beer, and as it irritated his ferret mind a devilish plot came
+into his being and took possession of him--a plot easy of execution
+because of his familiarity with the Ringwood stables.
+
+That night he slipped through the dark, like a hyena pup, to Ringwood.
+That the stable was locked mattered not. More than once, out of
+laziness, Shandy had shirked going to Mike's quarters for the keys and
+had found ingress by a small window, a foot square, through which the
+soiled straw bedding was thrown into the yard. Standing on the dung
+heap, Shandy worked open the board slide that closed this window, and
+wormed his weasel-form through the small opening. He passed down the
+passage between the stalls and entered a saddle room at the farther end.
+
+"The bloomin' thing used to be on the fourth peg," he muttered, drawing
+his small figure up on tiptoe and feeling along the wall for something.
+"Blow me!" and he chuckled fiendishly as his fingers encountered the
+cold steel of a bit, "I'd know that snaffle in hell, if I got a feel of
+it."
+
+There was a patent device of a twist and a loose ring in the center of
+the bit he clutched, which Porter had devised for Diablo's hard mouth.
+
+Shandy gave the bridle a swing, and it clattered to the floor from its
+peg. Diablo snorted and pawed the planks of his stall nervously.
+
+"All right, my buck," hissed Shandy, "you wait till to-morror; you'll
+git the run of yer life, I'm thinkin', damn their eyes!" and he went
+off into a perfect torrent of imprecation against everybody at Ringwood,
+hushing his voice to a snarling whisper. Then he shut the door of the
+saddle room, sat down on the floor and pulled from his pocket a knife
+and stub of candle. He lighted the latter and held it flame down till
+a few drops of wax formed a tiny lake; into this he stuck the candle
+upright, shielding its flame with his coat. He opened the knife and
+laying it down, inspected minutely the bridle which lay across his leg.
+
+"It's Diablo's right enough," he said; "I couldn't be mistook on the
+bit, nor them strong lines."
+
+He picked up the knife, and holding the leather rein across the palm of
+his left hand started to saw it gently with the blade. Almost instantly
+he left off. "Of all the bloomin' ijits! God drat me fer a goat! He'd
+feel that cut the first slip through his fingers the leather took."
+
+He gathered in the rein until he had it six inches from the bit. There
+he cut, stopping many times, and doubling the leather close to the light
+to see how deep he had penetrated.
+
+"There, Mr. Bloody Ned!" he exclaimed at last, as inspection showed that
+only the outer hard shell of the leather remained intact. "That'll just
+hold till the Black takes one of his cranky spells, an' you give him
+a stiff pull. God help you then!" Even this was a blasphemous cry of
+exultation; not a plea for divine assistance for the man he plotted
+against.
+
+His next move proved that his cunning was of an exceptional order. From
+his coat pocket he brought forth a pill box. In this receptacle Shandy
+dipped a forefinger, and rubbed into the fresh cut of the leather a
+trifle of blackened axle grease which he had taken from a wagon wheel
+before starting out. Then he wiped the rein with his coat tail and
+looked at it admiringly.
+
+"The bloke won't see that, blast him!"
+
+He hung the bridle up in its place, put out the candle, dropped it in
+his pocket and made his way from the stable.
+
+As he passed Diablo's stall the big Black snorted again, and plunged in
+affright.
+
+"You'll get enough of that to-morror," sneered the boy. "I hope you and
+Ned both break your damn necks. Fer two cents I'd drop somethin' in your
+feed-box that'd settle you right now; but it's the skunk as split on me
+I want to get even with."
+
+Shandy trudged back to where he nested in Brookfield and soon slept with
+calm restfulness, as though no evil had ever homed in his heart. In the
+first gray of the early morning he rose and went out to the race course.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+The course near Ringwood had formerly been a trotting track, and
+was still used at irregular intervals for the harness horses. In its
+primitive days a small, square, box-like structure had done duty as
+a Judges' Stand. With other improvements a larger structure had been
+erected a hundred yards higher up the stretch.
+
+It was to the little old stand that Shandy took his way. Inside he
+waited for the coming of Gaynor's string of gallopers as supremely happy
+in his unrighteous work as any evil-minded boy might be at the prospect
+of unlimited mischief.
+
+"Ned'll ride Diablo, sure; there's nothin' else to it," he muttered.
+"I hope he breaks his blasted neck. I'll pay 'em out fer turnin' me off
+like a dog," he continued, savagely, the small ferret eyes blazing
+with fury. "I'll learn the damn--Hello!" His sharp ears had caught the
+muffled sound of hoofs thudding the turf in a slow, measured walk. He
+peeped between the boards.
+
+"Yes, it's Mike. And the girl, too--blast her! She blamed me fer near
+bein' eat alive by that black devil of a dope horse. Hell!"
+
+This ambiguous exclamation was occasioned by the sight of his former
+master springing into the saddle on Diablo's back.
+
+"That's the game, eh? God strike me dead! I hope you git enough of
+him. My arms ache yet from bein' near pulled out of the sockets by that
+leather-mouthed brute. Gee, if the boss hasn't got spurs on! If he ever
+tickles the Black wit' 'em--say, boys, there'll be a merry hell to pay,
+and no pitch hot."
+
+The young Arab spoke to the boards as though they were partners in his
+iniquity. Then he chuckled diabolically, as in fancy he saw Porter being
+trampled by the horse.
+
+"The girl's on Lauzanne," he muttered; "she's the best in the lot, if
+she did run me down. A ridin' that sorrel mut, too, when she ought to be
+in the house washin' dishes. A woman ain't got no more business hangin'
+'round the stable than a man's got in the kitchen. Petticoats is the
+devil; I never could abide 'em." Shandy sometimes harked back to his
+early English Whitechapel, for he had come from the old country, and had
+brought with him all the depravity he could acquire in the first five
+years of his existence there.
+
+"Ned's got the soft snap in that blasted bunch," as his eye discovered
+Carter on Lucretia. "He's slipped me this go, but I've nobbled the boss,
+so I don't care. I'm next 'em this trip."
+
+As the three horses and their riders came on to the course he pulled out
+a cheap stop-watch Langdon had equipped him with for his touting, and
+started and stopped it several times.
+
+"You'll pay fer their feed, you damn ole skinflint," he was
+apostrophizing Porter, "an' I'll be next the best they can do, an'
+stan' in on the rake-off. Gee! I thought they was out fer a trial," he
+muttered, looking disconsolately at the three as they cantered the first
+part of the journey. "I'll ketch 'em at the half, on the off chance," he
+added.
+
+But though the timepiece in his hand clicked impatiently, after he
+pressed the stem with his thumb, as Diablo's black nozzle showed past
+the half-mile post, the three horses still cantered. Lauzanne was loping
+leisurely with the action of a wooden rocking-horse. Lucretia, her long,
+in-tipped ears cocked eagerly forward, was throwing her head impatiently
+into the air as though pleading for just one strong gallop. Diablo's
+neck was arched like the half of a cupid's bow; his head, almost against
+his chest, hung heavy in the reins tight-drawn in Porter's strong hands.
+His eyes, showing full of a suspicious whiteness, stood out from his
+lean, bony head; they were possessed of a fretful, impatient look. Froth
+flecked back from the nervous, quivering lips, and spattered against his
+black satin-skinned chest, where it hung like seafoam on holding sand.
+
+"Whoa! Steady, old boy!" Porter was coaxing soothingly. "Steady, boy!"
+
+"The ease up has put the very deuce into this fellow," he flung over
+his shoulder to Allis, who was at Diablo's quarter. "He's a hard-mouthed
+brute if ever there was one."
+
+"He'll be all right, dad," she called forward, raising her voice, for
+the wind cut her breath; "Shandy rode him with a heavy hand, that's
+why."
+
+"I'll put a rubber bit in his mouth, to soften it," he pumped brokenly.
+"Let out a wrap, girl, and we'll breeze them up the stretch; come on.
+Carter, get to the front with the mare." A quarter of a mile from the
+finish the horses raced into a swinging stride. Diablo was simply mad
+with a desire to gallop; but in the saddle was his master; no horse
+ever did as he wished with John Porter. Battling against the sharps
+his honesty might handicap him out of the strife, but in the saddle the
+elation of movement crept into his sinews, and he was superb, a king.
+As a jockey, he would have been unsurpassed. It filled his heart with
+delight to play with the fierce, imperious animal he rode.
+
+"Steady, my boy--no you don't!" This as Diablo stuck his neck straight
+out like an arrow and sought to hold the bit tight against the bridle
+teeth, that he might race at his own sweet will. Back came the right
+hand, then the left, three vicious saws, and the bit was loose and
+Diablo's head drawn down again close to the martingale. Lucretia and
+Lauzanne were pulling to the front.
+
+"Go on!" called Porter to Ned Carter; "I want to see the little mare in
+her stride. Take them out at three-quarter gallop down the back stretch.
+I'll be treading your heels off."
+
+By this they were opposite the old stand, where Shandy was hiding. The
+boy, surmising that a gallop was on, and anxious to see them as they
+rounded the turn going down the back, had knocked a board loose to widen
+the crack. As the horses came abreast, Shandy, leaning forward in his
+eagerness, dislodged it at the top, and it fell with a clatter, carrying
+him half through the opening. The wind was blowing fair across the
+little stand, so the scent of the boy came to Diablo's nostrils at the
+same instant the startling noise reached his nervous ears. In a swerve
+he almost stopped, every muscle of his big body trembling in affright.
+Porter was nearly thrown from his seat by this crouching side step;
+the horse seemed to shrink from under him. Just for an instant, but the
+reins had flapped loose against the wet neck and Diablo felt freedom.
+With a snort he plunged forward like a wounded buck, and raced madly
+after Lucretia, who had bolted when the crash came.
+
+Porter had lost a stirrup in the sudden twist, and the reins had slipped
+through his fingers as he grabbed the mane on Diablo's wither to pull
+his weight back into the saddle.
+
+Now the black neck was straight and taut, flatcapped by the slim ears
+that lay close to the throatlatch. The thunder of his pounding hoofs
+reached to the ears of Lucretia and Lauzanne in front, and urged them
+onward. Carter had sat down in the saddle, and taken a steadying pull at
+the brown mare. Even Lauzanne seemed lifted out of his usual lethargy,
+and, widemouthed, was pulling Allis out of the saddle.
+
+"Curse the brute!" gasped Porter, burying his knees in the saddle flaps,
+and searching for the dangling stirrup with the toe of his right foot.
+Once he almost had it, but missed; the iron, swinging viciously, caught
+Diablo in the flank--it made little difference, his terror was complete.
+All the time Porter was kneading the dangling reins back through
+forefinger and thumb, shortening his hold for a strong pull at the
+galloping brute's head.
+
+"Who-o-o-a-h, who-o-o-ah, stead-y!" and, bracing himself against the
+pummel he swung the weight of his shoulders on the reins. As well might
+he have pulled at the rock of Gibraltar. Diablo's head was up, his teeth
+set hard and the man's strength was as nothing against the full-muscled
+neck of the big horse. Diablo was cutting down the lead the other two
+held over him, galloping like a demon. Porter felt that he must loosen
+the bit and throw that set head down to get command of the horse. One
+fierce yank to the right and the black head swayed a trifle; another to
+the left and--God in heaven! the rein snapped, and its loose end came
+back, slashing the rider across the face. He reeled with the recoil,
+nearly bringing Diablo to his knees with the sudden swing of weight on
+the right rein. Porter's brain jerked foolishly for an instant; then he
+was the trained horseman again, and had let the remaining leather slip
+through his fingers a trifle.
+
+"Go on!" he shouted to those in front; "go on--give me a lead! Hang to
+the course!"
+
+He realized now that the crazed brute under him must run himself out.
+All he could do was to sit tight and wait till Diablo had raced himself
+to a standstill. To use the one rein meant a crash into the rail, and
+surely death. Before, he had thought only of the horse's welfare; now
+it was a matter of his own life. All that remained to him was to keep a
+cool head, a steady nerve, and wait.
+
+Freed of restraint, not battled with, the Black's stride lengthened, his
+nostrils spread wider, the hoofs pounded quicker and quicker until the
+earth echoed with their palpitating beat. The other horses heard the
+turmoil, and they, too, became more afraid, and took up the mad rush.
+
+Diablo's reaching nose was at Lauzanne's hip when Allis took one swift
+backward glance. She saw the dangling rein, the set look in her father's
+face, the devil eyes of the horse, and for one breath-gasp her heart
+fluttered in its beat. As quickly she put the fear from her, and
+swinging Lauzanne a shade wide, left Diablo more room next the rail.
+
+"On, Lauzanne!" she called through drawn lips; and hitched encouragingly
+in the saddle.
+
+Lucretia was still in front, her speed mocking at the swift rush of
+Lauzanne and Diablo. But how the Black galloped! Every post saw him
+creeping up on the Chestnut, and Allis riding and nursing him to keep
+the runaway hemmed in at the turns, so that he could not crash through
+the outer rail. No one spoke again. Each knew that nothing was left to
+do but keep Diablo to the course, and ride, ride.
+
+Just in front of Lauzanne, with swinging stride raced the brown mare,
+waiting till the Chestnut should drop back beaten, to take up the
+running with Diablo. That was Carter's good judgment; and he rode as
+though it were the Derby, and he was nursing his mount for the last call
+at the finish.
+
+At the three quarters Lauzanne and Diablo were neck and neck; at the
+half, the Black was lapped on Lucretia; another furlong and she was
+laboring to keep her place, nose and nose with him.
+
+"I'm done," panted Carter, feeling the mare swerve and falter; "I'm
+done--God help us!"
+
+Still there was no check in the Black's gallop; he was like a devil that
+could go on forever and ever.
+
+They had turned into the straight with Lucretia a neck to the bad, when
+Carter heard the girl's voice faintly calling, "Pull out, Ned!" The
+boy thought it fancy. Lauzanne the Despised couldn't be there at their
+heels. He had thought him beaten off long ago. But again the voice came,
+a little stronger, "Pull out, Ned!"
+
+This time there was no mistake. It might be a miracle, but it was
+his duty to obey. As he galloped, Carter edged Lucretia to the right.
+Without looking back he could feel Lauzanne creeping up between him and
+Diablo. Soon the Chestnut's head showed past his elbow, and they were
+both lapped on the Black. Halfway up the stretch Allis was riding
+stirrup to stirrup with her father. Porter's weight was telling on
+Diablo.
+
+"She's got him. Lauzanne'll hold him if he doesn't quit," Carter
+muttered, as he dropped back, for Lucretia was blown.
+
+Past the finish post Lauzanne was a head in front, and Diablo was
+galloping like a tired horse.
+
+"He's beat!" ejaculated Carter. "Hello! that's it, eh? My word, what a
+girl!"
+
+He saw Allis reach down for the slack rein running from her father's
+hand to Diablo's mouth. "Missed! She's got it!" he cried, eagerly. "The
+devil!"
+
+As Allis grasped Diablo's rein, the horse, with sudden fury at being
+drawn toward Lauzanne, his old foe, snapped at the Chestnut. As he did
+so, thrown out of his stride, his forelegs crossed and he went down in
+a heap with the rider underneath. The force of his gallop carried the
+Black full over onto his back. He struggled to his feet, and stood,
+shaking like a leaf, with low-stretched neck and fearcocked ears,
+staring at the crushed, silent figure that lay with its face smothered
+in the soft earth. In a dozen jumps Allis stopped Lauzanne, threw
+herself from the saddle, and leaving the horse ran swiftly back to her
+father.
+
+"Oh, my God! he's dead, he's dead!" she cried, piteously, the nerve that
+had stood the strain of the fierce ride utterly shattered and unstrung
+at sight of the senseless form.
+
+"He's not dead," said Carter, putting his hand over Porter's heart.
+"It's just a bad shake-up. Mike's coming, and we'll soon get him home.
+He'll be all right, Miss Allis--he'll be all right," he kept muttering
+in a dazed manner, as he raised her father's head to his knee.
+
+"Take Lucretia and gallop for the docthor, Miss 'Allis," commanded Mike
+coming up on the run. "We'll get yer father home in the buggy."
+
+"In God's mercy, don't let him die, Mike," and bending down she pressed
+her lips to the cold forehead that was driven full of sand. "Get him
+home quick, and try not to let mother see. I'll take Lauzanne."
+
+Lauzanne had followed her and was standing waiting; his big eyes full of
+a curious wonderment. Mike lifted Allis to the saddle. As he drew back
+his hand he looked at it, then up at the girl. "Don't cry, Miss," he
+said, struggling a little with his voice that was playing him tricks;
+"yer father's just stunned a bit. The dochtor'll brace him up all
+right."
+
+"It's bad business, this," he continued, as Allis galloped on her
+errand, and he helped Carter lift the injured man. "There, that's
+roight; jist carry his legs; I'll take him under the back."
+
+As they moved slowly toward the buggy that stood in the paddock, Diablo
+followed at their heels as though he had done nothing in the world but
+take a mild gallop. "Ye black divil!" muttered Mike, looking over his
+shoulder; "ye've murthered wan av the best min as iver breathed. If I'd
+me way, I'd shoot ye. I'd turn ye into cat meat; that's what ye'r fit
+for!"
+
+"What broke the rein?" he asked of Carter as they neared the buggy;
+"what started thim goin'?"
+
+"Somebody was in the old stand," Carter replied, as putting his foot on
+the step he raised himself and the dead weight of the limp man.
+
+"There, steady, Ned. Pull the cushion down in the bottom. Now ye've got
+it. Bot' t'umbs! it's as good as an ambulance. I'll hold his head in me
+lap, an' ye drive. Here, Finn," he continued, turning to the boy who
+had caught and brought up Lucretia, "take the wee filly an' that divil's
+baste back to the barn; put the busted bridle by till I have a good look
+at it after. Go on, Ned; slow; that's it, aisy does it. When we get out
+on the turnpike ye can slip along."
+
+When they had turned into the road he spoke again to Carter, "Ye were
+sayin', Ned, there was a guy in th' ould stan'."
+
+"Yes," replied Carter; "somebody was toutin' us off. A board broke, an'
+that frightened the boss's mount."
+
+"I t'ought I see a b'y skinnin' off the track," commented Gaynor. "First
+I t'ought it was Shandy, but what'd he be doin' there? Did ye see his
+face, Ned?"
+
+"I was too busy takin' a wrap on Lucretia; she was gettin' a bit out of
+hand."
+
+When they came to the gate which gave entrance to Ringwood house Mike
+said to Carter, with rough sympathy in his voice: "Slip in ahead, Ned,
+and tell the Misses that the boss has had a bit av a spill. Say he's
+just stunned; no bones broke. Bot' t'umbs! though, I fear he's mashed to
+a jelly. Ask fer a bottle of brandy till we give him a bracer. Ned!" he
+called, as Carter slipped from the buggy, "see if ye kin kape the Misses
+from seein' the boss till the docthor comes. Git hould of the girl
+Cynthie, an' give her the tip that things is purty bad. Go on now; I'll
+drive slow wid wan hand."
+
+Mike's kindly precautions were of little avail. Mrs. Porter saw the
+slow-moving conveyance crawling up the broad drive, and instinctively
+knew that again something terrible had occurred. That Allis was not
+there added to her fear.
+
+"He's just bad, ma'am," Carter was saying, as Mike reached the steps.
+But she didn't hear him; her face was white, and in her eyes was the
+horror of a great fear, but from her lips came no cry; her silence was
+more dreadful than if she had called out.
+
+"We'll carry him, ma'am," Mike said, as she came down the steps to the
+buggy, and clutching the wheel rim swayed unsteadily. "Jest git a bed
+ready, Misses," Gaynor continued, softly; "git a bed ready, an' he'll be
+all roight afther a bit. He's just stunned; that's all, just stunned!"
+
+It was curious how the sense of evil had limited each one's vocabulary.
+
+"Let me help," pleaded Mrs. Porter, speaking for the first time.
+
+"We'll carry him, Misses--he's just stunned," repeated Mike, in a dreary
+monotone, as feeling each step carefully with his toe he and Carter bore
+the still senseless form into the house. The wife had got one of the
+battered hands between her own, and was walking with wide, dry, staring
+eyes close to her husband.
+
+"O John, John! Speak to me. Open your eyes and look at me. You're not
+dead; O God! you're not dead!" she cried, passionately, breaking down,
+and a pent-up flood of tears coming to the hot, dry eyes as the two men
+laid Porter on the bed that Cynthia had made ready.
+
+"There, Misses, don't take on now," pleaded Mike. "The boss is jest
+stunned; that's all. I've been that way a dozen toimes meself," he
+added, by way of assurance. "Where's the brandy? Lift his head, Ned;
+not so much. See!" he cried, exultantly, as the strong liquor caused
+the eyelids to quiver; "see, Misses, he's all roight; he's jest stunned;
+that's all. There's the dochtor now. God bless the little woman! She
+wasn't long!"
+
+The sound of wheels crunching the gravel, with a sudden stop at the
+porch, had come to their ears.
+
+"Come out av the room, Ma'am," Mike besought Mrs. Porter; "come out av
+the room an' lave the docthor bring the boss 'round." He signaled to
+Cynthia with his eyes for help in this argument.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Porter," seconded Cynthia, "go out to the porch; Miss Allis
+and I will remain here with the doctor to get what's needed."
+
+"Ah, a fall, eh," commented Dr. Rathbone, cheerily, coming briskly into
+the room. Then he caught Mike's eye; it closed deliberately, and the
+Irishman's head tipped never so slightly toward Mrs. Porter.
+
+"Now 'clear the room,' as they say in court," continued the doctor, with
+a smile, understanding Mike's signal. "We mustn't have people about
+to agitate Porter when he comes to his senses. I'll need Cynthia, and
+perhaps you'd better wait, too, Gaynor. Just take care of your mother,
+Miss Allis. I'll have your father about in a jiffy."
+
+"He's jest stunned; that's all!" added Mike, with his kindly, parrotlike
+repetition.
+
+It seemed a million years to the wife that she waited for the doctor's
+outcoming. Twice she cried in anguish to Allis that she must go in; must
+see her husband.
+
+"He may die," she pleaded, "and I may never see his eyes again. Oh, let
+me go, Allis, I'll come back, I will."
+
+"Wait here, mother," commanded the girl. "Doctor Rathbone will tell us
+if--if--" she could not finish the sentence--could not utter the dread
+words, but clasping her mother's hands firmly in her own, kept her in
+the chair. Once Mike came out and said, "He's jest stunned, Ma'am. The
+docthor says he'll be all roight by an' by."
+
+"He won't die--"
+
+"He's worth a dozen dead men, Ma'am; he's jest stunned; that's all!"
+
+There was another long wait, then Dr. Rathbone appeared.
+
+"Porter will be all right, Madame; it'll take time; it'll take time--and
+nursing. But you're getting used to that," he added, with a smile, "but,"
+and he looked fixedly at Allis, "he must have quiet; excitement will
+do more harm than the fall."
+
+"Tell me the truth, doctor," pleaded Mrs. Porter, struggling to her
+feet, and placing both hands on his shoulders, "I can stand it--see, I'm
+brave."
+
+"I've told you the truth, Mrs. Porter," the doctor answered. "There's no
+fear for your husband's recovery if he has quiet for a few days."
+
+She looked into his eyes. Then crying, "I believe you, doctor; thank
+God for his mercy!" swayed, and would have fallen heavily but for Mike's
+ready arm.
+
+"She'll be better after that," said the doctor, addressing Allis. "It
+has been a hard pull on her nerves. Just bathe her temples, and get her
+to sleep, if you can. I'll come back soon. Your father is not conscious,
+or will he be, I'm thinking, for a day or two. He has heavy concussion.
+Cynthia has full directions what to do."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+After Dr. Rathbone had left Mike and Carter went down to the stables.
+
+"I'll jest have a look at that broke rein," said Gaynor; "that sthrap
+was strong enough to hang Diablo. If there's not some dirty business in
+this, I'll eat me hat. T'umbs up! but it was a gallop, though. The Black
+kin move whin he wants to."
+
+"But what do you think of old Lauzanne?" exclaimed Carter. "He just wore
+Diablo down, hung to him like a bulldog, an' beat him out."
+
+"It was the girl's ridin'; an' Lauzanne was feared, too. He's
+chicken-hearted; that's what he is. Some day in a race he'll get away in
+front av his horses, an' beat 'em by the length av a street. He'll be a
+hun'red to wan, an' nobody'll have a penny on."
+
+When they arrived at the stable Mike headed straight for the harness
+room. The light was dim, coming from a small, high, two-paned window;
+but Mike knew where every bridle and saddle should be. He put his
+hand on Diablo's headgear, and bringing it down carried it through the
+passage to a stable door where he examined it minutely.
+
+"Jest what I tought. Look at that," and he handed it to Carter for
+inspection. "How do ye size that up, Ned?"
+
+"The rein's been cut near through," replied Carter. "I wonder it held as
+long as it did."
+
+"A dirty, low-down trick," commented Mike. "I'll hang it back on the peg
+just now, but don't use it again fer a bit."
+
+As he reentered the saddle room briskly his heel slipped on the plank
+floor, bringing him down. "I'd take me oath that was a banana peel,
+if it was on the sidewalk," he exclaimed, after a gymnastic twist that
+nearly dislocated his neck. "Some of ye fellows is pretty careless wit'
+hoof grease, I'm thinkin'."
+
+More out of curiosity than anything else he peered down at the cause of
+his sudden slip. "What the divil is it, onyway?" he muttered, kneeling
+and lighting a match, which he held close to the spot. "Bot' t'umbs!" he
+exclaimed, "it's candle grease. Have aither of ye b'ys been in here wit'
+a candle? It's agin the rules."
+
+"There isn't a candle about the barn, an' you know it, Mike," cried
+Carter, indignantly.
+
+Mike was prospecting the floor with another light.
+
+"Here's two burnt matches," he continued, picking them up. "An' they
+were loighted last night, too. See that, they're long, an' that means
+that they wasn't used for lightin' a pipe or a cigar--jes' fer touchin'
+off a candle, that's all. I know they was loighted last night," he
+said, as though to convince himself, "fer they're fresh, an' ain't been
+tramped on. If they'd been here fer two or three days, roight in front
+of the door, they'd have the black knocked off 'em wid ye boys' feet.
+This wan didn't light at all hardly, an' there's a little wool fuzz
+stickin' to it. Gee! that manes some wan sthruck it on his wool pants.
+Git the lantern, Ned, p'raps we'll fin' out somethin' more. The light
+from that high up winder ain't good enough fer trackin' a bear."
+
+When the lantern was brought, Mike continued his detective operations,
+nose and eyes close to the floor, like a black tracker.
+
+"What's that, Ned?" he asked, pointing his finger at a dark brown spot
+on the boards.
+
+Carter crouched and scrutinized Mike's find. "Tobacco spit," and he gave
+a little laugh.
+
+"Roight you are; that's what it is. Now who chaws tobaccie in this
+stable?" he demanded of Carter, with the air of a cross-examining
+counsel.
+
+"I don't."
+
+"Does Finn?"
+
+"No; I don't think so."
+
+"Didn't Shandy always have a gob of it in his cheek--the dirty pig?"
+
+"Yes, he did, Mike."
+
+"I t'ought so; I t'ought it was that blackguard. But how did the swine
+get in here? The stable was locked, an' I had the key in me pocket. I'll
+take me oath to that."
+
+Carter took his cap off, ran a hand reflectively up and down the crown
+of his head, canvassing every possible entry there might be to the
+stalls. Suddenly he replaced his cap and whistled softly. "I know, Mike;
+he crawled through the dung window. I've seen him do it half a dozen
+times. When he was too lazy to go for the keys, he'd wiggle through that
+hole."
+
+Mike said nothing, but led the way to the back of the stable. There he
+climbed upon the pile of rotting straw, and examined closely the small,
+square opening, with its board slide, through which Shandy had passed
+the night before.
+
+"God! I t'ought so!" he ejaculated. "Here's more tobacco spit, where the
+cutt'roat divil stood when he opened the winder."
+
+Looking down, his eye caught the glint of something bright deep in the
+straw. He dug his hand down into the mass and brought up a knife. "Whose
+is that, Ned?" he queried.
+
+Carter looked at it closely. "Shandy's," he answered; "I'll swear to
+that. I've borrowed it from him more than once to clean out the horses'
+hoofs."
+
+"Bot' t'umbs up! I'd hang that b'y to a beam if I had him here. He cut
+that rein as sure as God made little apples," declared Mike, vehemently.
+"An' the gall av him to go an' sit there in the ould stand to watch the
+Black run away wit' somewan an' kill 'em. Now jest kape yer mouth shut,
+Ned, an' we'll put a halter on this rooster. By hivins! when I git him
+I'll make him squale, too!"
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+The seriousness of Porter's accident became clearer to Doctor Rathbone
+the following day. He imparted this information to Allis; told her that
+in all probability it would be weeks before her father would be strong
+again.
+
+"In the meantime, little woman, what are you to do with all these hungry
+horses on your hands?" he asked.
+
+The girl's answer came quickly enough, for she had lain awake through
+all the dreary night, thinking out this problem. Without medical
+knowledge she had felt certain that her father was badly injured, and
+the gloomy future had come to her in the darkness instead of sleep.
+
+"I'll look after them," she answered the doctor, quite simply.
+
+A smile of skepticism hovered about his full lips, as he raised his eyes
+to the girl's face, but the look of determination, of confidence that he
+met put his doubts to flight. "I believe you can do it, if any man can,"
+and he put his big hand on her slight shoulders, as much as to say, "I'm
+behind you; I believe in you."
+
+Of course an inkling of Porter's condition had to be given his wife,
+though the full gravity was masked. This was done by Allis, and Mrs.
+Porter immediately became a prey to abject despair.
+
+The first thing to be done was to get rid of Diablo. She was too gentle
+to ask that he be shot, but he must go, even if he be given away.
+She would willingly have sacrificed all the horses. Always with their
+presence had come financial troubles, spiritual troubles; now the lives
+of those dear to her were in actual peril. No wonder the good woman was
+rendered hysterical by the strong emotions that swayed her.
+
+In her depression she somewhat startled Allis by insisting that they
+must send for Mr. Crane at once. After all, it was not so unreasonable;
+with the master of Ringwood helpless, who else could they consult with
+over their entangled condition? For, the past year Porter had found it
+necessary to keep in constant touch with the bank; so they must become
+familiar with the details of the entanglement.
+
+Mrs. Porter had come to have the utmost confidence in Crane's friendship
+and ability; he was the one above all others to have Diablo taken off
+their hands. So Philip Crane, to his intense delight, was summoned to
+Ringwood. This was his first knowledge of Porter's mishap, for he had
+been in New York.
+
+Crane was supposed to possess a rare magnetism; most certainly men came
+under his influence with a noiseless, cheerful complaisance. It may have
+been that there was a slight fascination in the oblique contour of his
+eyes, but in reality his power lay in his exquisite finesse; people
+delved for him under the impression that they were laboring according to
+the dictates of their own sweet wills. Figuratively speaking, he twisted
+Mrs. Porter round his finger, and so delightfully, that she was filled
+with gratitude because of Crane's kindness in their hour of trouble.
+
+The matter of Diablo was settled in a minute; he would buy the horse
+himself, and the price could be arranged when Mrs. Porter was able to
+discuss the matter--that is, definitely; in the meantime he would pay
+a thousand for him. He understood Porter had bough him for that price.
+With a touch of kindly humor, Crane declared that he would have a small
+bet on the horse for Allis the first time he started.
+
+Beyond parting with Diablo, Allis would not go farther in the matter of
+selling the horses; this was the full extent of her concession to the
+mother. Had she known that her father had entered Diablo in the Brooklyn
+Handicap she might even have refused to part with the horse. As it
+happened, Porter had entered both Lucretia and Diablo in the Brooklyn a
+day or so before his accident, but had not spoken of it.
+
+Crane assured Mrs. Porter that she need not distract her mind over money
+matters, the bank could easily carry their lead until her husband was
+himself again. No matter how things turned out, it was a delicate matter
+to touch upon, the possibility of Porter's condition taking a
+serious turn, but coming from Crane it seemed like an earnest of his
+sincerity--well, Mrs. Porter would find a friend in him, quite willing
+and able to smooth their difficult path.
+
+Crane had meant to defer any protestations of regard for Allis until
+a propitious future, but with his quick perception he saw that the
+psychological moment had been moved forward by the sudden effacement of
+the master of Ringwood. If he spoke now to Mrs. Porter it would give
+her a right to call upon his services. He would appear in the light of
+a debtor; it would break down barriers which might seem to exist because
+of their non-relationship.
+
+Crane had not been without a suspicion that the younger man, Mortimer,
+might prove a rival; heroics such as the Diablo episode were apt to
+give young people a romantic interest in each other; Fate had more than
+evened matters up by giving him the present opportunity. He thought with
+some satisfaction how perfectly helpless Mortimer was in the present
+instance, for he was most undeniably poor. It was an opportunity to be
+grasped; and Crane never let the tide pass its flood in the waters of
+his life.
+
+So the banker spoke to Mrs. Porter of his strong love for Allis; so
+delicately, and with so much sincerity, that she was completely won
+over. It is true, the ground had been prepared for the seed, for the
+mother had long feared that Allis might become attached to some one of
+Porter's racing associates. Though strong in spiritual matters, the
+good woman was not without worldly instinct. She was pleased with Crane
+personally; he was not by any means a racing man; a rich banker, who
+would make a most desirable husband for her daughter. Of course, it
+would rest with the girl herself. Mrs. Porter would not coerce nor
+influence her; but why should not Allis come to care for Crane under the
+influence of his strong love?
+
+Mrs. Porter's mind had rebounded from its dazed condition after her
+husband's accident, and was now acute. All these thoughts came to her
+with rapidity, as Crane talked with masterly judgment.
+
+To the mother's suggestion that he speak to Allis he put forward a plea
+of delicate consideration for the girl; he would rather deny himself; he
+would wait patiently until her mind was in a happier condition. Cleverly
+enough he knew that Mrs. Porter was now his ally, and would plead his
+cause with less chance of failure than if he startled Allis by the
+sudden fronting of life's great problem.
+
+When Crane had gone Allis found her mother calmed by his visit; his
+assurances had driven away distressing clouds of financial worry.
+
+Almost immediately Mrs. Porter transmitted to the girl what had come to
+her of Crane's declaration.
+
+"It seems almost like an answer to my prayer," she said to Allis; "not,
+of course"--she interrupted herself--"that I've been praying for a
+husband for you, but this wicked racing has warped the whole woof of
+my life; it seemed inevitable in the strength of its contaminating
+atmosphere that you would be wedded into it, though one were better dead
+than willingly choose a path of sin."
+
+"Then you've settled it, mother!" Allis's big eyes took on a dangerous
+look of rebellion.
+
+"No, daughter; you must choose for yourself; only you will be wise not
+to go contrary to your parent's wishes. I did--"
+
+"But you are not sorry, mother?" there was reproach in the girl's voice.
+
+"Not for having wedded your father, but because of his racing life. I
+should have been firmer, and asked him to give it up before I married
+him. He might have done it then. Mr. Crane is a gentleman, Allis. That
+is a great deal nowadays, and he loves you most sincerely. Words often
+mean very little, but one can tell--at least when they've come to years
+of discretion they can--from a man's voice whether he is in earnest or
+not. I suppose it is very worldly to speak of his riches, but in poverty
+one can do very little, very little good. I had rather that you didn't
+have to look with misgiving into the future, Allis; it has taken much
+joy out of my existence. The dread of poverty is a nightmare; it wears
+one's life threadbare. To the young, buoyed up by confidence in the rosy
+future, this may seem sordid, but this feeling of insecurity mars many
+lives which might otherwise be happy.
+
+"You see, Allis," her mother continued, "I know you are heart-whole, so
+I can't cause you any misery by my well-meant advice. You've been a good
+girl, and there has been nobody of your class about. Mr. Mortimer is,
+I dare say, a gentleman, and I must confess I was afraid that you might
+mistake a feeling of generosity to him for something stronger; but that
+was only an idle fancy, I see. It would have been unfortunate if it
+were otherwise, for he is very poor indeed. His small salary must be all
+taken up in keeping himself, his widowed mother, and a younger sister."
+
+Allis gave a sudden start. She had not known these particulars of
+Mortimer's life; but they carried certain explanations of his conduct.
+Quite casually she had formed an impression that he was penurious;
+something he had dropped about not being able to afford certain
+pleasures. That was where the money went--to support his mother and
+sister. Unwittingly her mother was pleading the cause of two men.
+
+The mother's talk depressed Allis greatly. Why should this troublesome
+matter come to her when she had so much to bear, so much to do. It gave
+her quite a shock to find that as her mother talked she was not
+thinking of Crane at all. She could not picture his face, even; just the
+narrow-lidded eyes peeped at her in her thoughts once or twice; it would
+be horrible to look into them forever and ever. The face of Mortimer,
+pale and firm-set as it had been in that day of strife, was always
+obliterating the other visage. Was her mother right? Was she so
+heart-whole? As if her thoughts had bearing on her mother's mind, the
+latter said: "I wouldn't have spoken to you of this matter while your
+father is so ill if it weren't for the fact that our position is
+very precarious. I can't understand just how badly off we are, but if
+anything were to happen your father, I hardly know what would become of
+us."
+
+"And Mr. Crane has promised to help us if--if--" There was a hard ring
+in the girl's voice as she spoke, getting not past the "if," refusing to
+put into words the distressing thought.
+
+"There is no 'if' about it, daughter. Mr. Crane is our friend, your
+father's friend, and he is going to help us; and he only spoke of
+his regard for you by way of an excuse--it was delicacy on his part,
+thinking that I would have less compunction in accepting his good
+offices. All I ask, girl, is that you will try to like Mr. Crane; if you
+can't, well, you won't find me making you unhappy. But I can tell you
+this, Allis, unless matters mend, and how the change is to come I can't
+say, your father will lose Ringwood and it will belong to Mr. Crane.
+Even if the horses were sold off, the money would not clear the debts;
+besides, I think that even the horses are encumbered."
+
+Allis stood in indecision for a little, thinking deeply; then she went
+up to her mother, and, taking her face in her hands, kissed her.
+
+"I understand, mother," she said, "you are worrying over the dear old
+place, over my future, and over father, and it is nothing but worry,
+worry, worry all the time. But I'll save Ringwood for you, mother.
+I hope father will soon be well again and that luck will change; but
+anyway, mother, I promise you that no matter what effort it costs me you
+sha'nt sacrifice the dear old place."
+
+Mrs. Porter's eyes were wet with tears of gratitude. She was thinking
+only of the redemption of the place through Crane; but Allis's words
+had meant far more than she had taken from them. They were inspired by a
+faith that she could save their fortunes without sacrificing herself to
+Crane. If not, if she failed, she was brave, she was a Porter, and would
+keep her word and save Ringwood, even at that price.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Journeying back to New York, Crane reviewed in detail his interview
+with Mrs. Porter. He congratulated himself upon his wisdom in having
+instituted his love suit by proxy. With all his masterfulness he was
+very considerably in awe of Miss Allis. There was a not-to-be-daunted
+expression in her extraordinary eyes which made him feel that a love
+tilt with her would be a somewhat serious business. He pictured himself
+as an ardent lover; he would cut a droll figure in that role, he knew;
+emotions were hardly in his line. He might feel such an assertive
+emotion as love quite as strongly as anyone, in fact, did, but could he
+express himself with faultless consistency? He rather doubted it. His
+usual slow-advancing method was certainly ordained of this intricate
+endeavor; and he had made great progress with the mother, the one above
+all others to be placated; adversity, continuous as it promised to
+be, would probably settle Porter's influence in his favor. His plan of
+action plainly was to be often at Ringwood to familiarize the household
+with his presence. The acquiring of Diablo would facilitate that.
+
+Diablo--a skate! He laughed to himself over his purchase. Certainly
+Langdon would laugh at him, too; not openly, of course; Crane wouldn't
+tolerate that. What an influence this girl had over him, to be sure! Any
+man who had endeavored to sell him a bad horse would have had a hopeless
+task; with but a nod of encouragement from Allis he would have bought
+every horse--all the useless crooks they had; the stable was full of
+them, Lauzanne among the rest.
+
+The influence was dividing his nature into a dual one; starting into
+life infantile thoughts of a generous morality; an unrest of great
+vigor was coming to him, retribution; possibly the power to feel the
+difference between an avariciousness, fathering dishonesty, and this new
+recognition of other rights.
+
+On his arrival in New York he sent for his trainer.
+
+"I bought a horse at Ringwood. I want you to look after him, Langdon,"
+he said. "Their man, Gaynor, will send him direct to your stables."
+
+The Trainer's face brightened. "Did you get Lucretia after all?"
+
+"No; I bought a big black, Diablo."
+
+The look of delight faded from Langdon's eyes quickly. "The devil!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+"That's what I said; that's his name."
+
+"But he's the most uncertain brute that ever wore a set of plates.
+You'll get no good of him, sir; he's bad, clean through. It's come down
+to him from his second sire, Robert the Devil, without a bit of the
+good, either. He'd break a man that would follow him."
+
+"He won't break me," answered Crane, quietly; "nor you, either,
+Langdon--you've got too much sense."
+
+This subtle tribute mollified the Trainer.
+
+Crane proceeded: "I remember the horse quite well. Four thousand was
+paid for him as a yearling; as a two-year-old he was tried out good
+enough to win the Futurity; but when it came to racing he cut it and
+finished in the ruck."
+
+"That's right," commented Langdon. "He owes me a good bit, that same
+Johnny; his people thought him a lead-pipe cinch, and I went down the
+line on him to my sorrow."
+
+"Just so. You know him as well as I do. It's a great way to get
+acquainted with them, isn't it, Langdon; put your money on, and have the
+good thing go down?"
+
+Langdon had the highest possible opinion of his master's astuteness and
+began to waver in his antipathy to Diablo.
+
+"You think he's really good, then, sir; did he show you a fast trial?"
+
+"I didn't even see the horse," Crane answered, looking dreamily out of
+the window. "I bought him to--"
+
+He paused in reflection; he couldn't tell Langdon why he had bought him,
+and he hardly cared to have his prestige with the Trainer destroyed. He
+continued, shifting the subject--matter a trifle, "You did John Porter
+up over Lauzanne last summer, Langdon--"
+
+"Me?" questioned 'the Trainer. Was Crane forgetting his share in the
+matter?
+
+"Yes, you!" affirmed the other, looking him steadily in the eye. "You
+sold him Lauzanne, and Lauzanne was loaded."
+
+Langdon said nothing. What the devil was coming?
+
+"Well," drawled Crane, "Porter's badly hurt; he's out of the race for
+some time to come. They're friends of mine."
+
+"They're friends," mused Langdon; "who in thunder are they?"
+
+"They're friends of mine, and I offered to buy Lauzanne back, just to
+help them out; but the old man's daughter has got the Chestnut for a
+hack, and she won't sell him. It was Diablo's fault that Porter got the
+fall, so they were willing to part with him, and I took the brute."
+
+This was certainly a new role for Crane to play, Langdon thought;
+his employer helping people out when they were in difficulties was
+a revelation. The Trainer felt inclined to laugh. No doubt there was
+something back of it all; some tout must have given Crane information
+of a fast gallop Diablo had done, and he had gone to Ringwood to buy the
+horse, thinking that Porter would be selling some of his racers owing to
+the accident.
+
+Langdon tried to remember what Shandy had said about Diablo, or whether
+the boy had mentioned his name at all.
+
+"I wonder what condition he's in?" the Trainer remarked, questioningly.
+
+"Physically I think he's all right; it seems he galloped something under
+forty miles with Porter before he came a cropper. But I understand they
+had an imp of a boy, Sheedy, or 'Shaney'--"
+
+"Shandy," corrected Langdon.
+
+"Yes, that's the name," affirmed Crane, drawing a semicircle in the air
+with his cigar, "and he's a devil on wheels, by all accounts. Diablo's
+no angel, as you've said, Langdon, and this boy made him a heap worse.
+You've handled some bad horses in your time, and know more about it than
+I do; but I'd suggest that you put Westley--he's a patient lad--to look
+after the Black; give him quite a bit of work, and when you've got him
+right, try him out with something, and if he shows any form we'll pick
+out a soft spot for him. Let me see, he's a maiden--fancy that, buying a
+four-year-old maiden!"
+
+Langdon laughed approvingly. Crane was evidently coming back to his view
+of the case.
+
+"Well, as I've said, he's a maiden, and we'll try and graduate him out
+of that class. It will be a great chance for a killing if we can round
+him into his early two-year-old form; and you can do it, Langdon, if
+anybody on earth can."
+
+"Now I've got him on his reputation," thought Crane, idly brushing
+specks of cigar ash from the front of his coat.
+
+"Just as I thought," mused Langdon; "the old man's got a horse after his
+own heart. Everybody thinks Diablo's no good, but the boss has found out
+something, and is on for the biggest kind of a coup."
+
+"How's The Dutchman coming on?" asked Crane, intimating by the question
+that the subject of Diablo bad been closed out, for the present, at
+least.
+
+"Great. He cleans up his four quarts three times a day, and is as big as
+a cart horse. I never had a better doer in my hands. If he keeps well,
+and I think he will, you have a great chance with him for the Brooklyn
+Derbv."
+
+"That's encouraging. There are some good horses in it, though, White
+Moth and others. However, I'll back The Dutchman to win fifty thousand,
+and there'll be ten thousand in that for you, Langdon, if it comes off."
+The Trainer's mouth watered. Money was his god. Horses were all right as
+a means to an end, but the end itself was gold. He would stop at nothing
+to attain that end; his avaricious mind, stimulated by Crane's promise,
+came at once to the disturbing element in the pleasant prospect,
+Shandy's report of Lucretia's good form.
+
+"Did you find out anything about Porter's mare Lucretia? I know White
+Moth's form; both fit and well. The Dutchman holds him safe over the
+Derby journey."
+
+"No; I didn't hear anything about Porter's mare."
+
+"I have," said Langdon, decisively. "I paid a boy to keep an eye on her,
+and he says she'll be hard to beat."
+
+Crane frowned. "What boy?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+"Shandy."
+
+"Well, just drop that; chuck that game. John Porter has his own
+troubles. If he can win, let him. He can't if The Dutchman keeps well;
+but anyway, our own horses will keep us fully occupied."
+
+Langdon was dumbfounded. If Crane had opened the Bible and read a
+chapter from St. Luke he would not have been more astonished. It had
+occurred to him that he had done a remarkably smart thing; he had
+expected commendation for his adroitness in looking after his master's
+interests. This disapprobation of such a trivial matter as the touting
+off of an opponent's horses was another new discovery in his master's
+character. Where were they at, anyway? Presently Crane would be asking
+him to give the public a fair run for their money each time out.
+
+All at once a light dawned upon Langdon. Crane was doubling on him. He
+saw it like a flash. His employer had a tout on the ground himself; that
+was how he had got next some good performance of Diablo's. My, but it
+was clever; he could appreciate it. Crane rose in his estimation again.
+
+Quite humbly he answered: "Very, well; it's not my funeral; I'll bring
+The Dutchman to the post fit to run the race of his life. If Lucretia
+beats him it won't be my fault. I thought perhaps you might want to
+hedge a bit on Porter's mare."
+
+"I don't think it. I'll stand The Dutchman; there are too many in
+to start backing them all. Let me know if the Black gives you any
+encouragement, and I'll see about placing him."
+
+After Langdon had gone Crane lighted a fresh cigar and let his thoughts
+circle about Allis and Diablo. It would be just like the play of Fate
+for the horse to turn out good, now that John Porter had got rid of him.
+When evil fortune set its hard face against a man he could do little
+toward making the wicked god smile, and Porter, even when he was about,
+was a poor hand at compelling success.
+
+   . . . . . . . . . .
+
+Jakey Faust learned of Diablo's transition from Porter's to Langdon's
+stable. This information caused him little interest at first; indeed, he
+marveled somewhat at two such clever men as Crane and Langdon acquiring
+a horse of Diablo's caliber.
+
+Faust's business relationship with Crane was to a certain degree
+tentative. Crane never confided utterly in anybody; if agents obeyed
+his behests, well and good; and each transaction was always completed in
+itself. He had discovered Faust and used him when it suited his purpose.
+
+Some time after the purchase of Diablo, Jakey, reading his Morning
+Telegraph, came with much interest upon the entries for the Brooklyn
+Handicap, published that day. They were all the old campaigning Handicap
+horses, as familiar to Faust as his fellow members of the betting ring.
+As his eye ran down the long list a sudden little pig grunt of surprise
+bubbled up through his fat throat. "Gee, Diablo! Oh, ho, Mr. Crane!"
+
+He tore out the list and put it in his pocket; then he sat for a time,
+thinking. The result was a run down to Gravesend to pay just a friendly
+visit to Langdon.
+
+As far as Crane was concerned, the Trainer and the Bookmaker were like
+two burglars suddenly coming upon each other while robbing the same
+house; they were somewhat in a condition of armed neutrality, toward
+each other.
+
+Faust hoped that Langdon would talk about Diablo; but the Trainer was
+like most of his guild generally, a close-mouthed man, so Jakey had to
+make his own running.
+
+"What's the boss goin' to do with Diablo?" he asked Langdon.
+
+"Must 've bought him for a work horse, I guess," the Trainer answered.
+
+"Is he any good?"
+
+"He can eat; that's all I see from him yet."
+
+"What did he buy him for?"
+
+"To help a snoozer that was sittin' in bad luck."
+
+Faust had an odd habit of causing his fat sides to ripple like troubled
+water when he wished to convey the impression that he was amused; he
+never laughed, just the rib ripple.
+
+"What's funny?" Langdon asked, eying Jakey, with querulous disfavor.
+
+"Crane buying a horse to help a man," answered the Cherub, wondering if
+Langdon was so devoid of humor as to take it seriously.
+
+"Crane told me so himself," said the Trainer; "Porter's hurt, an' I
+guess they're in a hole, an' the boss took over Diablo."
+
+"Say, Dick," and Faust edged close enough to tap the other man's ribs
+with his thumb, "were you born yesterday? I say," continued the Cherub,
+for Langdon had turned away somewhat impatiently, "what's the good av
+givin' me that gup; you didn't stand for it yourself--not on yer life.
+Th' old man's pretty slick; buys a bad horse to help a poor mutt, an'
+enters him in the Brooklyn, eh?"
+
+"The Brooklyn!" exclaimed Langdon, thrown off his guard.
+
+With corpulent intensity the Cherub melodramatically drew from his
+pocket the Telegraph clipping and tendered it to Langdon, watching the
+latter's face closely. "That's the pea, Dick, eh?" he asked.
+
+Langdon was thinking. Was Crane doubling on him all around? Why the
+devil hadn't he told him?
+
+"Now you ain't takin' in that fairy tale of Crane's any more'n I am,
+Dick. Why can't we do a bit for ourselves over this; it won't hurt the
+boss none. Won't throw him down. This horse was a good youngster, an'
+Crane didn't get him without seein' him do somethin'. You jest keep me
+posted, an' if he shapes good I can back 'm fer an old-time killin',
+see? I'll divvy up straight."
+
+Langdon didn't answer at once--not with satisfaction to Faust; he knew
+that Crane held the butter for his bread, even the bread itself; but
+here was a man with cake, and he loved cake. Finally, in the glamour
+of Jakey's talk of untold wealth to be acquired, Langdon, swayed by
+the cupidity of his nature rather than his better judgment, promised
+half-heartedly to cooperate with Faust.
+
+But no sooner had the latter gone than the lode-star of Langdon's
+self-interest flickered clearly in view, and he promised Mr. Jakey,
+mentally, a long trip to a very hot place, indeed, rather than a
+surreptitious partnership over Diablo.
+
+It was some little time after this, while Faust was feeling somewhat
+irritated at the absence of information from Langdon, that he had an
+interview with Crane.
+
+"I want you to back The Dutchman to win fifty thousand for me over the
+Brooklyn Derby," the latter said.
+
+"But there's no winner book on it," objected Faust.
+
+"That's just where your cleverness will come in," suavely answered
+Crane. "There's no hurry, and there are always people looking for
+foolish money. There's one such in Chicago, O'Leary; and I fancy they
+could even be found in New York. But you ought to get fifty to one,
+about it, if you put it on easy."
+
+"I see you have Diablo entered for the Brooklyn," Faust put out as a
+feeler. "Don't you want a commission worked on him?"
+
+"I didn't enter him; that was somebody else's foolishness, and I don't
+want to back him."
+
+"He's a hundred to one."
+
+"A thousand would be short odds, I should say," answered Crane. "But
+wait a bit. I bought him just to--well, I took him from some people who
+were tired of his cannibal ways, and promised to have a small bet on him
+the first time he ran, for--for the man." The equivocation was really a
+touch of delicacy. "You might take the odds to fifty for me; there's not
+one chance in a million of his starting, but I might forget all about
+this little matter of the bet, even if I were foolish enough to pay
+post-money on him."
+
+"Hadn't I better dribble on more from time to time, if he has a chance?"
+
+"Not of my money, thanks!" The "thanks" clipped like a steel trap, and
+the business was completed.
+
+Faust went away more than ever suspicious of Crane and Diablo. That
+fifty dollars being put on for anybody else was bunkum. What was Crane
+up to anyway? If he really meant to back the horse he would not have
+started with such a trifle. Perhaps Diablo had been stuck in the
+Brooklyn simply to see how the handicapper would rate him.
+
+Faust was convinced that Crane had some big coup in view; he would wait
+a little, and at the first move have a strong play himself.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Langdon was a consummate trainer, a student of horse character. He knew
+that while biniodide of mercury would blister and put right a bowed
+tendon, or the firing iron take the life out of a splint, that a much
+finer knowledge than this was requisite to get fullhearted work out of
+a thoroughbred. Brain must be pitted against brain; so he studied
+his horses; and when Diablo came into his hands, possessed of a mind
+disease, he worked over him with considerable intelligent patience.
+
+This study of horse character was the very thing that had caused him to
+go wrong over Lauzanne. He had not gone quite far enough; had not
+waited for time to demonstrate clearly the horse's temperament, but had
+recourse to a cocaine stimulant. But with him Lauzanne's case had been
+exceptional.
+
+At first there was little encouragement over Diablo, but almost by
+accident Langdon discovered that the Black's bad temper was always
+fanned into a blaze by the sight of the boy Shandy.
+
+Then came a glint of hope. Diablo took a fancy to Westley, the jockey,
+who was experimentally put on his back in the working gallop. After that
+Shandy was kept out of the way; Westley took Diablo under his care, and
+the big horse began to show a surprising improvement.
+
+Crane had been quite honest in his statement that he thought Diablo a
+bad horse. His having been entered by Porter in the "Brooklyn" suggested
+the possiability that his former owner must have seen some merit in the
+horse. At any rate, he advised Langdon to give Diablo a patient trial.
+He really had very little idea that the horse would start in the
+Handicap--it seemed improbable. Langdon was also convinced that Porter
+had discovered something great in Diablo; that Crane knew this, and had
+paid a stiff price for the horse, and to his own ends was keeping it
+dark.
+
+As the winter turned into April he intimated to Crane that it was time
+for them to decide the placing of the horses, and suggested that they
+try them out. Crane had already decided to race The Dutchman this
+year in his own name and not in Langdon's. If The Dutchman came up to
+expectation they could give him a slow preparation up to Derby time;
+they could find out whether Diablo was worth keeping for--well, for
+Morris Park or Gravesend, or they could hurry him on a little, and start
+him at Aqueduct.
+
+Crane agreed with this reasoning, and it was decided to give the two
+horses a home trial.
+
+On the day that Langdon had said he would try Diablo and The Dutchman,
+Crane went down to Gravesend. When he got to the Trainer's house he
+found the latter waiting for him.
+
+"I sent the horses over with the boys," Langdon said; "if you'll just
+wait a minute, I'll have a buggy hitched up and we'll drive over."
+
+A stable-boy brought the trap to the door in a few minutes, and Langdon,
+telling Crane to get in, disappeared into the house, returning presently
+with two saddles, which he placed in the buggy.
+
+"A couple of favorite saddles of mine," he explained, "they're like old
+fiddles that great players carry about under their arms an' sleep with,
+an' never let no one but themselves touch."
+
+"Are you that particular with these?" asked Crane by way of
+conversation, not feeling at all interested in what he considered a fad
+of the Trainer's.
+
+"Yes; I mostly handle 'em myself. They cost a bit. I had 'em made to
+order. The boys is that careless, they'd smash anything."
+
+As they jogged along, Langdon kept up a monologue dissertation on the
+merits of the two horses. "It's a good day for a gallop," and he flicked
+the driving beast's quarter with the whip; "there's not much wind, an'
+the air's a bit sharp. They'll be on their mettle, the both of 'em, more
+'specially Diablo. I had his plates changed. 'Pears to me he hadn't been
+shod in three moons; I'll bet the smith took an inch off his toes." Then
+he broke off to chuckle awhile.
+
+Crane was not skilled in the anatomy of a horse, beyond as it worked out
+in winning races and money. That a horse had toes had never quite come
+into his knowledge, and Langdon's gurgle of mirth he put down to a
+suspicion that the Trainer was taking a rise out of him in what he had
+said.
+
+"I was thinking of Paddy Caramagh when he shod Diablo the other day. I
+think you've heard Pat swear. He holds the belt for cussin' in this part
+of the country. Well, he let it all out of him before he'd finished with
+the Black. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I can hear him still, with the sweat running
+off his face like oats spilling from a feed bag. I says to Paddy, 'Rub
+his nose a bit,' for I could see it was more nervousness with the horse
+than sheer deviltry. 'With what?' says Paddy, 'the hammer? Be gor!
+You're right, though,' says he, and with that he tries to put a twister
+on Diablo's nose. Holy mother! Diablo reached for him, and lifted the
+shirt clean off his back. Say, there was a scared Irishman, if you ever
+saw one in your life. He threw down the plate, cussin' as only Paddy
+can, and swore the brute could run till he'd wore his hoofs off, for all
+of him. Well, I takes hold of the Black's head, an' kids him a bit, only
+firm-like, and we shod him right enough."
+
+"He is bad tempered, then?" asked Crane.
+
+"No; just wants a fair deal; that's all. You make him believe you're on
+the square, an' he'll do what's right. But he hasn't got no use for any
+of the guys that gets a cranky play in on him; he won't stand it. I'm
+going to put Westley up on him to-day."
+
+"What about The Dutchman?"
+
+"Colley'll do. Any kid can ride him, if they sit still. He's just the
+easiest-tempered horse ever looked through a bridle; he knows what's
+doin' all the time. But Colley ain't no good on Diablo, an' if he can
+smell Shandy, that settles it--it's all over. I'll put Westley up; it
+takes a man to ride that horse."
+
+"What about this gallop?" asked Crane; "there'll be spies about trying
+to find out things, won't there?"
+
+"Bet yer life, there'll be somebody, sir. It's just like when I was
+out in Colorado; you couldn't see a vulture if you traveled forty days,
+perhaps, but plant a dead thing anywhere and in an hour the sky simply
+rained 'em down. These touts is most like vultures of anything I know;
+you've just got to work your stunt to give 'em the go-by, that's all."
+
+Crane took but an apathetic interest in the matters that held full sway
+over the Trainer's mind; looking after these incidents was Langdon's
+part of the contract.
+
+That was why they were so strong together. Langdon could do it. Just how
+the trial was to benefit them alone, with the inevitable tout at hand,
+Crane knew not, neither did he investigate; that was up to the Trainer.
+
+They drove into the paddock. Westley, Colley, and the two stable lads
+were there.
+
+"Shall we bring out the horses?" asked Westley, as Langdon sat swinging
+a leg loosely over the end of the buggy seat.
+
+"Any of the talent about, Bill?"
+
+"Quite likely, though I haven't seen none."
+
+"Well, we'll slip 'em now. Just saddle up careless like, and no
+preliminary, mind you. The sharks won't look for a brush till you've
+gone around once. Take your mounts down the stretch to the quarter post,
+an' then come away the first break; if there's anyone toutin' you off,
+they'll think it just a pipe opener, an' won't catch the time. Run out
+the mile-an'-a-quarter, make a race of it, but don't go to the bat.
+Diablo an' The Dutchman don't need no whip to give us about the best
+they've got."
+
+"All right, sir," answered Westley. "If I'm a judge, when the Black's
+through pullin', he's done racin', 'cause he's a keen one, so there
+won't be no call to put the bud to him. If any of the rail birds is
+lookin' they'll think we're goin' under a strong wrap, even when we're
+all out."
+
+Lang don nodded his head. He was a man not given to exuberant
+appreciation. The boys averred that when Dick Langdon didn't curse at
+them they had done pretty well, indeed.
+
+"What's your weight?" he asked of Westley, abruptly.
+
+"I've just tipped the scales at a hundred-and-three in my sweater."
+
+"One hundred and three," mused the Trainer, making a mental calculation.
+"What's Colley's weight?"
+
+"He's as near a hundred as you can make it."
+
+"Did you bring over a saddle?"
+
+"Yes; two of 'em; one apiece for the horses."
+
+"Tell Colley to take one, and some leads, and weigh out a hundred and
+twelve. That'll be three pounds above the scale for May, weight for age,
+for the three-year-old, The Dutchman. I guess he won't need more'n seven
+pounds dead weight, for it's a five-pound saddle, I think. Let me see,
+you said a hundred and three, you were."
+
+"Yes, sir; in the sweater; I can take that off--"
+
+"No; never mind. Take this saddle," and he lifted one from the buggy;
+"it'll just suit Diablo; he's got a herring-bone of a wither, an' this
+is high in the tree, an' won't cut him. Here's the cloth an' some
+leads; weigh out a hundred and twelve too. Weight for age--Diablo's a
+four-year-old; you ought to carry a hundred and twenty-six, but he's not
+The Dutchman's class, an' the ycungster'd lose him before they'd gone
+half the journey. We'll run 'em at level weights, an' he'll get closer
+to The Dutchman, an' the sharks won't have such a fairy tale to tell
+about our horse."
+
+"A hundred and twelve, you said, sir?" queried Westley, as he put the
+saddle that Langdon handed him over his left arm, slipped the thin
+sheets of lead in his pocket, and stood dangling the linen weight cloth
+in his right hand.
+
+"Yes; level weights--a hundred an' twelve pounds."
+
+"Westley," the Trainer called as the little man started off, "just bring
+the saddle back to me here when you've weighed. I'll put it on Diablo
+myself; he's a touchy cuss, and I don't want him ruffled by careless
+handlin'."
+
+"You take considerable trouble over it," remarked Crane. "One would
+think it was a big handicap you meant to capture this morning."
+
+Langdon started visibly. Was Crane thinking of the Brooklyn? Did this
+quiet, clever man sitting at his elbow already know as much as he hoped
+to discover in his present gallop?
+
+He answered: "Handicaps is usually won pretty much like this; they're
+generally settled before the horse goes to the post for the trip itself.
+When he goes through the paddock gate the day of the big race he's
+out of his trainer's hands; the man's got no more to do with the race
+himself than a kid sittin' up in the grand stand. Here's where I come
+in, if we mean to land the Brooklyn," and he looked searchingly at
+Crane, a misleading grin on his lips. But the latter simply joined in
+the laugh, doubtingly, perhaps.
+
+"A hundred and twelve, neat," declared Westley, as he returned, throwing
+some loose leads into the buggy. "Colley's gone to saddle The Dutchman."
+
+"All right," answered Langdon, getting down from the seat and taking
+the saddle. "Go and tell the boy to bring Diablo out of the stall. I'll
+saddle him in the open. He generally kicks the boards when I cinch him
+up, an' it puts him in a bad humor."
+
+Langdon started off with the jockey, but turned back, saying, "Oh, Mr.
+Crane, I wanted to ask you--"
+
+By this he had reached the buggy, while Westley continued on his way to
+the stalls.
+
+"It's a fine day, sir," continued Langdon, finishing his sentence,
+and exchanging the saddle held in his hand for the one that was in the
+buggy.
+
+"Going to put the other on?" asked Crane.
+
+"Yes; I fancy Diablo will like this better. Touchy brutes, these race
+horses; got to humor 'em. Come on over to the stalls--the horse'll
+stand."
+
+Diablo was being led around in a small circle by his boy. He was a
+magnificent creature, sixteen and a half hands high, and built on the
+same grand scale; perhaps a bit leggy for the huge barrel that topped
+the limbs; that was what caused him to go wrong in his younger days. His
+black skin glistened in the noonday sun.
+
+"That's what I call the mirror of health," said Langdon, in an unwonted
+burst of poetic eloquence, as he passed his hand across the horse's
+ribs. Then feeling that somehow he had laid himself open to a suspicion
+of gentleness, added, "He's a hell of a fine looker; if he could gallop
+up to his looks he'd make some of the cracks take a back seat."
+
+Even Diablo had resented either the mellifluous comparison or the rub
+of Langdon's hand, for he lashed out furiously, with a great farreaching
+leg that nearly caught Crane unawares.
+
+"Your polite language seems to be as irritating to him as the
+blacksmith's oaths," ejaculated Crane, as he came back from the hasty
+retreat he had beaten.
+
+"It's only play. Good horses is of two kinds when you're saddlin' 'em.
+The Dutchman there'll hang his head down, and champ at the bit, even
+if you bury the girt' an inch deep in his belly; he's honest, and knows
+it's all needed. That's one kind; and they're generally the same at the
+post, always there or thereabouts, waitin' for the word 'go.' An' they
+race pretty much the same all the time. If you time 'em a mile in 1:40
+at home, they'll do it when the colors is up, an' the silk a-flappin'
+all about 'em in the race.
+
+"Whoa! Hold still, you brute! Steady, steady! Whoa!" This to Diablo, for
+while talking he had adjusted the weight cloth with the gentleness of a
+cavalier putting a silk wrap about his lady love's neck, and had put a
+fold of soft woolen cloth over the high-boned wither.
+
+"Stand out in front of him and hold his head down a bit;" this to the
+boy. Then as he slipped the saddle into place and reached underneath
+for the girths, he continued his address to Crane on the peculiarity of
+racers.
+
+"Now this is a horse of another color, this one; he ain't takin' things
+easy at no stage of the game. He objects to everything, an' some day
+that'll land him a winner, see? He'll get it into his head that the
+other horses want to beat him out, an' he'll show 'em a clean pair of
+heels; come home on the bit, pullin' double. Whoa, boy! Steady, steady,
+old man!" Then he ceased talking, for he had taken the girth strap
+between his teeth, and was cinching up the big Black with the firm pull
+of a grizzly. Diablo squirmed under the torture of the tightening web on
+his sensitive skin, and crouched as though he would fall on the Trainer.
+
+"Yes, sir;" continued Langdon, as he ran the stirrups up under the
+saddle flap out of the way, and motioned to the boy to lead Diablo
+about. "Yes, sir; this fellow's different. He's too damn sensitive.
+At the post he's like as not to act like a locoed broncho, an' get one
+blamed for having 'juiced' him, but he don't need no dope; what he needs
+is steadying. If he gets away in front, them long legs of his will
+take some catchin'. He's the kind that wins when the books are layin' a
+hundred to one against him. But the worst of it is with his sort, like
+as not the owner hasn't a penny on them; but the public'll howl; they'll
+call it in-an'-out runnin'; an' the scribblers'll get their paper to
+print a notice that the stable ought to be ruled off; an' all the time
+you're breakin' your heart trying to get him to give his true--Hello!
+there's Colley out on The Dutchman; mount your horse, Westley--wait,
+you don't need no spurs; yes, carry a whip, an' give the guys that is
+watchin' a stage play with it; but don't hit the Black. We'll just see
+what he'll do himself, this trip," he added, addressing Crane.
+
+Taking Westley's small-booted foot in his hand, he lifted the lad to
+Diablo's back, and led the horse out through a gate to the course.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+The two boys cantered their mounts down to the quarter post carelessly,
+as though they were going around to the far side.
+
+"Look at 'em!" cried the Trainer; "isn't he a little gentleman?"
+
+To the uninitiated this might have been taken as a tribute to one of the
+boys, Westley, perhaps; but the Trainer was not even thinking of them.
+They were of no moment. It was the wine-red bay, The Dutchman, cantering
+with gentle, lazy grace, that had drawn forth this encomium. His head,
+somewhat high carried, was held straight and true in front, and his big
+eyes searched the course with gentle inquisitiveness, for others of his
+kind, perhaps.
+
+"He's a lovely horse," commented Crane, knowing quite well to what
+Langdon referred.
+
+"He's all that, but just look at the other devil."
+
+Diablo was throwing his nose fretfully up and down, up and down;
+grabbing at the bit; pirouetting from one side the course to the other;
+nearly pulling Westley over his neck one minute, as with lowered head he
+sought to break away, and the next dashing forward for a few yards with
+it stuck foolishly high, like a badmouthed Indian cayuse.
+
+"But Westley'll manage him," Langdon confided to Crane, after a period
+of silent observation; "he'll get his belly full of runnin' when he's
+gone a mile and a quarter with The Dutchman. Gad! that was neat; here
+they come;" for the two boys had whirled with sudden skill at the
+quarter post, and broke away, with Diablo slightly in the lead. "My God!
+he can move," muttered Langdon, abstractedly, and quite to himself. The
+man at his side had floated into oblivion. He saw only a great striding
+black horse coming wide-mouthed up the stretch. At the Black's heels,
+with dogged lope, hung the Bay.
+
+"Take him back, take him back, Westley!" yelled Langdon, leaning far out
+over the rail, as the horses raced by, Diablo well in front.
+
+The Trainer's admonition seemed like a cry to a cyclone, as void of
+usefulness. What power could the tiny dot lying close hugged far up on
+the straining black neck have over the galloping fiend?
+
+"Yes, that's the way," Langdon said, nodding his head to Crane, and
+jerking a thumb out toward the first turn in the course, where the
+two horses were hugging close to the rail; "that's the way he's worked
+here."
+
+"Which one?" asked his companion.
+
+"The Black, an' if he ever does that in a race--God help the
+others--they'll never catch him; they'll never catch him; they'll never
+catch him," he kept repeating, dwelling lovingly on the thought, as he
+saw the confirmation of it being enacted before his eyes; for across the
+new green of the grass-sprouted course he could see two open lengths of
+daylight between Diablo and The Dutchman.
+
+"Fifty-one and a half for the half-mile," he imparted to Crane, looking
+at his watch. "Now The Dutchman is moving up; Colley doesn't mean to get
+left if he can help it. I'm afraid Diablo'll shut up when he's pinched;
+his kind are apt to do that. The Dutchman is game, an' if he ever gets
+to the Black's throat-latch he'll chuck it. But it takes some ridin';
+it takes some ridin', sir." He was becoming enthusiastic, exuberant.
+The silent man at his side noticed the childish repetition with inward
+amusement. He had thought that Langdon would have been overjoyed to
+see the bay horse smother his opponent. Was not the Trainer to have
+ten thousand dollars if The Dutchman won the Handicap? But here he was
+pinning his satisfaction to the good showing of Diablo. He didn't know
+of the compact between Langdon and the Bookmaker Faust, but he strongly
+suspected from the Trainer's demeanor that the gallop he was witnessing
+foretold some big coup the latter scented.
+
+"He hasn't got him yet, he hasn't got him yet!" cried Langdon, joyfully,
+as the horses swung around the bottom turn, closer locked, but with
+Diablo still a short length in the lead.
+
+Crane saw no great cause for exhilaration. The Dutchman was certainly
+giving the Black twenty pounds the best of it in the weights, for one
+was a three-year-old while the other was four, and they each carried a
+hundred and twelve.
+
+"The mile in 1:42," chirped Langdon. "That's movin', if you like,
+considerin' the track, the condition of the horses, an' that they're
+runnin' under a double wrap. Now we'll see a ding-dong finish, if the
+Black doesn't show a streak of yellow. Dutchy's got him," he added, as
+through his glasses he saw them swing into the straight, neck and neck.
+
+"Clever Mr. Westlev!" for Diablo's rider, having the rail and the lead,
+had bored out slightly on the turn, so as not to cramp the uncertain
+horse he rode, and carried The Dutchman wide.
+
+Up the straight they came, the boys helping their mounts with leg and
+arm; the Black holding his own with a dogged persistence that quite
+upset Langdon's prognostication of cowardice.
+
+To the watchers it was as exciting as a stake race. The stamina that
+Langdon had said would stand The Dutchman in good stead over the mile
+and a half Handicap course now showed itself. First he was level with
+the Black, then gradually, stride by stride, he drew away from Diablo,
+and finished a short length in front.
+
+"A great trial," cried the Trainer, gleefully, holding out his watch for
+Crane's inspection. "See that!" pointing to the hand he had stopped as
+the Bay's brown nozzle flashed by the post; "two-nine on this course!
+Anything that beats that pair, fit and well, a mile and a quarter on a
+fast track'll have to make it in two-five, an' that's the record."
+
+"It looks good business for the Derby, Langdon."
+
+"Yes, it does. That's the first showing I've had from the colt as
+a three-year-old; but I knew he had it in him. Hanover was a great
+horse--to my mind we never had his equal in America--but this
+youngster'll be as good as his daddy ever was. I don't think you ought
+to start him, sir, till the Derby, if you're set on winnin' it."
+
+He had moved up to the gate as he talked, and now opened it, waiting for
+the boys to come back. They had eased down the horses gradually after
+the fierce gallop, turned them about and were trotting toward the
+paddock, where stood the two men. Langdon took Diablo by the bridle rein
+and led him in toward the stalls.
+
+"How did he shape under you, Westley?" he asked, as the boy slipped from
+the saddle.
+
+"I wouldn't ask to ride a better horse. I thought I had the colt beaten,
+sure; but my mount seemed to tire a little at the finish. He didn't toss
+it up, not a bit of it; ran as game as a pebble; he just tired at the
+finish. I think a mile is his journey. He held The Dutchman safe at a
+mile."
+
+"I guess you're right, Westley; a mile's his limit. At level weights
+with the three-year-old, which means that he had twenty pounds the best
+of it, he should have held his own the whole route to be a stayer, for
+the colt isn't more'n half ready yet."
+
+"I didn't hustle him none too much, sir; I might a-squeezed a bit more
+out of him. Did we make fair time?"
+
+"Quite a feeler, Mister Jockey," thought Langdon to himself; "it's news
+you want, eh?" Then he answered aloud, with a diplomacy born of many
+years of turf tuition: "Fairish sort of time; it might have been better,
+perhaps--a shade under two-twelve. I thought they might have bettered
+that a couple of seconds. But they'll come on--they'll come on, both of
+them. If anybody asks you, Westley, The Dutchman was beaten off, see?
+I don't like to discourage the clever owners that has good 'uns in
+the Derby" Then he added as a sort of after thought, and with wondrous
+carelessness:
+
+"It doesn't matter about the Black, you know; he's only a sellin'
+plater, so it doesn't matter. But all the same, Westley, when we find a
+soft spot for him, an over-night sellin' purse or somethin, you'll have
+the leg up, with a bet down for you at a long price, see?"
+
+"I understand, sir."
+
+By the time Langdon had slipped the saddle from Diablo's back the boy
+had thrown a hooded blanket over him, and he was led away. "Send them
+home, Westley. Now, Mr. Crane, we'll drive back to the house an' have a
+bit of lunch."
+
+As they drove along Crane brought up the subject of the trial.
+
+"The colt must be extra good, Langdon, or the Black is--well, as he was
+represented to be, not much account."
+
+"I guess Diablo's about good enough to win a big handicap, if he
+happened to be in one at a light weight."
+
+"He didn't win to-day."
+
+"He came pretty near it."
+
+"But where would he have been carrying his proper weight?"
+
+"About where he was, I guess."
+
+"You said as a four-year-old he should have had up a hundred and
+twenty-six, and he carried a hundred and twelve; and, besides, had the
+best boy by seven pounds on his back."
+
+"Just pass me that saddle, Mr. Crane," said Langdon, by way of answer.
+"No; not that--the one I took off Diablo."
+
+Crane reached down his hand, but the saddle didn't come quite as freely
+as it should have. "What's it caught in?" he asked, fretfully.
+
+"In itself, I reckon--lift it." "Gad! it's heavy. Did Diablo carry that?
+What's in it?"
+
+"Lead-built into it; it's my old fiddle, you know. You're the first man
+that's had his hand on that saddle for some time, I can tell you."
+
+"Then Diablo did carry his full weight," commented Crane, a light
+breaking in upon him.
+
+"Just about, and carried it like a stake horse, too."
+
+"And you--"
+
+"Yes; I changed the saddles after Westley weighed. He's a good boy, and
+don't shoot off his mouth much, but all the same things will out while
+ridin' boys have the power of speech."
+
+"It looks as though Diablo had something in him," said Crane,
+meditatively.
+
+"He's got the Brooklyn in him. Fancy The Dutchman in at seventy pounds;
+that's what it comes to. Diablo's got ninety to carry, an' he gave the
+other twenty pounds to-day. You've got the greatest thing on earth right
+in your hands now--"
+
+Langdon hesitated for a minute, and then added: "But I guess you knew
+this all before, or you wouldn't have sent him here."
+
+"I bought him for a bad horse," answered Crane, quietly; "but if he
+turns out well, that's so much to the good. But it's a bit of luck
+Porter's not having declared him out to save nearly a hundred. He seems
+to have raced pretty loose."
+
+"I wonder if he thinks I'm taking in that fairy tale?" thought Langdon.
+Aloud, he said: "But you'll back him now, sir, won't you? He must be a
+long price in the winter books."
+
+"Yes; I'll arrange that," answered the other, "and I'll take care of
+you, too. I suppose Westley will take the mount?"
+
+"Surely."
+
+"Well, you can just give him to understand that he'll be looked after if
+the horse wins."
+
+"It's the Brooklyn, sir, is it?"
+
+"Seems like it."
+
+"I won't say anything about the race to Westley, though."
+
+"I'll leave all that to you. I'll attend to getting the money on; you do
+the rest."
+
+When Crane had gone, Langdon paid further mental tribute to his master's
+astuteness. "Now I see it all," he muttered; "the old man just thought
+to keep me quiet; throw me of the scent till he duplicated the other
+trial, whenever they pulled it off. Now he's got a sure line on the
+Black, an' he'll make such a killin' that the books'll remember him for
+many a day. But why does he keep throwin' that fairy tale into me
+about buyin' a bad horse to oblige somebody? A man would be a sucker to
+believe that of Crane; he's not the sort. But one sure thing, he said
+he'd look after me, an' he will. He'd break a man quick enough, but when
+he gives his word it stands. Mr. Jakey Faust can look after himself:
+I'm not goin' to take chances of losin' a big stable of bread-winners by
+doublin' on the Boss."
+
+Langdon's mental analysis of Crane's motives was the outcome of
+considerable experience. The Banker's past life was not compatible with
+generous dealing. His act of buying Diablo had been prompted by newborn
+feelings of regard for the Porters, chiefly Allis; but no man, much less
+Langdon, would have given him credit for other than the most selfish
+motives.
+
+True to his resolve, Langdon utterly refused to share his confidences
+with Jakey Faust.
+
+"We've tried the horses," he said, "and the Dutchman won, but Crane
+knows more about the whole business than I do. You go to him, Jake, or
+wait till he sends for you, an' you'll find out all about it. My game's
+to run straight with one man, anyway, an' I'm goin' to do it."
+
+That was all Faust could learn. When an occasion offered he slipped a
+ten-dollar note into Shandy's hand, for he knew the lad was full open to
+a bribe, but Shandy knew no more than did the Bookmaker. The Dutchman,
+had won the trial from the Black quite easily, was the extent of his
+knowledge. As to Diablo himself, Shandy gave him a very bad character
+indeed.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Faust was in a quandary. First Crane had confided in him over Diablo,
+but now his silence seemed to indicate that he meant to have this good
+thing all to himself.
+
+Then Langdon had promised to cooperate, now he, too, had closed up like
+a clam; he was as mute as an oyster.
+
+"Crane is dealin' the cards all the time," thought Faust; "but there's
+some game on, sure."
+
+He determined to back Diablo for himself at the long odds, and chance
+it.
+
+Two days later Crane received a very illiterate epistle, evidently from
+a stable-boy; it was unsigned:
+
+"DERE Boss, Yous is gittin it in the neck. de big blak hors he didn't
+carre the sadel you think the blak hors had on his bak. Yous got de
+duble cros that time. Der bokie hes axin me wot de blak is good fer der
+bokie is playin fer to trow yous downe.
+
+"No moar at presen."
+
+This was the wholly ambiguous communication that Crane had found under
+his door. There was no stamp, neither place nor date written in the
+letter; nothing but an evident warning from some one, who, no doubt,
+hoped to get into his good graces by putting him on his guard.
+
+As it happened, Crane had just made up his mind to make his plunge on
+Diablo while the odds were long enough to make it possible with the
+outlay of very little capital. He smoked a heavy Manuel Garcia over
+this new contingency. It did not matter about the saddles. Langdon had
+confided in him fully. But how had the writer of the ill-spelled missive
+known of that matter?
+
+Yes, he had better make his bet before these whisperings came to other
+ears.
+
+But the bookmaker mentioned? That must be Faust. Why was he prowling
+about among stable lads?
+
+He sent for Faust. When the latter had come, Crane asked Diablo's price
+for the Brooklyn.
+
+"It's thirty to one now," replied the Bookmaker; "somebody's backin'
+him."
+
+Faust's small baby eyes were fixed furtively on Crane's pale, sallow
+face, as he imparted this information; but he might as well have studied
+the ingrain paper on the wall; its unfigured surface was not more
+placid, more devoid of indication, than the smooth countenance he was
+searching.
+
+Crane remained tantalizingly silent for a full minute; evidently his
+thoughts had drifted away to some other subject.
+
+"Yes," said Faust, speaking again to break the trying quiet, "some one's
+nibblin' at Diablo in the books. I wonder if it's Porter; did he think
+him a good horse?"
+
+"It can't be Porter, nor any one else who knows Diablo. It's some
+foolish outsider, tempted by the long odds. I suppose, however, it
+doesn't matter; in fact, it's all the better. You took that five
+thousand to fifty for me, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, just lay it off. You can do so now at a profit."
+
+"You don't want to back Diablo, then? Shall I lay against him further?"
+
+"If you like--in your own book. I don't want to have anything to do
+with him, one way or the other. I always thought he was a bad horse,
+and--and--well, never mind, just lay that bet off. I shall probably want
+to back The Dutchman again shortly."
+
+When Faust had gone, Crane opened the little drawer which held his
+betting book, took it out, and drew a pencil through the entry he had
+made opposite Allis's name.
+
+"That's off for a few days, thanks to Mr. Faust," he thought. Then
+he ran his eye back over several other entries. "Ah, that's the
+man--Hummel; he'll do."
+
+Next he consulted his telephone book; tracing his finger down the "H"
+column he came to "Ike Hummel, commission broker, Madison 71184."
+
+Over the 'phone he made an appointment for the next day at eleven
+o'clock with Hummel; and the result of that interview was that Crane
+backed Diablo to win him a matter of seventy-five thousand dollars at
+the liberal odds of seventy-five to one; for Jakey Faust, feeling that
+he had made a mistake in backing the Black, had laid off all his own
+bets and sent the horse back in the market to the longer odds. Crane had
+completely thrown him of his guard.
+
+No sooner had Faust congratulated himself upon having slipped out of his
+Diablo bets than he heard that a big commission had been most skillfully
+worked on this outsider for the Brooklyn. In his new dilemma he went to
+Crane, feeling very much at sea.
+
+"They're backin' your horse again, sir," he said.
+
+"Are they?"
+
+"Yes; heavy."
+
+"If he's worth backing at all I suppose he's worth backing heavily."
+
+This aphorism seemed to merit a new cigar on Crane's part, so he lighted
+one.
+
+"He's travelin' up and down in the market," continues Faust. "He dropped
+to thirty, then went back to seventy-five; now he's at twenty; I can't
+make it out."
+
+"I shouldn't try," advised Crane, soothingly. "Too much knowledge is
+even as great a danger as a lesser amount sometimes."
+
+Faust started guiltily and looked with quick inquiry at the speaker,
+but, as usual, there was nothing in his presence beyond the words to
+hang a conjecture on.
+
+"I thought for your sake that I'd better find out."
+
+"Oh, don't worry about me; that is, too much, you know. I go down to
+Gravesend once in a while myself, and no doubt know all that's doing."
+
+A great fear fell upon Faust. Evidently this was an intimation to him
+to keep away from the stables. How did Crane know--who had split on him?
+Was it Langdon, or Shandy, or Colley? Some one had evidently aroused
+Crane's suspicion, and this man of a great cleverness had put him away
+while he worked a big commission through some one else. The thought
+was none the less bitter to Faust that it was all his own fault; his
+super-cleverness.
+
+"An' you don't want me to work a commission for you on Diablo?" he
+asked, desperately.
+
+"No; I sha'n't bet on him at present. And say, Faust, in future when I
+want you to do any betting on my horses, on my account, you know, I'll
+tell you. Understand? You needn't worry, that is--other people. I'll
+tell you myself."
+
+"I didn't mean--" Faust had started to try a plausible explanation, but
+Crane stopped him.
+
+"Never mind; the matter is closed out now."
+
+"But, sir," persisted Faust, "if you've got your money all on, can I
+take a bit now? Is it good business? We've worked together a good deal
+without misunderstanding before."
+
+"Yes, we have," commented Crane.
+
+"Yes; an' I'd like to be in on this now. I didn't mean to forestall
+you."
+
+Crane raised his hand in an attitude of supplication for the other man
+to desist, but Faust was not to be stopped.
+
+"I made a mistake, an' I'm sorry; an' if you will tell me whether
+Diablo's good business for the Brooklyn, I'll back him now at the
+shorter price. There's no use of us bein' bad friends."
+
+"I think Diablo's a fairly good bet," said Crane, quietly, entirely
+ignoring the question of friendship.
+
+"It won't be poachin' if I have a bet, then?" asked the Cherub, more
+solicitous than he had appeared at an earlier stage of the game.
+
+"Poachers don't worry me," remarked Diablo's owner. "I'm my own game
+keeper, and they usually get the worst of it. But you go ahead and have
+your bet."
+
+"Thank you, there won't be no more bad breaks made by me; but I didn't
+mean to give you none the worst of it. Good day, sir," and he was gone.
+
+"Faust has had his lesson," thought Crane, as he took from a drawer the
+stable-boy's ill-favored note.
+
+"I wonder who sent me this scrawl? It gave me a pointer, though. I
+suppose the writer will turn up for his reward; but the devil of it is
+he'll sell information of this sort to anyone who'll buy. Must weed him
+out when I've discovered the imp. At any rate Faust will go straight,
+now he's been scorched. I'll just re-enter that bet to the Little Woman
+while I think of it. 'Three thousand seven hundred and fifty to fifty,
+Diablo for the Brooklyn, laid to Miss Allis Porter.'" Then he dated
+it. "She loses by this transaction, but that won't matter; it will be
+a pretty good win if it comes off. She may even refuse this, though she
+shouldn't, for it's a part of the bargain that I was to have a bet on
+for her, a small bet, of course. Yes, yes; I remember, a small bet.
+But this is a small bet. There was nothing said about the size of the
+winnings. She was probably thinking of gloves. Jingo, she has a lovely
+hand, I've noticed it; long slim fingers, even the palm is long; sinewy
+I'll warrant; nothing pudgy about that hand. Hey, Crane, you're silly!"
+he cried, half audibly, taking himself to task; "doing business in big
+moneys--a cool seventy-five thousand, if it materializes, perhaps even
+more--and then slipping off into a mooney dream, vaporing about a girl's
+slim hand. I suppose that's the love symptom. But at forty! it's hardly
+my normal condition, I fancy."
+
+The slim hand beckoned him off into a disjointed reverie. Was he the
+better for it? What would the end be? Before the new emotion he could
+look back upon his past struggles with sordid satisfaction. Men in
+battle were not given to uneasy qualms of compunction, nor questionings
+as to the method that had led to victory. His life had been one
+long-drawn-out battle; the financial soldiers that had fallen by the
+wayside because of his sword play did not interest him; they were
+dead; being dead, their memory harrassed him not at all. If there were
+commercial blood stains upon his hand, they were hidden by the glove
+of success. After a manner he had had peace; now all was disquiet; the
+turmoil of an awakened gentler feeling clashing with the polemics of
+self-satisfying selfishness. And all because of a girl! To him that was
+the peculiar feature of the disturbance in his nature. He, Philip
+Crane, the strong man of strong men, to be shorn of his indifference to
+everything but success by a girl unskilled in managing anything but a
+horse.
+
+"It's all very fine to argue it out with one's self," he thought, "but
+I simply can't help it." He was astonished to find that he was pacing up
+and down the floor of his apartment. Undoubtedly he was possessed of a
+tremendous regard for the girl Allis. But why not put it from him; why
+not conquer himself as he had always done? To let it master him meant
+the giving up of things that were almost second nature. He could not
+love the girl as a good woman should be loved, and--and--well, the gray
+eyes that had their strength because of supreme honesty would surely
+bring him disquietude. It would indeed be difficult to change his nature
+much; his habits were almost like leopard's spots; they were grown into
+the woof of his existence. Even if he won her it must be almost entirely
+because of a superior diplomacy. Everything told him that his love was
+not returned. It seemed almost impossible that it should be; there was
+not more disparity in their years than in their two selves. "All very
+fine again," he muttered, somewhat savagely; "I want her, I want her,
+not because of anything but love. What she is, or what I am counts for
+nothing; love is all compelling; my first master, I salute thee," this
+in sarcastic sincerity.
+
+In his strength he relied upon his power to bring forth an answering
+love, at least regard, should he win Allis. Yes, it would surely come.
+He had not even a young rival to combat. Yes, he would win, first Allis,
+and afterward her love.
+
+"I'm quite silly," he ejaculated; "but I can't help it. But I can go out
+and get some fresh air, and I will."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+It was the middle of May. Down in the earth the strong heart of
+reawakened nature throbbed with a pulsating force that sent new life
+forth on its errand of rejuvenation. The apple trees had peeped out with
+pink eyes, and seeing the summer maiden stalking through the land, had
+thrown off their timid coyness and shaken loose a drapery of white, all
+rose-tinted and green-shaded, that turned their broad-acred homes into
+fairy ball rooms. And for music the bees, and the birds, and shrill
+fife-playing frogs volunteered out of sheer joyousness of life.
+
+Tiny shavings of green wag, the gentle spring grass, lay strewn about
+the ballroom floor, and glistened in the warm light that was of one
+high-hung chandelier, the sun.
+
+But all the newborn awakening, all the sweet strength of soul and life
+that was borne to the waiting land on the wings of soft winds, brought
+not the hoped-for allotment to John Porter.
+
+At Ringwood they had waited for the springtime. That would work the cure
+the doctor's skill had failed of. A man of outdoors, it was the house
+caging that was killing him, keeping him back.
+
+These things were said; but Doctor Rathbone only shook his wise, old
+head, with its world of good sense, and answered: "It is none of these
+things. The trouble is in his mind; he is fretting. A sensitive man,
+well in body, may be brought to illness by anticipated disaster. That
+could not have been the case with John Porter well, but John Porter ill
+is quite a different matter. It's as I have said before, give him hope,
+win him races."
+
+So Allis was really glad at the near approach of the time of her trial.
+The day was coming fast, soon, when She was to go forth with her
+little band of horses, as a man almost in everything, to strive for the
+fulfillment of that which had been put upon her.
+
+The nearness of the not-to-be-shirked responsibility drove into her
+veins an unlooked-for exhilaration of strength. She had thought that she
+would look with dread upon the going away from Ringwood; that a feeling
+much akin to stage fright would quite unnerve her at the very last. The
+riding at home, the horse lore, and the almost constant companionship
+with her father, always among horses and horsemen, though it appeared
+somewhat dreadful to the village folks had been as nothing to her. Now
+that she needed strength for the newer, stranger endeavor, it came to
+her, even as the blossoms came to the swaying apple trees, great and
+small.
+
+What wouldn't she do? she asked herself many times, to bring a
+strength-giving peace to her father's troubled mind. Even Mrs. Porter,
+implacably bitter against racing, must condone what was so evidently
+Allis's study, if it tended to their happiness; the mother had softened
+somewhat in the austerity of her opposition.
+
+Evening after evening they had discussed the gloomy outlook, with,
+always from Allis's side, a glimmer of hopeful light. The girl's patient
+resolve had worn down the mother's pessimistic dread of anticipated
+evil.
+
+"You know, Allis," she had said, "how I look upon this thoroughly
+unchristian pursuit. Nothing can justify it from a true woman's point of
+view, absolutely nothing--not even poverty. I would willingly suffer the
+loss of all we possess--that it is so little is due to this dreadful,
+immoral horse racing--but I would sacrifice even what remains, if
+your father were well and willing to start afresh in some occupation
+befitting his noble character. I would help him, to endure every
+hardship, even deprivation, without a murmur."
+
+"But, mother," interrupted Allis, "it's impossible now; I think it
+always was, for, as you know, father knew nothing of other business.
+Nothing would tempt him to be dishonest in racing, and he always enjoyed
+it because of his love for horses. But with all that, mother, if he had
+been in a position to please you, if he had felt that we--you, and Alan,
+and I--would not have suffered, I am sure he would have listened to
+your pleadings and given it up. He might perhaps have gone on breeding
+horses, for you wouldn't have objected to that, would you, mother?"
+
+"No, it's the wicked associations of the race course which I felt
+degraded a man of your father's character. But I'm not going to
+dishearten you, Allis, nor hamper you now in your brave acceptance
+of the task that has come to you, because of wrong done before. It is
+distasteful to me, of course; it would be to any right-minded mother,
+to have her daughter in a position so repellant; but, strange as it may
+seem I'd rather you went with the horses than Alan."
+
+"Alan couldn't go, mother; he couldn't give up his place in the bank;
+besides, father has purposely kept him from racing."
+
+"I know it, Allis; I wasn't thinking of that, though. Alan has the
+gambling spirit born in him; it's not his fault; it's the visitation of
+the sins of the father upon the son. It came to your father in just the
+same way. No, I'm not even blaming your father for it; it has come down
+from generation to generation; but there has never been dishonor, thank
+God--there has never been a dishonest Porter in my husband's family,
+and, please God, there never may be. That would be too much! It would
+kill me. And it's better that you go, Allis, for Alan is but a boy,
+and the temptations to a young man at the race course must be almost
+impossible to resist. Besides, your going may bring new life to your
+father; the doctor is so hopeful--he says it will. He was afraid that
+he had shocked me, when he said you were to win races for your father's
+good. It displeased the pastor; I know it did, but perhaps he doesn't
+quite understand how much we have at stake."
+
+"He's so narrow, mother."
+
+"The Reverend Mr. Dolman thinks only of our souls, daughter; naturally,
+too, and one can hardly be a Christian and race horses. But we have got
+so much to consider. I hope I am not wrong in feeling glad that you are
+able to look after our interests. I should like to pray for your success
+even, Allis. It might be wrong; I might feel guilty; but if it makes
+your father better, don't you think I'd be forgiven?"
+
+"I'm sure you would, mother, and it would make me stronger. I'm so glad.
+I didn't want to displease you. I wanted you to feel that I was doing
+right. It will be lighter now; I sha'n't mind what anybody says if
+you're with me, mother. Now everything will come out right; I know it
+will. And if it does, if father gets strong, just out of thankfulness,
+I'll coax him to try something else, for your sake, mother."
+
+"No, for his own, Allis. I think only of him in this matter." The
+prospective commencement of the racing campaign seemed to foreshadow a
+complete fulfillment of the doctor's prophecy should success smile upon
+this modern Joan of Arc; for the bustle of preparation was music to
+the ears of the stricken man, and he fought the lethargic fever of
+discontent that was over him until his eyes brightened and his face took
+on a hopeful look of interest.
+
+"Brave little woman," he said to Allis, "it's a shame for a great hulk
+as I am to lie up here, while you fight the sharks that were almost too
+much for your father."
+
+Then he spoke a little lower, as a man utters unfamiliar words for the
+first time. "Your mother said that Providence would look after you.
+Sounds strange, doesn't it, girl? But I'm glad. Your mother was so
+bitter--I don't blame her--now she's turned right around. And, Allis,
+I believe with a little tempting, a little coaxing, she'd almost have
+a bet on Lucretia in your hands. Funny, isn't it?" And he gave a little
+chuckle.
+
+Allis hadn't heard her father laugh for a long time. It wasn't much of
+a laugh, very dry, and very short lived, hardly lighting up his face at
+all, but still it was the feeble pulsation of humor which showed that
+the old John Porter spirit was not quite broken.
+
+"About the betting, Allis, you must have Dixon come down here to see me,
+for the horses are to go to his stable again, aren't they?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"That's right. I thought we had arranged it that way, but I seem to
+forget things since that bad tumble."
+
+"You don't forget much now, father; you're getting stronger in every
+way."
+
+"Blarney, girl. But I don't mind; your blarney is like the sunshine,
+that comes through the window every day at ten. Ah, I know to the very
+minute when to look for it. But about Dixon. Have him come down, for we
+must arrange to back Lucretia--she's worth it. She's been doing well,
+hasn't she, girl? O God! why can't I go out into the open and see the
+little mare do just one gallop? And then I'd like to sit and look at
+the trees sway back and forth in the wind. Their swing is like the free
+gallop of a good horse."
+
+He dropped the brief, fretful remonstrance against fate with an
+apologetic turning away of his head, and continued about the Trainer.
+
+"Lucretia's in the Brooklyn, Allis; you know that, of course. If Dixon
+starts her, the stake alone will be about enough to run for, for a
+three-year-old has a tough job ahead in that mob of picked horses.
+But you'll get a line on her there--I think she'll win with ninety-two
+pounds up; but if she shows good form, then she'll have to be backed for
+the Brooklyn Derby. Lucretia's the best three-year-old in the land, I
+know. We'll have to arrange for that money. There will be a couple of
+thousand to be had if it seems safe business. You and Dixon will judge
+of that. You're taking Lauzanne, girl. Is it worth while?"
+
+"Lauzanne is going to do great things for us, father. I'm sure of it."
+
+"Still young, Allis. I talked like that when I was your age. Fancy and
+horse racing go arm in arm always, and they're like an experienced man
+of forty hobnobbing with the little love god; they're just about as well
+mated."
+
+Porter's irrelevant simile caused Allis to start, and Crane's relentless
+eyes came and peeped at her through the narrow-slitted lids.
+
+"All right, though, little girl; your faith may make Lauzanne win, and I
+think Lucretia's speed will carry her to the front, so you may strike a
+bit of luck at last."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+A few days later Mike Gaynor took the stable up to Gravesend. Dixon had
+a cottage there, which he occupied with his wife, and Allis was to stop
+with them.
+
+On the 20th of May the horses were settled in their racing quarters.
+Only four days remained for introducing Lucretia to the Gravesend track;
+on the 24th she would take up her ninety-two pounds and be tested to the
+utmost in the great Brooklyn Handicap.
+
+Dixon felt that several things were in her favor. She was as quiet as
+an old cow at the post; many false starts would improve rather than
+diminish her chances, for nothing seemed to excite the gallant little
+brown mare. Her great burst of speed would enable the jockey to get out
+of the ruck and steal a good place to lie handy at the leader's heels.
+She could be nursed to the last furlong of the stretch, for the sight of
+horses in front would not daunt her brave spirit.
+
+Against the mare were two or three rather important factors; she was
+slight of build, not overstrong, and the crush of contending horses
+might knock her out of her stride, should they close in. Then there
+was just a suspicion of lack of staying power in the Assassin strain;
+Lucretia might not quite last the mile and a quarter so early in the
+season, being a mare. However, she had a chance.
+
+"But I'd hardly call it a betting chance," Dixon said, speaking to
+Allis; "there's never been a three-year-old won the Brooklyn yet.
+There'll be openings enough to put down the money later on--in the
+Derby, if the mare pans out well."
+
+Andy Dixon was first of all 'a careful man. "There are risks enough in
+racin' without lookin' for them," he said. "When one has got an absolute
+lead-pipe cinch, it's two to one against its coming off." That was
+another of his conservative aphorisms.
+
+Andy made no big wins, had never been booked as a successful plunger,
+had never skinned the ring; on the other hand, bringing the scales of
+equity to a dead level, he had never been forced to ask any man to pay
+his feed bills for him, nor let an account stand over for a time.
+
+Allis was in good hands, and, what added to the value of the situation,
+she knew it, and would take Dixon's advice. The Trainer's opinion was
+borne out by the betting market; Lucretia stood a long way down in the
+list. Even Diablo, bad horse as he was supposed to be, was at a shorter
+price; the heavy outlay of his owner, and some intangible rumors having
+caused the bookmakers to feel inclined to hold him close up against
+their chests. His work since his trial with The Dutchman had been quite
+satisfactory. He looked upon Westley, the jockey, as a friend, and
+strode along in his gallops as though he had never sulked or shown
+temper in his life.
+
+Favoritism for the Brooklyn was divided between The King, a
+five-year-old that had won it the year before, and White Moth, a
+three-year-old, winner of the last year's Futurity. Jockey Redpath had
+been riding Lucretia in her gallops since she had come to Gravesend.
+At last Dixon had been singularly fortunate in the matter of jockeys.
+Redpath was just making his reputation, making it as all jockey
+reputations are made, by winning races.
+
+This somewhat unstudied factor in racing had loomed large on his
+mental vision. It might be possible to acquire a reputation in other
+professions by good fortune or favor. As a jockey, a light weight might
+possibly make money by dishonest methods, though that itself seemed
+doubtful, but there was no way to rise to the top of the tree except by
+riding winners; verily there was one royal road to fame in the field.
+Knowing all this, Redpath rode to win.
+
+On the 22d Dixon gave Lucretia a good strong three-quarter gallop over
+the handicap course; on the 23d she had a quiet canter; and on the
+morning of the 24th, the eventful day, she poked her mouse-brown nozzle
+over the bar of her stall when Allis came to look at her and seemed to
+say, "I'll do my part to-day."
+
+Nothing could have been wished for in Lucretia's appearance that wasn't
+there, except just the faint suspicion of a sacrifice of strength to
+speed. But if the frame wasn't there, the good strong heart was; the
+courage and the gentleness, and the wisdom, and the full glow of perfect
+health.
+
+For hours the trains had borne to Long Island crowd after crowd of
+eager, impatient New Yorkers. Lovers of horses, lovers of gambling, pure
+and simple; holiday makers, and those who wished to see the Brooklyn
+run out of sheer curiosity; train after train whirled these atoms of
+humanity to the huge gates of the Gravesend arena, wherein were to
+battle that day the picked thoroughbreds, old and young.
+
+Even like bees, black-coated and buzzing, the eager ones swarmed from
+the cars and rehived in the great stand. Betting ring, and paddock, and
+lawn became alive because of their buzz; tier after tier, from step
+to roof, the serrated line of whitefaced humanity waited for the grand
+struggle.
+
+The first race was but a race, that was all. Horses galloped, but did
+they not gallop other days? It was not the Brooklyn. And also the second
+was but another race. How slow, and of what little interest were the
+horses! Verily, neither was it the Brooklyn, and it was the Brooklyn
+forty thousand pairs of eyes had come to see.
+
+Down in the betting ring men of strong voices bellowed words of money
+odds, and full-muscled shoulders pushed and carried heads about that
+were intent on financial businesses. But what of that? It was not the
+Brooklyn, it was gambling.
+
+Out in the paddock a small brown mare of gentle aspect, with big soft
+eyes, full of a dreamy memory of fresh-shooting grass, walked with easy
+stride an elliptical circle. Her fetlocks fair kissed the short grass in
+an unstable manner, as though the joints were all too supple. Inside
+of the circle stood Allis Porter and a man square of jaw and square of
+shoulder, that was Andy Dixon. Presently to them came Mike Gaynor.
+
+"We're gittin' next it now, Miss Allis; we'll soon know all about it."
+
+"We're all ready, Mike," said Dixon, with square solemnity. "When
+they've beat the little mare they'll be catchin' the judge's eye."
+
+"There's nothing left now, Mike, but just a hope for a little luck,"
+added the girl.
+
+"Ye'r talking now, Miss Allis. Luck's the trick from this out. The
+little mare'll have a straight run this trip. Here's the b'y comin' now,
+and a good b'y he is."
+
+A little man in blue jacket and white stars joined them, saluting Miss
+Allis with his riding whip. "Are you going to win, Redpath?" asked the
+girl.
+
+"I'm going to try, Miss. She's a sweet mare to ride, but it's a big
+field. There's some boys riding that ought to be in the stable rubbing
+horses."
+
+"You'll have to get out in front," said Dixon, speaking low; "your
+mare's too light to stand crowdin', an' even if you have to take her
+back for a breather after you've gone half the journey, she'll come
+again, for she's game."
+
+"Them Langdon fellows thinks they've got a great chance wit' our
+cast-off, Diablo," volunteered Mike. "I had a peep at him in the stall,
+an' he's lookin' purty fit."
+
+"He never was no class," objected Dixon.
+
+"If ye'd see him gallop the day he run away, ye'd think he had class,"
+said Mike. "Bot' tumbs up! ye'd a t'ought it was the flyin' Salvator."
+
+"Well, we'll soon know all about it," declared Dixon. "There's the
+saddlin' bell. Have you weighed out, Redpath? Weight all right,
+ninety-two pounds?"
+
+"All right, sir. It was a close call to make it, though; there was a few
+ounces over."
+
+"All the better; it's a hot day, an' if they're long at the post it'll
+take them spare ounces out of you, I fancy."
+
+Dixon held up his finger to the boy that was leading Lucretia, and
+nodding his head toward the stall led the way.
+
+"We're number seven, Mike," said Allis, looking at the leather tag which
+carried the figure on Jockey Redpath's right arm.
+
+"'There's luck in odd numbers, said Rory O'Moore,'" quoted Mike.
+
+"I've a superstitious dread of seven," the girl said; "it's the one
+number that I always associate with disaster--I don't mind thirteen a
+bit."
+
+"We'll break the bad luck seven to-day," asserted little Redpath,
+bravely.
+
+"I hope so," answered Allis. "Let me put my finger on the number for
+good luck," and she touched the badge on his arm. "Now I'm going up to
+get a good seat in the stand," she continued; "I'll leave Lucretia to
+you, Redpath."
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+As the slight figure, looking slighter still in a long trailing race
+coat, passed through the paddock gate to the stand enclosure, Mike
+Gaynor spoke to the jockey.
+
+"Redpath, me b'y, it's up to ye to put yer best leg for'ard to-day. Ye'r
+ridin' for the greatest little woman in this big country. In all the
+stand up there, wit' their flounces and jewels, there isn't a lady like
+her. Not wan av them judys kin touch her as a rale proper lady. God
+bless me, she's de sweetest--" then he checked himself; he was going to
+say the sweetest filly, but even to his rough-hewn mind, tutored only by
+horse lore, it seemed sacrilege to speak of Miss Porter as anything but
+a lady.
+
+"You're right, Mike," concurred the little man; "I'd rather ride the
+mare for her than White Moth, or The King, or any of the favorites for
+their owners."
+
+"An' the ould man lyin' there at home on his back, eh, Redpath? He's as
+good as gold hisself; that's where the girl gets it; not sayin' a word
+ag'in Mrs. Porter; she don't understand, that's all. But ye'll put up
+the ride of your life, me b'y, won't ye?"
+
+"I'll do that, old chap."
+
+"Mike'll stand by ye," affirmed Gaynor. "Say, b'y," and he turned and
+looked squarely into the eyes of the little man, "I know if they beats
+ye to-day, 'twon't be yer fault 'cause why?"--and he put his hand on
+Redpath's shoulder-="'cause ye'r like many another man, sweet on the
+young Missis. Now, now, now stop that!" and he held up his finger
+warningly, as the other raised his voice in mild protest; "it's to
+yer credit. It'll do ye no good in wan way, av coorse, for, as ye
+say, she'll never know it." Redpath had not made the statement Mike
+attributed to him, but the latter was giving him a kindly pointer. "But
+it'll do ye no harm. The likin' av a good woman will sometimes make
+a man av a scoundrel, but ye'r a long way from bein' that, me b'y; so
+it'll do ye tons av good. There's the bugle; go an' mount, an' I'll
+watch how ye get on; an' good luck to ye."
+
+Regally, one after another, in stately file, the turf kings, decked out
+with the silken jackets that rested a-top--crimson, and gold, and blue,
+and white, and magpie, passed through the paddock gate to the newly
+smoothed course. Very modest and demure number seven, the little brown
+mare, looked beside the strong-muscled giants, bright bay, golden
+chestnut, and raven-wing black, that overshadowed her in the procession
+that caught the forty thousand pairs of eyes. Something of this thought
+came to Allis, sitting in the stand. What a frail little pair they were,
+both of them, and to be there battling for this rich prize that was
+so hardly fought for, by strong men athirst for gold, and great horses
+a-keen for the gallop!
+
+Ah, there was Diablo, the very number Allis had said carried no dread
+for her, thirteen. What a strange coincidence! What a cruel twist
+of fate it would be if he were to win!--he looked equal to it. A man
+sitting at Allis's elbow suddenly cried in a voice enthused into the
+joyous treble of a boy's: "Look at that big Black; isn't he a beaut?
+Number thirteen. That's a hoodoo number, if you like; it's enough to
+give a backer cold feet."
+
+"I thought you weren't superstitious, Rex;" this was a woman's voice.
+
+"I'm not, an' I'm going straight down to back that Black, thirteen and
+all."
+
+On Allis's other side one of the party was ticking off the horses by
+their numbers as they passed; "One, two, that's White Moth; they say
+she'll win; three, Red Rover; four, what's that? that's George L.; five,
+six, seven; just look at that little runt. What is it? Oh, Lucretia.
+Might as well run a big calf, I should think."
+
+"She's just lovely," declared a lady in the party. "She's as graceful as
+a deer, and I'm sure she'll run as fast as any of them."
+
+"Can't live in that mob; they'll smother a little thing like her,"
+declared the man, emphatically. "Where are we--ten, eleven, The King,
+that's the winner for a hundred. Look at him. He carries my money.
+It's all over now; they can't beat him. That's a fine looker, though,
+thirteen,--Diabo, eh? What's that horse Diablo, George?" turning to one
+of the men.
+
+"No good--a maiden; I looked them all up in the dope book; how they
+expect to win the Brooklyn with a maiden gets beyond me."
+
+Somewhat tortured, Allis listened to the voluble man on her left, who
+was short and fat, and red of face, as he graded, with egotistical
+self-sufficiency, the thirteen competitors for the big Handicap.
+Lucretia he had passed over in disdain. Crude as his judgment seemed,
+arrogantly insufficient, it affected Allis disagreeably. Now that
+everything had been done, that the last minute of suspense was on, she
+was depressed. The exhilaration of preparation had gone from her, and
+the words of the captious man on her left, "that little runt," hung with
+persistent heaviness on her soul. All the vast theater of the stand
+was a buzz of eager chatter. Verily it was a race; it was the Brooklyn
+Handicap. Lips that smiled gave a mocking lie to drawn, strained faces,
+and nervous, shifting eyes, that told of the acceptance of too deep a
+hazard. The weeks and months of mental speculation embodied in heavy
+bets would have their fruit ripened and plucked within a brief half
+hour.
+
+Allis's gaze dropped to the grass lawn in front of the stand for a
+minute, her eyes seeking repose from the strain of watching the horses
+as they went down to the starting post. How fretfully erratic were the
+men who dotted its green sward with gray and solemn black! The deeper
+interest Allis had over there on the course where was the little mare,
+seemed to lift her to a great height above them. How like ants they
+were, crossing and recrossing each other's paths, twisting and turning
+without semblance of an objective point, creatures of an impulse almost
+lower than instinct, devoid of this well-directed governing motive.
+Yes, they were like an army of ants that had been suddenly thrown
+into confusion. She saw one of them come hurriedly out of the paddock,
+talking impetuously with bended head--for he was tall--to a short man
+in gray tweed, beyond doubt a trainer. Suddenly the tall man broke away,
+hurried to the rail which separated the lawn from the course, leaned far
+over its top to take a last look at the horses, and then with a queer
+shuffling trot he hurried to the mob that was surging and pushing about
+the bookmakers. Allis noted with minute observance each little act in
+this pantomime of the last-minute plunge. Just beneath where she sat
+two men were having a most energetic duel of words. A slim, darkskinned
+youth, across whose fox-like face was written in large letters the word
+"Tout," was hammering into his obdurate companion the impossibility of
+some certain horse being defeated. Presently the other man's hand went
+into his pocket, and when it came forth again five ten-dollar bills were
+counted with nervous reluctance and hesitatingly made over to the Tout.
+Tight clutching his prize this pilot of the race course slipped from
+Allis's sight and became lost in the animated mass that heaved and
+swayed like full-topped grain in a harvest breeze.
+
+Within all that enclosure there seemed no one possessed of any calm. To
+the quiet girl it was a strange revelation; no one could have as much at
+stake as she had, and yet over her spirit there was nothing beyond
+the lethargy of depression. No; no one is calm, she thought. Ah, the
+assertion was too sweeping. Coming up the steps, just at her right, was
+a man who might have been walking in a quiet meadow, or a full-leafed
+forest, for all there was of agitation in his presence. A sudden new
+thought came to Allis; she had never seen that face distraught but once.
+The collected man was Philip Crane. A tinge of almost admiration tingled
+the girl's mind. To be possessed of calm where all was nervous strain
+was something.
+
+Suddenly the unimpassioned face lighted up; the narrow-lidded eyes
+gleamed with brightened interest. As eagerly as a boy their owner,
+Crane, came forward and saluted Allis. At that instant the man of many
+words on her left rose from his seat to chase through the interminable
+crowd on the lawn a new victim.
+
+Allis had sought to be alone in this short time of trial; she was hardly
+sure of herself. If Lucretia failed she might break down; for what would
+come to her father should the message home be one of disaster? Even if
+the little mare won her joy might lead her to commit strange pranks; she
+felt that her heart would burst out of sheer joy, if she did not shout
+in exultation, or caper madly, as she had seen others do in the hour of
+victory. She was sorry that Crane had come.
+
+"I was looking for you," he said; "I want to see you win this race;
+that is, if--I mean, like every other man here, I have harked back to my
+natural instinct of covetous acquisition and had a bet on."
+
+"Not Lucretia?"
+
+"No--I've bet on Diablo. Langdon thinks he'll win. Do you remember the
+agreement about his purchase?"
+
+"What was that? I've half forgotten it."
+
+"Just a little bet on your account, you know."
+
+"Oh, I remember; but that was only in fun, wasn't it?"
+
+"It was part of the bargain, and it's on. You'll take it, won't you, if
+he wins--"
+
+"They're off!" Some one had shouted the magic words from the head of the
+steps. In a second every voice of the thousands was stilled, and there
+was only the noise of shuffling feet, as eager watchers stood up to see
+the horses.
+
+"It's a false start," said Crane, quietly, turning toward the girl. "It
+would have been well for you, Miss Allis, had the starter let them go.
+Lucretia was well out in the lead; it was Diablo's fault, too, that they
+had to go back--he was left standing."
+
+Crane's voice was Fate's voice. Would there never be anything but
+Lucretia and Diablo, seven and thirteen, thirteen and seven?
+
+"Diablo's a bad horse at the post, sure," ejaculated Crane, letting
+his field glass rest for an instant on his knee; "he just backs up and
+shakes his head viciously; evidently he doesn't like the idea of so much
+company."
+
+"How is Lucretia acting, Mr. Crane?"
+
+"Perfectly. You must have instilled some of your own patience into her."
+
+The girl hardly heard the implied compliment.
+
+Would the patience be rewarded? Or would thirteen, that was symbolical
+of evil, and its bearer, Diablo, who was an agent of evil, together
+snatch from her this prize that meant so much? It was strange that she
+should not think of the other horses at all. It was as though there
+were but two in the race--Lucretia and Diablo--and yet they were both
+outsiders.
+
+"The Starter is having a bad time of it; that makes six false breaks,"
+said Allis's companion; "it will end by his losing patience with the
+boys, I fear, and let them go with something off in a long lead. But
+they say this Fitzpatrick is a cool hand, and gives no man the best of
+it. He'll probably fine Diablo's rider a hundred dollars; I believe it's
+customary to do that when a jockey persistently refuses to come up
+with his horses. Just look at that!--the black fiend has lashed out and
+nearly crippled something."
+
+"Not Lucretia, Mr. Crane!" gasped Allis.
+
+"No, it's a chestnut--there they go! Good boy, Westley. I mean Diablo's
+jockey has done a fiendish clever thing. He came through his horses on
+the jump, carried them off their feet, they all broke--yes, the flag's
+down, and he's out with a clean lead."
+
+Down in front a bell was clanging viciously; people were rushing with
+frenzied haste from the betting ring, and clambering up the steps of the
+stand; in the stand itself the whole vast mob had risen to its feet, and
+even now the rolling beat of eager hoofs was in the aid, hushed of the
+mob's clamor.
+
+Yes, Crane had spoken truly; a great striding black, along whose neck
+hung close a tiny figure in yellow and red, was leading the oncoming
+horses. Allis strained her eyes trying to discover the little mare, but
+she was swallowed up in the struggling mob that hung at Diablo's heels.
+As they opened a little, swinging around the first turn, Allis caught
+sight of the white-starred blue jacket. Its wearer was quite fifth or
+sixth.
+
+"Lucretia is doing well," said Crane; "she's holding her own; she's
+lapped on White Moth."
+
+It seemed strange to Allis that any other thought should come into her
+mind at that time other than just concern for Lucretia, but she caught
+herself wondering at Crane's professional words of description. For
+the time he was changed; the quick brevity of his utterance tokened an
+interested excitement. He was not at all like the Crane she knew, the
+cold, collected banker.
+
+"Lucretia's doing better," her companion added a few seconds later. "If
+I were given to sentiment, I should say her gallop was the poetry of
+motion. She deserves to win. But honestly, Miss Allis, I think she'll
+never catch the Black; he's running like a good horse."
+
+Allis could not answer; the strain was too great for words. It would be
+all over in a minute or so; then she would talk.
+
+"Your mare is creeping up, Miss Allis; she's second to the Black now,
+and they've still a good three furlongs to go. You may win yet. It takes
+a good horse to make all his own running for a mile and a quarter and
+then in. His light weight may land him first past the post. There are
+only four in it now, the rest are beaten off, sure. Diablo is still in
+the lead; White Moth and Lucretia are a length back; and The King is
+next, running strong. It's the same into the stretch. Now the boys are
+riding; Lucretia is drawing away from White Moth--she's pressing Diablo.
+You'll win yet!"
+
+His voice was drowned by the clamor that went up from every side.
+"Diablo! White Moth! Lucretia!" What a babel of yells! "He's beat! Come
+on!" It was deafening. All the conjecture of months, all the hopes and
+fears of thousands, compressed into a few brief seconds of struggling
+endeavor.
+
+Allis had sat down. There was less frenzied excitement thus.
+
+"God of Justice!" it was Crane's voice, close to her ear; his hot breath
+was on her cheek; he had leaned down, so that she might hear him. "Your
+jockey has sold you, or else Lucretia quit. I thought I saw him pull her
+off. I'm sorry, Miss Allis, God knows I am, though I've won--for Diablo
+is winning easily." Then he straightened up for an instant, only to bend
+down again and say, "Yes, Diablo has won, and Lucretia is beaten off.
+Perhaps it wasn't the boy, after all, for it's a long journey for a
+three-year-old mare. Can I do anything for you? Let me see you down to
+the paddock."
+
+"Thank you," the girl answered, struggling with her voice. "Yes, I must
+go, for Dixon will be terribly disappointed. I must go and put a brave
+face on, I suppose. It's all over, and it can't be helped. But you've
+won, and I congratulate you."
+
+"Poor old dad!" she muttered to herself, "to have fairly given away
+Diablo just when he was ready to win a big race." With a tinge of
+bitterness the girl thought how much her mother's opposition was to
+blame for this narrow missing of a great victory. She was glad to get
+away from the cataract of voices that smothered her like great falling
+waters. There was little exultation. If it had been any solace to her,
+she had much companionship in her dashed hopes; for Diablo, the winner,
+had not been backed by the general public; the favorite, White Moth, had
+been beaten.
+
+After the first outburst a sullen anger took possession of the
+race-goers. They had been wronged, deceived; another coup had been made
+by that trick manipulator, Langdon. How carefully he had kept the
+good thing bottled up. If the mob could have put into execution its
+half-muttered thoughts, every post about the Gravesend track would have
+been decorated with a fragment of Langdon's anatomy.
+
+Even the bookmakers were less jubilant than usual over this winning of
+an outsider, for Crane, and Langdon, and Faust, and two or three others
+who had either received a hint or stumbled upon the good thing, had
+taken out of the ring a tidy amount of lawful currency.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Crane accompanied Allis to the paddock gate; and she continued on to
+the fatal number seven stall. Lucretia had just been brought in, looking
+very distressed after her hard race. For an instant the girl forgot her
+own trouble at sight of the gallant little mare's condition. Two boys
+were busy rubbing the white-crusted perspiration and dust from her
+sides; little dark rivulets of wet trickled down the lean head that hung
+wearily.
+
+"Well, we lost!" It was Dixon's voice at Allis's elbow. "That'll do," to
+the boys; "here, put this cooler on, and walk her about."
+
+Then he turned to Allis again. "She was well up with the leaders half
+way in the stretch; I tho't she was goin' to win."
+
+"Was it too far for her, Dixon?"
+
+The Trainer did not answer at once; with him at all times questions
+were things to be pondered over. His knitted brows and air of hesitating
+abstraction showed plainly that this question of Allis's was one he
+would prefer to answer days later, if he answered it at all.
+
+"Didn't she stop suddenly?" Allis asked, again.
+
+"I couldn't just see from where I was what happened," he replied,
+evasively; "and I haven't asked the boy yet. She may have got shut in.
+Ah, here he comes now," as the jockey returned from the weighing scales.
+
+Redpath seemed to think that some explanation was necessary, as he came
+up to Allis and the Trainer, so he said: "The little mare seemed to have
+a chance when I turned into the stretch, an' I thought once I was goin'
+to win; but that big Black just kept galloping, galloping, an' I never
+could get to his head; I'd a been in the money, though, if somethin'
+hadn't bumped me; an' then my mount just died away--she just seemed to
+die away." He repeated this is a falling decadence, as though it best
+expressed his reason for finishing in the ruck.
+
+"Well, we're beat, an' that's all there is to it," declared Dixon, half
+savagely; then he added, "an' by a cast-off out of your father's stable,
+too, Miss Allis. If there's any more bad luck owin' John Porter, hanged
+if I wouldn't like to shoulder it myself, an' give him a breather."
+Then, with ponderous gentleness for a big, rough-throwntogether man, he
+continued: "Don't you fret, Miss; the little mare's all right; she'll
+pull your father through all this; you just cheer up. I've got to go now
+an' look after her."
+
+When the Trainer had gone the jockey turned to Allis, hesitatingly,
+and said: "Dixon's correct about the little mare; she's all right. I
+wouldn't speak even afore him, though he's all right too, but" and he
+looked about carefully to see that nobody was within ear-shot. Two men
+were talking a little farther out in the paddock, and Redpath, motioning
+to Allis, stepped close to the stall that was next to the one Lucretia
+had occupied, "I could a-been in the money."
+
+The girl started. Crane had said that the jockey had stopped riding.
+
+"Yes, Miss; you mustn't blame me, for I took chances of bein' had up
+afore the Stewards."
+
+"You did wrong if you didn't try to win," exclaimed Allis, angrily.
+
+"I did try to win, but I couldn't. I saw that I'd never catch that big
+Black; he was going too strong; his long stride was just breaking the
+little mare's heart. She's the gamest piece of horseflesh--say, Miss
+Porter, believe me, it just hurt me to take it out of her, keeping up
+with that long-legged devil. If I could a-headed him once, just got to
+him once--I tried it when we turned into the straight--he'd have quit.
+But it was no use--the mare couldn't do it. With him out of the race I'd
+have won; I could a-been second or third as it was, but it might have
+done the little mare up so she wouldn't be any good all season. I
+thought a bit over this when I was galloping. I knew she was in the
+Brooklyn Derby, an' when I had the others beat at a mile, thinks I, if
+the public don't get onto it, Mr. Porter can get all his losses back in
+the Brooklyn Derby. That's why I eased up on the little mare. You don't
+think I could do anything crooked against you, Miss? Give me the mount
+in the Derby, an' your father can bet his last dollar 'that Lucretia'll
+win."
+
+As he finished speaking Mike Gaynor shuffled moodily up to them. Usually
+Mike's clothes suggested a general despondency; his wiry body, devoid of
+roundness as a rat trap, seemed inadequate to the proper expression of
+their original design. The habitual air of endeavorless decay had been
+accentuated by the failure of Lucretia to win the Brooklyn. Mike had
+shrunken into his allenveloping coat with pathetic moroseness. The
+look of pity in his eye when it lighted upon Allis gave place to one
+of rebellious accusation as he turned his head slowly and glared at
+Redpath.
+
+"Ye put up a bad ride there, b'y," he commenced, speaking in a hard,
+dry, defiant tone; "a bad ride, an' no mistake. Mind I'm not sayin' ye
+could a-won, but ye might a-tried," and he waited for Redpath's defense.
+
+"She was all out, Mike, beat; what was the use of driving her to death
+when she hadn't the ghost of a chance?"
+
+"You're a little too hard on Redpath," remonstrated Allis; "he's just
+been telling me that he didn't wish to punish the mare unnecessarily."
+
+"His business was to win if he could, Miss," answered Mike, not at all
+won over. "It was a big stake, an' he ought to've put up a big finish.
+The Black would've quit if ye'd ever got to his throat-latch; he's soft,
+that's what he is. An' just where ye could have won the race, p'r'aps,
+ye quit ridin' an' let him come home alone. It's queer b'ys that's
+ridin' now, Miss," Gaynor added, fiercely, nodding his head in great
+decision, and, turning away abruptly, the petulant moroseness showing
+deeper than ever in his wrinkled face.
+
+"You mustn't mind Mike, Redpath," said Allis; "he's a good friend of our
+family, and is upset over the race, that's all."
+
+"I don't blame him," answered the jockey; "he would have rode it out and
+spoiled your chance with the mare--that would have done no good."
+
+"Still, I hardly like it," answered the girl. "I know you did it for
+my sake, but it doesn't seem quite right. Don't do anything like this
+again. Of course, I don't want Lucretia pushed beyond her strength, nor
+cut up with the whip, but she ought to get the place if she can. People
+might have backed her for the place, and we've thrown away their money."
+
+"The bettors will look after their own interests, Miss Porter, and they
+wouldn't help you a little bit if you needed it; they'd be more like to
+do you a bad turn. If I'd driven the mare to death, an' been beaten
+for the place, as I might have, the papers would have slated me for
+cruelty. You must believe that I did it for the best, Miss."
+
+"I do, and I suppose I must thank you, but don't do it again. I'd rather
+you didn't carry your whip at all on Lucretia; she doesn't need it;
+but don't ease her up if you've got a chance till you pass the winning
+post."
+
+As the two finished speaking, and moved away, a thin, freckled face
+peered furtively from the door of stall number six. Just the ferret-like
+eyes and a knife-thin nose showed past the woodwork, but there could be
+no mistaking the animal. It was Shandy.
+
+"I've got you again," he muttered. "Blast the whole tribe of you! I'll
+just pip you on that dirty work, blowed if I don't."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+The Brooklyn had been run and won; won by Langdon's stable, and lost by
+John Porter's. That night Allis spent hours trying to put into a letter
+to her mother their defeat and their hopes in such a way as to save
+distress to her father. She wound up by simply asking her mother to get
+Dr. Rathbone to impart as much information as he deemed advisable to his
+patient.
+
+They were a very depressed lot at Dixon's cottage that evening. Dixon
+was never anything else but taciturn, and the disappointment of the day
+was simply revolving in his mind with the monotonous regularity of a
+grindstone. They had lost, and that's all there was about it. Why talk
+it over? It could do no good. He would nurse up Lucretia, and work back
+into her by mile gallops a fitting strength for the Brooklyn Derby. With
+incessant weariness he rocked back and forth, back and forth in the big
+Boston rocker; while Allis, at a little table in a corner of the room,
+sought to compose the letter she wished to send home.
+
+With apathetic indifference the girl heard a constrained knock at the
+cottage door; she barely looked up as Dixon opened to a visitor. It was
+Crane who entered.
+
+At almost any other time his visit would have been unpleasant. In
+his presence even the most trivial conversation seemed shrouded in a
+background of interested intentions; but to-night Dixon's constrained
+depression weighed heavy on her spirits and irritated her.
+
+"Luck was against you to-day, Dixon," exclaimed the visitor.
+
+"They were too strong for the little mare," answered the Trainer,
+curtly. "Our cast-off won, of course, but there were a half dozen in the
+race that would have beaten Lucretia, I fancy."
+
+Allis looked inquiringly at the Trainer; he had not talked that way to
+her. Then a light dawned upon the girl. She had not associated Dixon
+with diplomacy in her mind, she knew that he could maintain a golden
+silence, but here he was, actually throwing out to the caller a
+disparaging estimate of Lucretia's powers. This perpetual atmosphere of
+duplicity was positively distasteful. In the free gallop of the horses
+there was nothing but an inspiration to honest endeavor; but in this
+subtle diplomacy Allis detected the touch of defilement which her
+mother so strongly resented. Perhaps to-night she was more sensitive
+to depressing influences; at any rate she felt a great weariness of
+the whole business. Then the spirit of resolve rose in open rebellion
+against these questionings; almost Jesuitical she became at once. What
+mattered the ways or means, so that she did no wrong? Was not the saving
+of her father's health and spirit, and his and her mother's welfare
+above all these trivial questionings; did not the end justify the means;
+might not her success, if the fates in pity gave her any, save her
+from--from--she did not even formulate in thought the contingency,
+for there stood the living embodiment of it-Crane; everything seemed
+crowding her into the narrow confines of her sacrificial crypt.
+
+Crane had spoken to her on his entry. As she was writing he had
+continued his discussion of the race with Dixon; perhaps, even--it was a
+hopeful thought, born of desire--he had come to see the Trainer. Crane's
+next words dispelled that illusion. It was in answer to an observation
+from Dixon that he was forced to go to the stables, that Crane said:
+"If Miss Porter has no objection I'll remain a little longer; I want to
+discuss a matter concerning her father."
+
+Allis felt quite like fleeing to the stables with Dixon; she dreaded
+that Crane was going to bring up again the subject of his affection for
+her. But the Trainer had passed out before she could muster sufficient
+moral courage to put in execution her half-formed resolve.
+
+"I wanted to speak about that wager on Diablo," began Crane. A thrill
+of relief shot through the girl's heart. Why had be troubled himself to
+come to her over such a trifling matter--a pair of gloves, perhaps half
+a dozen pairs even.
+
+"I put the bet on some time ago," he continued, "when Diablo was at a
+long price. It was only a trifle, as we agreed upon--" Allis noticed
+that he laid particular stress upon "agreed." "But it has netted you
+quite a nice sum, three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars."
+
+Crane said this in a quiet voice, without unction; but it startled the
+girl--she stared in blank amazement. Her companion was evidently waiting
+for her to say something; seemed to expect an exclamation of joyous
+approval. She noticed that the gray eyes she so distrusted had taken on
+that distasteful peeping expression, as though he were watching her walk
+into a trap.
+
+"I cannot take it," answered Allis, decisively, after a pause.
+
+Crane raised his hand in mild protest.
+
+"It was good of you, kind; but how could I accept a large sum of money
+like that when I am not entitled to it?"
+
+"You are--it's yours. The bet was made in your name I entered it at the
+time in my book, and the bookmaker is ready to pay the money over."
+
+"I can't take it--I won't. No, no, no!"
+
+"Don't be foolishly sensitive, Miss Allis. Think what your father lost
+when he parted with Diablo for a trivial thousand dollars; and it was
+my fault, for I arranged the sale. Your father's needs--pardon me, but I
+know his position, being his banker--yes, he needs this money badly."
+
+"My father needs a good many things, Mr. Crane, which he would not
+accept as a gift; he would be the last man to do so. We must just go
+on doing the best we can, and if we can't succeed, that's all. We can't
+accept help, just yet, anyway."
+
+She was bitter; the reference to her father's troubles, though meant
+partly in kindness, angered her. It caused her to feel the meshes of the
+net drawing closer about her, and binding her free will. The fight was
+indeed on. More than ever she determined to struggle to the bitter end.
+Almost indefinably she knew that to accept this money, plausible as the
+offering was, meant an advantage to Crane.
+
+"You can't leave this large sum with the bookmaker," he objected. "He
+would like nothing better; he would laugh in his sleeve. I can't take
+it; it isn't mine."
+
+"I won't touch it."
+
+"Perhaps I had better speak to your father about it," said Crane,
+tentatively; "he can have no objection to accepting this money that has
+been won."
+
+"Father won't take it, either," answered the girl; "I know his ideas
+about such matters. He won't take it."
+
+Crane brought all his fine reasoning powers to bear on Allis, but failed
+signally in his object. He was unaccustomed to being balked, but the
+girl's firm determination was more than a match for his adaptable
+sophistry. He had made no headway, was quite beaten, when Dixon's
+opportune return prevented absolute discomfiture. Crane left shortly,
+saying to Allis as he bade them good night: "I'm sorry you look upon
+the matter in this light. My object in coming to-night was to give you a
+little hope for brightness in your gloomy hour of bad luck; but perhaps
+I had better speak to your father."
+
+"I'd rather you didn't," she answered, somewhat pleadingly. "Dr.
+Rathbone has cautioned us all against worrying father, and this could
+have no other result than but to distress him."
+
+Allis's letter had been completed, but she now added a postscript,
+telling her mother briefly of Crane's insistence over the bet, and
+beseeching her to devise some plan for keeping this new disturbing
+element from her father.
+
+Crane was remaining over night in Gravesend, and, going back to his
+quarters, he reviewed the evening's campaign. He had expected opposition
+from Allis, but had hoped to overcome the anticipated objections; he had
+failed in this, but it was only a check, not defeat.
+
+He smiled complacently over his power of self-control in having allowed
+no hint of his absorbing passion to escape him.
+
+Acceptance of this money by Allis, the money which was the outcome of
+an isolated generous thought, would have given him a real advantage.
+To have spoken, though never so briefly of his hopes for proprietary
+rights, would have accentuated the girl's sensitive alarm. He was too
+perfect a tactician to indulge in such poor sword play; he had really
+left the question open. A little thought, influenced by the desperate
+condition of Porter's fortunes, might make Allis amenable to what was
+evidently her best interest, should she be approached from a different
+quarter.
+
+Crane had made the first move, and met checkmate; the second move would
+be through Allis's mother; he determined upon that course. All his old
+cunning must have surely departed from him if he could not win this
+girl. Fate was backing him up most strenuously. Diablo had been cast
+into his hands--thrust upon him by the good fortune that so steadily
+befriended him. He was not in the habit of attributing unlooked-for
+success to Providence; he rarely went beyond fate for a deity.
+Unmistakably then it was fate that had cast the horoscope of his and
+Allis's life together. Never mind what means he might use to carry out
+this decree; once accomplished, he would more than make amends to the
+girl.
+
+He drew most delightful pictures of the Utopian existence his wealth
+would make possible for Allis. For the father he would provide a racing
+stable that would bring profit in place of disaster. Crane smiled
+somewhat grimly as he thought that under those changed circumstances
+even Allis's mother might be brought to condone her husband's
+continuance in the nefarious profession. If for no other reason than
+the great success he had made in the Brooklyn Handicap with Diablo,
+his spirits were that evening impossible of the reception of even a
+foreshadowing of failure. A suppressed exhilaration rose-tinted every
+projected scheme. He would win Allis, and he would win the Brooklyn
+Derby with his good colt, The Dutchman.
+
+He went to sleep in this happy glamour of assured success, and, by the
+inevitable contrariness of things, dreamed that he was falling over a
+steep precipice on The Dutchman's back, and that at the bottom Mortimer
+and Allis were holding a blanket to catch him in his fall. Even in his
+imaginative sleep, he was saved from a dependence upon this totally
+inadequate receptacle for a horse and rider, for he woke with a gasp
+after he had traveled with frightful velocity for an age through the
+air.
+
+Crane was a man not given to superstitious enthrallment; his convictions
+were usually founded on basic manifestations rather than fanciful
+visions; but somehow the night's dream fastened upon his mind as he
+lingered over a breakfast of coffee and rolls. Even three cups of
+coffee, ferociously strong, failed to drown the rehearsal of his
+uncomfortable night's gallop. Why had he linked Mortimer and Allis
+together? Had it been fate again, prompting him in his sleep, giving him
+warning of a rival that stood closer to the girl than he?
+
+More than once he had thought of Mortimer as a possible rival. Mortimer
+was not handsome, but he was young, tall, and square-shouldered--even
+his somewhat plain face seemed to reflect a tall, square-shouldered
+character.
+
+Subconsciously Crane turned his head and scanned critically the
+reflection of his own face in a somewhat disconsolate mirror that
+misdecorated a panel of the breakfast room. Old as the glass was,
+somewhat bereaved of its quicksilver lining at the edge, it had not got
+over its habit of telling the truth. Ordinarily little exception
+could have been taken to the mirrored face; it was intellectual; no
+sign-manual of cardinal sin had been placed upon it; it was neither
+low, nor brutal, nor wolfishly cunning in expression. Its pallor rather
+loaned an air of distingue, but--and the examination was being conducted
+for the benefit of a girl of twenty--it was the full-aged visage of a
+man of forty.
+
+More than ever a conviction fixed itself in Crane's mind that, no matter
+how strong or disinterested his love for Allis might be, he would win
+her only by diplomacy. After all, he was better versed in that form of
+love-making, if it might be so called.
+
+Crane was expecting Langdon at ten o'clock. He heard a step in the
+breakfast room, and, turning his head, saw that it was the Trainer.
+Mechanically Crane pulled his watch from his pocket; he had thought it
+earlier; it was ten. Langdon was on time to a minute. Nominally
+what there was to discuss, though of large import, required little
+expression. With matters going so smoothly there was little but
+assurances and congratulations to be exchanged. Diablo's showing in the
+big Handicap confirmed Langdon's opinion that both the Black and The
+Dutchman had given them a great trial; probably they would duplicate
+their success with The Dutchman in the Brooklyn Derby. It was only a
+matter of a few days, and the son of Hanover had steadily improved; he
+was in grand fettle.
+
+Langdon's appreciation of Crane's cleverness had been enhanced by the
+successful termination of what he still believed was a brilliantly
+planned coup. He had never for an instant thought that Crane purchased
+the horse out of kindness to anyone. It was still a matter of mystery to
+him, however, why his principal should wish to keep dark just how he had
+learned Diablo's handicap qualities.
+
+Accustomed to reading Langdon's mind, Crane surmised from the Trainer's
+manner that the latter had something that he had not yet broached. Their
+talk had been somewhat desultory, much like the conversation of men who
+have striven and succeeded and are flushed with the full enjoyment of
+their success. Suddenly the Trainer drew himself together, as if for a
+plunge, and said: "Did you notice Porter's mare in the Brooklyn, sir?"
+
+"Yes; she ran a pretty good race for a three-year-old."
+
+"She did, an' I suppose they'll start her in the Derby. Do you happen to
+know, sir?"
+
+"I fancy they will," answered Crane, carelessly.
+
+"She stopped bad yesterday; but I've heard somethin'."
+
+Crane remembered his own suspicion as to Lucretia's rider, but he only
+said, "Well?"
+
+"After the race yesterday the jockey, Redpath, was talkin'--to the
+Porter gal--"
+
+Crane started. It jarred him to hear this horseman refer to Allis as
+"the Porter gal."
+
+"Redpath told her," proceeded Langdon, "that when he saw he couldn't
+quite win he pulled his mount off to keep her dark for the Derby."
+
+"How do you know this?"
+
+"A boy in my stable happened to be in the stall an' heard 'em."
+
+"Who's the boy? Can you believe him?"
+
+"It's Shandy. He used to be with the Porters."
+
+Like a flash it came to Crane that the spy must be the one who had
+written him the note about Faust and the change of saddles.
+
+"Well, that doesn't affect us, that I can see," commented Crane. "I'm
+not backing their mare."
+
+"It means," declared Langdon, with great earnestness, "that if Lucretia
+could have beat all the others but Diablo, she has a rosy chance for the
+Derby; that's what it means. The Black got away with a flyin' start,
+and she wore him down, almost beat him; I doubt if The Dutchman could do
+that much. She was givin' him a little weight, too."
+
+"Well, we can't help it. I've backed The Dutchman to win a small
+fortune, and I'm going to stand by it. You're in it to the extent of ten
+thousand, as you know, and we've just got to try and beat her with our
+colt; that's all there is to it."
+
+"I don't like it," muttered Langdon, surlily. "She's a mighty good
+three-year-old to put up a race like that."
+
+"She may go off before Derby day," suggested Crane; "mares are uncertain
+at this time of year."
+
+"That's just it; if she would go off we'd feel pretty sure then. I think
+the race is between them."
+
+"Well, we'll know race day; if she goes to the post, judging from what
+you say, it'll be a pretty tight fit."
+
+"She didn't cut much figure last year when Lauzanne beat her." Langdon
+said this with a drawling significance; it was a direct intimation that
+if Lucretia's present jockey could be got at, as her last year's rider
+had been--well, an important rival would be removed.
+
+Crane had not been responsible for the bribing of Lucretia's jockey,
+though he was well aware what had occurred; had even profited by it.
+
+"There'll be no crooked work this time," he said; "nobody will interfere
+with the mare's rider, I hope," and he looked significantly at Langdon.
+
+"I don't think they will," and the Trainer gave a disagreeable laugh.
+"From what Shandy tells me, I fancy it would be a bad game. The truth of
+the matter is that gosling Redpath is stuck on the gal."
+
+Crane's pale face flushed hot.
+
+"I believe that Shandy you speak of is a lying little scoundrel. I have
+an idea that he wrote me a note, a wretched scrawl, once. Wait, I've got
+it in my pocket; I meant to speak to you about it before."
+
+Crane drew from the inner pocket of his coat a leather case, and after
+a search found Shandy's unsigned letter, and passed it over to the
+Trainer.
+
+"It's dollars to doughnuts Shandy wrote it. Let me keep this, sir."
+
+"You're welcome to it," answered Crane; "you can settle with him. But
+about the Derby, I have reasons for wishing to win that race, reasons
+other than the money. I want to win it, bad. Do you understand?"
+
+"I think I do. When you say you want to win a race, you generally want
+to win it."
+
+"Yes, I do. But see here, Langdon, just leave their jockey to take
+orders from his own master, see?"
+
+"I wasn't goin' to put up no game with him, sir."
+
+"Of course not, of course not. It wouldn't do. He's a straight boy, I
+think, and just leave him to ride the best he knows how. We've got a
+better jockey in Westley. Besides, the Brooklyn Handicap has taken a lot
+out of their mare; they may find that she'll go back after it. I think
+you'd better get rid of that Shandy serpent; he seems ripe for any
+deviltry. You can't tell but what he might get at The Dutchman if
+somebody paid him. If I'm any judge of outlawed human nature, he'd do
+it. I've got to run down to Brookfield on a matter of business,
+but shall be back again in a day or so. Just keep an eye on The
+Dutchman--but I needn't tell you that, of course."
+
+"That two-year-old I bought at Morris Park is coughin' an' runnin'
+at the nose; I blistered his throat last night; he's got influenza,"
+volunteered the Trainer.
+
+"Keep him away from The Dutchman, then."
+
+"I've got him in another barn; that stuff's as catchin' as measles."
+
+"If The Dutchman were to get a touch of it, Porter would land the Derby
+with Lucretia, I fancy."
+
+"Or if they got it in their stable we'd be on Easy Street."
+
+"I suppose so. But Dixon's pretty sharp; he'll look out if he hears it's
+about. However, we've got to watch our own horse and let them do the
+same."
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+That evening Langdon and Jakey Faust were closeted together in a room
+of the former's cottage. An A1 piece of villainy was on, and they were
+conversing in low tones.
+
+"It's a cinch for The Dutchman if it wasn't for that damn mare
+Lucretia," Langdon observed, in an injured tone, as though somehow the
+mare's excellence was an unwarranted interference with his rights.
+
+"What about the jock?" asked Faust.
+
+"No good--can't be done. He's mooney on the gal."
+
+"Huh!" commented the Cherub. "Did you talk it over with the Boss? He's
+not a bad guy gettin' next a good thing."
+
+"He gave me the straight tip to give Redpath the go-by."
+
+"What's his little game? Is he going to hedge on the mare?"
+
+"No; he'll stand his bet flat-footed. Say, he's the slickest! If he
+didn't give me the straight office that the mare might get sick, then
+I'm a Dutchman."
+
+"We're both Dutchmen." The Cherub laughed immoderately at his stupid
+joke. "See, we're both standin' for The Dutchman, ain't we?"
+
+Langdon frowned at the other's levity. "You'll laugh out the other side
+your mouth if Lucretia puts up a race in the Derby like she did in the
+Handicap."
+
+"But ain't she goin' to get sick? We could whip-saw them both ways
+then, that's if we knew it first. I could lay against her an' back your
+horse."
+
+"I wish the old man wasn't so devilish deep; he makes me tired
+sometimes; gives it to me straight in one breath that he's got reasons
+for wantin' to win the race, an' then he pulls that preacher mug of
+his down a peg an' says, solemn like: 'But don't interfere with their
+jockey.' Then he talks about The Dutchman or Lucretia gettin' the
+influenza, an' that Andy Dixon is pretty fly about watchin' the mare.
+Now what do you make of all that, Jake?"
+
+"Well, you area mug. It don't need no makin' up. That book's all rounded
+to. He wants the mare stopped, an' don't want no muddlin' about with the
+jockey, see? Wasn't there a row over stoppin' Lucretia last year? Wasn't
+the boy set down for the meetin'? You ought to know; you had to pay
+through the nose for shuttin' his mouth. But what made the old man talk
+about the mare gettin' sick?"
+
+Langdon searched his memory; just how was that subject started? "Damn
+it! yes, of course; I told him about the two-year-old havin' the
+influenza."
+
+"Well, Dick, my boy, you've guessed it, though you weren't trying. Crane
+would like to see the Porter mare coughin'."
+
+"But you can't take a strange horse into their stable, an' him sick,"
+objected the Trainer.
+
+"Right you are, Dick. But you could take the sickness there, if you had
+a boy with the sabe."
+
+"I was thinkin' of that," said Langdon, reflectively; "I was wonderin'
+if that's what the Boss meant."
+
+"Sure thing--that's his way; he never wants to stand in for none of the
+blame, but he likes to feel sure that he's goin' to win."
+
+"It looks a bit like it, damn me if it don't; an' I believe he was
+givin' me a pointer about the proper boy for the job, too. He said
+Shandy would get at a horse quick enough if he was paid for it."
+
+"There you are; what more do you want? Would you have Crane get out on
+the housetop an' shout to you to go an' cruel Porter's mare? He's slick,
+he is, an' if it can be done you've got a great chance."
+
+"I'm a poor man," whined Langdon, "an' I can't take no chances on
+loosin' ten thousand, if it can be helped."
+
+"It's got to be done right away, 'cause it'll take a couple of days to
+get the mare coughin'."
+
+"I told Shandy to come here," said the Trainer; "he ought to be turnin'
+up soon. When you hear him knock, just slip into that other room, an'
+leave the door open a little so that you can hear what takes place. God
+knows what that young imp wouldn't swear if a fellow had no witnesses.
+I think he's comin' here to-night to ask me to pay him to do some dirty
+job, an' I won't do it, see?" and he winked at Faust. "He's a bad boy,"
+said the Bookmaker, in a tone of mock condemnation.
+
+"There he is now," declared Langdon. "I hear a step on the gravel.
+Quick, slip into the room; he'll be peepin' through the windows; he's
+like a fox."
+
+There was a knock at the door. When Langdon opened it Shandy shuffled
+into the room with a peculiar little rocking-horse sort of gait, just
+like the trot of a skunk. His whole appearance somehow suggested this
+despised animal.
+
+"Have you heard anything from the Porter stable?" Langdon asked, when
+the boy had taken a seat.
+
+"The little mare's well," the boy answered, laconically.
+
+"That's bad luck for us, Shandy. We'll be poorer by the matter of a few
+thousand if they win the Derby."
+
+"Who's we?" questioned Shandy, with saucy directness.
+
+"The whole stable. A man has played The Dutchman to win a hundred
+thousand, an' he's goin' to give the boys, one or two of them, five
+hundred if it comes off."
+
+The small imp's weak, red-lidded eyes took on a hungry, famished look.
+"What're you givin' us is that straight goods?" he demanded, doubtingly.
+
+Langdon didn't answer the question direct; he said: "My man's afraid
+somebody'll get at The Dutchman. There's a lot of horse sickness about,
+an' if anyone was to take some of the poison from a sick horse's nose
+and put it in The Dutchman's nostrils at night, why he'd never start in
+the Derby, I reckon."
+
+A look of deep cunning crept into the boy's thin freckled face; his eyes
+contracted and blinked nervously.
+
+"What th' 'ell's the difference? If the Porter mare starts Redpath
+thinks he's got a lead-pipe cinch."
+
+"You'd lose your five hundred; that's the difference," retorted Langdon.
+
+"An' if she doesn't start, an' our horse wins, I get five hundred? Is
+that dead to rights?"
+
+"If The Dutchan wins you get the money," replied the Trainer,
+circumspectly. "You mustn't come to me, Shandy, with no game about
+takin' the horse sickness from, our two-year-old an' fixin' Porter's
+mare, 'cause I can't stand for that, see?"
+
+The boy would have interrupted, but Langdon motioned him to keep silent,
+and proceeded:
+
+"You see, if it leaked out an' we'd won a lot of money over The
+Dutchman, damn fools would say that I'd been at the bottom of it; an'
+if they had me up in front of the Stewards I couldn't swear that I'd had
+nothing to do with it."
+
+He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, held it in front of Shandy's
+eyes, and said: "What did you write that letter for?"
+
+The boy stared in blank amazement. He trembled with fear; it was the
+warning note he had sent to Crane.
+
+"Now if I was to show that to Faust he'd put a pug on to do you up, see?
+I wouldn't give three cents for your carcass after they'd finished with
+you."
+
+"I didn't mean nothin', s' help me God, I didn't," pleaded the boy;
+"give it back to me, sir."
+
+"You can take it, only don't play me the double cross no more. If you're
+doin' anything crooked, don't mix me up in it. You couldn't get into
+Porter's stable, anyway, if you tried to fix the mare."
+
+"I didn't say I was goin' to do no bloomin' job; but I could get in
+right enough."
+
+"Well, I ain't puttin' you next no dirty work, but if you hear that the
+mare gets this horse sickness that's goin' about, let me know at once,
+see? Come here quick. If Faust got a chance to lay against the mare he
+probably wouldn't say anythin' about that note, if he did know."
+
+"I'll give you the office, sir, when she's took sick."
+
+"That's right. You ain't got any too many friends, Shandy, an' you'd
+better stick to them that'll help you."
+
+"Do I get that five hundred, sure?"
+
+"If Lucretia don't beat The Dutchman, you get it."
+
+When the boy had gone Faust came forth from his hiding like a badger.
+
+"That's a bad boy--a wicked boy!" he said, pulling a solemn face.
+"You're a good man, Langdon, to steer him in the straight an' narrer
+path. He'll take good care of The Dutchman for that five hundred."
+
+"Yes, if you don't pay these kids well they'll throw you down; an' I
+ain't takin' no chances, Faust."
+
+"The Porter mare might catch the influenza, eh, Dick?"
+
+"If she does, I'll let you know at once, Jake. But I ain't in it. I
+threatened to kick that kid out when he hinted at something crooked."
+
+"I heard you, Langdon, I'll take my oath to that. But I must be off now.
+You know where to find me if there's anything doin'."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+The next day, intent on persuading Porter to accept the money won over
+Diablo, Crane took a run down to Ringwood farm.
+
+As Allis had foreshadowed, his visit was of no avail, so far as Porter's
+acceptance of the winnings was concerned.
+
+With natural forethought Crane first talked it over with Mrs. Porter,
+but that good lady would have felt a sort of moral defilement in
+handling any betting money, much less this that seemed obscured in
+uncertainty as to its rightful ownership. She believed very much in
+Crane's bona fides, and had no doubt whatever but his statement of the
+case was absolutely truthful. But Allis had refused to accept the money;
+it would never do for her to go beyond her daughter's judgment. She even
+thought it unadvisable for Crane to discuss the matter with her husband;
+it would only worry him, and she was positive that, in his pride of
+independence, he would refuse to touch a penny that was not actually due
+him.
+
+"But there's a payment on Ringwood due in a few days," Crane argued,
+"and we must arrange for that at all events. If this money, which is
+rightfully your family's, could be applied on that, it would make a
+difference, don't you think?"
+
+"I suppose John must settle it," she said, resignedly; "perhaps you had
+better see him. I can't interfere one way or the other. I have no head
+for business," she added, apologetically; "I'm not sure that any of us
+have except Allis. We just seem to drift, drift, drift."
+
+Crane stated the facts very plausibly, very seductively, to John Porter.
+Porter almost unreasonably scented charity in Crane's proposal. He
+believed that the bet was a myth; Crane was trying to present him with
+this sum as a compensation for having lost Diablo. It wasn't even
+a loan; it was a gift, pure and simple. His very helplessness, his
+poverty, made him decline the offer with unnecessary fierceness. If
+Allis had refused it, if she were strong enough to stand without this
+charity, surely he, a man, battered though he was, could pass it by. He
+had received a hopeful message from Allis as to Lucretia's chances in
+the Derby; they felt confident of winning. That win would relieve them
+of all obligations.
+
+"I can't take it," Porter said to Crane. "Allis is more familiar with
+the circumstances of the bet--if there was one--than I. It must just
+rest with her; she's the man now, you know," he added, plaintively; "I'm
+but a broken wreck, and what she says goes."
+
+"But there's a payment on Ringwood falling due in a few days," Crane
+remonstrated, even as he had to Mrs. Porter.
+
+Porter collapsed, fretfully. He could stand out against prospective
+financial stringency, but actual obligations for which he had no means
+quite broke down his weakened energy. He had forgotten about this
+liability, that is, had thought the time of payment more distant.
+He would be forced to recall the money he had given Dixon to bet on
+Lucretia for the Derby, to meet this payment to the bank.
+
+Quite despondently he answered the other man. "I had forgotten all about
+it; this shake-up has tangled my memory. I can pay the money, though,"
+he added, half defiantly; "it will hamper me, but I can do it."
+
+A sudden thought came to Crane, an inspiration. "I've got it!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+Porter brightened up; there was such a world of confidence in the
+other's manner.
+
+"We'll just let this Diablo money stand against the payment which is
+about due on Ringwood; put it in the bank to cover it, so to speak;
+later we can settle to whom it belongs. At present it seems to be
+nobody's money; it's seldom one sees a few thousand going abegging for
+an owner," he added, jocularly. "You say it isn't yours; I know it isn't
+mine; and most certainly it doesn't belong to the bookmaker, for he's
+lost it fair and square. We can't let him keep it; they win enough of
+the public's money."
+
+Reluctantly, Porter gave a half-hearted acquiescence. He would have
+sacrificed tangible interests to leave the money that was in Dixon's
+hands with him to bet on Lucretia. It would be like not taking the tide
+at its flood to let her run unbacked when her chances of winning were so
+good, and the odds against her great enough to insure a big return.
+
+It was after banking hours, quite toward evening, by the time Crane had
+obtained this concession. He had brought the winnings for John Porter's
+acceptance, should the latter prove amenable to reason. Now it occurred
+to him that he might leave the money with one of the bank staff, who
+could deposit it the next day.
+
+Crane drove back to the village and went at once to the cashier, Mr.
+Lane's house. He was not at home; his wife thought perhaps he was still
+in the bank. Crane went there in search of him. He found only Mortimer,
+who had remained late over his accounts. From the latter Crane learned
+that the cashier had driven over to a neighboring town.
+
+"It doesn't matter," remarked Crane; "I can leave this money with you.
+It's to meet a payment of three thousand due from John Porter about the
+middle of June. You can put it in a safe place in the vault till the
+note falls due, and then transfer it to Porter's credit."
+
+"I'll attend to it, sir," replied Mortimer. "I'll attach the money to
+the note, and put them away together."
+
+On his way to the station Crane met Alan Porter.
+
+"I suppose you'd like a holiday to see your father's mare run for the
+Derby, wouldn't you, Alan?" he said.
+
+"I should very much, sir; but Mr. Lane is set against racing."
+
+"Oh, I think he'll let you off that day. I'll tell him he may. But,
+like your mother, I don't approve of young men betting--I know what it
+means."
+
+He was thinking, with bitterness, of his own youthful indiscretions.
+
+"If you go, don't bet. You might be tempted, naturally, to back your
+father's mare Lucretia, but you would stand a very good chance of
+losing."
+
+"Don't you think she'll win, sir?" Alan asked, emboldened by his
+employer's freedom of speech.
+
+"I do not. My horse, The Dutchman, is almost certain to win, my trainer
+tells me." Then he added, apologetic of his confidential mood, "I tell
+you this, lest through loyalty to your own people you should lose your
+money. Racing, I fancy, is very uncertain, even when it seems most
+certain."
+
+Again Crane had cause to congratulate himself upon the somewhat clever
+manipulation of a difficult situation. He had scored again in his
+diplomatic love endeavor. He knew quite well that Allis's determined
+stand was only made possible by her expectation of gaining financial
+relief for her father through Lucretia's winning the Derby. Should she
+fail, they would be almost forced to turn to him in their difficulties.
+That was what he wanted. He knew that the money won over Diablo, if
+accepted, must always be considered as coming from him. The gradual
+persistent dropping of water would wear away the hardest stone; he would
+attain to his wishes yet.
+
+He was no bungler to attempt other than the most gently delicate
+methods.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Encouraged by Jockey Redpath's explanation of his ride on Lucretia,
+Allis was anxious that Dixon should take the money her father had set
+aside for that purpose and back their mare for the Brooklyn Derby.
+
+"We had better wait a day or two," Dixon had advised, "until we see the
+effect the hard gallop in the Handicap has had on the little mare. She
+ain't cleanin' up her oats just as well as she might; she's a bit off
+her feed, but it's only natural, though; a gallop like that takes it out
+of them a bit."
+
+It was the day after Crane's visit to Ringwood that Dixon advised Allis
+that Lucretia seemed none the worse for her exertion.
+
+"Perhaps we'd better put the money on right away," he said. "She's sure
+to keep well, and we'll be forced to take a much shorter price race
+day."
+
+"Back the stable," advised Allis, "then if anything happens Lucretia we
+can start Lauzanne."
+
+The Trainer laughed in good-natured derision. "That wouldn't do much
+good; we'd be out of the frying pan into the fire; we'd be just that
+much more money out for jockey an' startin' fees; he'd oughter been
+struck out on the first of January to save fifty dollars, but I guess
+you all had your troubles about that time an' wasn't thinkin' of
+declarations."
+
+"It may have been luck; if Lauzanne would only try, something tells me
+he'd win," contended the girl.
+
+"And somethin' tells me he wouldn't try a yard," answered Dixon, in
+good-humored opposition. "But I don't think it'll make no difference in
+the odds we get whether we back the stable or Lucretia alone; they won't
+take no stock in the Chestnut's prospects."
+
+So Dixon made a little pilgrimage among the pencilers. He was somewhat
+dismayed and greatly astonished that these gentry also had a somewhat
+rosy opinion of Lucretia's chances. Her good gallop in the Brooklyn
+Handicap had been observed by other eyes than Crane's. Ten to one was
+the best offer he could get.
+
+Dixon was remonstrating with a bookmaker, Ulmer, when the latter
+answered, "Ten's the best I'll lay--I'd rather take it myself; in fact,
+I have backed your mare because I think she's got a great chance; she'll
+be at fours race day. But I'll give you a tip--it's my game to see the
+owner's money on," and he winked at the Trainer as much as to say, "I'll
+feel happier about it if we're both in the same boat."
+
+"It'll be on, sure thing, if I can get a decent price."
+
+"Well, you go to Cherub Faust; he'll lay you longer odds. I put my bit
+on with him at twelve, see? If I didn't know that you an' Porter was
+always on the straight I'd a-thought there was somethin' doin', an'
+Faust was next it, stretchin' the odds that way. How's the mare doin--is
+she none the worse?" Ullmer asked, a suspicious thought crossing his
+mind.
+
+"We're backin' her--an' money talks," said Dixon, with quiet assurance.
+
+"Well, Faust is wise to somethin'--he stands in with Langdon, an' I
+suppose they think they've got a cinch in The Dutchman. Yes, that must
+be it," he added, reflectively; "they made a killin' over Diablo, an'
+likely they got a good line on The Dutchman through him in a trial.
+But a three-year-old mare that runs as prominent in the big Handicap
+as Lucretia did, will take a lot of beatin. She's good enough for my
+money."
+
+Thanking him, Dixon found Faust, and asked of him a quotation against
+Porter's stable.
+
+"Twelve is the best I can do," answered the Cherub.
+
+"I'll take fifteen to one," declared Dixon.
+
+"Can't lay it; some of the talent--men as doesn't make no mistake, is
+takin' twelve to one in my book fast as I open my mouth."
+
+"I want fifteen," replied Dixon, doggedly. "Surely the owner is entitled
+to a shade the best of it."
+
+"What's the size of your bet?" queried the Cherub.
+
+"If you lay me fifteen, I'll take it to a thousand."
+
+"But you want it ag'in' the stable, an' you've two in; with two horses
+twelve is a long price."
+
+"I'm takin' it against the stable just because it's the usual thing
+to couple it in the bettin. It's a million to one against Lauzanne's
+starting if Lucretia keeps well."
+
+Faust gave a little start and searched Dixon's face, furtively. The
+Trainer's stolid look reassured him, and in a most sudden burst of
+generosity he said: "Well, I'll stretch a point for you, Dixon. Your
+boss is up ag'in' a frost good and hard. I'll lay you fifteen thousand
+to one ag'in' the stable, an' if Lauzanne wins you'll buy me a nice
+tiepin."
+
+His round, fat sides heaved spasmodically with suppressed merriment at
+the idea of Lauzanne in the Brooklyn Derby.
+
+"They must have a pretty good opinion of The Dutchman," Dixon thought,
+as he moved away after concluding the bet. "I'm naturally suspicious of
+that gang, when they get frisky with their money. It's a bit like I've
+heard about the Sultan of Turkey always givin' a present to a man before
+cutting his head off."
+
+The Trainer told Allis what he had done. He even spoke of his distrust
+at finding Faust laying longer odds against their mare than the other
+bookmakers. "But I don't see what they can do," he said, reflectively,
+studying the grass at his feet, his brow quite wrinkled in deep thought.
+"The mare's well, and we can trust the boy this time, I think."
+
+"Yes, you can trust Redpath," affirmed Allis, decisively. "If Faust is
+in with Langdon, as you say, it just means that they're goin' on their
+luck, and think their colt, The Dutchman, can't lose."
+
+"It must be that," concurred the Trainer, but in a hesitating tone that
+showed he was not more than half satisfied.
+
+"You backed the stable?" queried Allis, as an afterthought.
+
+"Yes, an' Lauzanne'll have a chance to-day to show whether he's worth
+the pencil that wrote his name beside Lucretia's."
+
+"You are starting him to-day? I had almost forgotten that he was
+entered."
+
+"Yes, it'll give him a fair trial--it's a mile, an' there ain't no good
+horses, that is, stake horses, in the race. I'll put Redpath up on
+him, an' you might have a talk with the boy, if you like. You're onto
+Lauzanne's notions better'n I am."
+
+Allis gave Jockey Redpath the benefit of her knowledge of Lauzanne's
+peculiarities.
+
+"I'm afraid he won't take kindly to you," she said, regretfully; "he's
+as notional as most of his sire's line. But if he won't try he won't,
+and the more you fight him the sulkier he'll get. I wish I could ride
+him myself," she added, playfully; then fearing that she had hurt the
+boy's feelings by discounting his ability, added, hastily: "I'm afraid
+I've spoiled Lauzanne; he has taken a liking to me, and I've learned how
+to make him think he's having his own way when he's really doing just
+what I want him to do."
+
+Redpath's admiration for Allis Porter was limited to his admiration
+for her as a young lady. Being young, and a jockey, he naturally had
+notions; and a very prominent, all-absorbing notion was that he could
+manage his mount in a race much better than most boys. Constrained to
+silent acquiescence by respect for Allis, he assured himself, mentally,
+that, in the race his experience and readiness of judgment would render
+him far better service than orders--perhaps prompted by a sentimental
+regard for Lauzanne.
+
+The Chestnut was a slow beginner; that was a trait which even Allis's
+seductive handling had failed to eradicate.
+
+When the starter sent Lauzanne off trailing behind the other seven
+runners in the race that afternoon, Redpath made a faint essay,
+experimentally, to hold to Allis's orders, by patiently nestling over
+the Chestnut's strong withers in a vain hope that his mount would
+speedily seek to overtake the leaders. But evidently Lauzanne had no
+such intention; he seemed quite satisfied with things as they were. That
+the horses galloping so frantically in front interested him slightly was
+evidenced by his cocked ears; but beyond that he might as well have been
+the starter's hack bringing that gentleman along placidly in the rear.
+
+"Just as I thought," muttered the boy; "this skate's kiddin' me just as
+he does the gal. He's a lazy brute--it's the bud he wants."
+
+Convinced that he was right, and that his orders were all wrong,
+the jockey asserted himself. He proceeded to ride Lauzanne most
+energetically.
+
+In the horse's mind this sort of thing was associated with unlimited
+punishment. It had always been that way in his two-year-old days; first,
+the general hustle--small legs and arms working with concentric swing;
+then the impatient admonishment of fierce-jabbing spurs; and finally
+the welt-raising cut of a vicious, unreasoning whip. It was not a
+pleasurable prospect; and at the first shake-up, Lauzanne pictured it
+coming. All thoughts of overtaking the horses in front fled from
+his mind; it was the dreaded punishment that interested him most;
+figuratively, he humped his back against the anticipated onslaught.
+
+Redpath felt the unmistakable sign of his horse sulking; and he promptly
+had recourse to the jockey's usual argument.
+
+Sitting in the stand Allis saw, with a cry of dismay, Redpath's
+whip-hand go up. That Lauzanne had been trailing six lengths behind the
+others had not bothered her in the slightest--it was his true method;
+his work would be done in the stretch when the others were tiring, if at
+all.
+
+"If the boy will only sit still--only have patience," she had been
+saying to herself, just before she saw the flash of a whip in the
+sunlight; and then she just moaned. "It's all over; we are beaten again.
+Everything is against us--everybody is against us," she cried, bitterly;
+"will good fortune never come father's way?"
+
+By the time the horses had swung into the stretch, and Lauzanne had not
+in the slightest improved his position, it dawned upon Redpath that his
+efforts were productive of no good, so he desisted. But his move had
+cost the Porters whatever chance they might have had. Left to himself,
+Lauzanne undertook an investigating gallop on his own account. Too much
+ground had been lost to be made up at that late stage, but he came
+up the straight in gallant style, wearing down the leaders until he
+finished close up among the unplaced horses.
+
+Allis allowed no word of reproach to escape her when Redpath spoke of
+Lauzanne's sulky temper. It would do no good--it would be like crying
+over spilt milk. The boy was to ride Lucretia in the Derby; he was on
+good terms with the mare; and to chide him for the ride on Lauzanne
+would but destroy his confidence in himself for the other race.
+
+"I'm afraid the Chestnut's a bad actor," Dixon said to Allis, after the
+race. "We'll never do no good with him. If he couldn't beat that lot
+he's not worth his feed bill."
+
+"He would have won had I been on his back," declared the girl, loyally.
+
+"That's no good, Miss; you can't ride him, you see. We've just got one
+peg to hang our hat on--that's Lucretia."
+
+Lauzanne's showing in this race was a great disappointment to Allis; she
+had hoped that his confidence in humanity had been restored. Physically
+he had undoubtedly improved; his legs had hardened and smoothed down. In
+fact, his whole condition was perfect.
+
+She still felt that if Redpath had followed her advice and allowed
+Lauzanne to run his own race he would have won. The race did not shake
+her confidence in the horse so much as in the possibility of getting
+any jockey to ride him in a quiescent manner. When it was impossible of
+Redpath, who was eager to please her, whom else could they look to? They
+might experiment, but while they were experimenting Lauzanne would be
+driven back into his old bad habits.
+
+The next morning brought them fresh disaster; all that had gone before
+was as nothing compared with this new development in their run of
+thwarted endeavor.
+
+Ned Carter had given Lucretia a vigorous exercise gallop over the Derby
+course. As Dixon led the mare through the paddock to a stall he suddenly
+bent down his head and took a sharp look at her nostrils; another stride
+and they were in the stall. The Trainer felt Lucretia's throat and ears;
+he put his hand over her heart, a look of anxious dismay on his usually
+stolid face.
+
+"She coughed a little, sir, when I pulled her up," volunteered Carter,
+seeing Dixon's investigation.
+
+"I'm afraid she's took cold," muttered Dixon. "Have you had her near
+any horses that's got the influenza?" he asked, looking inquiringly at
+Carter.
+
+"She ain't been near nothing; I kept her away from everything, for fear
+she'd get a kick, or get run into."
+
+"I hope to God it's nothin'," said the Trainer; and his voice was
+quite different from his usual rough tone. Then a sudden suspicion took
+possession of him. Faust's readiness to lay long odds against the mare
+had haunted him like a foolish nightmare. Had there been foul play? The
+mare couldn't have taken a cold--they had been so careful of her; there
+had been no rain for ten days; she hadn't got wet. No, it couldn't be
+cold. But she undoubtedly had fever. A sickening conviction came that it
+was the dreaded influenza.
+
+That morning was the first time she had coughed, so Faust could not have
+known of her approaching illness, unless he had been the cause of it.
+
+The Trainer pursued his investigation among the stable lads. When he
+asked Finn if he had noticed anything unusual about the mare, the boy
+declared most emphatically that he had not. Then, suddenly remembering
+an incident he had taken at the time to be of little import, he said:
+"Two mornin's ago when I opened her stall and she poked her head out, I
+noticed a little scum in her nose; but I thought it was dust. I wiped it
+out, and there was nuthin' more come that I could see."
+
+"What's the row?" asked Mike Gaynor, as he joined Dixon.
+
+When the details were explained to him Mike declared, emphatically, that
+some one had got at the mare. Taking Dixon to one side, he said: "It's
+that divil on wheels, Shandy; ye can bet yer sweet loife on that. I've
+been layin' for that crook; he cut Diablo's bridle an' t'rew th' ould
+man; an' he done this job, too."
+
+"But how could he get at her?" queried the Trainer. "The stable's been
+locked; an' Finn and Carter was sleepin' in the saddle room."
+
+"That divil could go where a sparrer could. How did he git in to cut th'
+bridle rein--t'rough a manure window no bigger'n your hat. He done that,
+as I know."
+
+"Well, if the mare's got it we're in the soup. Have you seen Miss Porter
+about, Mike?"
+
+"I did a minute ago; I'll pass the word ye want to see her--here she
+comes now. I'll skip. Damn if I want to see them gray eyes when ye tell
+about the little mare. It'll just break her heart; that's what it'll do.
+An' maybe I wouldn't break the back av the devil as put up this dirty
+job. It isn't Shandy that's as much to blame as the blackguard that
+worked him."
+
+Dixon ran over in his mind many contorted ways of breaking the news
+to Allis, and finished up by blurting out: "The mare's coughin' this
+mornin', Miss; I hope it ain't nothin', but I'm afraid she's in for a
+sick spell."
+
+Coming to the course, the girl had allowed rosy hope to tint the gray
+gloom of the many defeats until she had worked herself into a happy
+mood. Lucretia's win would put everything right; even her father,
+relieved of financial worry, would improve. The bright morning seemed
+to whisper of victory; Lucretia would surely win. It was not within the
+laws of fate that they should go on forever and ever having bad luck.
+She had come to have a reassuring look at the grand little mare that was
+to turn the tide of all their evil fortune. The Trainer's words, "The
+mare's coughin'," struck a chill to her heart. She could not speak--the
+misery was too great--but stood dejectedly listening while Dixon spoke
+of his suspicions of foul play.
+
+What villains there were in the world, the girl thought; for a man to
+lay them odds against their horse, knowing that she had been poisoned,
+was a hundred times worse than stealing the money from their Dockets.
+
+"I don't suppose we'll ever be able to prove it," declared Dixon,
+regretfully; "but that doesn't matter so much as the mare being done
+for; we're out of it now good and strong. If we'd known it two days ago
+we might a-saved the money, but we've burned up a thousand."
+
+"We'll have to start Lauzanne," said Allis, taking a brave pull at
+herself, and speaking with decision.
+
+"We might send him to the post, but that's all the good it'll do us, I'm
+feared."
+
+"I've seen him do a great gallop," contended Allis.
+
+"He did it for you, but he won't do it for nobody else. There ain't no
+boy ridin' can make him go fast enough for a live funeral. But we'll
+start him, an' I'll speak to Redpath about takin' the mount."
+
+Allis was thinking very fast; her head, with its great wealth of black
+hair, drooped low in heavy meditation.
+
+"Don't engage him just yet, Dixon," she said, looking up suddenly, the
+shadow of a new resolve in her gray eyes; "I'll talk it over with you
+when we go back to the house. I'm thinking of something, but I don't
+want to speak of it just now--let me think it over a little."
+
+Dixon was deep in thought, too, as he went back to his own stables. "We
+haven't got a million to one chance," he was muttering; "the money's
+burned up, an' the race is dead to the world, as far as we're
+concerned."
+
+That Allis could evolve any plan to lift them out of their Slough of
+Despond he felt was quite impossible; but at any rate he got a distinct
+shock when, a little later, a slight-formed girl, with gray eyes, set
+large and full in a dark face, declared to him that she was going to
+ride Lauzanne in the Derby herself.
+
+"My God, Miss!" the Trainer exclaimed, "you can't do it. What would
+people say--what would your mother say?"
+
+"People will say the race was well ridden if I'm any judge, and mother
+won't be interested enough to know whether Lucretia was hitched to a
+buggy in the Derby or not."
+
+"But the Judge would never allow a girl--"
+
+"There'll be no girl in it;". and Allis explained, in minute detail the
+result of her deep cogitation.
+
+"It won't work; you never could do it," objected Dixon, with despondent
+conviction. "That big head of hair would give you dead away."
+
+"The head of hair won't be in evidence; it will be lying in my trunk,
+waiting to be made up into a wig after we've won."
+
+"No, no; it won't do," the Trainer reiterated; "everybody'd know you,
+an' there'd be a fine shindy. I believe you could ride the horse right
+enough, an' if he has a chance on earth you'd get it out of him. But
+give up the idea, everybody'd know you."
+
+The girl pleaded, but Dixon was obdurate. He did not contend for an
+instant that she was not capable of riding the horse,--only in a race
+with many jockeys she would find it different from riding a trial
+gallop,--but his main objection was that she'd be known. Allis closed
+the discussion by saying that she was going home to encourage her father
+a little over the mare's defeat in the Handicap, and made Dixon promise
+not to engage Redpath for Lauzanne till her return next morning.
+
+"He can't take another mount," she said, "because he's retained for
+Lucretia, and we haven't declared her out yet."
+
+"I'm hopin' we may not have to," remarked Dixon. "Anyway, there's no
+hurry about switchin' the boy onto Lauzanne, so we'll settle that when
+you come back."
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Allis's visit to Ringwood was a flying one. Filial devotion to her
+father had been one motive, but not the only one. Her brother Alan's
+wardrobe received a visitation from hands not too well acquainted with
+the intricacies of its make-up.
+
+John Porter was undoubtedly brightened by the daughter's visit.
+Lucretia's defeat in the Handicap had increased his despondency. To
+prepare him gradually for further reverses Allis intimated, rather than
+asserted, that Lucretia might possibly have a slight cold--Digon wasn't
+sure; but they were going to run Lauzanne also. Like the Trainer, her
+father had but a very poor opinion of the Chestnut's powers in any other
+hands but in that of the girl's.
+
+"Who'll ride him?" he asked, petulantly. "It seems you can't trust any
+of the boys now-a-days. If they're not pin-headed, they're crooked as a
+corkscrew. Crane tells me that Redpath didn't ride Lucretia out in
+the Handicap, and whether he rides the mare or Lauzanne it seems all
+one--we'll get beat anyway."
+
+"Another boy will have the mount on Lauzanne," Allis answered.
+
+"What difference will that make? You can't trust him."
+
+"You can trust this boy, father, as you might your own son, Alan."
+
+"I don't know about that. Alan in the bank is all right, but Alan as a
+jockey would be a different thing."
+
+"Father, you would trust me, wouldn't you?"
+
+"I guess I would, in the tightest corner ever was chiseled out."
+
+"Well, you can trust the jockey that's going to ride Lauzanne just as
+much. I know him, and he's all right. He's been riding Lauzanne some,
+and the horse likes him."
+
+"It's all Lauzanne," objected Porter, the discussion having thrown him
+into a petulant mood. "Is Lucretia that bad--is she sick?"
+
+"She galloped to-day," answered the girl, evasively. "But if anything
+happens her we're going to win with the horse. Just think of that,
+father, and cheer up. Dixon has backed the stable to win a lot of money,
+enough to-enough to--well, to wipe out all these little things that are
+bothering you, dad."
+
+She leaned over and kissed her father in a hopeful, pretty way. The
+contact of her brave lips drove a magnetic flow of confidence into the
+man. "You're a brick, little woman, if ever there was one. Just a tiny
+bunch of pluck, ain't you, girl? And, Allis," he continued, "if you
+don't win the Derby, come and tell me about it yourself, won't you?
+You're sure to have some other scheme for bracing me up. I'm just a
+worthless hulk, sitting here in the house a cripple while you fight the
+battles. Perhaps Providence, as your mother says, will see you through
+your hard task."
+
+"I won't come and tell you that we've lost, dad; I'll come and tell you
+that we've won; and then we'll all have the biggest kind of a blow-out
+right here in the house. We'll have a champagne supper, with cider for
+champagne, eh, dad? Alan, and Dixon, and old Mike, and perhaps we'll
+even bring Lauzanne in for the nuts and raisins at desert."
+
+"And the Rev. Dolman,--you've left him out," added the father.
+
+They were both laughing. Just a tiny little ray of sunshine had
+dispelled all the gloom for a minute.
+
+"Now I must go back to my horses," declared Allis, with another kiss.
+"Good-bye, dad--cheer up;" and as she went up to her room the smile of
+hope vanished from her lips, and in its place came one of firm, dogged
+resolve. Allis needed much determination before she had accomplished the
+task she had set herself--before she stood in front of a mirror, arrayed
+in the purple and fine linen of her brother. She had thought Alan
+small, and he was for a boy, but his clothes bore a terribly suggestive
+impression of misfit--they hung loose.
+
+Mentally thanking the fashion which condoned it, she turned the trousers
+up at the bottom. "I'll use my scissors and needle on them to-night,"
+she said, ruthlessly. Thank goodness, the jockeys are all little chaps,
+and the racing clothes will fit better.
+
+The coat was of summer wear, therefore somewhat close-fitting for Alan;
+but why did it hang so loosely on her? She was sure her brother was
+not so much bigger. A little thought given to this question of foreign
+apparel brought a possible solution. The undergarments she had tumbled
+about in her search were much heavier than her own. Her crusade had its
+side of comedy; she chuckled as, muttering, "In for a penny, in for a
+pound," she reincarnated herself completely, so far as outward adornment
+was concerned. Then she examined herself critically in the glass. The
+mirror declared she was a passable counterfeit of her brother; all but
+the glorious crown of luxuriant hair. Perhaps she had better leave it
+as it was until she had met with the approval of Dixon--the terrible
+sacrifice might be for nothing. She wavered only for an instant--no
+half measure would do. "In for a penny, in for a pound." The slightest
+weakness in carrying out her bold plan might cause it to fail.
+
+Twice she took up a pair of scissors, and each time laid them down
+again, wondering if it were little short of a madcap freak; then,
+shrinking from the grinding hiss of the cutting blades, she clipped
+with feverish haste the hair that had been her pride. It was a difficult
+task, and but a rough job at best when finished, but the change in
+her appearance was marvelous; the metamorphosis, so successful, almost
+drowned the lingering regret. She drew a cap over her shorn head, packed
+her own garments and a few of her brother's in a large bag, buttoned her
+newmarket coat tight up to her throat, and once more surveyed herself
+in the glass. From head to foot she was ready. Ah, the truthful glass
+betrayed the weak point in her armor--the boots. In an instant she
+had exchanged them for a pair of Alan's. Now she was ready to pass her
+mother as Allis in her own long cloak, and appear before Dixon without
+it as a boy. That was her clever little scheme.
+
+Before going up to her room she had asked that the stableman might be
+at the door with a buggy when she came down, to take her to the station.
+When she descended he was waiting.
+
+"I'm taking some clothes back with me, mother," she said. "Let Thomas
+bring the bag down, please."
+
+"You're getting dreadfully mannish in your appearance, daughter; it's
+that cap."
+
+"I have to wear something like this about in the open;" answered Allis.
+
+"But for traveling, girl, it seems out of place. Let me put a hat on
+you. I declare I thought it was Alan when you came into the room."
+
+"I can't wait; this will do. I must be off to catch my train. Goodbye,
+mother; wish me good luck," and she hurried out and took her seat in the
+buggy.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+Some hours later Dixon, sitting in his cottage, oppressed by the
+misfortune that had come to his stable, heard a knock at the door. When
+he opened it a neatly dressed, slim youth stepped into the uncertain
+light that stretched out reluctantly from a rather unfit lamp on the
+center table.
+
+"Is this Mr. Dixon?" the boy's voice piped modestly.
+
+"Yes, lad, it is. Will you sit down?"
+
+The boy removed his cap, took the proffered chair, and said somewhat
+hesitatingly, "I heard you wanted a riding boy."
+
+"Well, I do, an' I don't. I don't know as I said I did, but,"--and he
+scanned the little figure closely, "if I could get a decent lightweight
+that hadn't the hands of a blacksmith, an' the morals of a burglar, I
+might give him a trial. Did you ever do any ridin'--what stable was you
+in?"
+
+"I've rode a good deal," answered the little visitor, ignoring the
+second half of the question.
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Mayne."
+
+"Main what?"
+
+"Al Mayne," the other replied.
+
+"Well, s'posin' you show up at the course paddocks to-morrow mornin'
+early, an' I'll see you shape on a horse. D'you live about here--can
+you bring your father, so if I like your style we can have things fixed
+proper?"
+
+The boy's face appealed to Dixon as being an honest one. Evidently the
+lad was not a street gamin, a tough. If he had hands--the head promised
+well--and could sit a horse, he might be a find. A good boy was rarer
+than a good horse, and of more actual value.
+
+"I guess I'll stay here to-night so as to be ready for the mornin',"
+said the caller, to Dixon's astonishment; and then the little fellow
+broke into a silvery laugh.
+
+"By Jimminy! If it isn't--well, I give in, Miss Allis, you fooled me."
+
+"Can I ride Lauzanne now?" the girl asked, and her voice choked a
+little--it might have been the nervous excitement, or thankfulness at
+the success of her plan in this its first stage.
+
+"Do they know at home?" the Trainer asked.
+
+"No, nobody is to know but you, Mr. Dixon--you and Mrs. Dixon."
+
+This suggested a thought to the Trainer. "The good wife's at work in the
+kitchen; I'll bring her in. Perhaps she'd like to hire a help," and he
+chuckled as he opened a door and called, "Come here for a minute. This
+is a boy"--he turned his head away--"I'm takin' on for Lauzanne."
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Dixon. Then, with severe politeness, "Good evenin',
+young man."
+
+The two figures in male attire broke into a laugh simultaneously. The
+good lady, oblivious to the humorous side of her greeting, flushed in
+anger. "Appears to be mighty funny," she said. "What's the joke?"
+
+"Oh, nuthin'," replied the husband, speaking hastily. "Can you give the
+lad a bed? He wants to bunk here."
+
+"Why, Andy, you know I can't. There's only Miss Allis's room."
+
+"Give her--him that."
+
+"Are you crazy, Andy?"
+
+"It's too bad, Mrs. Dixon; I sha'n't let your husband tease you any
+more. I am Allis; but I'm glad you didn't know."
+
+"Oh, Miss Allis, where's your beautiful hair gone? Surely you didn't cut
+that off just for a joke?"
+
+Then she was taken fully into their confidence; and before Allis retired
+Dixon had been quite won over to the plan of Allis's endeavor.
+
+In the morning the Trainer asked the girl whether she would ride
+Lauzanne a working gallop to get accustomed to the new order of things,
+or would she just wait until race day and take her place in the saddle
+then.
+
+"I'm afraid Mike'll spot you," he said--"even Carter may."
+
+"I'll ride to-day," declared Allis; "I musn't take any chances of losing
+this race through my inexperience. Even Lauzanne will hardly know me,
+I'm afraid. Mike and Carter needn't see much of me--I can slip away as
+soon as I've ridden the gallop."
+
+"Here's a boy's sweater, then," said Dixon; "the collar'll half hide
+your face. I'll get a pair of ridin' breeches an' boots for you by
+tomorrow. The little mare's in for it sure," he added; "her legs are
+swellin', an' she's off her feed--just nibbles at a carrot. I feel as
+bad as if it was a child that was sick, she's that gentle. She can't
+start, an' I'll just tell Redpath that he can take another mount if he
+gets it. You're still bound to ride the Chestnut?" he asked, by way of
+assurance.
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"Well, we'll get five pounds off the weight for 'prentice
+allowance--that's somethin'. I'll arrange about a permit for you. What
+did you say your name was, mister?"
+
+"Al Mayne, please, sir," this in the humble tone of a stable-boy.
+
+"Well, Miss--Al, I mean--you can carry Lauzanne around the course at
+nine o'clock sharp; then you'd better come back here an' rest up all
+day--lay low."
+
+"A new boy, I'm tryin'," Dixon explained to Gaynor, after he lifted
+a little lad to Lauzanne's back at the paddock gate, and they stood
+watching the big Chestnut swing along with his usual sluggish stride.
+
+"He's got good hands," said Mike, critically, "though he seems a bit
+awkward in the saddle. Ye couldn't have a better trial horse fer a new
+b'y. If Lauzanne's satisfied with him he can roide onythin'."
+
+When Allis, who was now Al Mayne, the boy, came around and back to the
+paddock, she slipped quietly from the horse, loitered carelessly about
+for a few minutes, and then made her way back to Dixon's quarters.
+Nobody had paid any attention to the modest little boy. Riding lads were
+as plentiful as sparrows; one more or less called for no comment, no
+investigation. Even Mike lost interest in the new boy in wondering why
+Miss Allis had not made her usual appearance.
+
+"How did the horse like it?" Dixon asked of the girl when he returned
+home.
+
+"Oh, he knew. I whispered in his ear as we cantered along, and he'll be
+all right--he'll keep my secret."
+
+"Well, I think he's due for a pipe opener to-morrow. It's just three
+days till the Derby, an' we've got to give him a strong workout.
+Besides, it'll put you next what you've got to do in the race. To-morrow
+mornin' you had better canter him just slow around once, an' then send
+him a full mile-an'-aquarter as though there was money hung up for it.
+I'll catch his time, an' we'll get wise to what he can do."
+
+This programme was carried out; and as Dixon looked thrice at his watch
+after the gallop to make sure that he was not mistaken in the time,
+2:11, he began to wonder if, after all, the girl was not nearly right
+in her prophetic hope that the despised Lauzanne would win the Brooklyn
+Derby.
+
+"He can move; he surprised me," the Trainer said to Allis as she
+dismounted. "He's not blown, either; he's as fresh as a daisy. Gad!
+we'll do those blackguards up yet, I believe."
+
+The gallop had attracted Mike's attention also. As Allis moved away
+he called after her, "I say, b'y, hould on a minute. What's yer name,
+ennyway?"
+
+"Al," answered the small voice.
+
+"Well, by me faith, ye didn't put up no bad roide. Ye handled that horse
+foine. Don't run away, lad," he added, hurrying after the retreating
+Allis.
+
+Before she could escape him, he had her by the arm, and turned about
+face to face. Even then he didn't recognize her, for Allis had taken a
+most subtle precaution in her make-up. The delicate olive of her cheeks
+was hidden under a more than liberal allowance of good agricultural
+cosmetique. It had been well rubbed in, too, made of a plastic adherence
+by the addition of mucilage.
+
+"Lord, what a doirty face!" exclaimed Mike. "But ye kin ride, b'y; so
+dirt don't count; clean ridin's the thing."
+
+If Allis hadn't laughed in his face, being full of the happiness of
+hope, Mike would not have recognized her--even then he didn't hit it off
+quite right.
+
+"Alan Porter!" he gasped. "Bot' t'umbs up! Is it ye, b'y?"
+
+"Hush!" and a small warning finger was held up.
+
+"Don't fear, b'y, that I'll give it away. Mum's the word wit' me. But
+I'm dahmned if I t'ought ye could roide like that. It's jus' in the
+breed, that's what it is; ye take to it as natural as ducks--" Mike had
+a habit of springing half-finished sentences on his friends. "Yer father
+could roide afore ye; none better, an' Miss Allis can sit a horse foiner
+nor any b'y as isn't a top-notcher. But this beats me, t'umbs up, if it
+doesn't. I onderstand," he continued, as Allis showed an inclination
+to travel, "ye don't want the push to get on to ye. They won't,
+nayther--what did ye say yer name was, sonny?"
+
+"Al Mayne."
+
+"Ye'r a good b'y, Al. I hope Dixon lets ye roide the Chestnut in the
+Derby. I'd give wan av me legs--an' I needs 'em bot'--to see ye beat out
+that gang av highway robbers that got at the mare. They'll not git at
+the Chestnut, for I'll slape in the stall me self."
+
+As Allis moved away, Mike stood watching the neat figure.
+
+"That's the game, eh?" he muttered to himself; "the gal don't trust
+Redpath no more'n I do; palaver don't cut no ice wit' her. The b'y
+didn't finish on Lucretia, an' that's all there is to it. But how's Alan
+goin' to turn the trick in a big field of rough ridin' b'ys? If it was
+the gurl herself" a sudden brilliant idea threw its strong light through
+Mike's brain pan. He took a dozen quick shuffling steps after Allis, then
+stopped as suddenly as he had started. "Mother a' Moses! but I believe
+it's the gurl; that's why the Chestnut galloped as if he had her on
+his back. Jasus! he had. Ph-e-e-w-w!" he whistled, a look of intense
+admiration sweeping over his leather-like face. "Bot' t'umbs! if that
+isn't pluck. There isn't a soul but meself'll git ontil it, an' she all
+but fooled me."
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+The news that Lucretia was sick had got about. The Porter's stable
+traveled out in the betting for the Brooklyn Derby until a backer--if
+there had been one--could have written his own price, and got it.
+
+Langdon had informed Crane of this change in their favor, though he said
+nothing about the deal with Shandy which had brought about the poisoning
+of the mare.
+
+"I'm sorry that Porter's mare has gone wrong," Crane said. "I think we
+would have won anyway, but it'll just about ruin them."
+
+Figuratively, Langdon closed one eye and winked to himself. Crane must
+know that it was his implied desires that had led up to the stopping of
+Lucretia. Langdon thought Crane just about the most complete hypocrite
+he'd ever met; that preacher face of his could look honorably pious
+while its owner raked in a cool forty thousand over the Trainer's dirty
+work. However, that cut no figure, it was his ten thousand dollars
+Langdon was after.
+
+Just as they thought they had destroyed the chances of their strongest
+opponent, came a new disturbing feature. Other eyes than Dixon's has
+seen Lauzanne's strong gallop; other watchers than his had ticked of the
+extraordinary good time, 2:11 for the mile and a quarter, with the
+horse seemingly running well within himself, never urged a foot of
+the journey, and finishing strong, was certainly almost good enough to
+warrant his winning.
+
+This information had been brought to Langdon, but he also had observed
+the gallop. And the same boy was to ride Lauzanne in the race, he
+understood, for Redpath had been released, and was looking for another
+mount. It wasn't in the natural order of things that one small stable
+would have in it two horses good enough to win the Derby, especially
+when one of them was a cast-off; but there was the gallop; time, like
+figures, didn't lie, not often; and as he thought of it Langdon admitted
+that he had never seen such an improvement in a horse as had been made
+in Lauzanne. Shandy had told him that it was Miss Porter's doing, that
+she had cured him of his sulky moods; the gallop Langdon had witnessed
+seemed to bear out the truth of this. What was he to do? They couldn't
+repeat the trick they had played on Lucretia. The Dutchman might win; he
+had worked the full Derby distance, a mile and a half, in 2:45, nearly
+all out at the finish. Lauzanne's gallop was only a mile and a quarter;
+he might not be able to stay the additional quarter. But there was
+ten thousand dollars at stake--for Langdon. He sought to discover the
+identity of Lauzanne's rider; but nobody knew him--Dixon had picked him
+up somewhere. Perhaps he could be got at; that would simplify matters
+greatly.
+
+The morning after her fast work on Lauzanne, Allis, draped as she was
+into the personification of Al Mayne, arrived at the course before their
+horses. As she was leaning over the paddock rail waiting for Lauzanne
+to come, Langdon, who had evidently determined upon a course of action,
+sauntered up carelessly to the girl and commenced to talk. After a free
+preliminary observation he said, "You're the boy that's ridin' for Andy
+Dixon, ain't you?"
+
+The small figure nodded its head.
+
+"I seen you gallop that Chestnut yesterday. Where you been ridin--you're
+a stranger here, I reckon?"
+
+"Out West," answered Allis, at a hazard.
+
+"Oh, San Francisco, eh? Are you engaged to Dixon?"
+
+"I'm just on trial."
+
+"Goin' to ride the Chestnut in the race?"
+
+Again the boy nodded; under the circumstances it wasn't wise to trust
+too much to speech.
+
+"He ain't no good--he's a bad horse. I guess I've got the winner of that
+race in my stable. If he wins, I'd like to sign you for a year. I like
+the way you ride. I ain't got no good lightweight. I might give you a
+thousand for a contract, an' losin' and winnin' mounts when you had a
+leg up. How do you like ridin' for Dixon?" he continued, the little chap
+not answering his observations.
+
+"I ain't goin' to ride no more for him after this race," answered the
+other, quite truthfully enough, but possessed of a curiosity to discover
+the extent of the other's villainy.
+
+"I don't blame you. He's no good; he don't never give his boys a chance.
+If you win on the Chestnut, like as not they'll just give you the
+winnin' mount. That ain't no good to a boy. They ain't got no money,
+that's why. The owner of my candidate, The Dutchman, he's a rich man,
+an' won't think nothin' of givin' a retainer of a thousand if we won
+this race. That'll mean The Dutchman's a good horse, and we'll want a
+good light boy to ride him, see?"
+
+Allis did see. Langdon was diplomatically giving her as A1 Mayne to
+understand that if she threw the race on Lauzanne, she would get a place
+in their stable at a retainer of a thousand dollars.
+
+"We can afford it if we win the race," he continued, "for we stand a big
+stake. Come and see me any time you like to talk this over."
+
+After he had gone, just as Allis was leaving the rail, she was again
+accosted; this time by Shandy. She trembled an instant, fearing that the
+small red-lidded ferret eyes would discover her identity. But the boy
+was too intent on trying to secure his ill-earned five hundred dollars
+to think of anything else.
+
+"Good mornin', boy," he said, cheerily. "I used to be in Dixon's stable.
+It's hell; and he's a swipe. I see my boss talkin' to you just now. Did
+he put you next a good thing?"
+
+Allis nodded her head, knowingly.
+
+"He's all right. So's the other one--the guy as has got the mun; he's
+got a bank full of it. I'm on to him; his name's Crane--"
+
+Allis started.
+
+"You don't know him," continued the imp; "he's too slick to go messin'
+about. But if the old man promised you anything, see, God blast me,
+you'll git it. Not like that other skin-flint hole where you don't git
+nothin'. I stand in five hundred if our horse wins the Derby."
+
+"Do you ride him?" asked Al Mayne.
+
+"Ride nothin'. I don't have to. I've did my job already."
+
+"I don't believe they'll give you five hundred for nothin'," said Allis,
+doubtingly, knowing that the boy's obstinate nature, if he were crossed,
+would probably drive him into further explanation.
+
+"Say, you're a stiff. What'd the ole man want you to do--pull Lauzanne?"
+
+Allis nodded.
+
+"I knowed it. What was the use of stoppin' the mare an' let the Chestnut
+spoil the job?"
+
+"Is that what you get the five hundred for?" asked Allis, a sudden
+suspicion forcing itself upon her.
+
+"Say, what d' you take me fer, a flat car? But she's sick, ain't she?
+An' you jes' take care of the Chestnut now, an' I'll give you a hundred
+out of my five, God bli' me if I don't."
+
+As he spoke Shandy looked hastily about to see that no one was
+listening, then he continued: "If you give me the double cross an'
+peach, I'll split yer head open." His small eyes blazed with venomous
+fury. "Besides, it won't do no good, my word's as good as yours. But
+I'll give you the hundred, s'help me God! I will, if you don't ride the
+Chestnut out. Mum's the word," he added, bolting suddenly, for Dixon had
+entered the paddock with his horses.
+
+With the horses also came Mike Gaynor. While their blankets were being
+taken off and saddles adjusted, he came over to Allis. There was a
+suppressed twinkle of subverted knowledge in his weatherbeaten eyes.
+
+"Good mornin', Al," he said, nodding in a very dignified manner, and
+putting a strong accent on the name.
+
+Now Mike had determined to keep from the girl the fact that he had
+penetrated her disguise. With proper Irish gallantry, crude as it might
+be in its expression, but delicate enough in its motive, he reasoned
+that his knowledge might make her uncomfortable.
+
+"I see that fly-by-night divil Shandy talkin' to ye as I come in. What
+new mischief is he up to now?"
+
+"He wants me to pull Lauzanne."
+
+"He ain't got no gall, has he? That come from headquarters; it's Langdon
+put him up to that."
+
+"He was talkin' to me, too."
+
+"I t'ought he would be. But he didn't know ye, Miss Allis--"
+
+Heavens! It was out. Mike's sun-tanned face turned brick-red; he
+could have bitten off his unruly Irish tongue. The girl stared at him
+helplessly, her cheeks, that were scarlet, tingling under the hot rush
+of blood.
+
+"There ye are, an' believe me, I didn't mean it. I was goin' to keep me
+mouth shut, but I never could do that."
+
+"You knew then, yesterday?"
+
+"Indade I didn't, an' that's a good sign to ye nobody'll know. But whin
+I t'ought wit' meself I knowed that Alan couldn't ride Lauzanne the way
+ye did; an' ye didn't deny ye was him, an' if ye wasn't him ye must be
+yerself, see?" which more or less lucid explanation seemed to relieve
+Mike's mind mightily. "I think ye're Jes doin' roight, Miss--Al, I mean;
+I must get used to that name; s'help me, I believe ye'll win on the
+Chestnut--that gallop was good enough."
+
+"Do you think I can do it, Mike, among all those jockeys?"
+
+"Sure thing, ye can, A--Al, me b'y; he won't need no ridin' in yer
+hands; all ye'll have to do is sit still an' keep him straight.
+He'll win the race in the stretch, an' there won't be many there to
+bother--they'll all be beat off. Now, it's a good thing that I do know
+about this, for I'll just kape close to ye an' kape any wan that's
+likely to spot ye away, if I have to knock him down."
+
+Mike had worked himself up to a fine frenzy of projected endeavor; he
+cast about for further services he could render his admired mistress.
+
+"An' ye know Carson the starter; he's jes the loveliest Irishman; there
+isn't a b'y on earth could git an inch the best av it from him on a
+start, not if they was to give him gold enough to weigh a horse down.
+But I'll jes' tip him the wink that ye'r a gurl, and--"
+
+"Mike, what are you saying? Do you mean to ruin everything?"
+
+The rosy hue of eager joyousness that had crept into Gaynor's suntanned
+face vanished; his jaw drooped, and a pathetic look of sheepish apology
+followed.
+
+"That's so," he ejaculated, mournfully; "bot' tumbs up! but it's a pity.
+Carson's an Irish gintleman, an' if I could till him ye was a gurl, he'd
+knock the head plumb off any b'y that 'ud bother ye. Ye'd git away well,
+too."
+
+Then the girl told Mike all that Shandy and Langdon had said. It only
+confirmed Mike's opinion that between them they had poisoned Lucretia.
+He felt that with a little more evidence he would be able to prove both
+crimes--the one with Diablo and the one with Lucretia.
+
+The Brooklyn Derby was to be run the next day. Allis was glad that it
+was so near; she dreaded discovery. She was like a hunted hare, dodging
+everyone she fancied might discover her identity. She would have to run
+the gauntlet of many eyes while weighing for the race, and at the time
+of going out; even when she returned, especially if she won. But in
+the excitement over the race, people would not have time to devote to a
+strange jockey's visage. She could quite smear her face with dirt, for
+that seemed a natural condition where boys were riding perhaps several
+races in one afternoon. The jockey cap with its big peak well pulled
+down over her head would add materially to her disguise. Mike would
+fetch and carry for her, so that she would be in evidence for very
+few minutes at most. Dixon even, opposed to the idea as he had been at
+first, now assured her quite confidently that nobody would make her out.
+
+"It's the horses they look at," he said, "and the colors. An apprentice
+boy doesn't cut much ice, I can tell you. Why, I've been racin' for
+years," he went on with the intent of giving her confidence, "an' many a
+time I see a boy up on a horse that must have rode on the tracks over a
+hundred times, an' I can't name him to save my neck."
+
+At any rate there was nothing more to do until she made the great
+endeavor, until she went to the track at the time set for the Brooklyn
+Derby, dressed in the blue jacket with the white stars of her father's
+racing colors; that was the plan adopted. A buggy, with Mike driving,
+would take her straight to the paddock quite in time for the race.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+After Crane left the money for Porter's note with Mortimer the latter
+took the three one-thousand-dollar bills, pinned them to the note,
+placed them in a cigar box and put the box away carefully in the bank
+safe, to remain there until the 14th of June, when it became due.
+Incidentally Mortimer mentioned this matter to Alan Porter.
+
+Crane in writing to the cashier about other affairs of the bank touched
+upon the subject of Porter's obligation, stating that he had left the
+money with Mr. Mortimer to meet the note when it matured.
+
+The day before the Derby, the 12th of the month, Alan asked his day's
+leave and got it. The cashier more readily granted Alan's request, as
+Crane had intimated in his letter that it would please him if the lad
+were to have a holiday.
+
+Alan went up to New York that evening. Earlier in the day he somewhat
+hesitatingly confided to Mortimer that he had backed Lucretia when she
+was well and looked to have a good chance to win her race; now she was
+scratched, and his money was lost. Bearing in mind what Crane had said
+about The Dutchman's chances of winning, even with Lucretia in the race,
+he felt now that it appeared almost like a certainty for Crane's horse.
+If he could have a bet on The Dutchman he would surely recoup his
+losses. Alan explained all these racing matters very minutely and with
+great earnestness to Mortimer, for the latter was quite unfamiliar
+with the science of race gambling. Having stated his predicament and
+hoped-for relief, as an excuse for so doing, he wound up by asking his
+companion for a loan of two hundred dollars.
+
+Mortimer had little less horror of betting and its evil influence than
+Mrs. Porter, but under the circumstances he would perhaps have complied
+with the boy's request had he been provided with sufficient funds. As it
+was, he said: "I don't like the idea of lending you money to bet with,
+Alan; your mother wouldn't thank me for doing so; besides, if you lost
+it you'd feel uncomfortable owing me the money. At any rate, I haven't
+got it. I couldn't lend you two hundred, or half of it. I suppose I
+haven't got a hundred to my credit."
+
+"Oh, never mind then," answered Alan, angrily, stiffening up, because of
+Mortimer's lecture.
+
+"I'll lend you what I've got."
+
+"I don't want it. I can get it some other place."
+
+"You'd better take--"
+
+"Take nothing--I don't want it."
+
+"Very well, I'm sorry I can't oblige you. But take my advice and don't
+bet at all; it'll only get you into trouble."
+
+"Thanks; I don't need your advice. I was a fool to ask you for the
+money."
+
+"I say, Alan," began Mortimer, in a coaxing tone.
+
+"Please don't 'Alan' me any more. I can get along without your money and
+without your friendship; I don't want either."
+
+Mortimer remained silent. What was the use of angering the boy further?
+He would come to see that he had meant it in good part, and would be all
+right in a day or two.
+
+During the rest of the day Alan preserved a surly distance of manner,
+speaking to Mortimer only once--a constrained request for a bunch of
+keys in the latter's possession which unlocked some private drawers in
+the vault.
+
+The next morning it suddenly occurred to Mortimer that Porter's note
+fell due that day--either that day or the next, he wasn't sure. The
+easiest way to settle the question was to look at the date on the note.
+
+He stepped into the vault, took out the little cigar box, opened it, and
+as he handled the crisp papers a sudden shock of horror ran through
+his frame. One of the bills was gone; there were only two
+one-thousand-dollar notes left.
+
+The discovery paralyzed him for an instant. He was responsible; the
+money had been left in his charge. Then he looked at the note; it
+matured the next day. All the money had been in the box the morning
+before, for he had looked at it. Only the cashier and Alan Porter knew
+that it was in the vault.
+
+The whole dreadful truth came clearly to Mortimer's mind with absolute
+conviction. Alan, infatuated with the prospect of winning a large sum
+over The Dutchman, and failing to borrow from him, had taken the money.
+
+The gravity of the situation calmed Mortimer, and his mind worked with
+a cool method that surprised him. Bit by bit he pieced it out. The boy,
+inconsistently enough, had reasoned that the money was his father's, and
+that he was only borrowing family property. No doubt he had felt sure
+of winning, and that he would be back in time to replace the thousand
+before it was needed. This sophistical reasoning had, without doubt,
+tempted the lad to commit this--this--Mortimer felt a reluctance to
+bestow the proper name upon Alan's act, but undoubtedly it was stealing.
+
+And if the boy lost the money, what would happen? He couldn't repay it;
+the shortage would be discovered and Allis's brother would be ruined,
+branded as a 'thief.
+
+Mortimer would willingly put the money back himself for Allis's sake;
+but he hadn't it. What was he to do? If he could find Alan and force him
+to give up the stolen money he could yet save the boy. But Alan had gone
+to Gravesend.
+
+Like an inspiration the thought came to Mortimer that he must go after
+him and get the money before it was lost. He shoved the box back in its
+place, and came out into the office.
+
+It was half past ten by the clock. Luckily the cashier had not come yet.
+Mortimer's mind worked rapidly. He must make some excuse and get away;
+anything; he must even lie; if he saved the boy it would be justifiable.
+Why did not the cashier come, now that he was ready for him? Each minute
+seemed an age, with the honor of Allis's brother hanging in the balance.
+He would need money. He drew a check for a hundred dollars. A hasty
+inspection showed that he still had a trifle more than this amount to
+his credit. Why he took a hundred he hardly knew; fate seemed writing
+the check. He had barely finished when the cashier appeared. At once
+Mortimer spoke to him.
+
+"I want leave of absence to-day, sir," he said, speaking hurriedly.
+
+The cashier frowned in astonishment. "Impossible We are short-handed
+with young Porter away."
+
+"I'll be back in the morning," pleaded Mortimer. "My mother is very ill.
+I've opened up, and Mr. Cass can manage, I'm sure, if you'll let me go.
+I wouldn't ask it, but it's a matter of almost life and death." He had
+nearly said of honor.
+
+Unwillingly the cashier consented. It probably meant extra work for him;
+he would certainly have to take a hand in the office routine. Theirs was
+not a busy bank, and that day was not likely to be a very pressing one,
+but still he would have to shoulder some of the labor.
+
+Full of the terrible situation, Mortimer cared not who worked, so that
+he got away in time to save Allis's brother from himself. At last he was
+free. He almost ran to the station.
+
+Looking from the window of the bank, the cashier seeing Mortimer's rapid
+pace, muttered: "I guess the poor man's mother is pretty bad; I'm glad I
+let him go. He's a good son to that mother of his."
+
+At eleven o'clock Mortimer got a train for New York. During the wait at
+the station he had paced up and down the platform with nervous stride. A
+dozen times he looked at his watch--would he be too late? He had no idea
+how long it would take to reach Gravesend; he knew nothing of the race
+track's location. As the train whirled him through Emerson, where
+his mother lived, he could see the little drab cottage, and wondered
+pathetically what the good woman would say if she knew her son was going
+to a race meeting. At twelve he was in New York.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+Mortimer found that he could take an "L" train to the Bridge, and
+transfer there to another taking him direct to the course. At the Bridge
+he was thrust into a motley crowd, eager, expectant, full of joyous
+anticipation of assured good luck. He was but a tiny unit of this
+many-voiced throng; he drifted a speck on the bosom of the flood that
+poured into the waiting race train. He was tossed into a seat by
+the swirling tide, and as the train moved he looked at his
+fellow-passengers. There was a pleasant air of opulence all about him.
+Gold chains of fair prominence, diamonds of lustrous hue, decorated the
+always rotund figures. He fell to wondering why the men were all of a
+gross physique; why did the ladies wear dresses of such interminable
+variety of color; from whence came the money for this plethora of rich
+apparel?
+
+The race literature that had come Mortimer's way had generally dealt
+with the unfortunate part of racing. Somehow he had got the impression
+that everybody lost money at it. He was sure Alan Porter had, also the
+father.
+
+True, on the train were some bearing undeniable evidences of poverty;
+but not many. One man of this latter unfortunate aspect sat next him.
+His whole appearance was suggestive of the shady side of life. With the
+industry of a student he pored over a disheveled sporting paper for half
+an hour, then throwing it under the seat he cast a furtive look at his
+neighbor, and presently said, "Dere'll be big fields to-day."
+
+"That's too bad," Mortimer answered, through ignorance, thinking that
+the other referred to perhaps a considerable walk across country to
+reach the course.
+
+"I like it," declared the man of sad drapery; "it means long odds if
+you're next somethin' good."
+
+Mortimer confined his remarks to a brief "Oh!" for the other man might
+as well have been speaking Choctaw.
+
+"Have you doped 'em out for de Derby?" asked the stranger.
+
+Mortimer shook his head. Whatever it was it was connected with horse
+racing, and he felt sure that he hadn't done it.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you somethin'--will you put down a good bet if I steer
+you straight?"
+
+Mortimer was growing weary; his mind, troubled by the frightful disaster
+that threatened Allis's family, wanted to draw within itself and ponder
+deeply over a proper course of action; so he answered: "My dear sir, I'm
+afraid you're mistaken. I never bet on races. But I thank you for your
+kind offer."
+
+The unwashed face looked at him in blank amazement, then it wrinkled in
+a mirthful laugh of derision. "What d' 'ell you goin' to Gravesend
+for, den? Blamed if I don't believe you dough--you look it. Say, is dat
+straight goods--did you never have a bet in your life?"
+
+"Never did."
+
+"Well, I'm damned! Say, I believe you've got de best of it, dough. Wish
+I'd never bucked ag'in' de bookies."
+
+"Why don't you stop it now, then?"
+
+"Say, pard, do you drink?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Smoke?"
+
+"No."
+
+A hopeless air of utter defeat came into the thin, sharp face. Its
+owner had been searching for a simile. He wanted to point a moral and
+he couldn't find it. The young man at his elbow was too immaculate.
+He tried to explain: "Racin's like any other locoed t'ing--it's like
+tobacco, or drink, or stealin' money out of a bank--"
+
+Mortimer shivered. He had felt a moral superiority in denying the
+implied bad habits.
+
+"It's like any of 'em," continued the ragged philosopher; "a guy
+starts simply as a kid, an' he gets de t'row-down. He takes a bracer at
+himself, and swears he'll give it de go-by, but he can't--not on your
+life."
+
+Mortimer had read much about confidence men, and half expected that
+his self-imposed acquaintance would try to borrow money, but he was
+disillusionized presently.
+
+"But de ring ain't broke Ole Bill yet. I'll clean up a t'ousand
+to-day--say, I like your mug; you ain't no stiff, or I miss my guess,
+an' I'll put you, next a good t'ing, damme if I don't, an' you don't
+need to divvy up, neither. Dere's a chestnut runnin' in de Derby what
+dey call Larcen, an' I'm goin' to plank down a hun'red chicks on him."
+
+He detected a look of incredulous unbelief in Mortimer's face,
+evidently, for he added, "You t'ink I ain't got no dough, eh?" He dug
+down into the folds of his somewhat voluminous "pants" and drew forth a
+fair-sized roll. "See? That wad goes to Larcen straight. I see him do
+a gallop good enough for my stuf; but dey got a stable-boy on him, an'
+dat's why he'll be ten to one. But dat don't cut no ice wit' me. He'll
+be out for de goods; it's a gal owns him, an' dere'll be nut'in' doin'.
+Gal's name's Porter."
+
+Again Mortimer started. What a little world it was, to be sure! Even
+here on the ferry boat, crowded with men of unchristian aspect, he heard
+the name of the woman he loved, and standing symbolical of honesty.
+
+"What's the name of this--this horse?" he asked.
+
+"Larcen."
+
+"Do you mean Lauzanne?"
+
+"Yes, dat's it. I jes' heered it, an' I t'ought it was Larcen. You've
+got it straight, stranger. Say, are you wise to anyt'in'?"
+
+"Not about the horse; but I know the people--the young lady; and they'll
+win if they can--that's sure."
+
+"Dere won't be many dead 'uns in de Derby. First money's good enough fer
+most of de owners. First horse, I see him gallop like a good 'un. An'
+I'm a piker; I like a bit of odds fer my stuff."
+
+Mortimer saw the other occupants of the train moving toward the front
+end.
+
+"I guess we're dere," said his companion; "perhaps I'll see you on
+de course. If you make a break to-day, play Larcen; he'll win. Say, I
+didn't catch your name."
+
+"Mortimer."
+
+"Well, take care of yourself, Mr. Morton. See you later."
+
+* * * * * * * * * *
+
+In his ignorance of a race meet Mortimer had felt sure he would be able
+to find Alan Porter without trouble. The true difficulty of his quest
+soon dawned upon him. Wedged into the pushing, shoving, hurrying crowd,
+in three minutes he had completely lost himself. A dozen times he
+rearranged his bearings, taking a certain flight of steps leading up
+to the grand stand as the base of his peregrinations; a dozen times
+he returned to this point, having accomplished nothing but complete
+bewilderment.
+
+He asked questions, but the men he addressed were too busy to bother
+with him; some did not hear, others stared at him in distrust, and many
+tendered flippant remarks, such as "Ask a policeman;" "You'll find him
+in the bar;" "He's gone to Europe."
+
+Even Mortimer's unpracticed mind realized speedily that it would be
+nothing short of a miracle if he were to find anyone in all those
+inpatient thousands who even knew the person he was seeking. One young
+man he spoke to declared that he knew Alan Porter quite well; he was a
+great friend of his; he'd find him in a minute. This obliging stranger's
+quest led them into the long race track bar room, which somehow or other
+suggested to Mortimer a cattle shambles.
+
+Behind the bar young men in white coats, even some in their shirt
+sleeves, were setting forth on its top, with feverish haste, clinking
+glasses that foamed and fretted much like the thirsty souls who called
+vociferously for liquid refreshment. Everybody seemed on fire--burnt up
+by the thirst of a consuming fever, the fever of speculation.
+
+Mortimer's new friend suggested that they indulge in beer while waiting
+for the sought one's appearance, and waxing confidential he assured his
+quarry that he had a leadpipe cinch for the next race--it couldn't
+lose. The trainer was a bosom friend of his; a sort of hybrid brother in
+friendship. He himself was no tipster, he was an owner; he even went
+the length of flashing a bright yellow badge, as occult evidence of his
+standing.
+
+These matters did not interest the searcher in the slightest; they only
+wasted his precious time. If he did not find Alan Porter soon the stolen
+money would be lost, he felt sure.
+
+"I must find my friend," he said, cutting the garrulous man short.
+"Excuse me, I'll go and look for him."
+
+But the other was insistent; ferret-like, he had unearthed good meat--a
+rare green one--and he felt indisposed to let his prey escape. His
+insistence matured into insolence as Mortimer spoke somewhat sharply to
+him. Ignorant of racing as the latter was, he was hardly a man to take
+liberties with once he recognized the infringement. The enormity of
+his mission and the possibility that it might be frustrated by his
+undesirable tormentor, made him savage. Raised to quick fury by a
+vicious remark of the tout who held him in leash, he suddenly stretched
+out a strong hand, and, seizing his insulter by the collar, gave him
+a quick twist that laid him on his back. Mortimer held him there,
+squirming for a full minute, while men gathered so close that the air
+became stifling.
+
+Presently a heavy hand was laid on Mortimer's shoulder and a gruff
+policeman's voice asked, "What's the matter here?"
+
+"Nothing much," Mortimer replied, releasing his hold and straightening
+up; "this blackguard wanted me to bet on some horse, and when I refused,
+insulted me; that's all."
+
+The other man had risen, his face purple from the twist at his throat.
+The officer looked at him.
+
+"At it again, Mr. Bunco. I'll take care of him," he continued, turning
+to Mortimer. "He's a tout. Out you go," this to the other man. Then,
+tickled in the ribs by the end of the policeman's baton, the tout was
+driven from the enclosure; the spectators merged into a larger crowd,
+and Mortimer was left once more to pursue his fruitless search.
+
+As he emerged into the open of the lawn he saw a gentleman standing
+somewhat listlessly, self-absorbed, as though he were not a party to the
+incessant turmoil of the others, who were as men mad.
+
+With a faith born of limited experience, Mortimer risked another
+hazard. He would ask this complacent one for guidance. What he had to do
+justified all chances of rebuke.
+
+"Pardon me, sir," he began, "I am looking for a young friend of mine
+whose people own race horses. Where would I be likely to find him?"
+
+"If he's an owner he'll probably be in the paddock," replied the
+composed one.
+
+"Could you tell me where the paddock is?"
+
+"To the right," and sweeping his arm in that direction the stranger sank
+back into his inner consciousness, and blinked his eyes languidly, as
+though the unusual exertion of answering his inquisitor's questions had
+decidedly bored him.
+
+"That man is one in a thousand; yea, forty thousand, for he is a
+stranger to excitement," Mortimer said to himself, as he strode rapidly
+across the grass to a gate which opened in the direction the other had
+indicated. His eagerness had almost carried him through the gateway
+when a strong arm thrown across his chest, none too gently, barred his
+further progress.
+
+"Show your badge, please," cried a voice.
+
+Mortimer exposed the pasteboard he had acquired on his entry to the
+stand.
+
+"You can't pass in here," said the guardian; "that's only good for the
+stand."
+
+"But," began Mortimer.
+
+"Stand aside--make room, please!" from the gatekeeper, cut short his
+conversation.
+
+Others were waiting to pass through. In despair he gave up his untenable
+place, and once more was swallowed in the maelstrom of humanity that
+eddied about the stand enclosure.
+
+As he was heading for his rock of locality, the stairway, hurrying
+somewhat recklessly, he ran with disturbing violence full tilt into a
+man who had erratically turned to his left, when according to all laws
+of the road he should have kept straight on.
+
+"I beg pardon--" began Mortimer; then stared in blank amazement, cutting
+short his apology. The victim of his assault was Mr. Crane. The latter's
+close-lidded eyes had rounded open perceptibly in a look of surprise.
+
+"Mr. Mortimer!" he exclaimed, "You here? May I ask who's running the
+bank?"
+
+Anxious about the stolen money the sudden advent of Crane on his
+immediate horizon threw the young man into momentary confusion. "My
+mother was ill--I got leave--I had to see Alan Porter--I've come here to
+find him. They'll manage all right at the bank without me."
+
+He fired his volley of explanation at his employer with the rapidity of
+a Maxim gun. Truth and what he considered excusable falsehood came forth
+with equal volubility. Crane, somewhat mollified, and feeling that at
+first he had spoken rather sharply, became more gracious. At sight of
+Mortimer he had concluded that it was to see Allis the young man had
+come, perhaps at her instigation.
+
+"Have you seen Alan Porter, sir?" Mortimer asked, anxiously.
+
+"I did, but that was about an hour ago. You will probably find him"--he
+was going to say--"in the paddock with his sister," but for reasons he
+refrained; "let me see, most likely sitting up in the grand stand."
+
+As Mortimer stood scanning the sea of faces that rose wave on wave above
+him, Mr. Crane said, "I hope you found your mother better. If I see Alan
+I'll tell him you are looking for him."
+
+When Mortimer turned around Crane had gone. He had meant to ask about
+the race Porter's horse Lauzanne was in, but had hesitated for fear he
+should say something which might give rise to a suspicion of his errand.
+He heard the rolling thunder of hoof beats in the air. From where he
+stood, over the heads of many people he could see gaudy colored silk
+jackets coming swiftly up the broad straight boulevard of the race
+course; even as he looked they passed by with a peculiar bobbing
+up-and-down motion. The effect was grotesque, for he could not see the
+horses, could not see the motive power which carried the bright-colored
+riders at such a terrific pace.
+
+A thought flashed through his mind that it might be the Derby.
+
+"What race is that?" he asked of one who stood at his elbow.
+
+The man's face wore a sullen, discontented look, and no wonder, for he
+had, with misplaced confidence, wagered many dollars on a horse that was
+even then prancing gaily in many yards behind the winner.
+
+"Do you know what race that was?" Mortimer repeated, thinking the silent
+one had not heard him.
+
+"Why don't you look at your race card?" retorted the jaundiced
+loser, transporting himself and his troubles to the haven of liquid
+consolation.
+
+His answer, curt as it was, gave Mortimer an inspiration. He looked
+about and saw many men consulting small paper pamphlets; they were like
+people in an art gallery, catalogue in hand.
+
+By chance, Mortimer observed a young man selling these race catalogues,
+as he innocently named them. He procured one, and the seller in answer
+to a question told him it was the third race he had just seen, and the
+next would be the Brooklyn Derby.
+
+There it was, all set forth in the programme he had just purchased.
+Seven horses to start, all with names unfamiliar except The Dutchman
+and Lauzanne. He had almost given up looking for Alan; it seemed so
+hopeless. At any rate he had tried his best to save the boy's honor;
+told deliberate lies to do it. Now it was pretty much in the hands of
+fate. He remembered what Alan had said about The Dutchman's certain
+chance of winning the coming race. He felt that if the horse won, Alan
+would put back the stolen thousand dollars; if not, where would the boy
+get money to cover up his theft?
+
+It had seemed to Mortimer a foolish, desperate thing to risk money on
+anything so uncertain as a horse race; but here was at stake the honor
+of a bright, splendid young man--even the happiness of his parents,
+which the poor, deluded boy had wagered on one horse's chance of winning
+against six others. It was terrible. Mortimer shuddered, and closed his
+eyes when he thought of the misery, the shame, that would come to Allis
+and her mother when they knew, as they must, if Crane's horse were
+beaten, that the son was a thief. Oh, God! why couldn't he find the boy
+and save him before it was too late? Probably Alan had already betted
+the money; but even if that were so, he had vain visions of forcing the
+man who had received the stolen thousand to disgorge. No one had a right
+to receive stolen money; and if necessary, Mortimer would give him to
+understand that he was making himself a party to the crime.
+
+But the mere fact that he couldn't find Alan Porter rendered him as
+helpless as a babe; he might as well have remained in the bank that day.
+How willingly he would have hastened back and replaced the money if he
+but had it. For Allis's sake he would have beggared himself, would have
+sacrificed a hundred times that sum to save her from the unutterable
+misery that must come if her brother were denounced as a felon. The love
+that was in him was overmastering him.
+
+He was roused from his despondent train of thought by speech that struck
+with familiar jar upon his ear. It was the voice of the man who had
+descanted on the pleasures of betting during their journey from New
+York.
+
+"What dye t'ink of it, pard?" was the first salutation.
+
+Mortimer stammered the weak information that he didn't know what to
+think of it.
+
+"Dere ain't no flies on us to-day--I'm knockin' 'em out in great shape.
+Can't pick a loser, blamed if I can. I've lined up for a cash-in tree
+times, an' I'll make it four straight, sure. Larcen'll come home all
+alone; you see if he don't."
+
+"I hope so," rejoined Mortimer.
+
+"I say, Mister Morton, put down a bet on him--he's good business; put a
+'V' on, an' rake down fifty--dat'll pay your ex's. De talent's goin' for
+De Dutchman, but don't make no mistake about de other, he'll win."
+
+In an instant the young man knew why this persistent worrier of a
+tortured spirit had been sent him. Fate gave him the cue; it whispered
+in his ear, "Put down a hundred--you have it--and win a thousand; then
+you can save Alan Porter--can keep this misery from the girl that is to
+you as your own life."
+
+Mortimer listened eagerly; to the babbler at his side; to the whisper in
+his ear; to himself, that spoke within himself. Even if it were not
+all true, if Lauzanne were beaten, what of it? He would lose a hundred
+dollars, but that would not ruin him; it would cause him to save and
+pinch a little, but he was accustomed to self-denial.
+
+"Will the betting men take a hundred dollars from me on this horse,
+Lauzanne?" he asked, after the minute's pause, during which these
+thoughts had flashed through his mind.
+
+"Will dey take a hundred? Will dey take a t'ousand! Say, what you givin'
+me?"
+
+"If Lauzanne won, I'd win a thousand, would I?"
+
+"If you put it down straight; but you might play safe--split de hundred,
+fifty each way, win an' show; Larcen'll be one, two, tree, sure."
+
+"I want to win a thousand," declared Mortimer.
+
+"Den you've got to plump fer a win; he's ten to one."
+
+Mortimer could hardly understand himself; he was falling in with the
+betting idea. It was an age since he stood at his desk in that bank,
+abhorrent of all gambling methods, to the present moment, when he was
+actually drawing from his pocket a roll of bills with which to bet on a
+horse.
+
+He took a despairing look through the thicket of human beings that made
+a living forest all about, in a last endeavor to discover Alan Porter.
+Not three paces away a uniquely familiar figure was threading in and out
+the changing maze-it was Mike Gaynor.
+
+Mortimer broke from his friend, and with quick steps reached the
+trainer's side.
+
+"I want to find Alan Porter," he said, in answer to Gaynor's surprised
+salutation.
+
+"He was in the paddock a bit ago," answered Mike; "he moight be there
+still."
+
+Almost involuntarily Mortimer, as he talked, had edged back toward his
+friend of disconsolate raggedness.
+
+"I wanted to go in there--I'd like to go now to find him, but they won't
+let me through the gate."
+
+"No more they will," answered Mike, with untruthful readiness, for all
+at once it occurred to him that if Mortimer got to the paddock he might
+run up against Allis and recognize her.
+
+"De gent could buy a badge and get in," volunteered Old Bill.
+
+The lid of Mike's right eye drooped like the slide of a lantern, as he
+answered: "He couldn't get wan now--it's too late; just wait ye here,
+sir, and if the b'y's there wit' the nags, I'll sind him out."
+
+Old Bill made no comment upon Mike's diplomatic misstatement anent the
+badge, for he had observed the wink, and held true to the masonry which
+exists between race-course regulars.
+
+"Yes, please send him out then, Mr. Gaynor; it's important."
+
+"I'm in a hurry meself," said Mike; "I just come out fer a minute; see
+here," and he nodded his head sideways to Mortimer. The latter walked by
+his side for a few steps.
+
+"Who's that guy?" asked the Trainer.
+
+"I don't know; he calls himself Old Bill."
+
+"Well, ye best look out--he looks purty tough. What's he playin' ye
+fer?"
+
+"He advised me to bet money on Lauzanne."
+
+"The divil he did! What th' yellow moon does he know about the Chestnut;
+did ye back him?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Are ye goin' to?"
+
+"I don't know. Do you think Lauzanne might come in first?"
+
+A slight smile relaxed the habitually drawn muscles of Mike's grim
+visage; it was moons since he had heard anybody talk of a horse "coming
+in first;" he was indeed a green bettor, this, young man of the counting
+house. What was he doing there betting at all, Mike wondered. It must be
+because of his interest in the girl, his reason answered.
+
+"I tink he'll win if he does his best for her."
+
+"Does his best for who?"
+
+Mike got to cover; his ungoverned tongue was always playing him tricks.
+
+"Miss Allis is managin' the horses," he explained, very deliberately,
+"an' there's a new b'y up on Lauzanne's back, d'ye onderstand; an' if
+the Chestnut doesn't sulk, does his best fer the young misthress that'll
+be watchin' him here in the stand wit' tears in her eyes, he moight
+win--d'ye onderstand?"
+
+Yes, Mortimer understood; it seemed quite clear, for Mike had been to
+some pains to cover up the slip he had made.
+
+"Now I must go," he continued; "an' ye needn't come in the paddock--if
+the b'y is there, I'll sind him out."
+
+When Alan's seeker returned to Old Bill, he said, "Mr. Gaynor thinks
+your choice might come in first."
+
+"Why was Irish steerin' you clear of de paddock?" asked the other.
+
+"I suppose it was to save me the expense of buying a ticket for it."
+
+The other man said nothing further, but the remembrance of Mike's wink
+convinced him that this was not the sole reason.
+
+They waited for young Porter's appearance, but he did not come. "The
+geezer yer waitin' fer is not in dere or he'd a-showed up," said Old
+Bill; "an' if yer goin' to take de tip, we'd better skip to de ring an'
+see what's doin'."
+
+Mortimer had once visited the stock exchange in New York. He could not
+help but think how like unto it was the betting ring with its horde of
+pushing, struggling humans, as he wormed his way in, following close on
+Old Bill's heels. There was a sort of mechanical aptness in his leader's
+way of displacing men in his path. Mortimer realized that but for his
+guide he never would have penetrated beyond the outer shell of the
+buzzing hive. Even then he hoped that he might, by the direction of
+chance, see Alan Porter. The issue at stake, and the prospect of its
+solution through his unwonted betting endeavor, was dispelling his
+inherent antipathy to gambling; he was becoming like one drunken with
+the glamour of a new delight; his continued desire to discover young
+Porter was more a rendering of tithes to his former god of chastity
+which he was about to shatter.
+
+Two days before betting on horse races was a crime of indecent enormity;
+now it seemed absolutely excusable, justified, almost something to be
+eagerly approved of. Their ingress, though strenuous, was devoid of
+rapidity; so, beyond much bracing of muscles, there was little to take
+cognizance of except his own mental transformation. Once he had known a
+minister, a very good man indeed, who had been forced into a fight. The
+clergyman had acted his unwilling part with such muscular enthusiasm
+that his brutish opponent had been reduced to the lethargic condition of
+inanimate pulp. Mortimer compared his present exploit with that of his
+friend, the clergyman; he felt that he was very much in the same boat.
+He was eager to have the bet made and get out into the less congested
+air; his companions of the betting ring were not men to tarry among in
+the way of moral recreation.
+
+The mob agitated itself in waves; sometimes he and Old Bill were carried
+almost across the building by the wash of the living tide as it set in
+that direction; then an undertow would sweep them back again close
+to their starting point. The individual members of the throng were
+certainly possessed of innumerable elbows, and large jointed knees, and
+boots that were forever raking at his heels or his corns. They seemed
+taller, too, than men in the open; strive as he might he could see
+nothing--nothing but heads that topped him in every direction. Once the
+proud possessor of a dreadful cigar of unrivaled odor became sandwiched
+between him and his fellow-pilgrim; he was down wind from the weed and
+its worker, and the result was all but asphyxiation.
+
+At last they reached some sort of a harbor; it was evidently an inlet
+for which his pilot had been sailing. A much composed man in a tweed
+suit, across which screamed lines of gaudy color, sat on a camp stool,
+with a weary, tolerant look on his browned face; in his hand was a
+card on which was penciled the names of the Derby runners with their
+commercial standing in the betting mart.
+
+Old Bill craned his neck over the shoulder of the sitting man, scanned
+the book, and turning to Mortimer said, "Larcen's nine to one now;
+dey're cuttin' him--wish I'd took tens; let's go down de line."
+
+They pushed out into the sea again, and were buffeted of the human
+waves; from time to time Old Bill anchored for a few seconds in the tiny
+harbor which surrounded each bookmaker; but it was as though they were
+all in league--the same odds on every list.
+
+"It's same as a 'sociation book," he grunted; "de cut holds in every
+blasted one of 'em. Here's Jakey Faust," he added, suddenly; "let's try
+him."
+
+"What price's Laxcen?" he asked of the fat bookmaker.
+
+"What race is he in?" questioned the penciler.
+
+"Din race; what you givin' me!"
+
+"Don't know the horse."
+
+Mortimer interposed. "The gentleman means Lauzanne," he explained.
+
+Faust glared in the speaker's face. "Why th' 'll don't he talk English
+then; I'm no Chinaman, or a mind reader, to guess what he wants.
+Lauzanne is nine to one; how much dye want?"
+
+"Lay me ten?" asked Old Bill of the bookmaker.
+
+"To how much?"
+
+"A hun'red; an' me frien' wants a hun'red on, too."
+
+"I'll do it," declared Faust, impatiently. "Ten hundred to one,
+Lauzanne!" he called over his shoulder to his clerk, taking the bettor's
+money; "an' the number is--?"
+
+"Twenty-five, tree-four-six!" answered Old Bill. "Pass him yer dust," he
+continued, turning to his companion.
+
+The latter handed his money to Faust.
+
+"Lauzanne!" advised Old Bill.
+
+"A thousand-to-hundred-Lauzanne, win; an' the number is" he stretched
+out his hand, and turning over Mortimer's dangling badge, read aloud,
+"Twenty-five, three-five-seven."
+
+He took a sharp look at the two men; his practised eye told him they
+were not plungers, more of the class that usually bet ten dollars at
+the outside; they were evidently betting on information; two
+one-hundred-dollar bets coming together on Lauzanne probably meant
+stable money.
+
+"Let's git out, mister," cried Old Bill, clutching Mortimer's arm.
+
+"Don't I get anything--a receipt, or--"
+
+Faust heard this and laughed derisively. "You won't need nothin' to show
+for this money," he said.
+
+"We'll be roun' at de back in a few minutes fer a couple of t'ou',"
+retorted Old Bill. "Let's cut trough here," he added to his companion,
+making a passage between the bookmakers.
+
+Bill's knowledge of the local geography was good, and skirting the crowd
+they were soon out on the lawn.
+
+"Let's watch de parade," Mortimer's adjutant suggested, and he led the
+way down to the course, where they stood against the rail, waiting.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+During this time there was a bustle of much interest in the paddock.
+Allis, ready dressed in the Porter colors, had been driven to the
+course half an hour before the time set for the Derby. Her face was as
+satisfactorily disguised with dust as though she had ridden three races.
+
+Mike assiduously attended to every detail; even the weighing, thanks to
+his officious care, was a matter of not more than one minute. The girl's
+weight was one hundred and ten pounds, the saddle brought it up to
+one hundred and thirteen. She would have to ride at least two pounds
+overweight, for the horse's impost was one hundred and eleven. Lauzanne
+was being led in a circle by a boy, so Allis shielded herself from the
+general gaze in his empty stall. She felt quite sure that nobody there
+would recognize her, unless, perhaps, Philip Crane. He was rarely seen
+in the paddock, but might this day come out to view The Dutchman. The
+latter horse came in for a great deal of attention, for he had been
+steadily backed down to the position of equal favorite with White Moth.
+
+At last there was the summons to saddle, and Lauzanne was brought into
+the stall by Dixon. Then the door was shrouded by an ever-changing
+semicircle of curious observers. Allis gave a little start and turned
+her head away as Crane, pushing through the others, stood just inside
+the stall and spoke to Dixon.
+
+"Your horse looks very well; I hope you win, if I don't."
+
+"He's as good as we could make him," answered the Trainer, as he
+adjusted the weight cloth.
+
+"Is Miss Porter here?" were Crane's next words, quite in the tone of a
+casually interested friend.
+
+"She may be in the stand," Dixon answered, without turning his head.
+Mike had deliberately interposed his body between Allis and the doorway.
+To the girl's relief, without further comment, Crane quietly moved away.
+
+"Excuse me, Al, fer standin' in front av ye," said Mike, "but these
+outsiders is enough to make a b'y narvous the way they stare at him.
+Alan Porter was in the paddock a minute ago askin' fer his sister, but I
+hustled him out, telling him ye--I mean she--was in the stand."
+
+"Thank you, Mike; you're a good friend," replied the girl, gratefully.
+
+Dixon had never taken so much care over the preparation of a horse for a
+race in all his life; and at last everything was as perfect as it could
+possibly be made. Lauzanne's behavior gladdened the girl's heart; he was
+as supremely indifferent to the saddling, to the staring of the people,
+to the scent of battle that was in the soft summer air, as though he
+were in his own stable at home. Not a muscle of his huge flank trembled.
+Once, as the bridle rein was loosened for an instant, he half turned in
+the stall, curved his neck and stretched his golden nozzle toward the
+small figure in blue silk, as though he fain would make sure by scent
+that one of his natural enemies, a man jockey, had not been thrust upon
+him. Allis understood this questioning movement, and reaching out her
+hand rubbed the gray velvet of his nose. But for the restraining rein,
+tightened quickly by the boy who held him, Lauzanne would have snuggled
+his head against his little mistress.
+
+"They understand each other," said Dixon to Mike, in an undertone;
+"we'll get all that's in him this trip."
+
+"Bot' t'umbs up! if he doesn't come home alone I'll eat me hat. The
+sharks'll get a knock this journey, that'll make 'em take a tumble to
+themselves."
+
+Dixon stepped back to the corner where Allis was and said: "I guess I
+can't give you no orders. He's a bit sluggish at the post, an' a few
+false breaks won't hurt him none. Just don't be afraid, that's all. A
+mile an' a half's a long journey, an' you'll have plenty of time to
+take their measure. He's sure to get away last, but that won't matter;
+there'll be plenty of openin's to get through after you've gone a mile.
+Just keep your eye on The Dutchman--he's a stayer from 'way back; an'
+Westley may kid you that he's beat comin' up the stretch, for he's slick
+as they make them, an' then come with a rattle at the finish an' nose
+you out on the post. Don't never let up once you're into the stretch;
+if you're ten lengths ahead don't let the Chestnut down, but keep a good
+holt on him, an' finish as though they was all lapped on your quarter.
+There's a horse in the race I don't understand; he can no more get a
+mile an' a half than I could; it's the Indian, an' why they're puttin'
+up the startin' price beats me, unless"--and he lowered his voice to a
+whisper--"there's a job to carry Lauzanne, or White Moth, or somethin'
+off their feet. Just watch the Indian, an' don't let him shut you in on
+the rail if you can help it. They've put up Redpath, an' that beats
+me, too, for I think he's straight. But the Indian hasn't a ghost of a
+chance to win. You'd better take a whip."
+
+"I don't want either whip or spurs," answered the girl. "Lauzanne will
+do better without them."
+
+"I know that, but take a whip--something else in the race might need it;
+an' if you have to use it, use it good an' strong. If Langdon lodges an
+objection I can make him quit."
+
+Over at The Dutchman's stall there was a very confident party. Their
+horse would go to the post as fit as any thoroughbred had ever stripped.
+Langdon was a great trainer--there was no doubt about that; if there had
+been Crane would have discovered it and changed his executive officer.
+The tall son of Hanover was lean of flesh, but gross in muscle. He was
+as though an Angelo had chiseled with sure hand from his neck, and ribs,
+and buttocks all the marble of useless waste, and left untouched
+in sinewy beauty layer on layer, each muscle, and thew, and cord.
+Flat-boned and wide the black-glossed legs, and over the corded form
+a silken skin of dull fire-red. From the big eyes gleamed an expectant
+delight of the struggle; not sluggishly indifferent, as was Lauzanne's,
+but knowing of the fray and joyous in its welcome.
+
+"He'll win on a tight rein," confided Langdon to Jockey Westley; "he's
+the greatest Hanover in the land. There's a dozen races bottled up in
+that carcass"--and he slapped the big Bay lovingly on the rump"--but if
+you're put to it, Bill, you can call on him fer the full dozen today.
+There's nothin' to it but yourself and White Moth."
+
+Carelessly he stepped to the back of the stall, touching Westley as he
+passed. Kicking the loose dirt with his toes, and bending his head to
+bury his voice, Langdon continued in a subdued tone: "The Indian'll cut
+out the pace so fast that it'll choke off Lauzanne. The Chestnut's a
+plugger an' ain't no good when it comes to gallopin'. If you was to all
+loaf aroun' he might hang on an' finish in front; but the pace'll kill
+him--it'll break his heart; the fast goin'll lay out White Moth, too,
+for she'll go to the front an' die away after a mile an' a quarter. Just
+nurse the Bay, an' let the others fight the Indian. But don't loaf an'
+let Lauzanne get near you, fer he can keep up a puddlin' gait all day.
+There ain't nothin' else in the race I'm afraid of; there ain't one of
+them can last a mile an' a half." Then he added, with a disagreeable
+chuckle--it was like the slobbering laugh of a hyena--"I miss my guess
+if the boy on Lauzanne kills himself tryin' to win anyway. He seems a
+fair lad, but you can ride rings 'round him, Bill."
+
+"I'll put up a good ride on The Dutchman, an' I think we'll ketch the
+Judge's eye," replied Westley. "It doesn't seem to stand for it that a
+stable-boy on a bad horse like Lauzanne is goin' to beat me out."
+
+"The boss says you're to have two thousand fer winnin', Westley, so
+don't make no mistake. I wasn't goin' to tell you this afore you went
+out, fer fear it'd make you too eager. Many a race's been thrown away
+by a boy bein' too keen, an' makin' his run too early in the game; but
+you've a good head and might as well know what you're to have. There's
+the bugle; get up."
+
+Eager hands stripped the blanket that had been thrown over The Dutchman;
+Westley was lifted into the saddle, and the gallant Bay led out by
+Langdon.
+
+In front strode White Moth; one by one the others, and last, seventh,
+Allis's fatal number, lagged Lauzanne, lazily loafing along as though he
+regretted leaving the stall.
+
+As the horses passed to the course, Crane, who had followed The Dutchman
+to the gate, raised his eyes from scanning Lauzanne to the rider on his
+back. It was just a look of languid interest in the apprentice boy Dixon
+had put up instead of such a good jockey as Redpath. The face rivetted
+his attention; something in the line of the cheek recalled a face he had
+constantly in view.
+
+"For an instant I thought that was Alan Porter on Lauzanne," he said
+to Langdon, who was at his elbow. "A strange fancy--I'm going up to the
+stand to watch the race:"
+
+"It's all roight but the win now," said Mike to Dixon. "I'm goin' in be
+the Judges' box to watch the finish. You'll be helpin' the b'y pass the
+scales, Andy."
+
+As Allis passed the Judges' Stand in the parade she cast a quick,
+furtive look toward the people on the lawn. She seemed pilloried on an
+eminence, lifted up in pitiless prominence; would anyone detect her at
+the last moment? Hanging over the rail in the very front she saw a pale
+face that struck a chill of fear to her heart--it was Mortimer's.
+She had not even thought of his being there. She had eluded the close
+scrutiny of all the others who were likely to recognize her, but there,
+within ten yards were eyes almost certain to penetrate her disguise. The
+girl turned her face away; she knew Mortimer well enough to think that
+if he did recognize her he would make no sign.
+
+"That's our horse," declared Old Bill, as Lauzanne passed. "He's all
+right, bet yer life; he's fit ter go all day. De geezer as trains him
+ain't no mug. Let's go up in de stand, where we can see de whole show;
+den we'll come down an' cash in. Say, pard, if dis goes through I'll
+blow you off to a bottle of de best; wine ain't none too good fer dis
+coop."
+
+Altogether it was as though Destiny had found pleasant domicile in the
+ancient clothing of Old Bill, and was using their unique wearer as a
+protective agent to ward off evil from both Mortimer and the girl. As
+they jogged toward the starting post Allis allowed Lauzanne to lag;
+she wished to avoid Redpath. But the Indian was a horse of uncertain
+temperament, and presently, with a foolish side rush, he cannoned fair
+into Lauzanne. In the melee Redpath looked full into Allis's eyes at
+short range. His face went white in an instant.
+
+"You!" he cried, pulling hard at his horse's mouth; "it's you, Miss--"
+He stopped suddenly. "God! I'm glad I know this," he jerked between set
+teeth, as he fought the Indian, who was nearly pulling him out of the
+saddle.
+
+"It's because he'll gallop for you, isn't it? You didn't think I was a
+wrong one--it wasn't because you couldn't trust me you took the mount
+away, was it?"
+
+The Indian, quieted by the sleepy Chestnut, was going steadier. "No;
+it's because Lauzanne won't give his running for anyone but me," the
+girl answered.
+
+The boy remained silent, thinking over why he was on the Indian. There
+was a moral obliquity about his present position; the new light of his
+discovery showed him this strongly. His feelings had been played upon by
+the owner of the Indian, at Langdon's instigation.
+
+He had been told that the Porters had not given him the mount on
+Lauzanne because they distrusted him. He had been put on the horse
+to make running for The Dutchman. There was nothing really patently
+dishonest about this arrangement, and Redpath's mind had been dulled to
+fine discrimination by the idea that he was falsely distrusted.
+
+Presently the boy spoke with sharp decision, in quick broken sentences,
+for they were nearing the Starter. "I'm in to make the running; this
+crock's got no license to win. Don't you bother about him--he'll come
+back to the others fast enough when he's done. When you want an opening
+to get through just come bang into me--I'll be next the rail; yell
+'Lauzanne,' an' I'll pull out. I'll give them blasted crooks something
+to stare at. Don't gallop your mount's head off chasing this sprinter;
+he'll be beat when we swing into the stretch. Don't go wide at the turn;
+you can have my place; I'll make it wide for something else though."
+
+They were at the post. Allis had not spoken; she had listened gratefully
+to Redpath's string of kindly directions. The presence of a friend
+in the race cheered her; the discovery she had dreaded had come as a
+blessing.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+Crane's words had started a train of thought in Langdon's mind. All at
+once he remembered that the face of Lauzanne's rider had a dream-like
+familiarity. He had not given it much thought before; but his owner's
+suggestion that the boy was like Alan Porter echoed in his ears. He had
+wondered where Dixon had got this new boy; why he was putting him up on
+Lauzanne instead of Redpath; it seemed a foolish thing to give the mount
+to an apprentice when a good jockey was to be had. Could it be that it
+really was Alan. The whole family were natural-born jockeys, father and
+son, even the girl, Allis.
+
+Langdon knew nothing of Alan Porter's movements--had not been interested
+enough to know. He had heard derogatory remarks about Redpath's
+riding of Lucretia in the Brooklyn Handicap; the Porters, no doubt
+dissatisfied--suspicious of the jockey--had put up Alan to insure an
+honest ride.
+
+Langdon had thought these thoughts as he passed swiftly from the paddock
+to the stand inclosure, where he stood not far from the rail, trying
+to get a good look at the lad on Lauzanne. Allis's persistently averted
+face thwarted this. The boy was inscribed on the jockey board "Al
+Mayne;" the permit to ride must be under that name. If it were really
+Alan Porter, why had he been called Mayne? But the boy had retained the
+name "Al"--that was a contraction of Alan, no doubt.
+
+While Langdon labored over the problem of Mayne's Identity he had
+watched the horses at the post through his glasses. The Dutchman was
+behaving well, his trifle of eagerness to break away was even better
+than Lauzanne's indolent indifference. The other five were acting as
+three-year-olds are wont to act--with erratic indecision; one minute
+violent desire, and the next obstinate reluctance characterizing their
+interminable twistings, backings, and plungings. It was not for long;
+a neck or a length at the start meant little when a mile and a half
+stretched its tiring length between them and the finish post.
+
+Langdon's perplexity was cut short by the cry, "They're off!" the jingle
+of a bell, and the scurrying of many feet, as eager men rushed for
+higher points of observation in the stand.
+
+As the seven horses came thundering by, pulling double in eager
+ignorance of the long journey that lay before them, Langdon saw with
+evil satisfaction that the Indian was well out in the lead.
+
+The Dutchman was sixth, and behind, with a short awkward strength in his
+gallop, loafed Lauzanne.
+
+There was smoothness in the stride of Hanover's big son, The Dutchman;
+and his trainer, as he watched him swing with strong grace around
+the first turn, mentally fingered the ten thousand dollars that would
+shortly be his.
+
+"That skate win!" he sneered, as Lauzanne followed; "he gallops like a
+fat pig. He can't live the pace--he can't live the pace," he repeated,
+and his voice was mellow with a cheerful exultation.
+
+His observations seemed eminently truthful; Allis's horse trailed
+farther and farther behind the others. Out in front galloped with
+unseeming haste the Indian--a brown blotch of swift-gliding color. Two
+lengths from his glinting heels raced four horses in a bunch--two bays,
+a gray, and a black; so close together that they formed a small mosaic
+of mottled hue against the drab-gray background of the course stables
+beyond. Then The Dutchman, with his powerful stride, full of easy
+motion--a tireless gallop that would surely land him the winner, Langdon
+thought, as he hung with breathless interest on every move of Westley's
+body.
+
+Up in the stand Old Bill was expressing in florid racetrack speech to
+Mortimer his deductions.
+
+"Days a good kid on Larcen. See what he's doin'; he's trailin' 'em.
+Dat's where our horse gits it; he's a stretch runner, he is. Dey'll have
+bellows to mend when he tackles 'em."
+
+To Mortimer it appeared very much as though the other horses were too
+fast for Lauzanne. "Isn't he losing?" he asked of his exuberant friend.
+
+"Losin' nut'in'! De kid ain't moved on him yet. De others is gallopin'
+der heads off; dey're chasm' de crazy skate in front. Dere's only two
+jocks in de race worth a damn--Bill Westley an' de kid on our horse.
+He knows he's got to beat Dutchy, an' he's lyin' handy by. When you see
+Dutchy move up Larcen'll come away, or I'm a goat."
+
+Mike Gaynor had taken his place on the little platform at the top of
+the steps leading to the stand. He was watching the race with intense
+interest. Would Lauzanne do his best for the girl--or would he sulk?
+He saw the terrific pace that the Indian had set the others. Would it
+discourage their horse. His judgment told him that this fast pace could
+not last, and that Lauzanne could gallop as he was going from end to
+end of the mile and a half; even faster if he so wished. Would his rider
+have the patient steadiness of nerve to wait for this fulfillment of the
+inevitable or would she become rattled and urge the horse. Mike set
+his teeth, and his nails were driven hard into his rough palms as he
+strained in sympathy with the girl's quietude.
+
+How long the Indian held on in his mad lead! Perhaps even he might upset
+all clever calculation and last long enough to win. Already the gray,
+White Moth, had drawn out from the bunch and was second; the other three
+were dropping back in straggling order to The Dutchman, who was still
+running as he had been, strong. That was at the mile. At the mile and an
+eighth, White Moth was at the Indian's heels; The Dutchman had moved up
+into third place, two lengths away; and Lauzanne had become merged in
+the three that were already beaten. At the mile and a quarter a half
+thrill of hope came to Mike, for Lauzanne was clear of the ruck, and
+surely gaining on the leaders. And still his rider was lying low on the
+withers, just a blue blur on the dark gold of the Chestnut.
+
+"Bot' t'umbs! but they're a pair," muttered the Irishman; "be me soul, I
+t'ink they'll win."
+
+At the bottom turn into the stretch Mike could see that White Moth and
+The Dutchman had closed up on the Indian, so that they swung around the
+corner as one horse.
+
+"Gad, she's shut off!" he muttered. It was a living wall, and through
+little chinks in its quivering face he could see specks of blue close up
+where raced Lauzanne.
+
+"Poor gurl!" he gasped, "they've got her in a pocket. Damn them b'ys.
+Why did she hug the rail--she's fair t'rowed away the last chance."
+
+Halfway up the steps stood Langdon, and his coarse, evil face took on a
+look of unholy joy as Lauzanne was blotted into oblivion by the horses
+in front.
+
+"Pocketed, by God! Clever Mister Dixon to put up a kid like that ag'in
+Westley an' the others," he sneered.
+
+Then a deafening roar went up from the stand. Somebody thrust a pair
+of broad shoulders in front of Mike's face; he leaned out far past the
+intruder, and saw the Indian sway drunkenly in his stride away from the
+rail, carrying White Moth and The Dutchman out; and into the opening he
+had left, glued to the rail, crept the chestnut form of Lauzanne.
+
+A wild yell of Irish joy escaped Mike; then he waited. Now it would be a
+race; but Lauzanne was trying, trying all by himself, for the rider was
+as still as death. Already the clamor of many voices was splitting the
+air; all over the stand it was, "The favorite wins! The Dutchman wins!"
+Even yet there was no beckoning call for Lauzanne; but Mike knew. He had
+said to Allis before she went out, "If ye ever get level wit' 'em in the
+straight, ye can win."
+
+And now Lauzanne's yellow head was even with the others; and soon it
+was in front. And then there were only two battling--Lauzanne and The
+Dutchman; and on the Bay, Westley was riding with whip and spur.
+
+"In a walk--in a walk, I tell you!" fairly screamed Old Bill, clutching
+at Mortimer's arm; "didn't I tell you? We're a tousand to de good. Look
+at him, look at him!" He had climbed halfway up Mortimer's strong back
+in his excitement. "Look at de kid! Never moved--in a walk, in a walk!
+Larcen all the way for a million!"
+
+His voice generally weak and tattered like his clothes; had risen to a
+shrill scream of exultation.
+
+It was past all doubt. Lauzanne, a length in front of The Dutchman, was
+opposite the stand; in two seconds they had flashed by the Judges' box,
+and Lauzanne had won.
+
+The wave of humanity that swept down the steps carried Mike in its front
+wash. He took his stand close to the Judges' box; there he would be
+handy for whatever might be needed. He saw Langdon with a face dark and
+lowering, full of an evil discontent, standing there too. Back the seven
+runners cantered. Lauzanne's rider saluted the judge with whip, and
+slipping from the horse stripped him of the saddle with deft fingers,
+and passed quickly into the scales. The weight was right. One after
+another the boys weighed.
+
+Watching, Mike saw Langdon pass up to the Stewards. There was a short
+consultation, the hush of something wrong, and a murmur of an objection.
+
+"What's the matter?" a voice questioned in Mike's ear. It was Alan
+Porter that had spoken.
+
+Mike pushed his way to the small gate, even through it, that led up to
+the Stewards' Stand. As he did so Langdon came back down the steps. One
+of the Stewards, following him with quick eyes, saw Mike and beckoned
+with a finger.
+
+"There's an objection to the rider of Lauzanne," said the official;
+"Trainer Langdon says Alan Porter rode the horse under a permit
+belonging to a boy named Mayne."
+
+"He's mistook, sir." answered Mike, respectfully; "there's Alan Porter
+standin' down there in the crowd. I'll sind him up, sir, an' ye can ask
+him yerself."
+
+Gaynor passed hurriedly down the steps, seized Porter by the arm, and
+whispered in his ear, "Tell the judge yer name--that a b'y named Mayne
+rode Lauzanne. Quick now."
+
+Then he stepped up to Langdon. The latter had seen Alan Porter go up
+the steps, and realized he had made a mistake. Mike drew him inside the
+little enclosure that surrounded the stand.
+
+"There's Alan Porter wit' the Stewards," Gaynor whispered close to the
+man's face; "an' ye'll withdraw the objection at once. If ye don't ye'll
+have to settle wit' the Stewards fer tryin' to bribe the b'y Mayne to
+pull Lauzanne. And Shandy has owned up that he was to get five hundred
+dollars fer dosin' Lucretia. Ye'll withdraw now, or get ruled off fer
+life; besides, p'isinin' a horse is jail business; an' I'll take me oath
+before God I can prove this, too. Now go an' withdraw quick. Ye're a
+damn blackguard."
+
+Mike had meant to restrict himself to diplomatic pressure, but his Irish
+was up like a flash, and he couldn't resist the final expression of
+wrath.
+
+A crowd of silent men had gathered about the box in a breathless wait.
+Fortunes depended upon the brief consultation that was being held
+between the Stewards.
+
+As Alan Porter came down Langdon went up the steps with nervous haste.
+"I've made a mistake, gentlemen," he said to the Stewards, "with your
+permission I'll withdraw the objection."
+
+"Yes, it's better that way," returned one of the Stewards; "the best
+horse won, and that's what racing's for. It would be a pity to spoil
+such a grand race on a technicality."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+After his first burst of aboriginal glee, ecstatically uncouth as it
+was, Old Bill's joy over the victory of Lauzanne took on a milder form
+of expression.
+
+"Let's line up fer a cash-in," he exclaimed to Mortimer, making a break
+down the steps to the lawn. On the ground he stopped, his mind working
+at fever heat, changing its methods quickly.
+
+"Let's wait till de kid's passed de scales; dere's no hurry. Dere won't
+be many drawin' down money over Larcen; he's an outsider."
+
+They were still waiting when the rumor of an objection floated like an
+impalpable shadow of evil through the enclosure. Old Bill's seamed face
+shed its mask of juvenile hilarity, and furrowed back into its normal
+condition of disgruntled bitterness. He had seen the slight mix-up when
+the Indian swerved in the straight. The objection must have to do with
+that, he thought. "What th' 'ell's th, difference," he said in fierce,
+imprecating anger; "de kid on Larcen didn't do no interferin', he jes
+come t'rough de openin' an' won-dey can't disqualify him."
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Mortimer; "what's wrong?"
+
+"De push's tryin' to steal de race; de favorite's beat, an' it's win,
+tie, or wrangle wit' 'em. If dey take de race away from Larcen we don't
+get de goods, see? Our t'ou's up de spout. Dere he goes, dere he goes;
+look at de knocker," as Langdon came down from the Stewards.
+
+Mortimer's heart sank. An exultation such as he had never experienced in
+his life had flushed his breast hot; the back of his scalp had tickled
+in a creepy way as Lauzanne flashed first past the winning post. He had
+felt pride in the horse, in the boy on his back, in himself at having
+overcome his scruples; he would be able to save Alan Porter from
+dishonor. His heart had warmed to the tattered outcast at his side,
+who had been the means to this glorious end. It had been all over,
+accomplished; now it was again thrust back into the scales, where it
+dangled as insecure as ever. It wasn't the money alone that teetered in
+the balance, but the honor of Allis Porter's brother.
+
+He gave a sharp cry of astonishment, for going up the steps in front of
+them was the boy himself, Alan. Presently he came down again, his face
+looking drawn and perplexed. In his ignorance of everything pertaining
+to racing Mortimer feared for an instant the theft of the thousand
+dollars had been discovered, and the present inquiry had something to do
+with that, else why was Alan mixed up in it.
+
+As the boy came through the little gate Mortimer accosted him. "Hello,
+Alan!" he exclaimed, very gently, "what's the trouble?"
+
+"Just a silly mistake," answered Porter, a weak laugh following his
+words; "Langdon has claimed that I rode Lauzanne."
+
+"Is dat it?" interposed Old Bill; "an' did you tell dem dey was wrong-de
+stiffs! Dere's cutt'roat Langdon up again; here he comes back, looking
+as tough he'd been fired fer splint--de crook! Hello! it's all right
+Hoo-ray! Lauzanne gits de race!" For already the cry of "All right!"
+was ringing through the betting ring. "Come on, pard," called Old Bill,
+eagerly, to Mortimer; "let's go an' rake down de dough."
+
+"In a minute," the other answered; and turning to Alan Porter, took
+him by the arm and led him to one side. "I suppose you lost over The
+Dutchman," he said.
+
+"Yes, I'm broke," answered the boy, with a plaintive smile.
+
+"Well, I've won."
+
+"You betting!" exclaimed Alan, in astonishment.
+
+"Yes--strange, isn't it? But I'm going to put that money of your
+father's back."
+
+The boy said nothing, and Mortimer fancied that his face flushed
+guiltily.
+
+"Yes, I can put it back now that Lauzanne's won," continued Mortimer;
+"but don't say a word to a soul about it, I don't want anybody to know I
+was betting."
+
+"But what money?" began Alan.
+
+"I've won a thousand dollars on Lauzanne--"
+
+"Come on, pard," said Old Bill, impatiently interrupting them, "let's
+get our rake off, an' den you kin buck to yer chum after."
+
+Mortimer yielded to the tattered one's command, for without his guidance
+he never would be able to find the man that held the money.
+
+"I'll be back in a little while," he said to young Porter; "don't go
+away."
+
+There was delay over the cashing in; being late, they found a line of
+Lauzanne men in front of them at the bookmaker's stand.
+
+When Mortimer returned to the lawn with eleven hundred dollars in his
+pocket Alan Porter had gone. He had dreaded that perhaps the boy might
+do something desperate, fearing discovery of the theft; he had thought
+even of taking Alan back to Brookfield with him; however, he had told
+him that the money would be replaced, the boy would understand that
+nothing could happen him and would go back, Mortimer felt sure. He spent
+a short time searching for Alan, but his former fruitless quest had
+shown him the hopelessness of trying to find a person in that immense
+throng. He thought kindly of the enveloping mob that had kept him hidden
+from Allis, as he thought. He had feared to meet her--something in his
+presence might cause her to suspect that something was wrong. The whole
+episode was like a fairy dream. It was a queer twist of Fate's web,
+his winning enough over Lauzanne--he, a man who had never betted in his
+life--to replace the money the brother had stolen.
+
+All at once it occurred to him that some reward was due the instigator
+of his success. The thousand he must keep intact. He had a few loose
+dollars in his pocket beyond his original hundred, quite sufficient
+to take him back to Brookfield. Taking the hundred from his pocket and
+turning to Old Bill, who was still with him, he said: "I'm going
+home, I've had enough horse racing for one day; you've done me a great
+kindness--will you take this hundred--I need the thousand badly, so
+can't spare more than this."
+
+"Not on yer life, pard. I give you de tip first, but you got de office
+straight from Irish, an' we're quits, see? I wasn't playin' you fer
+a sucker, an' yer straight goods. Jes' shove de boodle in yer breast
+pocket, an' don't show it to no one. Dere's some here as would take it
+off you quick enough."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Dere ain't no buts in dis game--it's a straight deal, an' we've split
+even. If you'd been a crook, well, God knows how we'd a-panned out. But
+you ain't no geezer of dat sort--yer square, an' Old Bill wishes you
+good luck till de robins nest again. Yer goin', eh? Say, pard, I'd
+a-been wearin' diamon's if I could quit when I was 'head of de game. Yer
+dead onto it. Here's my hand, Mr. Morton."
+
+"Mortimer--George Mortimer."
+
+"Well, shake, George. Where do you hang out?"
+
+"Brookfield."
+
+"My address is New York. Dat's as close a fit as I knows at present.
+If de run o' luck keeps up p'r'aps I'll write you from de Waldorf.
+Good-bye, of man."
+
+With a light heart Mortimer hastened from Gravesend, not waiting for
+the other races, and took his way to Brookfield. A genuine admiration of
+buffeted Old Bill filled his mind.
+
+In the morning he would be at the bank bright and early, and replace the
+stolen thousand dollars; nobody would know that it had been taken. The
+narrow escape that had come to Alan Porter might prove his salvation.
+Surely it would cure him of his desire to bet. Out of all this evil
+positive good would accrue.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+After winning on Lauzanne Allis had dodged the admiring crowd of paddock
+regulars that followed her. As Lauzanne was being blanketed she had
+kissed the horse's cheek and given him a mighty squeeze of thankfulness.
+How nobly he had done his part; good, dear old despised, misjudged
+Lauzanne. He had veritably saved her father from disaster; had saved her
+from--from many things.
+
+She had slipped into her long coat and stood waiting for Mike to drive
+her to Dixon's cottage when the rumor came of an objection. Then there
+had been the misery of terrible suspense, a wait of uncertainty. Was her
+sacrifice of womanly instinct to go for nothing? Dixon had hurried to
+the scene of investigation; then he had come back after a little with
+Mike, and the good news that they had been given the race. If it had not
+been for prying eyes she would have knelt there at Lauzanne's feet and
+offered up a prayer of thankfulness. She had done all a woman could do,
+almost more; Providence had not forsaken her and her stricken father.
+
+Then Mike had hurried her to the buggy just as Crane, leaving the beaten
+Dutchman and Langdon, had come, asking Dixon where Miss Porter was,
+that he might tender congratulations. He wanted to see the boy that had
+ridden Lauzanne, also--wanted to take his hand and tell him what a grand
+race he had ridden. But Dixon had been ready with excuses; the boy was
+dead beat after the race--he was only a kid--and had gone to Dixon's
+home. Miss Porter was perhaps in the stand, or perhaps she had gone home
+also. Crane knew of Langdon's objection. It was a silly thing, he said,
+due to overeagerness. He had taken no part in it, he assured Dixon. Alan
+Porter, too, came into the paddock, asking for his sister; but fared
+pretty much as Crane had. He would certainly find her at the cottage,
+Dixon assured him.
+
+That night Allis wired the joyful tidings to her father, and that she
+would be home in the morning.
+
+Dr. Rathbone's prophecy as to the proper medication for John Porter
+stood a chance of being fulfilled in one day. Allis's telegram proved
+that the doctor had understood the pathology of Porter's treatment, for
+he became as a cripple who had touched the garment of a magic healer.
+
+It was thus that Allis found him when she reached Ringwood. Oh, but she
+was glad; and small wonder. What she had done was as nothing; it shrank
+into insignificance under the glamourous light of the change that had
+come over the home. What a magic wand was deserved success; how it
+touched with fairy aspect all that drooped with the fearsome blight of
+anticipated decay! And even then they did not know the full extent of
+her endeavor. Mingled with her mother's gentle welcome, and her father's
+full-throated thanks, was praise for the, to him unknown, boy that had
+ridden Lauzanne so gallantly.
+
+The girl found tears of thankfulness glistening in her eyes as she
+listened to the praise that was wholly hers, though given in part to the
+jockey. They had not even heard his name--it had not mattered before;
+and now when her father asked for it, she answered that Mike called him
+Al something. Her father, generous in his salvation, was most solicitous
+as to a fitting present; a thousand dollars, or perhaps two, or even
+more, if Dixon advised so. What had he promised the lad? But there
+were so many things to talk over and settle, and laugh about, and
+congratulate each other upon. Good fortune was a generous dame. They
+were all like children in their happiness. \ "Yes, Alan had been there,"
+the girl answered to a question from her father. Also it was a strange
+happening, a distortion of fate that Crane had beaten them in the
+Brooklyn with Diablo, and now they had beaten his horse, The Dutchman,
+with Lauzanne the Despised. All was content after the turmoil of
+endeavor. And of the horses, Lauzanne, who would gallop for no one but
+Allis, would be brought back to Ringwood, to be petted and spoiled
+of his young mistress for the good he had done. Lucretia, when
+convalescent, would also come to the farm to rest and get strong.
+
+In the midst of it all Dr. Rathbone came in, and of course, man-like and
+doctor-like, with pretended pomposity, said: "I told you so. What did
+I say? Now Mrs. Porter, no more scolding over the ways of horses, a good
+horse is a delight, and a good daughter a joy forever."
+
+Dear old Dr. Rathbone, wise in his generation and big of heart!
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+At the bank down in the village--well, at nine o'clock Mortimer, feeling
+the virtue of early effort, with the money of redemption in his pocket,
+entered into the resumption of his duties. At the earliest moment after
+the vault was opened he made his way to the box that contained
+the Porter payment. One thing troubled him slightly. It was a
+thousand-dollar bill that had been taken; the money he had to replace
+was in hundreds and fifties. As he slipped them quietly into the box he
+thought it wouldn't really matter; he would transfer the three thousand
+to the account himself, and nobody would know of the change. Leaving the
+box where it was for a little, in the way of subtle strategy, he came
+out and busied himself over other matters.
+
+To Mortimer's slight astonishment, presently the cashier, Mr. Lane,
+came out from his office, and speaking somewhat carelessly, said: "Mr.
+Mortimer, you have that Porter note and money in charge. It is due
+today, isn't it?"
+
+Looking up, Mortimer saw Lane's eye fixed upon his face with piercing
+intensity. He flushed out of sheer nervousness.
+
+"Yes, sir," he stammered, "it is. I'll attend to it at once."
+
+"Ah!" there was a peculiar drawl in the cashier's voice as he spoke;
+"ah, I had a communication from Mr. Porter yesterday, asking if the note
+had been paid."
+
+Mortimer felt his knees shake-something was choking hire. Had the
+devil of mischance taken the salvation of Alan's good name out of his
+hands--had his work been for nothing.
+
+"I couldn't understand it," went on the cashier. His voice sounded like
+the clang of a fire bell to the listening man, though it was evenly
+modulated, cold and steady in its methodical precision. "I thought
+Porter knew the money was here to meet the note," said Lane, still
+speaking, "but my attention being called to the matter, I looked up the
+papers. I found one thousand dollars missing!" He was looking steadily
+at Mortimer; his eyes were searching the young man's very soul. There
+was accusation, denunciation, abhorrence in the cashier's gaze.
+
+Mortimer did not speak. He was trying to think. His brain worked in
+erratic futility. The slangy babble of Old Bill thrust itself upon him;
+the roar of the race course was in his ears, deadening his senses; not
+a sane, relevant word rose to his lips. He was like a child stricken by
+fear. In an indistinct way he felt the dishonor that was Alan Porter's
+being given to him. The cashier waited for Mortimer to say something;
+then he spoke again, with reproach in his voice.
+
+"I at once sent a messenger to ask you to return from your home at
+Emerson to clear up this matter; he discovered that you had not
+been there; that your mother was not ill. May I ask where you were
+yesterday?"
+
+"I was at Gravesend, sir--at the races," answered Mortimer, defiantly.
+
+This speech broke the lethargy that was over him; his mind cleared--he
+commenced to think sanely.
+
+"Can you tell me," proceeded Lane, "where the balance of Mr. Porter's
+three thousand dollars is?"
+
+"It's in the box."
+
+"That's a--it is not."
+
+"It's in the box," repeated Mortimer, firmly.
+
+"We can soon settle that point," declared the cashier, going hurriedly
+into the vault and reappearing instantly with the box in his hand.
+
+He opened it and stared at the package of bills that rose up when
+freed from the pressure of the lid. With nervous fingers he counted the
+contents.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he exclaimed in a quick, jerky way. "The three
+thousand dollars is here, but these bills have been put in the box this
+morning; they were not there last night. It is not the money that was
+taken away, either. That was one bill, a thousand-dollar note; and
+here are"--he counted them again--"six one hundreds and eight fifties,
+besides the original two of one thousand. You put those notes back, Mr.
+Mortimer," he said, tapping the desk with two fingers of the right hand.
+
+"I did."
+
+"And you took the money yesterday or the day before?"
+
+"I did not."
+
+"Ah!" Lane repeated in a drier, more severe tone than he had used
+before. This "Ah" of the cashier's, with its many gradations of tone,
+had been a most useful weapon in his innumerable financial battles. It
+could be made to mean anything--everything; flung out at haphazard it
+always caught his opponent off guard; it was a subtle thrust, and while
+one pondered over its possible meaning, Lane could formulate in his mind
+more decisive expressions.
+
+"Ah," he repeated, adding, "if you did not steal the money, who did? And
+if you did not take it, why did you put it back?"
+
+With an expressive sweep of the hand outward the cashier stood waiting,
+his tall, narrow head, topped by carefully brushed gray hair, thrust
+forward in the attitude of a parrot about to strike with its beak.
+
+"I can't answer those questions," answered the man he was grilling. "The
+money to pay Mr. Porter's note is here; and I fancy that is all the
+bank needs to concern itself about. It was entrusted to me, and now I am
+prepared to turn it over."
+
+"Quite true; ah, yes, quite true; but it might have been vastly
+different. That is the point that most concerns the bank. Whoever took
+the money"--and he bowed, deprecatingly, with ironical consideration
+to Mortimer--"must have needed a thousand dollars for--well, some
+speculative purpose, perhaps. Good fortune has enabled the some one to
+make good, and the money has been replaced."
+
+The cashier straightened up, threw his head back, and actually smiled.
+He had scored linguistically--by a clever manipulation of the sentence
+he had made the some one who had stolen the money the some one who who
+had replaced it. That was accusation by inference, if you like. As the
+other did not speak, Lane added: "I will wire for Mr. Crane to come at
+once; this is a matter for investigation."
+
+Mortimer bowed his head in acquiesence; what could he say--what other
+stand could the bank take?
+
+"You might remain at your desk," the cashier said, "if there is any
+mistake we'll discover it, no doubt."
+
+Mortimer felt like one dead, indeed as a dishonored man he were better
+dead. The bank was like a mausoleum, and he a lost spirit haunting
+its precincts in quest of the undefiled body that had been his but
+yesterday. Cass, the teller, certainly shunned him as he would a leper.
+Lane, vindictively pleased that he had unearthed the villain, drew his
+small soul into a shell of cold, studious politeness; much as a sea
+spider might house his unpleasant body in a discarded castle of pink and
+white.
+
+Alan Porter was late--he had not come yet. Mortimer waited in suffering
+suspense for his appearance. What would come of it all. Now that the
+money was replaced, if the boy admitted his guilt to Crane, probably no
+further action would be taken, but he would be dishonored in the sight
+of his employer. Mortimer had sought to avert this; had not denounced
+Alan in the first instance; by good fortune had been able to replace
+the money; even now had refused to divulge the name of the thief. He was
+well aware of the mass of circumstantial evidence, the outcome of his
+own hurried actions, that pointed to himself as the guilty one. Better
+this than that he should denounce the boy. Dishonor to the lad might
+kill his father; for Mortimer was well aware of the doctor's edict. And
+Allis, the girl he loved as his life, would hang her head in shame for
+evermore. He was anxious to see Alan before the cashier did; he did not
+want the boy to deny taking the money at first, as he might do if he
+were unaware of the circumstances; it would place him in a wrong light.
+
+Just before twelve Alan Porter came hurriedly in. He had missed his
+train the night before, he explained in a general way to all. Mortimer
+stepped up to him almost at once, speaking with low, earnest rapidity;
+the cashier was in his own office and Mr. Cass was not within earshot.
+
+"I put the money back, but its loss had been discovered yesterday. I
+have been accused of taking it, but have denied it, accusing no one. I
+want you to say that you borrowed it, thinking it no great harm, as it
+was your father's money."
+
+Alan would have interrupted him, but Mortimer said, "Wait till I
+finish;" and then continued: "There will be nothing done to you, I feel
+sure, if you will take this stand, because of your father's connection
+with Crane. It will save me from dishonor--"
+
+"Mr. Porter."
+
+It was the cashier's voice of Damascus steel cutting in on Mortimer's
+low, pleading tones.
+
+Alan turned his head, and Mr. Lane, beckoning, said, "Will you step into
+my office for a minute?"
+
+The cashier's one minute drew its weary length into thirty; and when
+Alan Porter came out again, Mortimer saw the boy sought to avoid him.
+Had he denied taking the money? My God! the full horror of Mortimer's
+hopeless position flashed upon him like the lurid light of a destroying
+forest fire. He could read in every line of the boy's face an accusation
+of himself. He had trembled when it was a question of Alan's dishonor;
+now that the ignominy was being thrust upon him, the bravery that he
+possessed in great part made him a hero. If through his endeavor to
+save the boy he was to shoulder the guilt, not of his own volition, but
+without hope of escape, he would stand to it like a man. What would it
+profit him to denounce the boy.
+
+Harking back with rapidity over his actions, and Alan's, he saw that
+everything implicated him. Once he thought of his mother and wavered;
+but she would believe him if he said he had not committed this dreadful
+crime. But all the world of Brookfield would despise the name of her
+son if it were thought that he had sought to testify falsely against his
+friend. And was not Alan the brother of Allis?
+
+Mentally his argument, his analysis of the proper course to pursue was
+tortuous, not definable, or to be explained in concise phraseology; but
+the one thought that rose paramount over all others was, that he must
+take his iniquitous punishment like a man. He had fought so strongly
+to shield the brother of the girl he loved that the cause in all its
+degradation had accrued to him.
+
+At one o'clock the president, Crane, arrived from New York, and in him
+was bitterness because of his yesterday's defeat. He had sat nearly the
+whole night through mentally submerged in the double happening that had
+swept many men from the chess board. Lauzanne, the despised, had kept
+from his hand a small fortune, even when his fingers seemed tightening
+on the coin, too. That was one happening. John Porter had gained over
+twenty thousand dollars. This made him quite independent of Crane's
+financial bolstering. The Banker's diplomacy of love had been weakened.
+That was the other happening.
+
+Crane was closeted with the cashier not more than ten minutes when
+Mortimer was asked to join the two men who had so suddenly become deeply
+interested in his affairs.
+
+The cashier's hand had been strengthened by Crane's contribution of
+evidence. Mortimer had told the same falsehood about his mother being
+ill to him at the race course. From Alan the cashier had learned that
+Mortimer had been betting heavily; he had admitted to the boy that he
+had won enough to replace the thousand dollars he had stolen. Mortimer's
+words had been contorted into that reading in their journey through
+two personalities. He had even begged young Porter not to speak of
+his betting transactions. He had denied taking the money--that was but
+natural; he had been forced to admit replacing it--that was conclusive.
+Indeed it seemed a waste of time to investigate further; it was utterly
+impossible to doubt his guilt. Mesh by mesh, like an enthralling net,
+all the different threads of convicting circumstances were drawn about
+the accused man.
+
+"Let us question him?" said Crane; and in his heart was not sorrow,
+nor hate, nor compassion, nor anything but just joy. Greater than the
+influence of money in his love ambition would be this degradation, this
+reducing to a felon a man he felt stood between him and Allis Porter.
+
+Yesterday they had won; to-day victory, almost, to him had come. Yes,
+bring the deliverer in; he would feast his eyes, the narrow-lidded
+eyes, upon the man whose young love might have conquered over all his
+diplomacy, and who would go forth from his hands branded as a felon.
+
+The probing of the already condemned man elicited nothing beyond a
+repeated denial of theft. With the precision of Mam'selle Guillotine,
+Cashier Lane lopped off everything that could possibly stand in
+Mortimer's defense, grafting into the cleaved places individual facts
+which confirmed his guilt. Mortimer contended nothing, threw suspicion
+upon no one. Was it Alan Porter? Was it Cass?--but that was impossible.
+Was it the cashier himself? Still more impossible. Mortimer answered
+nothing. He had not taken the money. Yes, he had replaced it--because he
+was responsible for its custody.
+
+"Can't you see," cried Crane, impatiently, "that this simple denial
+of yours is of no value as against so much that points to your--" he
+hesitated--"your implication?"
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+While Mortimer was still in the cashier's improvised inquisition room,
+Allis Porter came into the bank to arrange the payment of her father's
+note.
+
+The sunshine seemed to come with her into the counting house that was
+all gloom. Her glorious success, the consequent improvement in her
+father, the power to pay off his indebtedness--all these had turned that
+day into a day of thankfulness. The happiness that was in her rippled
+her face into smiles. When the door creaked on its hinges as it swung
+open, she laughed. It was a thriftless old door, such as bachelors kept,
+she murmured. Her brother's face, gloomy behind the iron screen, tickled
+her fancy. "You're like a caged bear, Alan," she cried, with a smile of
+impertinence; "I should hate to be shut up a day like this--no wonder
+you're cross, brother."
+
+"I'm busy," he answered, curtly. "I'll see you after bank hours, Sis; I
+want to see you."
+
+"I've come to pay father's note, busy-man-of-importance," she flung
+back, with the swagger of a capitalist.
+
+"It's paid, Allis."
+
+"Paid! I thought--"
+
+"Wait, I'll come out;" and opening a door in the rail, he passed around
+to the girl.
+
+"Father's note is paid," he resumed, "but there's fierce trouble over
+it. Crane left the money, three thousand dollars, with Mortimer, and he
+stole"--the boy's voice lowered to a hoarse whisper--"a thousand of it
+to bet at Gravesend."
+
+"That's not true, Alan; God knows it's not true. Mortimer wouldn't
+steal."
+
+"Yes, he did," persisted the brother, "and he begged of me to take the
+blame. He said it would ruin him, but that Crane wouldn't do anything to
+me. He's a vile, sneaking thief, Allis!"
+
+"Hush, Alan; don't say that. It's all some dreadful mistake. The money
+will be found somewhere."
+
+"It has been found; Mortimer put it back. Why should he replace the
+money if he had not stolen it?"
+
+"Where is Mr. Mortimer, Alan?"
+
+The boy pointed with his thumb to the door of the cashier's office.
+"Crane's in there, too. I hope Mortimer owns up. He can't do anything
+else; they caught him putting the money back."
+
+Allis remembered that she had seen Mortimer on the race course.
+
+"Mr. Mortimer doesn't bet," she said.
+
+"Yes, he does; he did yesterday, anyway; and when he saw that I knew
+about it, he begged me to say nothing--practically admitted that he had
+taken the money, and was going to put it back."
+
+"Why should he tell you that, Alan?"
+
+"I don't know, unless he feared it might be found out while he was away;
+or, perhaps he was so excited over winning a thousand dollars that he
+didn't know what he was saying. At any rate, he took it right enough,
+Allis, and you ought to cut him."
+
+"I shan't do that. He's innocent, I know he is--I don't care what they
+say. If he replaced the money, it was to shield the man who took it."
+She was looking searchingly into her brother's eyes--not that she was
+accusing him of the theft, she was just searching for the truth.
+
+"Do you mean it was to shield me--that I took it? No one could have
+taken the money except Mortimer or myself."
+
+"I don't know," answered the girl, wearily; "it's all so terribly new; I
+only know that Mortimer did not steal it."
+
+While she was still speaking, the accused man came from the cashier's
+office, holding his head as erect as an Indian, not at all as a
+half-convicted felon should have slunk through the door; yet withal in
+his face was a look of troubled gravity.
+
+When Mortimer saw Allis his face flushed, then went pale in an instant.
+He felt that she knew; he had seen her talking earnestly to her brother.
+Probably she, too, would think him a thief. He admitted to himself that
+the evidence was sufficient to destroy anyone's faith in his innocence,
+and he was helpless, quite helpless; he was limited to simple denial,
+unless he accused her brother; even had he been so disposed, there was
+nothing to back up a denunciation of the boy. He felt a twinge of pain
+over Alan's ingratitude; the latter must know that he had put his neck
+in a noose to save him. Now that one of them needs be dishonored, why
+did not Alan prove himself a man, a Porter--they were a hero breed--and
+accept the gage of equity. Even worse, Alan was shielding himself behind
+this terrible bulwark of circumstantial evidence which topped him, the
+innocent one, on every side.
+
+As he resumed his place at his desk close to the brother and sister,
+Alan looked defiantly at him. He could see in the boy's eyes malignant
+detestation, a glimmer of triumph, as though he felt that Mortimer
+was irrevocably in the toils. The lad was like a strippling Judas; his
+attitude filled Mortimer with loathing. He stole a look into the girl's
+face. Would she, too, say with her, eyes, "Behold, here is Barabbas!"
+
+A thrill of ecstatic comfort warmed his being. In Allis's eyes was the
+first touch of kindness he had known in this hour of trial; faith, and
+sorrow, and cheer, and love were all there, striving for mastery;
+no furtive weakening, no uncertain questioning, no remonstrance of
+reproval--nothing but just unlimited faith and love. If the boy's look
+had angered him, had caused him to waver, had made the self-sacrifice
+seem too great when repaid with ingratitude, all these thoughts vanished
+in an instant, obliterated by that one look of unalterable love. In the
+hour of darkness the girl stood by him, and he would also stand firm.
+She would believe in him, and his sacrifice would be as nothing. He had
+undertaken to avert the sorrow of dishonor from her, from her brother,
+from her parents, and he would continue to the end. He would tell no
+one on earth but his mother the full truth; she must know. Then with the
+faith of the two women he loved, still his, he could brave the judgment
+of all others. Perhaps not willingly in the first place would he have
+taken upon himself the brand of Barrabas, but out of good motive he had
+incurred it.
+
+Mortimer heard the brother say, "I think you had better not," then the
+girl's voice, clear and decisive, answering, "I will, I must."
+
+In anger Alan left his sister's side, and she, stepping up to the
+wicket, said, "Will you please come out for a minute, Mr. Mortimer, I
+want to speak with you."
+
+He passed around to her side. Crane and the cashier were still closeted
+in the latter's office.
+
+"Let us go out into the sunshine," Allis said. "Can you--will it make
+any difference?"
+
+"I don't think it matters much," he answered, despondently; "things are
+as bad as they can be, I suppose."
+
+He took it for granted that she knew everything; but he was possessed of
+no shame, no diffidence, no reserve; he was innocent, and her eyes had
+assured him that she knew it. As they passed through the door it
+creaked again on its dry hinges. Before she had laughed at the weird
+complaining; now it sounded like a moan of misery. Outside the village
+street was deserted; there was no one to listen.
+
+"What is this dreadful thing all about?" and she laid her hand on his
+arm in a gesture of amity, of association. Her touch thrilled him; she
+had never gone that length in friendly demonstration before. He marveled
+at her generous faith. All but dishonored, the small, strong hand lifted
+him to a pedestal-her eyes deified him.
+
+"A thousand dollars was stolen from the bank, and I am accused of taking
+it," he answered, bitterly.
+
+"You didn't, did you? I know you didn't, but I want to hear you say so."
+
+He looked full into the girl's eye, and answered with deliberate
+earnestness, "I did not steal the money."
+
+"Some one took it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you know who it was?"
+
+"I do not."
+
+"But you suspect some one?"
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"Did you put the money back?"
+
+He nodded his head.
+
+"To protect somebody's good name?"
+
+"Because it had been in my charge. I can't talk about it," he broke in,
+vehemently; "all I can say is, that I am innocent. If you believe that
+I don't care what they do. They'll be able to prove by circumstantial
+evidence that I took it," he added, bitterly, "and nothing that I can
+say will make any difference. My mother won't believe me guilty, and,
+thank God, you don't; and I am not; God knows I am not. Beyond that
+I will say nothing; it is useless--worse than useless; it would be
+criminal--would only cast suspicion on others, perhaps innocent. I
+don't know what they'll do about it; the money has been repaid. They may
+arrest me as a felon--at any rate I shall be forced to leave the bank
+and go away. It won't make much difference.--I am as I was before, an
+honest man, and I shall find other openings. It's not half so hard as I
+thought it would be; I feared perhaps that you--"
+
+She stopped him with an imploring gesture.
+
+"Let me finish," he said. "I must go back to the office. I thought that
+you might believe me a thief, and that would have been too much."
+
+"You cared for my poor opinion?" she asked. The quiver in her voice
+caused him to look into her face; he saw the gray eyes shrouded in
+tears. He was a queer thief, trembling with joy because of his sin.
+
+"Yes, I care," he answered; "and it seemed all so dark before you
+brought the sunlight in with you; now I'm glad that they've accused me;
+somebody else might have suffered and had no one to believe in him. But
+I must go back to--my prison it seems like now--when I leave you;" this
+with a weary attempt at brave mockery.
+
+Allis laid a detaining hand on his arm, the small gloved hand that
+had guided Lauzanne to victory. "If anything happens, if you are going
+away--I think you are right to go if they distrust you--you will see me
+before you leave, won't you?"
+
+"Will you care to see me if I stand branded as a thief?" The word came
+very hard, but in his acridity he felt like not sparing himself; he
+wanted to get accustomed to the full obloquy.
+
+"Promise me to come to Ringwood before going away," she answered.
+
+"Yes, I will; and I thank you. No matter how dark the shadow may make my
+life your kindness will be a hope light. No man is utterly lost when a
+good woman believes in him."
+
+The creaking bank door wailed tremulously, irritably; somebody was
+pushing it open from the inside. With a whine of remonstrance it swung
+wider, and Crane stepped out on the sidewalk. He stared in astonishment
+at Mortimer and Allis, his brow wrinkled in anger. Only for an instant;
+the forehead smoothed back into its normal placidity and his voice,
+well in hand, said, in even tones: "Good afternoon, Miss Porter. Are you
+going back to Ringwood?" and he nodded toward Allis's buggy.
+
+"Yes, I am. I'm going now. Good day, Mr. Mortimer," and she held out her
+hand.
+
+Mortimer hesitated, and then, flushing, took the gloved fingers in his
+own. Without speaking, he turned and passed into the bank.
+
+"May I go with you?" asked Crane; "I want to see your father."
+
+"Yes, I shall be glad to drive you over," the girl answered.
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+When they had passed the edge of the village the Banker said: "I doubt
+if you would have shaken hands with Mr. Mortimer if you knew--I mean,
+he is under strong suspicion, more than strong suspicion, for he is
+practically self-accused of having stolen a sum of money from the bank.
+In fact, I'm not sure that it wasn't from your father he really stole
+it."
+
+"I do know of this terrible thing," she answered. "I shook hands with
+him because I believe him innocent."
+
+"You know more than we do?" It was not a sneer; if so, too delicately
+veiled for detection; the words were uttered in a tone of hopeful
+inquiry.
+
+"Mr. Mortimer could not steal--it is impossible."
+
+"Have you sufficient grounds for your faith--do you happen to know who
+took the money, for it was stolen?"
+
+The girl did not answer at once. At first her stand had simply been one
+of implicit faith in the man she had conjured into a hero of all that
+was good and noble. She had not cast about for extenuating evidence; she
+had not asked herself who the guilty man was; her faith told her it
+was morally impossible for Mortimer to become a thief. Now Crane's
+questions, more material than the first deadening effects of Alan's
+accusation, started her mind on a train of thought dealing with motive
+possibilities.
+
+She knitted her small brows, and tapping the jogging horse's quarter
+with the whip sat for many minutes silently absorbed.
+
+Her companion waited for an answer with his usual well-bred patience.
+Perhaps the girl had not heard him. Perhaps she did not wish to answer a
+question so unanswerable. He waited.
+
+Mortimer, being innocent, replaced the stolen money, Allis's mind
+tabulated--she tickled this thought off on the horse with her whip--it
+was to shield some one. Her heart told her, his eyes had told her, that
+he would have taken upon himself this great risk but for one person,
+her brother. Yes, Mortimer was a hero! The horse, lazily going, jumped
+a little in the traces; she had struck him a harder tap with the whip.
+Allis continued her mental summing up. Why did Mortimer go to Gravesend?
+It must have been to see Alan--the boy was there. If he had discovered
+that the money was missing, and thought Alan had taken it, he would
+do this; if he had suspected some other person he would have made the
+matter known to the cashier. He did not replace the money at once,
+because he hadn't it. She knew that Mortimer was poor. He had failed to
+find Alan until after Lauzanne's victory; her brother had told her this
+much, and that Mortimer had won a lot of money over the horse. Why he
+had bet on Lauzanne she knew not; perhaps Providence had guided, had
+helped him that much. But surely that was the money, his winnings, with
+which he had replaced the thousand dollars.
+
+The girl's mind had worked methodically, following sequence of action
+to sequence, until finally the conviction that Mortimer had sought to
+shield her brother, and chance or Providence working through herself
+and Lauzanne had placed in his hands the necessary funds, came to her as
+fixedly as though the whole past panorama of events lay pictured before
+her eyes.
+
+She saw all this mentally; but would it avail anything in actuality? If
+the boy disclaimed guilt, as he had; if Mortimer limited his defense to
+a simple denial, refusing to implicate her brother, what could she do
+except give her moral support? To her it seemed such a small reward for
+his heroism; her faith would not save him from the brand of felony, and
+to follow out her convictions publicly she must denounce her brother,
+cast upon him the odium of theft. Truly her position was one of extreme
+hopelessness. Two men she loved stood before her mentally, one accused
+of others as a thief, and one--her own brother--charged by her reason
+with the crime.
+
+Under the continued silence Crane grew restless; the girl, almost
+oblivious of his presence, deep in the intricacies of the crime, gave no
+sign of a desire to pursue the discussion.
+
+"Of course I am anxious to clear the young man if he is innocent,"
+hazarded the banker, to draw her gently back into the influence that he
+felt must be of profit to himself. This assertion of Crane's was only
+assimilatively truthful. As president of the bank, naturally he should
+wish to punish none other than the guilty man; as a rival to Mortimer
+for the girl's affection, he could not but be pleased to see the younger
+man removed from his path, and in a way which would forever preclude his
+aspiring to Allis's hand. Believe in Mortimer as she might, he felt sure
+that she would not run counter to the inevitable wishes of her mother
+and marry a man who stood publicly branded as a thief.
+
+Allis answered his observation--he distinctly felt the vibration of pain
+in her voice--with a startling depth of analytical discernment:--
+
+"While I believe in Mortimer's innocence, and will always believe in
+it, I am afraid that he has drawn such a web of circumstantial evidence
+about him, trying to shield some one else, that--that--it is too
+terrible!" she broke off, passionately--"he is innocent. For God's sake,
+Mr. Crane"--she took the reins in her whip hand, and put her left on his
+arm, pleadingly--"for God's sake, for his mother's sake, save him. You
+can do it--you can believe that he is innocent, and stop everything. The
+money has been paid back."
+
+"It isn't that, Miss Allis"--his voice was so cuttingly even after
+the erratic pump of her own--"in a bank one must not have a dishonest
+person. We must investigate to the end, and if Mortimer can clear
+himself by fastening the crime upon the perpetrator--"
+
+"He will never do that; he cannot if he would."
+
+"What can I do then, Miss Allis? But why shouldn't he?"
+
+"Can't you see--don't you understand the man? He commenced by shielding
+some one, and he will carry it through to the bitter end."
+
+"I am afraid there was no one to shield but himself--everything points
+to this conclusion. The money was locked up, he had the keys, no one
+touched them--except your brother, and that but for a minute--but if
+any suspicion could attach to your brother it is all dissipated by
+Mortimer's subsequent actions. It's unpleasant to even hint at such a
+contingency, but if Mortimer is innocent, then your brother must be the
+guilty one."
+
+He expected the girl to denounce indignantly such a possibility; he was
+surprised that she remained silent. Her non-refutation of this deduction
+told him as conclusively as though she had uttered the accusation that
+she thought Alan had taken the money and Mortimer was shielding him. It
+was but a phase of blind love; it was the faith women place in men they
+love, of which he had read and scoffed at.
+
+Against all evidence she was holding this man honest, believing her
+brother the thief.
+
+Surely a love like that was worth winning; no price was too great to
+pay. Her very faith in Mortimer, through which she sought to save him
+by inspiring Crane, determined the latter to crush utterly the man who
+stood between him and this great love. Intensity of hate, or love, or
+cupidity, never drew Crane out of his inherent diplomacy; he took refuge
+behind the brother of Allis.
+
+"You see," he said, and his voice was modulated with kindness, "I can't
+save Mortimer except at the expense of Alan; you would not have me
+do that. Besides, it is impossible--the evidence shines as clear as
+noonday."
+
+"If you bring this home to Mr. Mortimer you will punish him, arrest
+him?"
+
+"That would be the usual course."
+
+She had taken her hand off his arm; now she replaced it, and he could
+feel the strong fingers press as though she would hold him to her
+wishes.
+
+"You will not do this," she said, "for my sake you will not."
+
+"You ask this of me, and it is for your sake?"
+
+"Yes, if there is no other way; if Mr. Mortimer, innocent, must take
+upon himself this crime, then for my sake you will not punish him."
+
+The gray eyes were violet-black in their intensity.
+
+"If I promise--" He had been going to ask for reward, but she broke in,
+saying: "You will keep your word, and I will bless you."
+
+"Nothing more--is that all?"
+
+The magnetism of the intense eyes broke down his reserve; he slipped
+back twenty years in a second. Love touched him with a fire-wand, and
+his soul ignited. Cold, passionless Philip Crane spoke in a tongue,
+unfamiliar as it was to him, that carried conviction to the girl--just
+the conviction that he was in earnest, that he was possessed of a
+humanizing love. She listened patiently while he pleaded his cause with
+much mastery. It was beyond her understanding, that, though Mortimer
+through all time had spoken not at all of love to her--at least not in
+the passionate words that came from this man's lips--yet she now
+heard as though it were his voice and not Crane's. Love was a glorious
+thing--with Mortimer.
+
+Crane's intensity availed nothing. When he asked why she held faith to a
+man who must be known for all time as a thief, her soul answered, "It is
+nothing--because he is innocent."
+
+Because of her Crane would do anything; the matter should be dropped as
+though it were all a hideous mistake. Mortimer might remain in the bank;
+his employer would even try to believe him innocent, taking the girl's
+protestation m conclusive proof. Her mother, her father, everyone
+would demand of her, however, that she give the dishonest one up as a
+possibility. Even in his vehemence he lost no delicacy of touch. Why
+should she chain herself to an impossibility? It would but ruin the man
+she professed to regard.
+
+The banker made no threat, but Allis shuddered. She knew. The
+narrow-lidded eyes had closed perceptibly when their owner talked of the
+alternative. He, Crane, loved her--she felt that was true. He was rich;
+for her father, for her brother, for herself, even for Mortimer, he
+would use his wealth. He pleaded his cause like a strong man, and when
+he spoke of failure because of her preference for Mortimer, an acridity
+crept into his voice that meant relentless prosecution.
+
+She could not hold this full power over Crane without feeling its value.
+To pledge herself to him as wife was impossible; she could not do it;
+she would not. Fate played into his hands without doubt, but Fate was
+not Providence. A decree of this sort, iniquitous, was not a higher
+command, else she would not feel utter abhorrence of the alliance.
+Paradoxically the more vehemently Crane's love obtruded itself the more
+obnoxious it became; it was something quite distinct from the man's own
+personality. She did not detest him individually, for the honesty of
+his love impressed her; mentally she separated Crane from his affection,
+anal while rejecting his love absolutely as a compelling factor,
+appealed to him as a man having regard for her, a woman he believed in.
+
+It was a most delicate cleavage, yet unerringly she attained to its
+utmost point of discrimination. Perhaps it was the strength of her
+love for Mortimer that enabled her to view so calmly this passionate
+declaration. A year before, unsophisticated as she had been, it would
+have thrown her into an agitated confusion, but she was developing
+rapidly; responsibility had tempered fine the great will power which was
+hers in such a marked degree.
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Crane," she began, conventionally enough, "I am, sorry;
+I couldn't marry a man without loving him. What you have just told me
+must win regard for you, because I know that you feel strongly, and I
+think any woman should take an offer of honest love as the greatest of
+all compliments."
+
+"But I don't even ask for your love now," he interrupted.
+
+"Ah, but you should. You shouldn't marry a woman unless she loves you.
+At any rate I feel that way about it. Of course, if there were a chance
+of my coming to care for you in that way we could wait, but it would be
+deceiving you to give hope."
+
+"Is it because you care for--Mortimer?" he asked.
+
+"I think it is. I suppose if I am to help him I must be quite honest
+with you. I do not want to talk about it--it seems too sacred. I have
+even spoken less to Mr. Mortimer of love," she added, with a painful
+attempt at a smile. "You have said that you care for me, Mr. Crane, and
+I believe you; you have been generous to my father, also. Now won't you
+promise me something, just for the sake of this regard? I suppose it
+is impossible to prove Mr. Mortimer's innocence"--she felt her own
+helplessness, and who else could or would care to accomplish it "but it
+is in your power to lessen the evil. Won't you take my word that he
+is innocent and stop everything? As you say, either he or Alan must be
+suspected, and if it were brought home to my brother it would crush me,
+and my mother and father."
+
+"What can I do?--"
+
+"Just nothing. I know Mr. Mortimer has determined to accept the
+disgrace, and he will go away. You can make his load as light as
+possible, for my sake."
+
+The small hand on his arm was drawing him to acquiesence. He did not
+answer at once, but sat moodily diagnosing his position. If he refused
+and prosecuted Mortimer, the girl, more determined than many men, would
+change from a state of possibility, from simply not loving him, to a
+vigorous hate. If he hushed the matter up Mortimer would go away under a
+cloud, and his removal from the presence of Allis might effect a change
+in her regard. He would accelerate this wished-for elision of love by
+procuring absolutely indisputable proof of Mortimer's dishonesty. He saw
+his opening to that end; he could do it under the guise of clearing the
+innocent one of the suspected two; for Allis alone this would be. To
+him there was not the slightest ground for supposing Alan had taken the
+money, but blinded by her love, evidently Allis thought Mortimer was
+shielding her brother. Though it was to Crane's best interests, he
+pretended to consent out of pure chivalry. "What you ask," he said, "is
+very little; I would do a thousand times more for you. There is nothing
+you could ask of me that would not give me more pleasure than anything
+else in my barren life. But I could not bear to see you wedded to
+Mortimer; he is not worthy--you are too good for him. I don't say this
+because he is more fortunate, but I love you and want to see you happy."
+
+The girl was like a slim poplar. The strong wind of Crane's clever
+pleading and seeming generosity swayed her from her rigid attitude only
+to spring back again, to stand straight and beautiful, true to her love
+and faith in Mortimer.
+
+"You are kind to me," she said, simply; "I wish I could repay you."
+
+"Perhaps some day I may get a reward out of all proportion to this small
+service."
+
+She looked fair into his eyes, and on her lips hovered a weak,
+plaintive, wistful smile, as though she were wishing he could accept the
+inevitable and take her regard, her gratitude, her good opinion of him
+and not wed himself to a chimera which would bring only weariness of
+spirit in return for his goodness.
+
+"You will be repaid some day," she answered, "for I feel that Mr.
+Mortimer's name will be cleared, and you will be glad that you acted
+generously."
+
+"Well, this will give him a better chance," he said, evasively; "it's
+not good to crush a man when he's down. I will see that no one connected
+with the bank shows him the slightest disrespect. Of course he'll have
+to go, he couldn't remain under the circumstances--he wouldn't."
+
+The horse had jogged slowly. Allis had purposely allowed the old Bay to
+take his time. Unused to such a tolerance he had scandalously abused the
+privilege; once or twice he had even cast longing glances at a succulent
+bunch of grass growing by the roadside, as though it were a pure waste
+of opportunity to neglect the delicacy for work when he had to do with
+such indifferent overseers. But now Ringwood was in sight, and there was
+still the matter of the money that had been paid on her father's note to
+speak of. She asked Crane where it had come from.
+
+"You won it over Diablo in the Brooklyn Handicap," he answered, bluntly.
+
+"You won it," she corrected him; "I refused to accept it."
+
+"I remember that eccentricity," he replied. "I'm a busy man, and
+having the money thrown back on my hands, as it was not mine, caused me
+considerable inconvenience. I deposited three thousand of it against the
+note to save both your father and myself needless worry. There are still
+some hundreds due you, and I wish you would please tell me what I am to
+do with it."
+
+"I'd rather pay you back the three thousand now."
+
+"I can't accept it. I have enough money of my own to worry along on."
+
+"Well, I wash my hands of the whole affair. When father gets stronger he
+must settle it."
+
+They had turned into the drive to Ringwood House.
+
+"We are home now," she added, "and I want to say again that I'll never
+forget your kind promise. I know you will not repent of your goodness."
+
+Mrs. Porter saw Allis and Crane together in the buggy; it pleased the
+good woman vastly. Allis's success with Lauzanne had taken a load from
+her spirits. She was not mercenary, but there had been so much at stake.
+Now in one day Providence had averted disaster, and she had awakened
+from a terrible nightmare of debt. The sunshine of success had warmed
+her husband's being into hopeful activity, a brightness was over his
+spirits that had not been there for months. It was like an augury of
+completed desire that Crane should come the day of their good fortune
+with Allis. If she would but marry him there would be little left to
+worry about. So it was that Crane, perplexed by his recent love check,
+and Allis, mired in gloom over her hero's misfortune, stepped into a
+radiancy of exotic cheerfulness.
+
+The girl bravely sought to shake off her gloom, chiding her heavy
+heart for its unfilial lack of response. Crane, accustomed to mental
+athletics, tutored his mind into a seeming exuberance, and playfully
+alluded to his own defeat at the hands of Allis and the erratic
+Lausanne. There was no word of the bank episode, nothing but a paean of
+victory.
+
+Crane's statement to Allis that he was going out to Ringwood to see
+her father was only an excuse. He soon took his departure, a stableboy
+driving him back to the village. There he had a talk with the cashier.
+Mortimer was to be asked to resign his position as soon as his place in
+the bank could be filled. No further prosecution was to be taken against
+him unless Crane decided upon such a course, "In the meantime you can
+investigate cautiously," he said, "and keep quite to yourself any new
+evidence that may turn up. So far as Mr. Mortimer is concerned, the
+matter is quite closed."
+
+The cashier had always considered his employer a hard man, and, in
+truth, who hadn't? He could scarcely understand this leniency; he had
+expected a vigorous prosecution of Mortimer; had almost dreaded its
+severity. Personally he had no taste for it; still, he would feel
+insecure if the suspected man, undeniably guilty, were to remain
+permanently in the bank. His dismissal from the staff was a wise move,
+tempered by unexpected clemency. If there were not something behind
+it all--this contingency always attached itself to Crane's acts--his
+employer had acted with fine, wise discrimination.
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+Crane returned to New York, his mind working smoothly to the hum of the
+busy wheels beneath his coach.
+
+This degrading humiliation of his rival must certainly be turned to
+account. With Allis Porter still believing in Mortimer's innocence the
+gain to him was very little; he must bring the crime absolutely home to
+the accused man, but in a manner not savoring of persecution, else
+the girl's present friendly regard would be turned into abhorrence. In
+addition to this motive he felt an inclination to probe the matter
+to its utmost depths. It was not his nature to leave anything
+to conjecture; in all his transactions each link in the chain of
+preparation for execution was welded whole. He felt that it would be
+but a matter of manipulation to environ Mortimer completely with the
+elements of his folly. He firmly believed him guilty; Allis, misled by
+her infatuation, mentally attributed the peculation to her brother.
+
+The Banker would go quietly to work and settle this point beyond
+dispute. He might have hesitated, leaving well enough alone, had he been
+possessed of any doubts as to the ultimate results of his investigation,
+but he wasn't. He reasoned that Mortimer had taken the thousand-dollar
+note thinking to win three or four thousand at least over his horse, The
+Dutchman, and then replace the abstracted money. Crane was aware that
+Alan Porter had told Mortimer of The Dutchman's almost certain prospect
+of winning; in fact, the boy had suggested that Mortimer had taken it
+for this purpose. Mortimer would not have changed the note; would have
+taken it straight to the race course. He must have lost it to some
+bookmaker over The Dutchman. Crane knew the number of the stolen note.
+The three one-thousand-dollar bills were new, running in consecutive
+numbers, B 67,482-83-84; he had noticed that quite by chance at the
+time; it was the middle one, B 67,483, that was missing. So he had a
+possible means of identifying the man who had taken the money. Mentally
+he followed Mortimer during the day at Gravesend. From Alan he knew of
+his winnings over Lauzanne.
+
+Crane reasoned that Mortimer, having risked the thousand on his horse,
+had been told that Lauzanne might win. This had perhaps frightened him,
+and being unfamiliar with the folly of such a course had backed two
+horses in the same race--had put a hundred on Lauzanne at ten to one to
+cover his risk on The Dutchman, feeling this made him more secure. He
+would either win a considerable stake or have sufficient in hand to
+cover up his defalcation. The first thing to do was to find the note if
+possible. Faust would be the man for this commission.
+
+Immediately upon his arrival in New York, Crane telephoned for Faust,
+asking him to bring his betting sheet for the second last day of the
+Brooklyn Meet. When Faust arrived at Crane's quarters the latter said,
+"I want to trace a thousand-dollar note, number B 67,483. I think it was
+betted on the Brooklyn Derby, probably on my horse."
+
+Faust consulted his betting sheet, Crane looking over his shoulder. "I
+didn't have no thousand in one bet on that race," he said.
+
+"What are those flgures," asked the other, pointing to two consecutive
+numbers of one thousand each.
+
+"That was the other way about," answered the Bookmaker; "that was pay.
+A thousand to one hundred twice over Lauzanne. I think it must have been
+stable money, for one of the guys was like a big kid; he didn't know
+'nough to pick a winner in a thousand years."
+
+The coincidence of this amount with the win attributed to Mortimer,
+appealed to Crane's fancy. "You remember the man who made this bet,
+then?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sure thing. There was two of 'em, as you see. I remember him
+because it took some explainin' to get the bet through his noddle. He
+was a soft mark for a bunco steerer. I've seen some fresh kids playin'
+the horses, but he had 'em all beat to a standstill. It must abeen
+first-time luck with him, for he cashed."
+
+"Can you describe him?"
+
+The Cherub drew an ornate verbal picture, florid in its descriptive
+phraseology, but cognate enough to convince Crane it was Mortimer who
+had made one of the bets. His preconceived plan of the suspected man's
+operations was working out.
+
+"Now find this thousand-dollar note for me," he said; "take trouble over
+it; get help if necessary; go to every bookmaker that was in line that
+day. If you find the note, exchange other money for it and bring it to
+me."
+
+"There may be a chance," commented Faust, scratching his fat poll
+meditatively; "the fellows like to keep these big bills, they're
+easier in the pocket than a whole bundle of flimsies. The next day was
+getaway-day, an' they wouldn't be payin' out much. I'll make a play fer
+it."
+
+The next afternoon Faust reported at Crane's rooms with the rescued
+note in his possession. He had been successful. "I give a dozen of 'em a
+turn," he said, "before I run again' Jimmie Farrell. He had it snuggled
+away next his chest among a lot of yellow-backs, good Dutchman money."
+
+"Does he know who bet it?"
+
+"Not his name--some stranger; he'd know him if he saw him, he says."
+
+Crane grasped this new idea with avidity, the scent was indeed getting
+hot. Why not take Farrell down to Brookfield to identify Mortimer. He
+had expected the searching for evidence would be a tedious matter; his
+fortunate star was guiding him straight and with rapidity to the goal he
+sought.
+
+"I'm much obliged to you," he said to Faust. "I won't trouble you
+further; I'll see Farrell myself. Give me his address."
+
+That evening the Banker saw Farrell. "There was a little crooked work
+over that thousand Faust got from you," he said, "an' if you could find
+time to go with me for an hour's run into the country, I think you could
+identify the guilty party."
+
+"I can go with you," Farrell answered, "but it's just a chance in a
+thousand. I should be on the block down at Sheepshead, but, to tell you
+the truth, the hot pace the backers set me at Brooklyn knocked me out a
+bit. I'm goin' to take a breather for a few days an' lay again' 'em next
+week. Yes, I'll go with you, Mr. Crane."
+
+In the morning the two journeyed to Brookfield.
+
+"I won't go to the bank with you," Crane said; "I wish you would go in
+alone. You may make any excuse you like, or none at all. Just see if the
+man you got this note from is behind the rail. I'll wait at the hotel."
+
+In fifteen minutes he was rejoined by Farrell.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+"He's there, right enough."
+
+"A short dark little chap?" questioned Crane, hesitatingly, putting Alan
+Porter forward as a feeler.
+
+"No. A tall fellow with a mustache."
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"Dead sure, unless he's got a double, or a twin brother."
+
+Crane felt that at last he had got indisputable proof; evidence that
+would satisfy even Allis Porter. He experienced little exhilaration over
+the discovery--he had been so sure before--yet his hand was strengthened
+vastly. Whatever might be the result of his suit with Allis, this must
+convince her that Mortimer was guilty, and unworthy of her love. There
+was also satisfaction in the thought that it quite cleared Alan of his
+sister's suspicion.
+
+How he would use this confirmation Crane hardly knew; it would come up
+in its own proper place at the right time, no doubt.
+
+"We can go back now," he said to Farrell; "we may as well walk leisurely
+to the station; we can get a train"--he pulled out his watch--"in twenty
+minutes."
+
+Crane had made up his mind not to show himself at the bank that day. He
+wished to bold his discovery quite close within himself--plan his
+course of action with habitual caution. It meant no increased aggression
+against Mortimer's liberty; it was of value only in his pursuit of Allis
+Porter.
+
+As they walked slowly toward the station Crane met abruptly the girl
+who was just then so much in his thoughts. Her sudden appearance quite
+startled him, though it was quite accidental. She had gone in to do some
+shopping, she explained, after Crane's greeting.
+
+Farrell continued on when his companion stopped. A sudden determination
+to tell the girl what he had unearthed took quick possession of Crane.
+His fine sense of reasoning told him that though she professed positive
+faith in Mortimer, she must have moments of wavering; it seemed only
+human. Perhaps his presiding deity had put this new weapon in his hands
+to turn the battle. He began by assuring her that he had prosecuted the
+inquiry simply through a desire to establish the innocence of either
+Mortimer or her brother, or, if possible, both.
+
+"You understand," he said, quite simply, "that Alan is like a brother--"
+he was going to say "son," but it struck him as being unadvisable,
+it aged him. He related how he had traced the stolen note, how he had
+discovered it, how he had brought the bookmaker down, and how, without
+guidance from him, Farrell had gone into the bank and identified
+Mortimer as the man who had betted the money.
+
+"It clears Alan," he said, seeking furtively for a look into the
+drooping face.
+
+The bright sun struck a sparkle of light from something that shot
+downward and splashed in the dust. The girl was crying.
+
+"I'm sorry," he offered as atonement. "Perhaps I shouldn't have told
+you; it's too brutal."
+
+The head drooped still lower.
+
+"I shouldn't have spoken had it not been for your brother's sake. I
+didn't mean to. It was chance drew you across my path just now. Though
+it is cruel, it is better that you should know. No man has a right to
+deceive you, you are too good. It is this very constancy and goodness
+that has taught me to love you."
+
+"Don't," she pleaded; "I can't bear it just now. Please don't talk of
+love, don't talk of anything. Can't you see--can't you understand?"
+
+"Yes, I know--you are suffering, but it is unjust; you are not fair to
+yourself. If this man would steal money, what difference would your
+love make to him? He would be as unfaithful to you as he has been to his
+trust in the bank. You must consider yourself--you must give him up; you
+can't link your young, beautiful life to a man who is only saved from
+the penitentiary because of your influence."
+
+"Don't talk that way, Mr. Crane, please don't. I know you think that
+what you say is right, but what difference does it all make to me? You
+know what love is like, you say it has come to you now. My heart tells
+me that Mortimer is guiltless. The time has been so short that he has
+had no chance to clear himself. If I didn't believe in him I wouldn't
+love him; but I still love him, and so I believe in him. I can't help
+it--I don't want to help it; I simply go on having faith in him, and my
+love doesn't falter. Can't you understand what a terrible thing it would
+be even if I were to consent to become your wife? I know it would please
+my mother. But if afterward this other man was found to be innocent,
+wouldn't your life be embittered--wouldn't it be terrible for you to be
+tied to a woman who loved another man?"
+
+"But it is impossible that he is innocent, or will ever be thought so."
+
+"And I know that he is innocent."
+
+"Your judgment must tell you that this is only fancy."
+
+"My heart tells me that he is not guilty of this crime. My heart is
+still true to him; so, shall I decide against myself? Don't--don't stab
+me to death with words of Mortimer's guilt; it has no effect, and only
+gives me pain. I must wait--we must all wait, just wait. There is no
+harm in waiting, the truth will come out at last. But you will keep your
+promise?" she said, lifting her eyes to his face.
+
+"Yes, I meant no harm to Mortimer in searching for this evidence; it was
+only to clear your brother."
+
+They had come to the station by now.
+
+"Would you like to speak to Mr. Farrell?" Crane asked. "You are taking
+my word."
+
+"No, it is useless. I can do nothing but wait; that I can and will do."
+
+"Don't think me cruel," Crane said, "but the wait will be so long."
+
+"It may be forever, but I will wait. And I thank you again for your--for
+your goodness to me. I'm sorry that I've given you trouble. If you
+can--if you can--make it easier for Mortimer--I know he'll feel it
+if you could make him think that you didn't altogether believe him
+as--dishonest--will you, for my sake?"
+
+It was generally supposed that Crane's heart had been mislaid at his
+inception and the void filled with a piece of chiseled marble; for years
+he was a convert to this belief himself; but as he stood on the platform
+of the primitive little station and looked into the soft luminous gray
+eyes, swimming moist in the hard-restrained tears of the pleading girl,
+he became a child. What a wondrous thing love was! Mountains were as
+mole-hills before such faith. In the unlimited power of her magnetism,
+what a trifle she had asked of him! With an influence so great she had
+simply said, "Spare of censure this man for my sake." In thankfulness
+rather than in condescension he promised.
+
+Even in disgrace--a felon--how Mortimer was to be envied! Above all else
+was such abiding love. In his, Crane's, victory was the bitterness of
+defeat; the other, beaten down, triumphed in the gain of this priceless
+love.
+
+A sharp material whistle, screeching through its brass dome on the
+incoming train, cut short these fantastically chaotic thoughts.
+
+"Good-bye, and thank you," said the girl, holding out her hand to Crane.
+
+"Good-bye," he repeated, mechanically.
+
+What had he accomplished? He had beaten lower his rival and wedded
+firmer to the beaten man the love he prized above all else. In his ears
+rang the girl's words, "Wait, wait, wait." Irresponsibly he repeated to
+himself, "All things come to them that wait."
+
+Seated in the car swift whirled toward the city, he was almost surprised
+to find Farrell by his side. He was like a man in a dream. A vision
+of gray eyes, blurred in tears of regret, had obliterated all that was
+material. In defeat his adversary had the victory. He, Philip Crane, the
+man of calculation, was but a creature of emotion. Bah! At forty if a
+man chooses to assume the role of Orlando he does it to perfection.
+
+With an effort he swept away the cobweb of dreams and sat
+upright--Philip Crane, the careful planner.
+
+"You nearly missed the train," said Farrell.
+
+"Did I?" questioned Crane, perplexedly. "I thought I got on in plenty of
+time."
+
+Farrell smiled knowingly, as befitted a man of his occupation--a
+New Yorker, up to snuff. The veiled insinuation disgusted Crane.
+Was everything in the world vile? He had left a young life swimming
+hopelessly in the breakers of disaster, buoyed only by faith and love;
+and at his side sat a man who winked complacently, and beamed upon him
+with senile admiration because of his supposed gallantry.
+
+Perhaps a year before this moral angularity would not have affected
+him; it would not have appealed to him as being either clever or
+objectionable; he would simply not have noticed it at all. But Allis
+Porter had originated a revolution in his manner of thought. He even
+fought against the softer awakening; it was like destroying the lifelong
+habits of a man. His callousness had been a shield that had saved him
+troublous misgivings; behind this shield, even in rapacity, he had
+experienced peace of mind, absence of remorse. If he could have put
+away from him his love for the girl he would have done so willingly. Why
+should he battle and strive for an unattainable something as intangible
+as a dream? It was so paradoxical that Allis's love for Mortimer seemed
+hopeless because of the latter's defeat, while his, Crane's love, was
+equally hopeless in his hour of victory.
+
+Farrell's voice drew him from this psychological muddle in tones that
+sounded harsh as the cawing of homing ravens at eventime.
+
+"Will it be a court case?" he queried.
+
+"What?" asked Crane, from his tangled elysium.
+
+"That high roller in the bank."
+
+"Oh! I can't say yet what it will lead to." Crane's caution always
+asserted itself first.
+
+"Well, I've been thinking it over. That's the guy, right enough, but
+when it comes to swearing to a man's identity in court, it's just a bit
+ticklish."
+
+Crane frowned. He disliked men who hedged. He always planned first,
+then plunged; evidently his companion had plunged first, and was now
+verifying his plans.
+
+Farrell continued, "You see what I mean?"
+
+"I don't," answered Crane, shortly.
+
+"You will if you wait," advised Farrell, a tinge of asperity in his
+tone. "I'm makin' a book, say. All the blazin' idiots in Christendom is
+climbin' over me wantin' to know what I'll lay this and what I'll lay
+that. They're like a lot of blasted mosquitos. A rounder comes up an'
+makes a bet; if it's small p'r'aps I don't twig his mug at all, just
+grabs the dough an' calls his number. He may be Rockefeller, or a tough
+from the Bowery, it don't make no difference to me; all I want is his
+goods an' his number, see? But a bettor of the right sort slips in an'
+taps me for odds to a thousand. Nat'rally I'm interested, because he
+parts with the thousand as though it was his heart's blood. I size him
+up. There ain't no time fer the writin' down of earmarks, though most
+like I could point him out in a crowd, an' say, 'That's the rooster.'
+But sposin' a judge stood up another man that looked pretty much like
+him, an' asked me to swear one of the guys into ten years in Sing Sing,
+pr'aps I'd weaken. Mistaken identity is like grabbin' up two kings an' a
+jack, an' playin' 'em fer threes."
+
+"Which means, if I understand it, that you're guessing at the man--that
+I've given you all this trouble for nothing."
+
+Crane wished that Farrell had kept his doubts to himself; the case had
+been made strong by his first decision, and now the devil of uncertainty
+would destroy the value of identification.
+
+"Not by a jugful!" ejaculated Farrell. "I'm just tellin' you this to
+show you that we've got to make it complete--we've got to get collateral
+to back up my pickin'."
+
+"You mean some one else to identify him also?"
+
+"No, not just that; but that's not a bad thought. My clerk, Ned Hagen,
+must have noticed him too. I mean that the bettor's badge number will be
+in line with that bet, an' you can probably find out the number of the
+badge this rooster wore."
+
+An inspiration came with Farrell's words--came to Crane. Why had he
+not thought of that before? Still it didn't matter. The badge number,
+Mortimer's number, would be in Faust's book where had been entered the
+hundred dollars Mortimer put on Lauzanne. He could compare this with the
+number in Farrell's book; no doubt they would agree; then, indeed,
+the chain would be completed to the last link. No man on earth could
+question that evidence.
+
+"It's a good idea, Farrell," he said.
+
+"Bet yer life, it's clear Pinkerton. You'd better come round to my place
+to-morrow about ten, an' we'll look it up."
+
+"I will," Crane answered.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII.
+
+
+The old bay horse that crawled back to Ringwood with Allis Porter after
+her interview with Crane must have thought that the millennium for
+driving horses had surely come. Even the ambition to urge the patriarch
+beyond his complacent, irritating dog trot was crushed out of her by the
+terrible new evidence the banker had brought in testimony against her
+lover.
+
+"I didn't need this," the girl moaned to herself. In her intensity of
+grief her thoughts became audible in expressed words. "Oh, God!" she
+pleaded to the fields that lay in the silent rapture of summer content,
+"strengthen me against all this falseness. You didn't do it, George--you
+couldn't--you couldn't! And Alan! my poor, weak brother; why can't you
+have courage and clear your friend?"
+
+Her heart rose in angry rebellion against her brother, against Crane,
+against Providence, even against the man she loved. Why should he
+sacrifice both their lives, become an outcast himself to shield a boy,
+who in a moment of weakness had committed an act which might surely be
+forgiven if he would but admit his mistake? yes, it might even be called
+a mistake. The punishment accepted in heroic silence by Mortimer was
+out of all proportion to the wrong-doing. It meant the utter ruin of two
+lives. Firmly as she believed in his innocence, a conviction was forced
+upon her that unless Alan stood forth and boldly proclaimed the truth
+the accumulated guilt--proof would cloud Mortimer's name, perhaps until
+his death. Even after that his memory might linger as that of a thief.
+
+The evening before Alan had been at Ringwood and Allis had made a final
+endeavor to get him to clear the other's name by confessing the truth
+to Crane. On her knees she had pleaded with her brother. The boy had
+fiercely disclaimed all complicity, protested his own innocence with
+vehemence, and denounced Mortimer as worse than a thief in having
+poisoned her mind against him.
+
+In anger Alan had disclosed Mortimer's treachery--as he called it--and
+crime to their mother. Small wonder that Allis's hour of trial was a
+dark one. The courage that had enabled her to carry Lauzanne to victory
+was now tried a thousandfold more severely. It seemed all that was left
+her, just her courage and faith; they had stood out successfully against
+all denunciation of Lauzanne, and, with God's help, they would hold her
+true to the man she loved.
+
+Even the pace of a snail lands him somewhere finally, and the unassailed
+Bay, with a premonition of supper hovering obscurely in his lazy mind,
+at last consented to arrive at Ringwood.
+
+Allis crept to her father like a fearsome child avoiding goblins.
+Providentially he had not been initiated into the moral crusade against
+the iniquitous Mortimer, so the girl clung to him as a drowning person
+might to a plank of salvation. She longed to tell him everything--of her
+love for Mortimer, perhaps he had guessed it, for he spoke brave words
+often of the sturdy young man who had saved her from Diablo. Perhaps she
+would tell him if she felt her spirit giving way--it was cruel to stand
+quite alone--and beseech him, as he had faith in her, to believe in her
+lover.
+
+Allis went to the tea table by her father's side, fearing to get beyond
+his hearing; she dreaded her mother's questioning eyes. What could be
+said in the accused man's defense, or in her own? Nothing; she could
+only wait.
+
+A square old-fashioned wooden clock on the mantelpiece of the sitting
+room had just droned off seven mellow hours, when the faint echo of its
+music was drowned by the crunch of gravel; there was the quick step of
+somebody coming up the drive; then the wooden steps gave hollow notice.
+The visitor's advent was announced again by the brass knocker on the
+front door.
+
+"I'll go," said Allis, as her mother rose. The girl knew who it was
+that knocked, not because of any sane reason; she simply knew it was
+Mortimer.
+
+When she opened the door he stepped back hesitatingly. Was he not a
+criminal--was he not about to leave his position because of theft?
+
+"Come in," she said, quietly; "I am glad you have come."
+
+"Shall I? I just want to speak to you for a minute. I said I would come.
+But I can't see anybody--just you, alone."
+
+"I understand," she answered. "Come inside."
+
+"I am going away," he began; "I can't stand it here."
+
+"You have done nothing--nothing to clear yourself?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"And you won't?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Is this wise?"
+
+"It is the inevitable."
+
+They were silent for a little; they were both standing. The girl broke
+the stillness.
+
+"I am glad you have come, because I can tell you again that I know you
+are innocent. I know it, because my heart repeats it a thousand times a
+day. I listen to the small voice and I hear nothing else."
+
+"You never waver--you never doubt?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"You never will?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then I care not. Other men have had misfortune thrust upon them and
+have borne it without complaint, have had less to solace them than you
+have given me now, and I should be a coward if I faltered. Some day
+perhaps, you will know that I am worthy of your faith: God grant that
+the knowledge brings you no fresh misery--there, forgive me, I have said
+too much; I am even now a coward. If you will say good-bye I'll go."
+
+"Good-bye, my hero." She raised her eyes, blurred with tears, and
+held out her hand gropingly, as one searches in the dark, for the room
+whirled like a storm cloud, and just faintly she could see the man's
+strong face coming to her out of the gloom like the face of a god. He
+took her hand. "Good-bye," his voice vibrated brokenly; "if--if Justice
+wills that my innocence be known some day, may I come back? Will you
+wait, believing in me for a little?"
+
+"Forever."
+
+He drew her to him by the hand he still clasped, and put his strong arms
+about her. What mattered it now that he had been falsely accused--what
+mattered it to either of them that he must accept the grim penalty of
+his endeavor? With them in the soft gloom was nothing but love, and
+faith, and innocence; and within the strong arms a sense of absolute
+security, as though the false accusing world had been baffled, beaten
+down, and the victory theirs--love.
+
+He raised the girl's face and kissed her. "Let God witness that I press
+your brave lips in innocence," he said; "and in this pledge I love you
+forever and ever."
+
+"Amen," came from Allis involuntarily; it sounded to them both like the
+benediction of a high priest.
+
+"Amen,--" he responded. To speak again would have been sacrilege.
+
+He put her from him gently, turned away and walked quickly from the
+house.
+
+The girl sat for a long time a gray shadow in the gathering darkness.
+He was gone from her. It seemed as though she had scarce spoken the
+encouragement she wished to give him. It had been a meeting almost
+without words; but she felt strangely satisfied. The accusing revelation
+that had come from Crane in the afternoon had been a crushing blow. It
+was a mistake, of course; it wasn't true--somehow it wasn't true, but
+still it had stunned. Now in the gloaming she sat with an angel of
+peace; big, steadfast, honest eyes, full of thankfulness, looked
+lovingly at her from where he had stood. If she could sit there forever,
+with the echo of his deep "Amen" to their love lingering in her ears,
+she would ask no further gift of the gods.
+
+Mortimer, as with swinging stride he hurried toward the village, let his
+mind flit back to the room of gray shadows. How little he had said!
+Had there been aught spoken at all? The strong arms still tingled with
+tender warmth where the impress of an angel had set them thrilling
+ecstatically. Yes, what mattered their speech? There had been little
+of the future--no promise to send word of his well-being--but let the
+future look to itself. In the present he was king of a love realm that
+was greater than all the world.
+
+Field after field flitted by, studded here and there by square, gray
+specters of ghost-like houses that blinked at him with red dragon eyes.
+Sub-consciously he knew the eyes were searching out the secret that made
+him in all his misery of misfortune so happy. And he would answer to the
+eyes, dragon or human, without fear and without shame--because he was
+innocent--that it was love, the greatest thing in all the world, the
+love and faith sublime of a good, true woman. Woman had he said?--an
+angel!
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+As Farrell had suggested, Crane sought him at the office the next day at
+ten o'clock.
+
+Farrell and his clerk were busy planning an enterprising campaign
+against men who had faith in fast horses for the coming week at
+Sheepshead Bay.
+
+"Ah!" the Bookmaker exclaimed when Crane entered, "you want that
+badge number. Hagen, get the betting sheet for the second last day at
+Gravesend, and look up a bet of one thousand dollars we roped in over
+Mr. Crane's horse. I want the number to locate the man that parted--I
+wish there'd been more like him."
+
+"Do you mean Billy Cass?" queried the clerk.
+
+"Who the devil's Billy Cass?"
+
+"Why the stiff that played The Dutchman for a thou'."
+
+"You know him?" This query from Farrell.
+
+"I should say! He's a reg'lar. Used to bet in Mullen's book last year
+when I penciled for him."
+
+The clerk brought the betting sheet and ran his finger down a long row
+of figures.
+
+"That's the bet. A thousand calls three on The Dutchman. His badge
+number was 11,785. Yes, that's the bet; I remember Billy Cass takin' it.
+You see," he continued, explanatory of his vivid memory, "he's gen'rally
+a piker--plays a long shot--an' his limit's twenty dollars; so, when he
+comes next a favorite that day with a cool thou' it give me stoppage
+of the heart. Damn'd if I didn't get cold feet. Bet yer life it wasn't
+Billy's money--not a plunk of it; he had worked an angel, an' was
+playin' the farmer's stuff for him."
+
+"Are you sure, Mr. Hagen--did you know the man?" Crane asked.
+
+"Know him? All the way--tall, slim, blue eyes, light mustache, hand like
+a woman."
+
+"That's the man," affirmed Farrell; "that's the man--I saw him yesterday
+in your place."
+
+Crane stared. For once in his life the confusion of an unexpected event
+momentarily unsettled him.
+
+"I thought you identified--which man in the bank did you mean?"
+
+"I saw three: a short, dark, hairless kid"--Alan Porter, mentally ticked
+off Crane; "a tall, dark, heavy-shouldered chap, that, judged by his
+mug, would have made a fair record with the gloves--"
+
+"Was not that the man you identified as having made the bet?"
+interrupted Crane, taking a step forward in his intense eagerness.
+
+"Not on your life; it was the slippery-looking cove with fishy eyes."
+
+"Cass," muttered Crane to himself; "but that's impossible--he never left
+the bank that day; there's some devilish queer mistake here." Farrell
+had identified David Cass in the bank as the man who had bet with him,
+while the clerk asserted that one "Billy" Cass had made the same wager.
+Hagen's description of "Billy" Cass fitted David Cass in a general way.
+Again the badge number--11,785--was not Mortimer's, as registered in
+Faust's book.
+
+Crane stood pondering over the complication. He saw that until further
+investigation disproved it there could be but one solution of this
+intricate riddle. Billy Cass, the maker of the bet, was a race track
+frequenter; David Cass was not. They must be separate personalities;
+but they resembled each other; they were of the same name--they might be
+brothers. Billy Cass had been in possession of the stolen note; he must
+have got it from some one having access to it in the bank--Mortimer,
+Alan Porter, or Cass--the cashier was quite out of the question.
+
+The next move was to trace back through Billy Cass the man who had
+delivered to him the stolen money. There was still a chance that
+Mortimer, unfamiliar with betting and possibly knowing of Billy Cass
+through his brother in the bank--if they were brothers--had used this
+practical racing man as a commission agent. This seemed a plausible
+deduction. It was practically impossible that David Cass could have
+got possession of the bill, for it was locked in a compartment of which
+Mortimer had the key; the latter had admitted that the keys were not out
+of his possession.
+
+This far in his hurried mental retrospect Crane spoke to Farrell: "I
+think this is all we can do at present. I may find it necessary to ask
+you to identify this Cass, but I hope not to trouble you any further in
+the matter."
+
+"Hang the trouble!" energetically responded Farrell, with huge
+disclaiming of obligation; "I'll spend time and money to down a crook
+any day; I've no use for 'em; a few of that kidney gives the racin' game
+a black eye. If you need me or Hagen, just squeak, an' we'll hop onto
+the chap if he's a wrong one with both feet."
+
+Crane said nothing about the other number he had culled from Faust's
+book; he said nothing about his suspicions of a brotherhood; he wanted
+to go back to his quarters and think this new problem out.
+
+What if in seeking for conclusive evidence against Mortimer he should
+prove him innocent? He was treading upon dangerous ground, pushing out
+of his path with a firebrand a fuse closely attached to a mine that
+might explode and shatter the carefully constructed fabric.
+
+Sitting in his own chamber he once more went over the whole
+extraordinary entanglement. Mistaken as it was, Farrell's identification
+at Brookfield must have strongly affected the mind of Allis Porter. At
+the time Crane had played an honest part in recounting it to the girl.
+He had firmly believed that Farrell, owing to his ambiguous report, had
+meant Mortimer; in fact, Cass had not entered his mind at all. Even yet
+Mortimer might be the guilty man--probably was. Why should he, Crane,
+pursue this investigation that might turn, boomerang-like, and act
+disastrously. Mortimer was either a thief or a hero; there could be no
+question about that. As a hero, in this case, he was pretty much of a
+fool in Crane's eyes; but Allis Porter would not look upon it in that
+light--she would deify him. Crane would commit diplomatic suicide in
+developing Mortimer's innocence. Again he asked himself why he should
+proceed. Mortimer was guilty in the strong, convicting light of the
+apparent evidence; better let it rest that happy way--happy for Crane.
+But still would he rest satisfied himself? He was not accustomed to
+doing things by halves. If Cass had stolen the money it would never
+do to retain him in a position of trust. Then the devil of subtle
+diplomacy, familiar at all times to Crane, whispered in his ear that he
+need not blazen to the world the result of his further investigation; he
+might satisfy himself, and then if Mortimer were found still deeper in
+the toils it might be spoken of; but if he were found innocent--well,
+was Crane his brother's keeper? He could adopt one of two plans to get
+at the truth; he could trace out Billy Cass and extort from him the name
+of his principal; but if startled, the latter might refuse to
+divulge anything. Police pressure meant publicity. There was a better
+plan--Crane always found a better plan in everything. If David Cass had
+stolen the money he must have sent it to his brother; if that fact were
+established it would show a connection between the two.
+
+That afternoon Crane took a train to Brookfield. A visit to the village
+post office disclosed a hidden jewel. As far as Crane was concerned the
+fate of the two men was held in the hollow of the postmaster's hand.
+The latter, with little hesitation, allowed him to delve into official
+secrets.
+
+He learned that David Cass had sent a letter, with a quick-delivery
+stamp on it, to William Cass, at A B C, East Fourteenth Street, New
+York, at 3:30 p.m., on June 12. So far as guilt or innocence was
+concerned there was nothing left to discover; the connection between
+these two men was demonstrated. Farrell's misidentification established
+another truth--they were brothers. The letter, hastening to its
+destination, had contained the stolen money. Mortimer would not give it
+to Cass to send away; even if he had done so he would not then have gone
+to Gravesend. Alan Porter had also gone to Gravesend; if he had stolen
+the money he would have taken it with him.
+
+David Cass, the unsuspected, was the thief. Mortimer, condemned,
+having restored the money--having taken upon himself with almost silent
+resignation the disgrace--was innocent. And all this knowledge was in
+Crane's possession alone, to use as he wished. The fate of his rival was
+given into his hands; and if he turned down his thumb, so, better for
+Mortimer that he had been torn of wild beasts in a Roman arena than to
+be cast, good name and all, to the wolves of righteous humanity.
+
+As a dog carries home a bone too large for immediate consumption, Crane
+took back this new finding to his den of solitude in New York. At eight
+o'clock he turned the key in his door, and arm in arm with his now
+constant companion walked fitfully up and down, up and down, the floor.
+Sometimes he sat in a big chair that beckoned to him to rest; sometimes
+he raced with swift speed; once he threw himself upon his bed, and lay
+staring wide-eyed at the ceiling for hours. What mockery--hours! on the
+mantelpiece the clock told him that he had ceased his strides for a bare
+five minutes.
+
+Then he thrust himself back into a chair, and across the table opposite
+sat Wrong, huge--grinning with a devilish temptation; not gold, but a
+perfume of lilacs, and the music of soft laughter like the tinkle of
+silver bells, the bejeweled light of sweet eyes that were gray, and all
+the temptation that Wrong held in itself was the possession of Allis
+Porter.
+
+And Crane need commit no crime, unless inaction were a crime--just leave
+things as they were. In the eyes of the world Mortimer was a thief; he
+would never claim Allis so branded.
+
+Crane with a word could clear the accused man; he could go to David Cass
+and force him to confess. But why should he do it--sacrifice all he held
+dear in life? Everything that he had valued before became obliterated
+by the blindness of his love for the girl. Yet still the love seemed to
+soften him. Into his life had come new, strange emotions. The sensuous
+odor of stephanotis, that had not repelled in the old life, had come to
+suggest a pestilence in his nostrils, made clean by the purity of lilac.
+As he swayed in contention, the face of Wrong fronting him became the
+face of Sin--repellent, abhorrent; how could he ruin her life, and by a
+criminal act?
+
+Hour by hour the struggle went on, until, exhausted, Crane flung himself
+upon his bed to rest a few minutes, and sleep, unsought, came and hushed
+the turmoil of his heart.
+
+Without decision he had cast himself down; his mind, tortured in its
+perplexity, was unequal to the task of guiding him. So wearied he should
+have slept for hours, but, as the first glint of sunlight came through
+the uncurtained window, he sprang from his couch with the call of an
+uncompleted something in his ears.
+
+But calm had come to him in his sleep; the question of right or wrong
+had been settled. He tried to remember how he had come to the conclusion
+that was alone in his rested mind. It must have been before he slept,
+though his memory failed him, for as he slumbered Allis Porter had come
+with the big gray eyes full of tears and asked him once again to
+spare Mortimer humiliation for her sake. And he had answered, "He is
+innocent." God! he remembered it, even now it thrilled through his
+frame--she had bent over and kissed him on the forehead. Yes, that was
+what had wakened him. What foolish things dreams were. He had won just a
+kiss and had paid the price of his love; and now waking, and in the calm
+of a conflict passed, he had won over the demon that had tempted him
+with the perfume of lilacs. He had striven to the point when further
+strife became a crime. He had lost; but he would prove himself a good
+loser.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+That day Crane went to Brookfield.
+
+In spirit he was like a man that had been cast into an angry sea, and
+had battled his way through hungry waves to shore. Saved, the utter
+weariness of fierce strife hung heavy over his soul, and exhaustion
+deadened his joy of escape. Just saved, bereft of everything, he looked
+back over the dark waters and shuddered. And before him a dreary waste
+of desert shore-land stretched out interminably, and he must wander
+alone over its vast expanse forever.
+
+Crane in all things was strong. It was strength drawn to right by the
+influence of the woman he loved that had saved him from the waters that
+were worse than the broad sands of a desolate life. But he still had
+something to do, the final act made possible by his redemption.
+
+At Brookfield he went to the hotel, secured an isolated sitting room
+upstairs, and with this as a hall of justice, followed out with his
+usual carefulness a plan he had conceived. First he wrote a brief note
+to Allis Porter asking her to come and see him at once. One line
+he wrote made certain the girl's coming, "I have important news to
+communicate concerning Mr. Mortimer." Then he sent the note off with a
+man. Next he despatched a messenger for David Cass. He pulled out his
+watch and looked at it. It was three o'clock. "I think five will do," he
+muttered; "it should be all over by that time." Another note addressed
+to Mortimer, asking him to call at the hotel at five o'clock, went
+forth.
+
+The village hotel throbbed with the pressure of unwonted business.
+The proprietor surmised that a financial matter of huge magnitude was
+afloat--another farm was being mortgaged, most like; more money for
+Ringwood probably, for had not a buggy gone out there to bring some one
+in to the great financier. Those race horses were the devil to put a man
+in a hole.
+
+David Cass came, treading on the heels of a much-whiskied howler who had
+summoned him.
+
+"You sent for me, sir?" he asked of Crane. It may have been the
+stairs--for he had come up hurriedly--that put a waver in his voice; or
+it may have been a premonition of trouble.
+
+"Take a seat, Mr. Cass," Crane answered, arranging a chair so that a
+strong light from the one window fell across the visitor's face.
+
+The hostler who had shown Cass to where the big man awaited him
+lingered, a jagged wobble of humanity, leaning against the door jamb. He
+expected an order for "Red Eye," as he had baptized strong drink since
+it had grown familiarly into his being. "Oh!" exclaimed Crane, "I'd
+forgotten; here's a quarter; much obliged. That's all."
+
+The hostler's unjointed legs, unstable because of recurrent debauchery,
+carried him disconsolately to lower levels. The Banker must be sure
+of his business, must have it well in hand, when he ignored the usual
+diplomatic mollifying preparation of a drink.
+
+The hostler had left the sitting-room door open; Crane closed it
+carefully, and, sitting with his back to the window, said to the bank
+clerk: "Mr. Cass, I am going to be very candid with you; I am going to
+tell you that I have discovered you stole the thousand dollars Mortimer
+has been accused of taking."
+
+Cass's face blanched a bluish white; his jaw dropped loosely like the
+jaw of a man who had been suddenly struck a savage blow. His weak,
+watery, blue eyes opened wide in terror; he gasped for breath; he
+essayed to speak--to give even a cry of pain, but the muscles of his
+tongue were paralyzed. His right hand resting on the arm of his chair,
+as Crane ceased speaking, fell hopelessly by his side, where it dangled
+like the cloth limb of a dummy.
+
+Crane saw all this with fierce satisfaction. He had planned this sudden
+accusation with subtle forethought. It even gave him relief to feel
+his suffering shifted to another; he was no longer the assailed by evil
+fortune, he was the assailant. Already the sustaining force of right was
+on his side; what a dreadful thing it was to squirm and shrink in the
+toils of crime. A thought that he might have been like this had he
+allowed Mortimer to stand accused flashed through his mind. He waited
+for his victim to speak.
+
+At last Cass found strength to say: "Mr. Crane, this is a terrible
+accusation; there is some dreadful mistake--I did not--"
+
+The other interrupted him. The man's defense must be so abjectly
+hopeless, such a cowardly weak string of lies, that out of pity, as he
+might have ceased to beat a hound, Crane continued, speaking rapidly,
+holding the guilty man tight in the grasp of his fierce denunciation.
+
+"You stole that note. You sent it, with a quick-delivery stamp to your
+brother, Billy Cass, in New York, and he bet it for you on my horse, The
+Dutchman, on the 13th, and lost it. Mortimer, thinking that Alan Porter
+had taken the money, replaced it, and you nearly committed a greater
+crime than stealing when you allowed him to be dishonored, allowed him
+to be accused and all but convicted of your foolish sin. It is useless
+to deny it, all this can be proved in court. I have weighed the matter
+carefully, and if you confess you will not be prosecuted; if you do not,
+you will be sent to the penitentiary."
+
+Cass, stricken beyond the hope of defense, rose from his chair,
+steadying himself with his hands on the table, leaned far over it, as
+though he were drawn physically by the fierce magnetism of his accuser,
+and spoke in a voice scarce stronger than the treble of a child's: "My
+God! Mr. Crane! Do you mean it, that you won't prosecute me? Did you say
+that?"
+
+"Not if you confess."
+
+"Thank God--thank you, sir. I'm glad, I'm glad; I've been in hell for
+days. I haven't slept. Mortimer's eyes have stared at me all through the
+night, for I liked him--everybody liked him--he was good to me. Oh, God!
+I should have gone out of my mind with more of it. I didn't steal the
+money--no, no! I didn't mean to steal it; the Devil put it into my
+hands. Before God, I never stole a dollar in my life. But it wasn't
+that--it wasn't the money--it was to think that an innocent man was to
+suffer--to have his life wrecked because of my folly."
+
+How it was coming home to Crane. Had he not dabbled his hands in the
+same sin, almost committed it?
+
+"You have never known what it is to suffer in that way. But let me tell
+you all. I must. Then perhaps you will understand how I was tempted. For
+years I have been ground in poverty. My mother and my sister, even my
+brother have all looked to me. My brother should have supported them,
+but all his money went on the race course, gambling. When I heard Alan
+Porter tell Mortimer that your horse was sure to win, for the first time
+in my life I felt a desire to get money that way. But I had no money to
+bet. That day as I went into the vault I saw under a lower shelf--the
+Devil drew my eyes that way--a bank note. I hardly knew it was a bank
+note, for I saw but a piece of paper indistinctly in the dim light. I
+picked it up. Oh, God! if I hadn't touched it! I looked at it. My heart
+jumped in my throat and choked me; my head swam. In my ears were strange
+voices, saying: 'Take it! Put it in your pocket!' Perhaps it was because
+it was so large--a thousand dollars--perhaps it was because it seemed
+lost, out of place, I don't know. I had handled thousands and thousands
+before, and never felt that way.
+
+"The devil voices that were in my ears said: 'This is your chance. Take
+it, borrow it, no one will know. Bet it on the horse that will surely
+win, and you will get many thousands; then you can replace it, and for
+once in your life you will know what it is to have something of your
+own.'"
+
+"I tried to put it back. I couldn't. The voices called me a fool, a
+coward. I thought of my mother, my sister, what I could do if I had the
+courage. I tried to take it in to Mr. Lane and say that I had found it.
+I couldn't. Oh, my God! you don't know what it is to be tempted! You
+have been successful, and don't know how miserably weak ill-fortune
+makes a man. I yielded--I took it; then when its loss was discovered,
+and Mortimer was accused, I tried to confess--I couldn't; I was a
+coward, a traitor, a Judas. Oh, God!"
+
+The overwrought man threw himself face down on the table in front of his
+grim accuser, like a child's broken doll, and wept with great sobs that
+shook his frame as the wind lashes the waters into turmoil.
+
+An exultation of righteous victory swept through Crane's soul. He might
+have been like that; he had been saved from it by his love for a good
+woman. He could not despise the poor broken creature who confessed so
+abjectly, because all but in deed he also had sinned. The deepest cry
+of despair from Cass was because of the sin he had committed against his
+friend--against Mortimer.
+
+Crane waited until Cass's misery had exhausted itself a little, and when
+he spoke his voice was soft in pity.
+
+"I understand. Sit in your chair there and be a man. Half an hour ago I
+thought you a thief--I don't now. You had your time of weakness, perhaps
+all men have that; you fell by the wayside. I don't think you'll do it
+again."
+
+"No, no, no! I wouldn't go through the hell I've lived in again for
+all the money in the world. And I'm so glad that it is known; I feel
+relief."
+
+"Well, it is better that the truth has come out, because everything can
+be put right. I was going to make you pay back the thousand dollars to
+Mortimer--I was going to drive you from the bank--I was going to let it
+be known that you had stolen the money, but now, I must think. You must
+have another chance. It's a dangerous thing to wreck lives--"
+
+"My God! it is; that's what haunted me night and day. I felt as though
+I had murdered a man who had been my friend. I knew he thought young
+Porter had taken it and was shielding him. The memory of the misery in
+Mortimer's face at being counted a thief would have stuck to me if I had
+lived a hundred years."
+
+Cass had interrupted Crane. When he ceased again out of exhaustion,
+Crane proceeded, "Mortimer must be paid back the money."
+
+"I'll save and work my fingers off till I do it."
+
+"You can't. Those dependent upon you would starve. I'll attend to that
+myself."
+
+"And you will let me go without--"
+
+"No, you can't go."
+
+"My God! I'm to be prosecuted?"
+
+"No, you can stay in the bank. I don't think you'll ever listen to the
+voices again; it's bad business."
+
+Cass sat and stared at the strange man who said these things out of
+silly expressionless eyes that were blurred full of tears.
+
+"Yes, you can go right on as you have been. It will be understood
+that the money was found, had been mislaid; I'll think that out. It's
+nobody's business just now; I run the bank and you take orders from me.
+Go back to your desk and stay there. I've got to tell Mortimer and Miss
+Porter that you made this mistake, and Lane, too, I suppose, but nobody
+else will ever know of it. I was going to make you sign a confession,
+but it's not needed. You may go now."
+
+Cass rose, his thin legs seeming hopelessly inadequate to the task of
+carrying his body, and said, "Will you take my hand, sir?"
+
+"Of course I will. Just do right from this on, and forget-no, better not
+forget; remember that there is no crime like weakness; all crime comes
+from weakness. Be strong, and listen to no more voices. But I needn't
+tell you. I know from this out I can trust you further than a man who
+has never been tried."
+
+At the door Cass turned and looked back at the man who had reached down
+into the abyss, pulled him up, and stood him on his feet. The man was
+sitting quite still, his back to the light, his head drooped, and Cass
+could not see his face. He strove futilely for some adequate expression
+of gratitude, but his senses were numb from the shock of what he had
+escaped; he simply nodded twice toward the sitting figure, turned, and
+passed out into the street, where the sunlight baptized him with warmth
+as though he had been born again.
+
+"Poor, weak devil!" muttered Crane; then he shivered. Had the imbecile's
+talk of voices got on to his nerves? Surely a voice had whispered
+derisively in his ear, "Which one is the poor, weak devil?" And
+in answer within his soul Crane knew that the margin was indeed of
+infinitesimal narrowness. Cass, hastened in his temptation, yielding
+to the first insane impulse, not knowing that the damnation of a friend
+hung on his act, had fallen. He, Crane, in full knowledge that two
+innocent lives might be wrecked by his doing, had been kept to the
+right only after hours of struggle, and by the supporting influence of
+a supreme love. To have gained Allis Porter by the strategy of a villain
+could not be the method of holy passion. To sacrifice his desire and
+give her back her lover was love, love worthy of the girl.
+
+For an hour he waited; then there was turmoil on the stairway;
+horses were surely coming up. At the door a thick voice explained the
+diversion. The hostler had again arrived, with an hour of increased
+drunkenness pulling mercilessly at his erratic legs.
+
+"John Porter's gal 'sh here, an'--an'--" the hostler wrestled with the
+mental exercise that had been entrusted to his muddled brain. He'd swear
+that she was there, for his eyes had seen her, two of her; and also he
+had a hazy idea that when he essayed the stairs she had entrusted to
+him some message. He groped fitfully among the wheels that buzzed in his
+skull for the elusive something connected with her advent. The heredity
+of habit came to his assistance.
+
+"D'ye want a drink?" he asked, with a sudden brightening.
+
+"Drink!" a voice cried. "I don't want any drink" A strong hand had him
+by the collar, and the house was rocking violently to and fro; he could
+scarcely keep his feet.
+
+"Wake up, you're drunk. Is Miss Porter down stairs?"
+
+"Porter, Porter, yesh, Portersh gal; thatsh what I said. Whatsh matter
+with you?--leg-go. Keep cool, don't get excited."
+
+"Here, get out--go down stairs!" And he did, hurriedly.
+
+Crane had followed him down. Allis was standing just within the hall
+door.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Porter," he said. "It was good of you to come.
+I've got something very important to tell you, and it's better that we
+have quiet--it doesn't seem quite the usual order of things here.
+Should you mind coming upstairs to the sitting room, where we shall be
+undisturbed?"
+
+"I don't mind," answered the girl, simply.
+
+"Have a chair," he said, motioning to the one Cass had lately sat in.
+
+Crane did not take the other seat, but paced restlessly up and down the
+room; it cooled the fever of his mind.
+
+"I hope it isn't more bad news, Mr. Crane," Allis said; for her
+companion seemed indisposed to break the silence.
+
+"It is--" the girl started--"for me," Crane added, after a little pause;
+"and yet I am glad."
+
+"That sounds strange," Allis commented, wonderingly.
+
+"What I am going to say to you means the destruction of the dearest hope
+I have in life, but it can't be helped. Now I wouldn't have it any other
+way."
+
+Suddenly he stopped in his swift pace, faced the girl, and asked, "You
+are quite sure you can't love me?" He was waiting for an answer.
+
+"No, I can't--I hate to cause you misery, but I must speak the truth;
+you have asked for it."
+
+"And you've answered honestly. I know it was foolish in me to ask
+the impossible. Just one more question and then I will tell you why I
+brought you here. Do you still believe in Mortimer's innocence--do you
+love Mortimer?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If I were to tell you that he is innocent, that I have discovered the
+guilty one."
+
+"Oh, my God!" It was a cry of sudden joy, incapable of exact expression,
+irrelevant in its naming of the Deity, but full in its exultation of
+soul. Then, in quick transformation, the girl collapsed, as Cass had
+done, and huddled in her chair, stricken by the sudden conviction that
+the crime had been brought home to her brother. Her lover was guiltless;
+but to joy over it was a sin, inhuman, for was not Alan the thief, if
+Mortimer were innocent?
+
+Crane understood. He had forgotten. He stepped quickly to the girl's
+side, put his hand tenderly on her head; her big gray eyes stared up at
+him full of a shrinking horror.
+
+"Poor little woman!" he said, "your big, tender heart will be the death
+of you yet. But I've got only good news for you this time. Neither
+Mortimer nor Alan took the money--it was Cass."
+
+"They are both innocent?"
+
+"Yes, both."
+
+"Oh, my God, I thank Thee." She pulled herself up from the chair,
+holding to Crane's arm, and looking in his face, said, "You did this;
+you found the guilty man for me?"
+
+Crane nodded his head; and it came to the girl as she looked, that
+the eyes she had thought narrow in evil grew big and round and full of
+honesty, and soft with gentleness for her.
+
+"How can I thank you--what can I do or say to repay you?" She knew what
+it must have cost the man to clear his rival's name.
+
+"It was your doing, Miss Allis; it is I who must thank you. You made a
+man of me, brought more good into my life than had been there for forty
+years. I will be honest. I did not do this of myself, my own free will.
+In my love for you, and desire to have you with me always, I almost
+committed a crime. I was tempted to conceal the discovery I had made;
+I knew that if I cleared Mortimer you were lost to me. I struggled
+with temptation and fell asleep still not conquering it. In my sleep I
+dreamed--I don't think it was a dream--it was like a vision--you came
+to me, and when I said that Mortimer was innocent, you kissed me on the
+forehead. I woke then, and the struggle had ceased--the temptation
+had passed. I came down here, and Cass has confessed that he took the
+money."
+
+"Would you like it--would you think it wrong--it seems so little for me
+to do--may I kiss you now, as I did in your dream, and thank you from
+the bottom of my heart for making me so happy? It all seems like a dream
+to me now."
+
+For answer Crane inclined his head, and Allis, putting her hand upon his
+shoulder, kissed him on the forehead, and through him went a thrill of
+great thankfulness, of joy such as he knew would never have come to him
+had he gained through treachery even this small token of conquest.
+
+"There," he said, taking Allis by the arm, and gently drawing her back
+to the chair; "now I am repaid a thousandfold for not doing a great
+wrong. You have beaten me twice within a few days. I fancy I should
+almost be afraid to be your husband, you master me so easily."
+
+"That's Mortimer coming," Crane said, suddenly, as a step with more
+consistency in its endeavor than pertained to the hostler's, sounded,
+coming up the stairs. "I sent for him," he added, seeing the look of
+happy confusion in Allis's face.
+
+"Come in," he called cheerily, in answer to a knock on the door.
+
+"You sent for me--" Then Mortimer stopped suddenly, and stood staring
+first at Allis, then at Crane, alternately, back and forth from one to
+the other.
+
+Crane turned his back upon the younger man and busied himself wondrously
+over the manipulation of a chair. A strange dread crept into Mortimer's
+heart; it smothered him; he felt dizzy. Why did Allis look so happy--why
+were there smiles on her lips when she must know there were ashes
+of gloom in his soul? Why was she alone there with Crane? Was it but
+another devilish trick of the misfortune that pursued him?
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss" the words stuck in Mortimer's throat, and he
+completed his greeting with a most dreadfully formal bow.
+
+The girl laughed outright; how droll it was to see a man trying to
+make himself unhappy when there was nothing but happiness in the world.
+Through the open window she could hear the birds singing, and through
+it came the perfume of clover-buried fields; across the floor streamed
+warm, bright sunlight from a blue sky in which was no cloud. And from
+their lives, Mortimer's and her own, had been swept the dark cloud--and
+here, in the midst of all this joy was her lover with a long, sad face,
+trying to reproach her with a stiff, awkward bow.
+
+Her laugh twirled Crane about like a top. He saw the odd situation;
+there was something incongruous in Mortimer's stiff attitude. Crane
+had a big cloud of his own not quite driven from his sky, but a smile
+hovered on his thin lips. This happiness was worth catching.
+
+Mortimer noticed the distasteful mirth reflected in the other man's
+face, and he repeated with asperity, "You sent for me, sir--may I ask--"
+
+"Will you take a chair," said Crane, and he pushed the one he had been
+toying with toward Mortimer. The latter remained standing.
+
+Allis sprang forward and caught him by the arm--Crane turned away,
+suddenly discovering that from the window the main street of Brookfield
+was a most absorbing study.
+
+"I'm so happy," began Allis. Mortimer shivered in apprehension. Why had
+Crane turned his face away--what was coming? How could she be happy, how
+could anyone in the world be happy? But evidently she was. She stole
+a quick look at Crane--to be exact, Crane's back, for his head and
+shoulders were through the window.
+
+Then the girl--she had to raise on her tiptoes--kissed the sad man on
+the cheek. I'm ashamed to say that he stared. Were they all mad--was he
+not standing with one foot in the penitentiary?
+
+She drew him toward the chair, calling to Crane: "Will you please tell
+Mr. Mortimer the good news. I am too happy; I can't."
+
+A fierce anger surged in Mortimer's heart; it was true, then--his
+disgrace had been too much for Allis. The other had won; but it was too
+cruel to kiss him.
+
+Crane faced about, and coming forward, held out his hand to the man of
+distrust. "I hope you'll forgive me."
+
+Mortimer sprang to his feet, shoving back his chair violently, and stood
+erect, drawn to his full height, his right hand clenched fiercely at his
+side. "Shake hands? No, a thousand times no!" he muttered to himself.
+
+Crane saw the action, and his own hand dropped. "Perhaps I ask too
+much," he said, quietly; "I wronged you--"
+
+Mortimer set his teeth and waited. There were great beads of
+perspiration on his forehead, and his broad chest set his breath
+whistling through contracted nostrils. A pretty misdirected passion was
+playing him. This was why they had sent for him--the girl he would have
+staked his life on had been brought to believe in his guilt, and had
+been won over to his rival. Ah--a new thought; his mind, almost diseased
+by unjust accusation, prompted it--perhaps it was to save him from
+punishment that Allis had consented to become Crane's wife.
+
+"But I believed you guilty--" Mortimer started as Crane said this "now I
+know that you are innocent, I ask--"
+
+Mortimer staggered back a step and caught at the chair to steady
+himself. He repeated mechanically the other's words: "You know I'm
+innocent?"
+
+"Yes, I've found the guilty man."
+
+"Then Alan--oh, the poor lad! It's a mistake--you are wrong. The boy
+didn't take the money--I took it."
+
+Crane looked at him in admiration, an indulgent smile on his lips.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear sir!" he exclaimed, dryly; "Alan did not take the
+money--neither did you. Cass took it, and you wasted a day of the bank's
+time covering the crime for him."
+
+"Cass took it?" asked Mortimer in a dazed way, looking from Crane to
+Allis.
+
+"Yes; he has confessed, so you see he's ahead of you in that line"
+He went on, speaking hurriedly: "I ask you to forgive me now for my
+suspicions. Your innocence is completely established. You acted like a
+hero in trying to shield Alan Porter, and I like men of that stamp. The
+thousand dollars you paid in will be restored to you; it is yours. We
+will devise some scheme for clearing up the matter as far as your good
+name is concerned that will shield poor Cass from people who have no
+business in this affair."
+
+"But how did Cass manage to get the note?"
+
+"Found it on the floor of the vault, he says."
+
+"I don't see how it could have fallen out of the box, because the three
+bills were pinned to the note."
+
+Crane drew forth a pocket book, and opening it took out the bill that
+had been stolen. He examined it closely, holding it up in front of the
+window.
+
+"I think you are mistaken," he said, "there are no pin holes in this
+bill; I see," he continued, "the pin had not gone through this one;
+being detached, in handling the box, it has slipped out."
+
+"It must have," concurred Mortimer. "I remember in putting the box in
+the compartment once I had to turn it on its edge; the bill being loose,
+as you say, has slipped to the floor, and as the vault was dark I did
+not notice it."
+
+"It doesn't matter," added Crane. "I must go now. Good-bye, Miss Allis."
+
+Turning to Mortimer he held out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye, and long happiness to you both," he said; "I trust you will
+think kindly of me and poor Cass. I am sure we are sorry for what has
+been done."
+
+As Crane went down the stairs he wondered why he had coupled himself
+with Cass. Was the difference so slight--had they been together in the
+same boat up to the point of that silly, fantastic dream. Perhaps they
+had.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+With the going of Crane an awkward restraint came over the two who were
+left; the man who had suffered so much for the woman's sake, and the
+girl who had endeavored so much.
+
+He was like a man suddenly thrust into a new world of freedom; he
+indulged in a physical manifestation of its exhilaration, drinking in
+a long, deep draught of the clover-scented air, until his great lungs
+sighed with the plethora. It seemed a lifetime that he had lived in the
+noisome atmosphere of a felon's cell. But now the crime had dropped from
+him; a free man in every sense of the word, he could straighten himself
+up and drink of the air that was without taint.
+
+Allis watched Mortimer curiously; she was too happy to speak--just to
+look upon him standing there, her undefiled god, her hero, with his
+heroism known and applauded, was a suffusing ecstasy. He was so
+great, so noble, that anything she might say would be inane, tawdry,
+inconsequent; so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time,
+nor the sunshine, nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of
+conventionality in the unsupervised tete-a-tete.
+
+The ecstatic magnetism of congenial silence has always a potency, and
+its spell crept into Mortimer's soul and laid embargo on his tongue. He
+crossed over to Allis, and taking her slender hand in his own, crouched
+down on the floor beside her chair, and looked up into her face, just
+as a great St. Bernard might have done, incapable of articulating the
+wealth of love and gratitude and faithfulness that was in his heart.
+
+Even then the girl did not speak. She drew the man's strong rugged head
+close up to her face, and nestled her cheek against his. Love without
+words; love greater than words. It was like a fairy dream; if either
+spoke the gentle gossamer web of it would float away like mist, and of
+needs they must talk of the misery that had passed.
+
+In the end the girl spoke first, saying like a child having a range of
+but few words, "You are happy now, my hero?"
+
+"Too happy--I almost fear to wake and find that I've been dreaming."
+
+She kissed him.
+
+"Yes, it's real," he answered; "in dreams happiness is not so positive
+as this. You did not doubt?" he queried.
+
+"Never."
+
+"You would have waited?"
+
+"Forever."
+
+"And now--and now, we must still wait."
+
+"Not forever."
+
+They talked of the wonderful necromancy the gods had used to set their
+lives to the sweet music of happiness. How Lauzanne the Despised had
+saved Ringwood to her father; how he had won Alan's supposed price of
+redemption for Mortimer; how he had stood sturdy and true to the girl
+of much faith and all gentleness. And the room became a crypt of
+confessional when she, in penitence, told of her ride on the gallant
+Chestnut.
+
+Just a span of Fate's hand from these two happy mortals, and twice
+the sand had sifted through the hour glass, sat a man all alone in his
+chamber. On his table was the dust of solitariness; and with his finger
+he wrote in it "Forever." But he looked fearlessly across the board, for
+there sat no grinning demon of temptation, nor remorse, nor fear. But a
+fragrance as of lilacs and of sweet clover coming through an open window
+was in his nostrils; and in his memory was the picture of a face he
+loved, made like unto an angel's with gratitude, and on his forehead
+still burned, like a purifying fire, a kiss that reached down into his
+soul and filled him with the joy of thankfulness.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Thoroughbreds, by W. A. Fraser
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Thoroughbreds, by W. A. Fraser
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+Title: Thoroughbreds
+
+Author: W. A. Fraser
+
+Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9088]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on September 4, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOROUGHBREDS ***
+
+
+
+
+
+THOROUGHBREDS
+
+by W. A. Fraser
+
+
+
+Dedicated to a THOROUGHBRED MY WIFE
+
+
+
+I
+
+Less than a hundred miles from the city of Gotham, across broad green
+fields, dotted into squares and oblong valleys by full-leafed maple, and
+elm, and mulberry, was the village of Brookfield. A hundred years of
+expansion in the surrounding land had acted inversely with the little
+hamlet, and had pinched it into a hermitical isolation.
+
+The Brookfieldians had discovered a huge beetle in the amber of their
+serene existence; it was really the Reverend Dolman who had unearthed
+the monster. The beetle in the amber was horse racing, and the prime
+offender, practically the sole culprit, was John Porter.
+
+By an inconsistent twist of fate he was known as Honest John. His father
+before him had raced in old Kentucky to considerable purpose, and with
+the full vigor of a man who races for sport; and so to the son John, in
+consequence, had come little beyond a not-to-be-eradicated love of
+thoroughbreds. To race squarely, honestly, and to the glory of high-
+couraged horses was to him as much a matter of religion as the
+consistent guardianship of parish morals was to the Reverend George
+Dolman. Therefore, two men of strong beliefs were set on opposite sides
+of the fence.
+
+Even in the Porter household, which was at Ringwood Farm, was divided
+allegiance. Mrs. Porter was possessed of an abhorrent detestation of
+horse racing; also an assertive Christianity. The daughter, Allison,
+had inherited the horse taint. The swinging gallop of a striving horse
+was to her the obliteration of everything but sunshine, and the smile of
+fields, and the blur of swift-gliding hedges, and the driving perfume of
+clover-laden winds that passed strong into spread nostrils. For Alan
+Porter, the son, there were columns of figures and musty-smelling
+bundles of tattered paper money where he clerked in the bank. There had
+been great unison in the Porter household over the placing of Alan. In
+addition to horse lore, John Porter was a fair judge of human nature,
+and, beyond doubt, there was a streak of velvet in Alan which would have
+twisted easily in the compressive grip of the race course.
+
+The Porter family were not the only dwellers of Brookfield who took part
+in racing. Philip Crane, the banker, wandering from the respectable
+highway of finance, had allowed himself to become interested in race
+horses. But this fact was all but unknown in Brookfield, so the full
+resentment of the place was effusively tendered to John Porter.
+
+In his younger days some money had come to Philip Crane. The gambler
+spirit, that was his of inheritance, had an instinctive truth as allied
+to finance; but, unfortunately for Philip Crane, chance and a
+speculative restlessness led him amongst men who commenced with the
+sport of kings. With acute precipitancy he was separated from the
+currency that had come to him. The process was so rapid that his racing
+experience was of little avail as an asset, so he committed the first
+great wise act of his life-turned his back upon the race course and
+marched into finance, so strongly, so persistently, that at forty he was
+wealthy and the banker of Brookfield.
+
+Twenty years of deliberate reminiscence convinced him that he could
+gratify the desire that had been his in those immature days, and
+possibly work out a paying revenge. Thus it was that he had got
+together a small stable of useful horses; and, of far greater moment,
+secured a clever trainer, Dick Langdon.
+
+Crane's latter-day racing had been successful--he made money at it. No
+man was ever more naturally endowed to succeed on the turf than was
+Banker Philip Crane. Cold, passionless, more given to deep concentrated
+thought than expression, holding silence as a golden gift--even as a
+gift of rare rubies--nothing drew from him an unguarded word, no sudden
+turmoil quivered his nerve. It was characteristic of the man that he
+had waited nearly twenty years to resume racing, which really came as
+near to being a passion with him as was possible for anything to be.
+There is a saying in England that it takes two years of preparation to
+win a big handicap; and these were the lines upon which Philip Crane, by
+instinctive adaptation, worked.
+
+Quite by chance Dick Langdon had come into his hands over a matter of
+borrowed money. It ended by the banker virtually owning every horse
+that raced in the trainer's name. In addition, two or three horses ran
+in Philip Crane's own name. If there had been any distinctive project
+in the scheme of creation that gave Dick Langdon to the world, it
+probably was that he might serve as the useful tool of a subtle thinker.
+Now it did seem that Langdon had come into his own--that he had found
+his predestined master.
+
+John Porter had not been successful; ill fortune had set in, and there
+was always something going wrong. Horses would break down, or get
+beaten by accident--there was always something. The steady financial
+drain had progressed even to an encumbrance on Ringwood.
+
+Ringwood was simply a training farm, located close to an old disused
+race course, for there had been no racing in Brookfield for years.
+
+      *         *         *         *         *         *
+
+Inadvertently the Reverend Mr. Dolman had intensified the strained
+relationship that existed between the good people who frowned upon all
+racing endeavor and those who saw but little sinfulness in John Porter's
+way of life.
+
+The church was in debt--everything in Brookfield was, except the town
+pump. The pastor was a nervous, zealous worker, and it occurred to him
+that a concert might lighten the financial load. The idea was not
+alarmingly original, and the carrying out of it was on conventional
+lines: local volunteer talent, and a strong appeal to the people of
+Brookfield for their patronage.
+
+The concert in the little old clap-boarded church, it's sides faded and
+blistered by many seasons of tempest and scorching sun, was an
+unqualified success up to the fifth number. Nothing could have been
+more successful, or even evoked greater applause, than the fourth
+effort, "Anchored," as rendered by the village pride in the matter of
+baritone singing; even De Reszke never experienced a more genuine
+triumph. The applause gradually fell away, and programmes were
+consulted preparatory to a correct readiness for the fifth offering.
+The programmes confided that "The Death of Crusader," by Miss Allis
+Porter, was the next item,
+
+In the front row of seats a prim little body, full of a severe
+quaintness in every quirk of dress, tilted her head toward a neighbor,
+and whispered, "It's that racin' gal of John Porter's."
+
+The neighbor answered in a creak meant for a whisper: "I'm right glad
+she's took to religion for onct, an' is givin' us somethin' about them
+Crusaders. They was in Palestine, you know. She's been away to
+boardin' school all winter, an' I guess it'll be a high-falutin' account
+of the war."
+
+The quaint little old lady jerked her head up and down with decisive
+bobbiness. On the third upward bob her eyes opened wide in
+astonishment--a small, slim figure in a glaring red coat stood in the
+center of the improvised platform.
+
+From beneath the coat fell away in long graceful lines a black riding
+skirt; a dark oval face, set with large wondrous gray eyes--the Porter
+eyes--confronted the quaint little old lady.
+
+"That's the Porter gal," her neighbor squeaked; "I've seen her a-top
+them race horses more'n a hundred times. My! you'd think butter
+wouldn't melt in her mouth, she's that prim now."
+
+"The coat would melt it," commented the quaint one.
+
+Then a clear, soft girlish voice, with just a tremble of apprehensive
+nervousness, giving it a lilt like a robin's, said:--
+
+
+                   THE RUN OF CRUSADER
+
+                              I
+
+    Full weight they had given the gallant big Black--a hundred
+        and sixty he carried;
+    And the run for the "Hunt Cup" was over three miles, with
+      mud-wall and water-jump studded.
+    The best racing days of the old horse were past--there'd
+          never been better nor braver
+    But now once again he must carry the silk I was needing the
+       help of Crusader.
+    Could he win at the weight, I whisperingly asked, as I
+       cinched up the saddle girt' tight;
+    He snuggled my hand as I gathered the rein, and I laughed
+       when they talked of defeat.
+    To the call of the bugle I swung to his back--like a rock was
+        the strength of his quarters.
+    At sight of the people he arched his lean neck, and they,
+        cheered for my King of all Hunters.
+
+                              II
+
+    Ten horses would strive for the prize--a big field, and the
+        pace would be killing.
+    From the West came Sweet Silver, a gray, gallant, and
+        fearless in jumping.
+    A rakish old nag who walked over the sticks, had been sent
+        for the Cup from Kentucky;
+    On a bay, Little Jack, who was fast, they had put but a
+        hundred and thirty.
+    But I knew that North Star, a big brown--even the Black was
+        no gamer-
+    With a pull of ten pounds in the weight, was almost a match
+        for Crusader.
+    We made a brave troop, long-striding and strong, with the
+        pick of cross-country riders,
+    As we filed past the Stand in stately parade, with its
+        thousands of eager admirers,
+    And down to the turn on the lower far side, where a red flag
+        was flicking the sunlight;
+    For twice we must circle the green-swarded field, and finish
+        close under the paddock.
+
+                              III
+
+    Just once we lined up; then down cut the flag, and "Go!"
+        hoarse-voiced the Starter;
+    And the thunder of hoofs, and the clanking of bits, made
+        music to me on Crusader.
+    Quick to the front, like a deer, sped a mare, a chestnut,
+        making the running;
+    But I steadied my mount, and took him far back--with his
+        weight he would need all my nursing.
+    They took the first hedge like sheep in a bunch, bit to bit,
+        and stirrups a-jingle;
+    And so past the Stand to the broad water-jump, where three
+        went down, in a tangle.
+    I trailed at the heels of the Silver Gray--but Crusader was
+        begging for halter
+    And flew the wide ditch with the swoop of a bird, and on
+        again, lapped on his quarter.
+    Then over the Liverpool, racing like mad,--where Sweet
+        Silver fell fighting for lead,
+    And his rider lay crushed, white-faced to the sky; and to
+        miss him Crusader jumped wide.
+
+                              IV
+
+    At the bank something struck, and a cloud of white dust hid
+        the wall as though it were shrouded;
+    But the big gallant Black took off with a swing--full thirty
+        feet ere we had landed.
+    As we rounded the turn I could see Little Jack go up to the
+         mare that was leading;
+    Then I let out a wrap, and quickened my pace, to work clear
+         of those that were tiring.
+    Once again past the Stand we drove at the ditch that some
+         would never get over;
+    And a cheer shook the air as the Bay landed safe; with the
+         mare on her back in the water.
+    Then over went North Star--though he pecked, and nearly
+         emptied his saddle.
+    As I lifted the Black at his heels, he frothed the Brown's
+         flank with his nozzle.
+
+                              V
+
+    Then down the back stretch, o'er hedge and o'er bank, we
+         three were racing together;
+    Till at the next rail the Bay jostled the Brown, and
+         riderless crashed through the timber.
+    So we rounded the turn, and into the straight--North Star's
+         lean flank we were lapping
+    But we shot to the front when I gave the Black head, and I
+         saw that the other was stopping.
+    We raced as one horse at the very last hedge--just a nose in
+         front was Crusader;
+    I felt the big Brown bump twice at my side, and knew he was
+         ready to blunder.
+    With stirrups a-ding, empty-saddled the Bay, stride for
+         stride, galloped and floundered.
+    Just missing his swerve, I called on the Black, and drew out
+         as he bravely responded.
+
+                              VI
+
+    Just the last jump! and Crusader took off twenty feet from
+         the brush-covered timber.
+    Then the Bay jumped--too short for his stride--and fell,
+         with his head on my wither.
+    Down, down! almost to earth,--brought to his knees in the
+         struggle,
+    The Black lost a length, the Brown forged ahead, and I was
+         half out of the saddle.
+    How I sat down and rode! how the old horse strove! and the
+         Brown rolling tired in his gallop.
+    On, gallant Black! on, my brave pet!  We were almost under
+         the paddock.
+    Then we nosed the Brown's dank; then we reached to his girt';
+         neck and neck I rode at his shoulder.
+    As we flashed past the post I had won by a head. How they
+         cheered, "Bravo, Crusader!"
+
+                              VII
+
+    But Crusader stopped short; gave a sigh and fell dead; I
+         stood all alone in the winning.
+    And a hush came over the clamorous mob; like a babe on his
+         neck I was sobbing.
+    He had run his last race; game to the end, his brave heart
+         broke in the striving.
+
+The girl's voice faltered and died away to a broken whisper as she told
+of the death of Crusader. For a full minute there was a noiseless hush.
+The full pathos of the gallant horse's striving had crept into the
+hearts that were flesh and blood; and, carried away by their feelings,
+the people had forgotten all about their tortured convictions of the
+sinfulness of making a horse go faster than a sharp trot. Gradually
+into their awakening senses stole a conviction that somehow they were
+countenancing the sin of racing.
+
+Before the complete horror of the situation had mastered the audience, a
+strong pair of hands, far back in the church, came together with an
+explosive clap. Like the rat-rat-tat of a quick-firing gun was the
+appreciative volley of recognition from the solitary applauder. It went
+rolling and crackling through the church defiantly, derisively,
+appreciatively. Halfway up the aisle a softer pair of hands touched the
+rattle with what sounded like a faint echo; then there was sudden
+silence. The entire audience turned and looked disparagingly,
+discouragingly, at the man who had figuratively risen as a champion of
+the scandalous recitation. Resentment had taken hold of the good
+Christians. That Crusader had enlisted their sympathies for a few
+minutes showed the dangerous subtlety of this "horseracin' business"
+
+The rest of the programme might just as well have been eliminated; the
+concert, as a concert, would be discussed for all time to come as having
+projected "The Death of Crusader."
+
+The people flowed from the church full of an expressive contentiousness,
+seeking by exuberant condemnation of the sacrilege to square themselves
+somehow with their consciences for the brief backsliding.
+
+Where the church path turned into the road a group of men had drawn
+together, attracted by the magnet of discussion. They quite blocked the
+pathway, oblivious to everything but their outraged feelings. Like a
+great dark blotch in the night the group stood; and presently two slight
+gray shadows slipping up the path, coming to the human barricade,
+stopped, wavered, and circled out on the grass to pass. The shadows
+were Allis Porter and her brother Alan.
+
+One of the men, overfilled with his exceeding wrath, seeing the girl,
+gave expression to a most unchristian opinion of her modesty. The sharp
+ears of the boy heard the words of the man of harsh instinct, and his
+face flushed hot with resentment. He half turned, bitter reproach
+rising to his lips. How could men be so brutish?  How could they be so
+base?  To speak ill of his sister Allis, who was just the purest,
+sweetest little woman that ever lived--too brave and true to be anything
+else but good!
+
+As he turned he saw something that checked his futile anger. A tall
+shadow that had come up the path behind them stretched out an arm, and
+he heard the vilifier's words gurgle and die away, as one of the strong
+hands that had beat the tattoo of approbation clutched him by the
+throat. The boy would have rushed to the assistance of this executive
+friend if the girl had not clasped his arm in detention.
+
+"It's Mortimer!" he cried, as a voice from the strong-armed figure cut
+the night air with sharp decision.
+
+Then the shadowy forms twisted up grotesquely, weaving in and out.
+There were voices of expostulation and strong words of anger; but the
+new serious business that had materialized had most effectually put a
+stop to reflections upon the innocent girl who had so unwittingly
+offended.
+
+"It's George Mortimer--he's in our bank," Alan confided to his sister,
+as they moved away. "He's all right--he's strong as a horse; and I bet
+Crandal'll have a kink in his neck to-morrow, where George pinched him."
+
+"What was it about?" the girl asked.
+
+"Crandal was jawing about people who own race horses," the boy answered,
+evasively. "It's Crandal, the butcher."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It was the May meeting at Morris Park, and Morris Park is the most
+beautiful race course in all America.
+
+John Porter, walking up the steps of the Grand Stand, heard some one
+call him by name. Turning his head, he saw it was James Danby, an
+owner, sitting in his private box. Porter turned into the box, and
+taking the chair the other pushed toward him, sat down.
+
+"What about Lucretia?" asked Danby, with the air of an established
+friendship which permitted the asking of such questions.
+
+"She's ready to the minute," replied Porter.
+
+"Can she get the five furlongs?" queried Danby. "She's by Assassin, and
+some of them were quitters."
+
+"She'll quit if she falls dead," replied the other man, quietly. "I've
+worked her good enough to win, and I'm backing her."
+
+"That'll do for me," declared Danby. "To tell you the truth, John, I
+like the little mare myself; but I hear that Langdon, who trained
+Lauzanne, expects to win."
+
+"The mare'll be there, or thereabouts," asserted her owner; "I never
+knew a Lazzarone yet much good as a two-year-old. They're sulky brutes,
+like the old horse; and if Lucretia's beat, it won't be Lauzanne that'll
+turn the trick."
+
+The bell clanged imperiously at the Judges' Stand. Porter pulled out
+his watch and looked at it.
+
+"That's saddling," he remarked, laconically; "I must go and have a bit
+on the mare, and then take a look at her before she goes out."
+
+As Porter went down the steps his companion leaned over the rail and
+crooked his fingers at a thin-faced man with a blond mustache who had
+been keeping a corner of his eye on the box.
+
+"What are they making favorite, Lewis?" queried Danby, as the thin-faced
+man stood beside him.
+
+"Lucretia."
+
+"What's her price?"
+
+"Two to one."
+
+"What's second favorite?"
+
+"Lauzanne--five to two."
+
+"Porter tells me Lucretia is good business," said Danby, in a tentative
+tone.
+
+"Langdon thinks it's all over bar the shouting; he says Lauzanne
+outclasses his field," retorted Lewis.
+
+"Langdon's a betting man; Porter's an owner, and a good judge," objected
+Danby; "and he's got a good boy up, too, McKay," he added, slowly
+focusing his field glasses on the jockey board opposite the Stand.
+
+"Crooked as a dog's hind legs," snarled Lewis, biting viciously at his
+cigar.
+
+"Bob, it's damned hard to find a straight-legged dog," laughed Danby.
+"And when John Porter starts a horse, there's never anything doing.
+Here's six hundred; put' it on the mare--straight."
+
+As Lewis pushed his way into the shoving, seething, elbowing crowd in
+the betting ring, he was suddenly struck in the chest by something which
+apparently had the momentum of an eight-inch shell; but it was only John
+Porter, who, in breaking through the outer crust of the living mass, had
+been ejected with more speed than was of his own volition.
+
+Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who
+the unwitting offender was, and asked, "What are they doin' to the mare
+in the ring?"
+
+"Not much," answered his assailant, catching his breath; "there's a
+strong play on Langdon's horse, and if I didn't know my boy pretty well,
+and Lucretia better, I'd have weakened a bit. But she can't lose, she
+can't lose!" he repeated in the tone of a man who is reassuring himself.
+
+Lewis battled his way along till he stood in front of a bookmaker with a
+face cast very much on the lines of a Rubens' cherub; but the cherub-
+type ended abruptly with the plump frontispiece of "Jakey" Faust, the
+bookmaker. Lewis knew that. "If there's anythin' doin', I'm up against
+it here," he muttered to himself. "What's Lauzanne's price?" he asked,
+in an indifferent voice, for the bookmaker's assistant was busy changing
+the figures on his list.
+
+Faust pretended not to hear him.
+
+"Sure thing!" whispered Lewis to himself. Then aloud he repeated the
+question, touching the bookmaker on the elbow.
+
+The Cherub smiled blandly. "Not takin' any," he answered, nodding his
+head in the pleasant manner of a man who knows when he's got a good
+thing.
+
+"What's Lucretia?" persisted Lewis.
+
+"Oh! that's it, is it?  I'll lay you two to one."
+
+The questioner edged away, shaking his head solemnly.
+
+"Here! five to two--how much--" but Lewis was gone.
+
+He burrowed like a mole most industriously, regardless of people's toes,
+their ribs, their dark looks, and even angry expressions of strong
+disapproval, and when he gained the green sward of the lawn, hurried to
+his friend's box.
+
+"Did you get it on?" queried the latter.
+
+"No; I don't like the look of it. Faust is holding out Lauzanne, and
+stretched me half a point about the mare. He and Langdon are in the
+same boat."
+
+"But that won't win the race," remonstrated Danby. "Lauzanne is a
+maiden, and Porter doesn't often make a mistake about any of his own
+stock."
+
+"I thought I'd come back and tell you," said Bob Lewis, apologetically.
+
+"And you did right; but if the mare wins, and I'm not on, after getting
+it straight from Porter, I'd want to go out and kick myself good and
+hard. But put it on straight and place; then if Lauzanne's the goods
+we'll save."
+
+Lewis was gone about four minutes.
+
+"You're on," he said, when he returned; "I've two hundred on the
+Chestnut for myself."
+
+"Lauzanne?"
+
+"It's booked that way; but I'm backin' the Trainer, Langdon. I went on
+my uppers two years ago backing horses; I'm following men now."
+
+"Bad business," objected his stout friend; "it's bad business to back
+anything that talks."
+
+When John Porter reached the saddling paddock, his brown mare, Lucretia,
+was being led around in a circle in the lower corner. As he walked down
+toward her his trainer, Andy Dixon, came forward a few paces to meet
+him.
+
+"Are they hammerin' Crane's horse in the ring, sir?" he asked, smoothing
+down the grass with the toe of one foot, watching this physical process
+with extreme interest.
+
+"Just what you'd notice," replied Porter. "Why?"
+
+"Well, I don't like the look of it a little bit. Here's this Lauzanne
+runs like a dog the last time out--last by the length of a street--and
+now I've got it pretty straight they're out for the stuff."
+
+"They'd a stable-boy up on him that time."
+
+"That's just it," cried Dixon. "Grant comes to me that day--you know
+Grant, he works the commission for Dick Langdon--and tells me to leave
+the horse alone; and to-day he comes and--" he hesitated.
+
+"And what?"
+
+"Tells me to go light on our mare."
+
+"Isn't Grant broke?" asked Porter, with seeming irrelevance.
+
+"He's close next it," answered the Trainer.
+
+"Aren't his friends that follow him all broke?"
+
+"A good many of them have their address in Queer Street."
+
+"Look here, Andy," said the owner, "there isn't a man with a horse in
+this stake that doesn't think he's going to win; and when it's all over
+we'll see Lucretia's number go up. Grant's a fool," he added,
+viciously. "Didn't he break Fisher-didn't he break every other man that
+ever stuck to him?"
+
+"It's not Grant at all," replied Dixon, rubbing the palms of his hands
+together thoughtfully--a way he had when he wished to concentrate in
+concrete form the result of some deep cogitation--"it's Langdon, an'
+he's several blocks away from an asylum."
+
+"Langdon makes mistakes too."
+
+"He cashes in often when he's credited with a mistake," retorted the
+other.
+
+"Well, I've played the little mare," asserted Porter.
+
+"Much, sir?" asked Dixon, solicitously.
+
+"All I can stand--and a little more," he added, falteringly; "I needed a
+win, a good win," he offered, in an explanatory voice. "I want to clear
+Ringwood--but never mind about that, Andy. The mare's well--ain't she?
+There can't be anything doing with McKay--we've only put him up a few
+times, but he seems all right."
+
+"I think we'll win," answered the Trainer; "I didn't get anythin'
+straight--just that there seemed a deuced strong tip on Lauzanne,
+considerin' that he'd never showed any form to warrant it. Yonder he is,
+sir, in number five--go and have a look at him."
+
+As John Porter walked across the paddock a horseman touched the fingers
+of his right hand to his cap. There was a half-concealed look of
+interest in the man's eye that Porter knew from experience meant
+something.
+
+"What do you know, Mike?" he asked, carelessly, only half halting in his
+stride.
+
+"Nottin' sir; but dere's somebody in de know dis trip. Yer mare's a
+good little filly, w'en she's right, but ye'r up against it."
+
+Porter stopped and looked at the horseman. He was Mike Gaynor, a
+trainer, and more than once Porter had stood his friend. Mike always
+had on hand three or four horses of inconceivable slowness, and
+uncertainty of wind and limb; consequently there was an ever-recurring
+inability to pay feed bills, so he had every chance to know just who was
+his friend and who was not, for he tried them most sorely.
+
+Porter knew all this quite well; also that in spite of Mike's chronic
+impecuniosity he was honest, and true as steel to a benefactor. He
+waited, feeling sure that Gaynor had something to tell.
+
+"There's a strong play on Lauzanne, ain't there, sir?"
+
+Porter nodded.
+
+"Sure t'ing!  That Langdon's a crook. I knowed him when he was ridin'
+on freight cars; now he's a swell, though he's a long sprint from bein'
+a gentleman. I got de tip dat dere was a killin' on, an' I axed Dick
+Langdon if dere was anyt'ing doin'; an' Dick says to me, says he,
+puttin' hot' t'umbs up"--and Mike held both hands out horizontally with
+the thumbs stiff and vertical to illustrate this form of oath--"'there's
+nottin' doin', Mike,' says he. What d'ye t'ink of that, sir, an' me
+knowin' there was?" asked Mike, tragically.
+
+"It's the biggest tip that always falls down, Gaynor; and they've got to
+be pretty swift to beat Lucretia."
+
+"That filly's all right; she's worked out well enough to do up that
+field of stiffs. I ain't no rail bird, but I've hed me eye on her. But
+I ain't doin' no stunt about horses, Mister Porter; I'm talkin' about
+men. Th' filly's honest, and ye'r honest sir, but ye don't roide th'
+mare yerself, do ye?"
+
+"You think, Mike--" began Mr. Porter, questioningly; but Gaynor
+interrupted him with: "I don't think nothin', sir, an' I ain't sayin'
+nothin. I ain't never been before the Stewards yet for crooked work, or
+crooked talk; but there's a boy ridin' in dat bunch to-day w'at got six
+hundred for t'rowing me down once, see? S'elp me God! he pulled Blue
+Smoke to a standstill on me, knowin' that it would break me. That was
+at Coney Island, two years ago."
+
+"And you don't remember his name, I suppose, Mike?"
+
+"I don't remember not'in' but that I got it in th' neck. But ye keep
+yer eye open, sir. Ye t'ink that none of the b'ys would t'row ye down
+cause ye've been good to 'em; but some of 'em are that mean they'd steal
+th' sugar from a fly. I know 'em. I hears 'em talk, cause they don't
+mind me--t'ink I'm one of th' gang."
+
+"Thank you very much, Gaynor; I appreciate your kindly warning; but I
+hope you're mistaken, all the same," said Porter. Then he proceeded on
+his way toward stall five, in which was Lauzanne.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Porter?"
+
+It was Philip Crane, standing just outside of the stall, who thus
+addressed him. "Got something running today?" he continued, with vague
+innocence.
+
+Langdon, just inside the box, chuckled softly. Surely Crane was a past
+master in duplicity.
+
+"I'm starting Lucretia in this race," replied Honest John.
+
+"Oh!"  Then Crane took Porter gently by the sleeve and drew him half
+within the stall. "Mr. Langdon, who trains a horse or two for me, says
+this one'll win;" and he indicated the big chestnut colt that the
+Trainer was binding tight to a light racing saddle. "You'd better have a
+bit on, Mr. Porter," Crane added.
+
+"Lucretia carries my money," answered Porter in loyalty.
+
+Langdon looked up, having cinched the girth tight, and took a step
+toward the two men.
+
+"Well, we both can't win," he said, half insolently; "an' I don't think
+there's anything out to-day'll beat Lauzanne."
+
+"That mare'll beat him," retorted Porter, curtly, nettled by the other's
+cocksureness.
+
+"I'll bet you one horse against the other, the winner to take both,"
+cried Langdon in a sneering, defiant tone.
+
+"I've made my bets," said Lucretia's owner, quietly.
+
+"I hear you had an offer of five thousand for your filly, Mr. Porter,"
+half queried Crane.
+
+"I did, and I refused it."
+
+"And here's the one that'll beat her to-day, an' I'll sell him for half
+that," asserted the Trainer, putting his hand on Lauzanne's neck.
+
+Exasperated by the persistent boastfulness of Langdon, Porter was
+angered into saying, "If he beats my mare, I'll give you that for him
+myself."
+
+"Done!" snapped Langdon. "I've said it, an' I'll stick to it."
+
+"I don't want the horse--" began Porter; but Langdon interrupted him.
+
+"Oh, if you want to crawl"
+
+"I never crawl," said Porter fiercely. "I don't want your horse, but
+just to show you what I think of your chance of winning, I'll give you
+two thousand and a half if you beat my mare, no matter what wins the
+race."
+
+"I think you'd better call this bargain off, Mr. Porter," remonstrated
+Crane.
+
+"Oh, the bargain will be off," answered John Porter; "if I'm any judge,
+Lauzanne's running his race right here in the stall."
+
+His practiced eye had summed up Lauzanne as chicken-hearted; the sweat
+was running in little streams down the big Chestnut's legs, and dripping
+from his belly into the drinking earth spit-spit, drip-drip; his head
+was high held in nervous apprehension; his lips twitched, his flanks
+trembled like wind-distressed water, and the white of his eye was
+showing ominously.
+
+Langdon cast a quick, significant, cautioning look at Crane as Porter
+spoke of the horse; then he said, "You're a fair judge, an' if you're
+right you get all the stuff an' no horse."
+
+"I stand to my bargain whatever happens," Porter retorted.
+
+At that instant the bugle sounded.
+
+"Get up, Westley," Langdon said to his jockey, "they're going out."
+
+As he lifted the boy to the saddle, the Trainer whispered a few concise
+directions.
+
+"Hold him steady at the post," he muttered; "I've got him a bit on edge
+to-day. Get off in front and stay there; he's feelin' good enough to
+leave the earth. This'll be a matter of a couple of hundred to you if
+you win."
+
+"All out! all out!" called the voice, of the paddock offcial. "Number
+one!" then, "Come on you, Wesltey! they're all out."
+
+The ten starters passed in stately procession from the green-swarded
+paddock through an open gate to the soft harrowed earth, gleaming pink-
+brown in the sunlight, of the course. How consciously beautiful the
+thoroughbreds looked!  The long sweeping step; the supple bend of the
+fetlock as it gave like a wire spring under the weight of great broad
+quarters, all sinewy strength and tapered perfection; the stretch of
+gentle-curved neck, sweet-lined as a greyhound's, bearing a lean, bony
+head, set with two great jewels of eyes, in which were honesty and
+courage, and eager longing for the battle of strength and stamina, and
+stoutness of heart; even the nostrils, with a red transparency as of
+silk, spread and drank eagerly the warm summer air that was full of the
+perfume of new-growing clover and green pasture-land.
+
+Surely the spectacle of these lovely creatures, nearest to man in their
+thoughts and their desires, and superior in their honesty and truth, was
+a sight to gladden the hearts of kings. Of a great certainty it was a
+sport of kings; and also most certainly had it at times come into the
+hands of highway robbers.
+
+Some such bitter thought as this came into the heart of John Porter as
+he stood and watched his beautiful brown mare, Lucretia, trailing with
+stately step behind the others. He loved good horses with all the
+fervor of his own strong, simple, honest nature. Their walk was a
+delight to him, their roaring gallop a frenzy of eager sensation. There
+was nothing in the world he loved so well. Yes--his daughter Allis.
+But just now he was thinking of Lucretia--Lucretia and her rival, the
+golden-haired chestnut, Lauzanne.
+
+He passed through the narrow gate leading from the paddock to the Grand
+Stand. The gate keeper nodded pleasantly to him and said: "Hope you'll
+do the trick with the little mare, sir. I'm twenty years at the
+business, and I haven't got over my likin' for an honest horse and an
+honest owner yet."
+
+There was covert insinuation of suspicion, albeit a kindly one, in the
+man's voice. The very air was full of the taint of crookedness; else
+why should the official speak of honesty at all?  Everyone knew that
+John Porter raced to win.
+
+He crossed the lawn and leaned against the course fence, to take a
+deciding look at the mare and the Chestnut as they circled past the
+stand in the little view-promenade which preceded the race.
+
+His trained eye told him that Lauzanne was a grand-looking horse; big,
+well-developed shoulders reached back toward the huge quarters until the
+small racing saddle almost covered the short back. What great promise
+of weight-carrying was there!
+
+He laughed a little at the irrelevance of this thought, for it was not a
+question of weight-carrying at all; two-year-olds at a hundred pounds in
+a sprint of only five furlongs. Speed was the great factor to be
+considered, and surely Lucretia outclassed the other in that way. The
+long, well-ribbed-up body, with just a trace of gauntness in the flank;
+the slim neck; the deep chest; the broad, flat canon bones, and the
+well-let-down hocks, giving a length of thigh like a greyhound's--and
+the thighs themselves, as John Porter looked at them under the tucked-up
+belly of the gentle mare, big, and strong, and full of a driving force
+that should make the others break a record to beat her.
+
+From the inquisition of the owner's study Lucretia stood forth
+triumphant; neither the Chestnut nor anything else in the race could
+beat her. And Jockey McKay--Porter raised his eyes involuntarily,
+seeking for some occult refutation of the implied dishonesty of the boy
+he had trusted. He found himself gazing straight into the small shifty
+eyes of Lucretia's midget rider, and such a hungry, wolfish look of
+mingled cunning and cupidity was there that Porter almost shuddered.
+The insinuations of Mike Gaynor, and the other things that pointed at a
+job being on, hadn't half the force of the dishonesty that was so
+apparent in the tell-tale look of the morally, irresponsible boy in
+whose hands he was so completely helpless. All the careful preparation
+of the mare, the economical saving, even to the self-denial of almost
+necessary things to the end that he might have funds to back her heavily
+when she ran; and the high trials she had given him when asked the
+question, and which had gladdened his heart and brought an exclamation
+of satisfaction from his phlegmatic trainer; the girlish interest of his
+daughter in the expected triumph--all these contingencies were as less
+than nothing should the boy, with the look of a demon in his eyes, not
+ride straight and honest.
+
+Even then it was not too late to ask the Stewards to set McKay down, but
+what proof had he to offer that there was anything wrong?  The boy's
+good name would be blasted should he, John Porter, say at the last
+minute that he did not trust him; and perhaps the lad was innocent.
+Race people were ready to cry out that a jockey was fixed-that there was
+something wrong, when their own judgment was at fault and they lost.
+
+Suddenly Porter gave a cry of astonishment. "My God!" he muttered, "the
+boy has got spurs on. That'll set the mare clean crazy."
+
+He turned to Dixon, who was at his elbow: "Why did you let McKay put on
+the steels?"
+
+"I told him not to." "He's got them on."
+
+"They've got to come off," and the Trainer dashed up the steps to the
+Stewards. In two minutes he returned, a heavy frown on his face.
+
+"Well?" queried Porter.
+
+"I've made a mess of it," answered Dixon, sullenly. "It seems there's
+hints of a job on, an' the Stewards have got the wrong end of the
+stick."
+
+"They refused to let the mare go back to the paddock?" queried Porter.
+
+"Yes; an' one of them said that if trainers would stick closer to their
+horses, an' keep out of the bettin' ring, that the public'd get a better
+run for their money."
+
+"I'm sorry, Andy," said Porter, consolingly.
+
+"It's pretty tough on me, but it's worse on you, sir. That boy hadn't
+spurs when he weighed, an' there's the rankest kind of a job on, I'll
+take me oath."
+
+"We've got to stand to it, Andy."
+
+"That we have; we've just got to take our medicine like little men.
+Even if we make a break an' take McKay off there isn't another good boy
+left. If he jabs the little mare with them steels she'll go clean
+crazy."
+
+"It's my fault, Andy. I guess I've saved and petted her a bit too much.
+But she never needed spurs--she'd break her heart trying without them."
+
+
+"By God!" muttered Dixon as he went back to the paddock, "if the boy
+stops the mare he'll never get another mount, if I can help it. It's
+this sort of thing that kills the whole business of racing. Here's a
+stable that's straight from owner to exercise boy, and now likely to
+throw down the public and stand a chance of getting ruled off ourselves
+because of a gambling little thief that can spend the income of a
+prince. But after all it isn't his fault. I know who ought to be
+warned off if this race is fixed; but they won't be able to touch a hair
+of him; he's too damn slick. But his time'll come--God knows how many
+men he'll break in the meantime, though."
+
+As John Porter passed Danby's box going up into the stand, the latter
+leaned over in his chair, touched him on the arm and said, "Come in and
+take a seat"
+
+"I can't," replied the other man, "my daughter is up there somewhere."
+
+"I've played the mare," declared Danby, showing Porter a memo written in
+a small betting book.
+
+The latter started and a frown crossed his brown face.
+
+"I'm sorry--I'm afraid it's no cinch."
+
+"Five to two never is," laughed his friend. "But she's a right smart
+filly; she looks much the best of the lot. Dixon's got her as fit as a
+fiddle string. When you're done with that man you might turn him over
+to me, John."
+
+"The mare's good enough," said Porter, "and I've played her myself--a
+stiffish bit, too; but all the same, if you asked me now, I'd tell you
+to keep your money in your pocket. I must go," he added, his eye
+catching the flutter of a race card which was waving to him three seats
+up.
+
+"Here's a seat, Dad," cried the girl, cheeringly, lifting her coat from
+a chair she had kept for her father.
+
+For an instant John Porter forgot all about Lucretia and her troubles.
+The winsome little woman had the faculty of always making him forget his
+trials; she had to the fullest extent that power so often found in plain
+faces. Strictly speaking, she wasn't beautiful--any man would have
+passed that opinion if suddenly asked the question upon first seeing
+her. Doubt of the excellence of this judgment might have crept into his
+mind after he had felt the converting influence of the blue-gray eyes
+that were so much like her father's; in them was the most beautiful
+thing in the world, an undoubted evidence of truth and honesty and
+sympathy. She was small and slender, but no one had ever likened her to
+a flower. There was apparent sinewy strength and vigor in the small
+form. Her life, claimed by the open air, had its reward--the saddle is
+no cradle for weaklings. Bred in an atmosphere of racing, and
+surrounded as she had always been by thoroughbreds, Allis had grown up
+full of admiration for their honesty, and courage, and sweet temper.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+In John Porter's home horse racing had no debasing effect. If a man
+couldn't race squarely--run to win every time--he had better quit the
+game, Porter had always asserted. He raced honestly and bet openly,
+without cant and without hypocrisy; just as a financier might have
+traded in stocks in Wall Street; or a farmer might plant his crops and
+trust to the future and fair weather to yield him a harvest in return.
+
+So much of the racing life was on honor--so much of the working out of
+it was in the open, where purple-clovered fields gave rest, and health,
+and strength, that the home atmosphere was impregnated with moral truth,
+and courage, and frankness, in its influence on the girl's development.
+
+Every twist of her sinewy figure bore mute testimony to this; every
+glance from her wondrous eyes was an eloquent substantiating argument in
+favor of the life she affected. John Porter looked down at the small,
+rather dark, upturned face, and a half-amused smile of content came to
+his lips. "Did you see Lucretia?" he asked. "Isn't she a beauty?
+Hasn't Dixon got her in the pink of condition?"
+
+"I saw nothing else, father."  She beckoned to him with her eyes, tipped
+her head forward, and whispered: "Those people behind us have backed
+Lauzanne. I think they're racing folks."
+
+The father smiled as an uncultured woman's voice from one row back
+jarred on his ear. Allis noticed the smile and its provocation, and
+said, speaking hastily, "I don't mean like you, father--"
+
+"Like us," he corrected.
+
+"Well, perhaps; they're more like betting or training people, though."
+She put her hand on his arm warningly, as a high-pitched falsetto
+penetrated the drone of their half-whispered words, saying, "I tell you
+Dick knows all about this Porter mare, Lucretia."
+
+"But I like her," a baritone voice answered. "She looks a rattlin'
+filly."
+
+"You'll dine off zwieback and by your lonely, Ned, if you play horses on
+their looks--"
+
+"Or women either," the baritone cut in.
+
+"You're a fair judge, Ned. But Dick told me to go the limit on
+Lauzanne, and to leave the filly alone."
+
+"On form Lucretia ought to win," the man persisted; "an' there's never
+anythin' doin' with Porter."
+
+"Perhaps not;" the unpleasant feminine voice sneered mockingly, with an
+ill-conditioned drawl on the "perhaps"; "but he doesn't ride his own
+mare, does he?"
+
+John Porter started. Again that distasteful expression fraught with
+distrust and insinuation. There was a strong evil odor of stephanotis
+wafted to his nostrils as the speaker shook her fan with impatient
+decision. The perfume affected him disagreeably; it was like the
+exhalation of some noisome drug; quite in keeping with the covert
+insinuation of her words that Dick, as she called him--it must be Dick
+Langdon, the trainer of Lauzanne, Porter mused--had given her advice
+based on a knowledge quite irrespective of the galloping powers of the
+two horses.
+
+"Did you hear that, father?" Allis whispered.
+
+He nodded his head.
+
+"What does it all mean?"
+
+"It means, girl," he said, slowly, "that all the trouble and pains I
+have taken over Lucretia since she was foaled, two years ago, and her
+dam, the old mare, Maid of Rome, died, even to raising the little filly
+on a bottle, and watching over her temper that it should not be ruined
+by brutal savages of stable-boys, whose one idea of a horse is that he
+must be clubbed into submission--that all the care taken in her
+training, and the money spent for her keep and entries goes for nothing
+in this race, if Jockey McKay is the rascal I fear he is."
+
+"You think some one has got at him, Dad?"
+
+Her father nodded again.
+
+"I wish I'd been a boy, so that I could have ridden Lucretia for you
+to-day," Allis exclaimed with sudden emphasis.
+
+"I almost wish you had, Little Woman; you'd have ridden straight anyway
+--there never was a crooked one of our blood."
+
+"I don't see why a jockey or anybody else should be dishonest--I'm sure
+it must take too much valuable time to cover up crooked ways."
+
+"Yes, you'd have made a great jock, Little Woman;" the father went on,
+musingly, as he watched the horses lining up for the start. "Men think
+if a boy is a featherweight, and tough as a Bowery loafer, he's sure to
+be a success in the saddle. That's what beats me--a boy of that sort
+wouldn't be trusted to carry a letter with ten dollars in it, and on the
+back of a good horse he's, piloting thousands. Unless a jockey has the
+instincts of a gentleman, naturally, he's almost certain to turn out a
+blackguard sooner or later, and throw down his owner. He'll have more
+temptations in a week to violate his trust than a bank clerk would have
+in a lifetime."
+
+"Is that why you put Alan in the bank, father?"
+
+Porter went on as though he had not heard the daughter's query. "To make
+a first-class jock, a boy must have nerves of steel, the courage of a
+bulldog, the self-controlling honesty of a monk. You've got all these
+right enough, Allis, only you're a girl, don't you see--just a good
+little woman," and he patted her hand affectionately.
+
+"They're off!" exclaimed the baritone.
+
+"Not this trip," objected the falsetto.
+
+"The spurs--the young fiend!" fiercely ejaculated John Porter.
+
+"What is it, father?"
+
+"The boy on Lucretia is jabbing her with the spurs, and she's cutting
+up."
+
+"That's the fourth false start," said Ned, the baritone. "I don't think
+much of your Lauzanne, he's like a crazy horse."
+
+Allis heard the woman's shrill voice, smothered to a hissing whisper,
+answer something. Two distinct words, "the hop," carried to her ears.
+There was a long-drawnout baritone, "Oh-h!" then, in the same key, "I
+knew Lauzanne was a sluggard, and couldn't make out why he was so frisky
+to-day."
+
+"Dick's got it down fine"--just audibly from the woman; "Lauzanne'll try
+right enough this time out"
+
+"The mare's actin' as if she'd a cup of tea, too," muttered her
+companion, Ned.
+
+This elicited a dry chuckle from the woman.
+
+Allis pinched her father's arm again, and looked up in his face
+inquiringly, as from the seat behind them the jumbled conversation came
+to their ears. Porter nodded his head understandingly, and frowned.
+The stephanotis was choking his nostrils, and an occasional word was
+filling his heart with confirmation of his suspicions.
+
+"I don't like it," he muttered to Allis. "They've had four breaks, and
+the mare's been left each time. The Chestnut's the worst actor I ever
+saw at the post. But I'm thinking he'll leave the race right there, the
+way he's cutting up."
+
+"My God!" he exclaimed in the next breath. He had startled the girl
+with the fierce emphasis he threw into the words; she sprang to her feet
+in excitement.
+
+A bell had clanged noisily, there was the shuffle of thousands of eager
+feet; a hoarse cry, "They're off!" went rolling from tier to tier, from
+seat to seat, to the topmost row of the huge stand.
+
+"Lauzanne is off with a flying lead of three lengths, and the mare is
+left absolutely-absolutely last. The boy whipped her about just as the
+flag fell."  There was the dreary monotone of crushed hope in Porter's
+voice as he spoke.
+
+"Yes, we're out of it, Little Woman," he continued; and there was almost
+a tone of relief, of resignation. Suspense was gone; realization of the
+disaster seemed to have steadied his nerves again. Allis attempted to
+speak, but her low voice was hushed to a whisper by the exultant cries
+that were all about them.
+
+"Didn't I tell you--Lauzanne wins in a walk!" the falsetto voice was an
+exultant squeak of hilarious excitement.
+
+"You called the turn."  Even Ned's baritone had risen to a false-keyed
+tenor; he was standing on his toes, peering over the heads of taller men
+in front.
+
+Allis brushed from her eyes the tears of sympathy that had welled into
+them, and, raising her voice, spoke bravely, clinging to the vain hope:
+"Lucretia is game, father--she may win yet--the race is not lost till
+they're past the post."
+
+Then her voice died away, and she kept pleading over and over in her
+heart, "Come on Lucretia--come on, brave little mare!  Is she gaining,
+father--can you see?"
+
+"She'll never make it up," Porter replied, as he watched the jumble of
+red, and yellow, and black patterned into a trailing banner, which
+waved, and vibrated, and streamed in the glittering sunlight, a furlong
+down the Course--and the tail of it was his own blue, whitestarred
+jacket. In front, still a good two lengths in front, gleamed scarlet,
+like an evil eye, the all red of Lauzanne's colors.
+
+"Where is Lucretia, father?" the girl asked again, stretching her slight
+figure up in a vain endeavor to see over the shoulders of those in
+front.
+
+"She had an opening there," Porter replied, speaking his thoughts more
+than answering the girl, "but the boy pulled her into the bunch on the
+rail. He doesn't want to get through. Oh!" he exclaimed, as though
+some one had struck him in the face.
+
+"What's wrong?  Has she--"
+
+"It's the Minstrel. His boy threw him fair across Lucretia, and knocked
+her to her knees."  He lowered his glasses listlessly. "It's Lauzanne
+all the way, if he lasts out. He's dying fast though, and Westley's
+gone to the whip."
+
+He was looking through his glasses again. Though beaten, his racing
+blood was up. "If Lauzanne wins it will be Westley's riding; the
+Hanover colt, The Dutchman, is at his quarter. He'll beat him out, for
+the Hanovers are all game"
+
+"Come on you, Lauzanne!"  Even the exotic stephanotis failed to
+obliterate the harsh, mercenary intensity of the feminine cry at the
+back of Allis.
+
+"He's beat!" a deep discordant voice groaned. "I knew he was a
+quitter;" the woman's companion was pessimistic.
+
+Like trees of a forest, swayed by strong compelling winds, the people
+rocked in excitement, tiptoed and craned eager necks, as they watched
+the magnificent struggle that was drawing to a climax in the stretch.
+Inch by inch the brave son of Hanover was creeping up on Lauzanne. How
+loosely the big Chestnut galloped--rolling like a drunken man in the
+hour of his distress. Close pressed to his neck, flat over his wither
+lay the intense form of his rider--a camel's hump--a part of the racing
+mechanism, unimpeding the weary horse in the masterly rigidity of his
+body and legs; but the arms, even the shoulders of the great jockey
+thrust his mount forward, always forward--forward at each stride; fairly
+lifting him, till the very lurches of Lauzanne carried him toward the
+goal. And at his girth raced the compact bay son of Hanover; galloping,
+galloping with a stout heart and eager reaching head; straining every
+sinew, and muscle, and nerve; in his eye the brave desire, not to be
+denied.
+
+Ah, gallant little bay!  On his back was the offspring of unthinking
+parents--a pin-head. Perhaps the Evil One had ordained him to the
+completion of Langdon's villainy with Lauzanne. At the pinch his
+judgment had flown--he was become an instrument of torture; with whip
+and spur he was throwing away the race. Each time he raised his arm and
+lashed, his poor foolish body swayed in the saddle, and The Dutchman was
+checked.
+
+"Oh, if he would but sit still!" Porter cried, as he watched the equine
+battle.
+
+The stand mob clamored as though Nero sat there and lions had been
+loosed in the arena. The strange medley of cries smote on the ears of
+Allis. How like wild beasts they were, how like wolves!  She closed her
+eyes, for she was weary of the struggle, and listened. Yes, they were
+wolves leaping at the throat of her father, and joying in the defeat of
+Lucretia. Deep-throated howls from full-chested wolves: "Come on you,
+Lauzanne!  On, Westley, on!  The Bay wins!  The Dutchman--The Dutchman
+for a thousand!"
+
+"I'll take--"
+
+But the new voice was stilled into nothingness by the shrill,
+reawakening falsetto. "Go on, Westley! Lauzanne wins--wins--wins!" it
+seemed to repeat. Allis sank back into her seat. She knew it was all
+over. The shuffle of many feet hastening madly, the crash of eager
+heels down the wooden steps, a surging, pushing, as the wolf-pack
+blocked each passage in its thirstful rush for the gold it had won, told
+her that the race was over.
+
+No one knew which horse had won. Presently a quiet came over the mob
+like a lull in a storm. Silently they waited for the winning number to
+go up.
+
+"I believe it's a dead heat," said Porter; and Allis noted how calm and
+restful his voice sounded after the exultant babel of the hoarse-
+throated watchers.
+
+"Where was Lucretia, father?"
+
+"Third," he answered, laconically, schooling his voice to indifference.
+"I hope it's a dead heat, for if Lauzanne gets the verdict I've got to
+take him. I don't want him after that run; they made him a present of
+the race at the start, and he only just squeezed home."
+
+"Why must you take the horse, father, if you don't want him?  I don't
+understand."
+
+"I suppose there's no law for it--I said I would, that's all. The whole
+thing is crooked though; they stole the race from Lucretia and planted
+me with a dope horse, and hanged if I don't feel like backing out. Let
+Langdon go before the Stewards about the sale if he dare."
+
+"Did you give your word that you'd buy the horse, father?"
+
+"I did; but it was a plant."
+
+"Then you'll take him, father. People say that John Porter's word is as
+good as his bond; and that sounds sweeter in my ears than if I were to
+hear them say that you were rich, or clever, or almost anything."
+
+"Lauzanne gets it!" called the eager grating voice behind them. "There
+go the numbers, Ned--three, five, ten; Lauzanne, The Dutchman, Lucretia.
+I knew it. Dick don't make no mistakes when he's out for blood."
+
+"He drew it a bit fine that time," growled Ned, still in opposition; "it
+was the closest sort of a shave."
+
+"Hurrah, Lauzanne!"
+
+Again there was more hurrying of feet as the Chestnut's backers who had
+waited in the stand for the Judge's decision, hurried down to the gold
+mart.
+
+"You'll take Lauzanne, father," Allis said, when the tumult had stilled;
+"it will come out right somehow--I know it will--he'll win again."
+
+John Porter stood irresolutely for a minute, not answering the girl, as
+though he were loath to go close to the contaminating influence that
+seemed part and parcel of Lauzanne, and which was stretching out to
+envelop him. He was thinking moodily that he had played against a man
+who used loaded dice, and had lost through his own rashness. He had
+staked so much on the race that the loss would cut cripplingly into his
+affairs.
+
+"I guess you're right, Allis," he said; "a man's got to keep his word,
+no matter what happens. I never owned a dope horse yet, and unless I'm
+mistaken this yellow skate is one to-day. I'll take him though, girl;
+but he'll get nothing but oats from me to make him gallop."
+
+Then Porter went resolutely down the steps, smothering in his heart the
+just rebellion that was tempting him to repudiate his bargain.
+
+As he reached the lawn, a lad swung eagerly up the steps, threw his eye
+inquiringly along row after row of seats until it stopped at Allis.
+Then he darted to her side.
+
+"Hello, Sis--been looking for you. Where's Dad?"
+
+"Gone to get Lauzanne."
+
+"Lauzanne!" and the boy's eyes that were exactly like her own, opened
+wide in astonishment.
+
+"Yes; father bought him."
+
+"The deuce!  I say, Allis, that won't do. Don't you know there's
+something wrong about this race?  I just saved myself. I backed the
+little mare for a V--then I heard something. This Langdon's a deuce of
+a queer fish, I can tell you. I wonder Crane has anything to do with
+him, for the Boss is straight as they make them."
+
+"Did you back Lauzanne then, Alan?"
+
+"You bet I did; quick, too; and was hunting all over for the gov'nor to
+tell him. You see, I know Langdon--he comes to the bank sometimes.
+He's that slick he'll hardly say 'Good-day,' for fear of giving
+something away."
+
+"Then how did you--how did people know there was something wrong?"
+
+"Oh, a woman, of course--she blabbed. I think she's Dick Langdon's
+sister, and--"
+
+"Hush-hh!" and Allis laid her hand on the boy's arm, indicating with her
+eyes the woman in the seat behind.
+
+"I'd better go and tell father--"
+
+"You needn't bother; he knows. It's a question of honor. Father said
+he'd buy the horse, and he's gone to make good."
+
+"I wouldn't; that sort of thing will break a man."
+
+"It's a good way to go broke, Alan. Perhaps we'd all be richer if it
+wasn't so strong in the Porter blood; but all the same, brother, you do
+just as father is doing to-day--always keep your word. I tell you what
+it is, boy"--and her face lighted up as she spoke--"father is a hero--
+that's what he is; he's just the biggest, bravest man ever lived. He
+couldn't do a mean act. How did you get away from the bank, Alan?" she
+said, changing the subject; "I didn't know you were coming to-day."
+
+"Mortimer was light, and took on my work. He's a good sort."
+
+"Does he bet?"
+
+The boy laughed. "Mortimer bet?  That's rich. We call him 'Old
+Solemnity' in the bank; but he doesn't mean any harm by it--he just
+can't help it, that's all. If he had a stiff ruff about his neck, you
+could pose him for a picture of one of those old Dutch burgomasters."
+
+"He's doing your work, and you're making fun of him, boy."
+
+"You can't make fun of him, at him, or with him; he's a grave digger;
+but you can trust him."
+
+"That's better."
+
+"If I'd killed a man and needed a friend to help me out, I'd go straight
+to Mortimer; he's got that kind of eyes. Do you know why he's doing my
+work to-day?"
+
+"Because you're away, I suppose."
+
+"Because you recited that doggerel about The Run of Crusader."
+
+"Alan!  I've never spoken to Mr. Mortimer."
+
+"That's why he choked the butcher the night of the concert--I mean--"
+
+"You're talking nonsense, Alan."
+
+"I'm not, I know when a man's interested. Hello. Blest if the Boss
+isn't coming this way--there's Crane. See, Allis?  I've a notion to
+tell him that his trainer is a crook."
+
+"No, you won't, Alan--you're too young to gabble."
+
+Philip Crane had evidently intended going higher up in the stand, but
+his eye lighting on the brother and sister, he stopped, and turned in to
+where they were sitting.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Porter."
+
+Allis started. Was the stand possessed of unpleasant voices? There was
+a metallic ring in Crane's voice that affected her disagreeably. He was
+almost a stranger to her; she hardly remembered ever having spoken to
+him.
+
+He turned and nodded pleasantly to Alan, saying, "May I take this seat?
+I'm tired. The Cashier let you oft for the day, eh?" he continued.
+"Came up to see your father's mare run, I suppose--I'm deuced sorry she
+was beaten."
+
+"What are they waiting for--why have they taken the horses' numbers down
+again?  Are they trying to steal the race from Lauzanne now?"  It was
+the woman's voice behind them, petulantly exclaiming.
+
+Crane turned in his seat, looked over his shoulder, and raised his hat.
+
+"The impatient lady is my trainer's sister," he explained in a modulated
+tone to Allis. "A trainer is quite an autocrat, I assure you, and one
+must be very careful not to forget any of the obvious courtesies"
+
+Allis wondered why he should find it necessary to make any explanation
+at all.
+
+"I want to thank you, Miss Porter, for that reading about Crusader."
+
+Allis's eyes opened wide.
+
+"Yes, I was there," Crane added, answering the question that was in
+them.
+
+As he said this a man came hurriedly up the steps, spoke to a policeman
+on guard, and searched the faces with his eyes. Catching sight of Crane,
+he came quickly forward and whispered something in his ear.
+
+"Excuse me, I must go--I'm wanted," Crane said to Allis.
+
+As he turned, the Trainer's sister spoke to him.
+
+"What's the matter, Mr. Crane--there's something going on up in the
+Stewards' Stand?"
+
+"I fancy there's an objection, though I don't know anything about it,"
+he answered, as he went down the steps with the messenger.
+
+Allis breathed more freely when he had gone. Somehow his presence had
+oppressed her; perhaps it was the fierce stephanotis that came in clouds
+from the lady behind that smothered her senses. Crane had said nothing
+--just an ordinary compliment. Like an inspiration it came to the girl
+what had affected her so disagreeably in Crane--it was his eyes. They
+were hard, cold, glittering gray eyes, looking out from between partly
+closed eyelids. Allis could see them still. The lower lids cut
+straight across; it was as though the eyes were peeping at her over a
+stone wall.
+
+"What did I tell you about Crusader?" Alan said, triumphantly. "There's
+another."
+
+"Alan!"
+
+"I wondered why Mr. Crane was so deuced friendly; but there's nothing to
+get cross about, girl, he's a fine old chap, and got lots of wealth."
+
+He leaned forward till he was close to his sister's ear, and added, in a
+whisper, "Her ladyship behind, Belle Langdon, is trying to hook him.
+Phew!--but she's loud. But I'm off--I'm going to see what the row is
+about."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+When John Porter left the stand, the horses had just cantered back to
+weigh in. The jockeys, one after another, with upraised whip, had
+saluted the Judge, received his nod to dismount, pulled the saddles from
+their steeds, and, in Indian file, were passing over the scales. As
+Lucretia was led away, Porter turned into the paddock. He saw that
+Langdon was waiting for him.
+
+"Well, he won, just as I said he would," declared the latter; "you've
+got a good horse cheap. You'd ought to've had a bet down on him, an'
+won him out."
+
+"He won," answered Porter, looking straight into the other's shifty
+eyes, "but he's a long way from being a good horse--no dope horse is a
+good horse."
+
+"What're you givin' me?" demanded Langdon, angrily.
+
+"Just what every blackguard ought to have--the truth."
+
+"By God!" the Trainer began, in fierce blasphemy, but John Porter took a
+step nearer, and his gray eyes pierced the other man's soul until it
+shriveled like a dried leaf, and turned its anger into fear.
+
+"Oh, if you want to crawl--if you don't want to take Lauzanne--"
+
+But Porter again interrupted Langdon---"I said I'd take the horse, and I
+will; but don't think that you're fooling me, Mr. Langdon. You're a
+blackguard of the first water. Thank God, there are only a few
+parasites such as you are racing--it's creatures like you that give the
+sport a black eye. If I can only get at the bottom of what has been
+done to-day, you'll get ruled off, and you'll stay ruled off. Now turn
+Lauzanne over to Andy Dixon, and come into the Secretary's office, where
+I'll give you a check for him."
+
+"Well, we'll settle about the horse now, an' there'll be somethin' to
+settle between us, John Porter, at some other time and some other
+place," blustered Langdon, threateningly.
+
+Porter looked at him with a half-amused, half-tolerant expression on his
+square face, and said, speaking in a very dry convincing voice: "I guess
+the check will close out all deals between us; it will pay you to keep
+out of my way, I think."
+
+As they moved toward the Secretary's office, Porter was accosted by his
+trainer.
+
+"The Stewards want to speak to you, sir," said Dixon.
+
+"All right. Send a boy over to this man's stable for Lauzanne--I've
+bought him."
+
+The Trainer stared in amazement.
+
+"I'll give you the check when I come back," Porter continued, speaking
+to Langdon.
+
+"There's trouble on, sir," said Dixon, as they moved toward the
+Stewards' box.
+
+"There always is," commented Porter, dryly.
+
+"The Stewards think Lucretia didn't run up to her form. They've had me
+up, an' her jock, McKay, is there now. Starter Carson swears he
+couldn't get her away from the post--says McKay fair anchored the mare.
+He fined the boy fifty dollars at the start."
+
+"I think they've got the wrong pig by the ear--why don't they yank
+Langdon? he's at the bottom of it. It a pretty rich, Andy, isn't it?
+They hit me heavy over the race, and now they'd like to rule me off for
+that thief's work," and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the
+direction of Langdon.
+
+"Yes, racin's hell now," commented Dixon with laconic directness. "It
+seems just no use workin' over a good horse when any mut of a crook who
+is takin' a turn at plungin' can get at the boy. I believe Boston
+Bill's game of gettin' a straight boy to play, an' lettin' the horses go
+hang, is the proper racket."
+
+"Yes, a good boy is better than a good horse nowadays; but they're like
+North Poles--hard to come by."
+
+"Some mug give the Stewards a yarn that you'd bought Lauzanne, sir, an'
+sez that's why you didn't win with the mare."
+
+Porter stopped, and gasped in astonishment. What next?
+
+"You see," continued Dixon, apologetically, "I didn't know you was
+meanin' to buy that skate, so I says it was all a damned lie."
+
+"Things are mixed, Andy, ain't they?"
+
+"I didn't know, sir"
+
+"Of course not--I didn't mention it to you--it was all a fluke. But I
+don't blame you, Andy. I'll go and talk to the Stewards--they're all
+right; they only want to get at the truth of it."
+
+As Porter went up the steps of the Stewards' Stand, he felt how like a
+man mounting a scaffold he was, an innocent man condemned to be hanged
+for another's crime.
+
+The investigation had been brought about by a note one of the Stewards
+had received. The sender of the missive stated in it that he had backed
+Lucretia heavily, but had strong reasons for believing there was a job
+on. The backer was a reliable man and asked for a fair run for his
+money. The note had come too late--just as the horses were starting--to
+be of avail, except as a corroboration of the suspicious features of the
+race. Starter Carson's evidence as to McKay's handling of the mare
+coincided with the contents of the note. Then there was the fact of
+Porter's having bought Lauzanne. The Stewards did not know the actual
+circumstances of the sale, but had been told that Lucretia's owner had
+acquired the Chestnut before the race. Where all was suspicion, every
+trivial happening was laid hold of; and Alan's trifling bet on Lauzanne
+had been magnified into a heavy plunge--no doubt the father's money had
+been put up by the boy. A race course is like a household, everything
+is known, absolutely everything.
+
+Porter was aghast. Were all the Furies in league against him? He was
+more or less a believer in lucky and unlucky days, but he had never
+experienced anything quite so bad as this. He, the one innocent man in
+the transaction, having lost almost his last dollar, and having been
+saddled with a bad horse, was now accused of being the perpetrator of
+the villainy; and the insinuation was backed up by such a mass of
+circumstantial evidence. No wonder he flushed and stood silent, lost
+for words to express his indignation.
+
+"Speak up, Mr. Porter," said the Steward, kindly. "Those that lost on
+Lucretia are swearing the mare was pulled."
+
+"And they're right," blurted out Porter. "I know what the mare can do;
+she can make hacks of that bunch. She was stopped, and interfered with,
+and given all the worst of it from start to finish; but my money was
+burnt up with the public's. I never pulled a horse in my life, and I'm
+too old to begin now."
+
+"I believe that," declared the Steward, emphatically. "I've known you,
+John Porter, for forty years, man and boy, and there never was anything
+crooked. But we've got to clear this up. Racing isn't what it used to
+be--it's on the square now, and we want the public to understand that."
+
+"What does the boy say," asked Porter; "you've had him up?"
+
+"He says the mare was 'helped;' that she ran like a drunken man--swayed
+all over the course, and he couldn't pull her together at all."
+
+"Does he mean she was doped?"
+
+"You've guessed it," answered the Steward, laconically.
+
+"That's nonsense, sir; and he knows it. Why, the little mare is as
+sweet as a lamb, and as game a beast as ever looked through a bridle.
+Somebody got at the boy. I can prove by Dixon that Lucretia never had a
+grain of cocaine in her life--never even a bracer of whiskey--she
+doesn't need it; and as for the race, I hadn't a cent on Lauzanne."
+
+"But your son"
+
+"He had a small bet; I didn't know that, even, until they were running."
+
+"Did you tell him not to back Lucretia, for he did Lauzanne?"
+
+"I told him not to bet at all"
+
+"And you played the mare yourself?"
+
+For answer Porter showed the Steward his race programme, on which was
+written the wager he had made on Lucretia, and the bookmaker's name.
+
+"Ask Ullmer to bring his betting sheet," the Steward said to an
+assistant.
+
+On the sheet, opposite John Porter's badge number, was a bet, $10,000 to
+$4,000, in the Lucretia column.
+
+"Did this gentleman make that bet with you?" the Steward asked of
+Ullmer.
+
+"He carries the number; besides I know Mr. Porter, I remember laying it
+to him."
+
+"Thank you, that will do. Hit you pretty hard," he said, turning to
+Porter. "And you hadn't a saver on Lauzanne?"
+
+"Not a dollar."
+
+"What about your buying him--is there anything in that story?"
+
+Porter explained the purchase. The Steward nodded his head.
+
+"They seem to have been pretty sure of winning, those other people," he
+commented; "but we can't do anything to them for winning; nor about
+selling you the horse, I fear; and as far as you're concerned, Lucretia
+was supposed to be trying. Who gave your jockey orders?"
+
+"Dixon. I don't interfere; he trains the horses."
+
+"We'd like to have Dixon up here again for a minute. I'm sorry we've
+had to trouble you, Mr. Porter; I can see there is not the slightest
+suspicion attaches to you."
+
+In answer to the Steward's query about the order to McKay, Dixon said:
+"I told McKay the boss had a big bet down, and to make no mistake--no
+Grand Stand finish for me. I told him to get to the front as soon as he
+could, and stay there, and win by as far as he liked. I got the office
+that there'd be somethin' doin' in the race, an' I told him to get out
+by himself."
+
+After Dixon was dismissed, the Stewards consulted for a minute, with the
+result that McKay was suspended for the balance of the meeting, pending
+a further investigation into his methods.
+
+*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+During the carpeting of Porter and Dixon, a sea of upturned faces,
+furrowed by lines of anxious interest, had surrounded the Judge's box.
+Wave on wave the living waters reached back over the grassed lawn to the
+betting ring. An indefinable feeling that something was wrong had crept
+into the minds of the waiting people, tense with excitement.
+
+As the horses had flashed past the post, and, after a brief wait for
+decision, Lauzanne's number had gone up, his backers had hastened
+eagerly to the money mart, and lined up in waiting rows behind the
+bookmakers' stands. There they waited, fighting their impatient souls
+into submission, for the brief wait would end in the acquiring of gold.
+Why did not the stentorian-voiced crier send through the ring the joyful
+cry of "All right!"  The minutes went by, and the delay became an age.
+A whisper vibrated the throng, as a breeze stirs slender branches, that
+the winner had been disqualified--that there had been an objection.
+First one dropped out of line; then another; one by one, until all
+stood, an army of expectant speculators, waiting for the verdict that
+had its birthplace up in that tiny square building, the Stewards' Stand.
+
+"It's over the pulling of Lucretia," a man said, simply to relieve his
+strained feelings.
+
+"It was the most barefaced job I ever saw," declared another; "it's even
+betting the stable gets ruled off."  He had backed Porter's mare, and
+was vindictive.
+
+"Not on your life," sneered a Tout, wolfishly; "a big owner always gets
+off. The jock'll get it in the neck if they've been caught."
+
+"Why don't they pay?" whined the fourth. "What's the pulling of the
+mare got to do with it?  The best horse won."  He was a backer of
+Lauzanne.
+
+"Bet yer life the bookies won't part till the numbers of the placed
+horses an' riders are up on that board again. They've run them down,
+don't you see?" chimed in the Tout.
+
+"I'll take two to one The Dutchman gets it," said a backer of that
+horse. "There's a job on, and they'll both get disqualified. Porter's
+kid won ten thousand over Lauzanne, and that's why they stiffened the
+mare."
+
+"That's what the Public are up against in this game," sneered the backer
+of Lucretia.
+
+"And the jock'll have to stand the shot; I know how it goes," asserted
+the Tout.
+
+"You ought to know," drawled Lauzanne's backer. The racing men within
+earshot smiled, for the Tout had been a jockey before his license had
+been taken away for crooked work.
+
+"Hello! here it comes," cried Lauzanne's backer, as a fat, red-faced man
+came swiftly down from the Stewards' Stand, ran to the betting ring, and
+pushing his way through the crowd, called with the roar of a gorilla:
+"Al-l-l right! Lauzanne, first!  The Dutchman, second! Lucretia, third!
+They're al-l-l weighed in!"
+
+A Niagara of human beings poured from the lawn to the ring; they ran as
+though the course was on fire and they sought to escape.
+
+"What about Lucretia?" some one asked.
+
+"They've broke McKay," the red-faced crier answered; "suspended him."
+
+"What did I tell you?" sneered the Tout, maliciously; "it's the under
+dog gets the worst of it every time."
+
+*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+A Celt, is an outspoken man when the prod of his hot temper has loosened
+his tongue, and Mike Gaynor was a Celt in excess.
+
+The injustice that had come to his benefactor, John Porter, had stirred
+a tempest in his Irish soul. A fierce exclamation of profane wrath had
+gone up from him as he watched the bad start from over the paddock rail.
+
+A misguided retribution led Starter Carson to pass from the Judges'
+Stand after the race, along the narrow passage between the Club Stand
+and the course, to the paddock gate. There he met Mike, who forthwith
+set to flailing him.
+
+"Did ye notice a little mare called Lucretia in that race, Mr. Carson--
+did ye see anythin' av her at all down at the post?"
+
+Carson's eyes twinkled uneasily. Years of starting had taught him that
+self-control was nine out of ten rules which should govern the Starter's
+actions.
+
+"Was there anythin' th' mather wit' yer ancestor's eyes that ye come by,
+Mister Carson?"
+
+The Starter made answer with a smile of good-humored tolerance. But Mike
+was only warming up; the hot blood was stinging his quick brain, and his
+sharp tongue galloped on with unbridled irresponsibility. With the deep
+pathos of scorn he continued:
+
+"Ye'r Carson the Stharter--Mister Carson!  S'help me, Bob! ye couldn't
+sthart a sthreet car down hill wit' bot' brakes off!"
+
+Carson ceased to smile; the smile had passed to other faces, the owners
+of which were listening with fiendish delight to the castigation.
+
+Some one touched Mike on the arm, saying, "Come over into the paddock,
+Gaynor; you're barkin' up the wrong tree."  It was Dixon.
+
+"Bot' t'umbs up!  This game's too tough fer me--I'll ship me plugs to
+Gravesend. Whin a straight man like Porther gets a deal av this kind"
+
+"Never mind, Mike," interrupted Dixon; "let it drop."
+
+Carson opened his lips to retort, then closed them tight, set his square
+jaw firmly, turned on his heel, and walked away.
+
+"What d' ye think av it, b'ys?" appealed Mike to the others.
+
+"You're wrong, Gaynor," declared a thin, tall, hawkfaced man, who was in
+his shirt sleeves; "my boy was in that run, and it isn't Carson's fault
+at all. It's dope, Mike. Lauzanne was fair crazy with it at the post;
+and McKay was dead to the world on the little mare--the Starter couldn't
+get him away."
+
+"That's right, Mike," added Dixon; "Carson fined the boy fifty, an' the
+Stewards set him down."
+
+"Is that straight goods?" asked Gaynor, losing confidence in the justice
+of his wordy assault.
+
+"Yes, you're wrong, Mike," they all asserted.
+
+In five minutes Gaynor had found Carson, and apologized with the full
+warmth of a penitent Irishman.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+For a week John Porter brooded over Lucretia's defeat, and, worse still,
+over the unjust suspicion of the unthinking public. Touched in its
+pocket, the public responded in unsavory references to Lucretia's race.
+Porter loved a good horse, and liked to see him win. The confidence of
+the public in his honesty was as great a reward as the stakes. The
+avowed principle of racing, that it improved the breed of horses, was
+but a silent sentiment with him. He believed in it, but not being rich,
+raced as a profession, honestly and squarely. He had asserted more than
+once that if he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But
+his income must be derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and
+just at this time he was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad
+luck; financially, he was in a hole; morally, he stood ill with the
+public.
+
+His reason told him that the ill-fortune could not last; he had one
+great little mare, good enough to win, an honest trainer--there the
+inventory stopped short; his stock in trade was incomplete--he had not a
+trusty jockey. In his dilemma he threshed it out with Dixon.
+
+"How's the mare doing, Andy?" he asked. "What did the race do to her?"
+
+"She never was better in her life," the Trainer answered, proudly. Then
+he added, to ease the troubled look that was in the gray eyes of his
+master, "She'll win next time out, sir--I'll gamble my shirt on that."
+
+"Not with another McKay up."
+
+"I think she's good enough for the 'Eclipse,' sir, dashed if I don't. I
+worked her the distance, and she shaded the time they made last year."
+
+"What's the use," said Porter, dejectedly; "where'll we get a boy?"
+
+"Oh, lots of the boys are straight."
+
+"I know that," Porter answered, "but all the straight ones are tied hand
+and foot to the big stables."
+
+"I've been thinkin' it over," hazarded Dixon, tentatively--"Boston
+Bill's got a good lad--there's none of them can put it over him, an' his
+boss ain't got nothin' in the 'Eclipse,' I know."
+
+"That means the same old game, Andy; we nurse the horse, get him into
+condition, place him where he can win, and then turn him over to a
+plunger and take the small end of the divide. Boston Bill would back
+her off the boards.
+
+"The stake'd mount up to seven or eight thousand, an' the win would
+square the little mare with the public."
+
+"And I'd do that, if I didn't land a dollar," said Porter. "Andy, it
+hurt me more to see the filly banged about there in the ruck than it did
+giving up the money."
+
+The Trainer smiled. With him this was unusual; there was a popular
+superstition that he never smiled except when one of his horses won.
+But his heart expanded at Porter's words, for he, too, was fond of the
+little mare.
+
+Then Porter spoke again, abruptly, and fast, as though he feared he
+might change his mind: "They downed me last trip, Dixon--I guess I'm
+getting a bit slow in my paces; and you do just as you like--arrange
+with Boston Bill if you think it's good business. He makes a specialty
+of winning races--not pulling horses, and we need a win, too, I guess."
+
+"Thank you, sir. We'll land that stake; an' p'raps the sharp
+division'll take a tumble. I'll bet a dollar they'll go for The
+Dutchman--he ran a great race the other day, an' he's in the Eclipse--if
+they start him. Lurcetia's right on edge, she's lookin' for the key
+hole, an' may go back if we don't give her a race. We'd better get the
+money for the oat bill while it's in sight. She oughter be a long price
+in the bettin', too," continued Dixon, meditatively; "the public soon
+sour on a beaten horse. You'll have a chance to get even."
+
+"I don't like that part of it," muttered Porter; "I'm in the black books
+now. People have no reason at all--no sense; they've got it into their
+heads that dirty job was of my making, and if the filly starts at ten to
+one, and I win a bit, they'll howl."
+
+"You can't make a success of racin', sir, an' run your stable for the
+public--they don't pay the feed bill."
+
+"Perhaps you're right, Dixon," answered Porter.
+
+For immediate financial relief Porter knew that he must look to
+Lucretia--no other horse in his stable was ready to win; but more
+immediately he must arrange certain money matters with his banker, who
+was Philip Crane. To Porter, Crane had been a tolerant financier,
+taking the man's honesty liberally as a security; not but what Ringwood
+had been called upon as a tangible asset. So that day, following his
+conversation with Dixin, the master of Ringwood had an interview with
+his banker. It was natural that he should speak of his prospects--his
+hopes of winning the Eclipse with Lucretia, and, corroboratively,
+mention her good trial.
+
+"I think that's a good mare of yours, Mr. Porter," said Crane,
+sympathetically. "I only race, myself in a small way, just for the
+outdoor relaxation it gives me, you know, so I'm not much of a judge.
+The other horse you bought--the winner of the race, I mean, Lauzanne--
+will also help put you right, I should say."
+
+Porter hesitated, uneasily. He disliked to talk about a man behind his
+back, but he knew that Langdon trained for Crane, and longed to give the
+banker a friendly word of warning; he knew nothing of the latter's
+manipulation of the trainer.
+
+With a touch of rustic quaintness he said, with seeming irrelevance to
+the subject, "Have you ever picked wild strawberries in the fields, Mr.
+Crane?"
+
+"I have," answered the other man, showing no surprise at the break, for
+life in Brookfield had accustomed him to disjointed deals.
+
+"Did you ever notice that going down wind you could see the berries
+better?"
+
+Crane thought for a moment. "Yes, that's right; coming up wind the
+leaves hid them."
+
+"Just so," commented Porter; "and when a man's got a trainer he's nearly
+always working up wind with him."
+
+"The trainer hides things?" queried Crane.
+
+"Some do. But the outsiders walking down wind see the berries."
+
+And the Banker pondered for a minute, then he said, "Whose garden are
+the berries in, Mr. Porter, yours or mine?"
+
+"Well, you've always been a good friend of mine, Mr. Crane," Porter
+answered, evasively.
+
+"I see," said the other, meditatively; "I understand. I'm much obliged.
+If I thought for an instant that any trainer wasn't dealing perfectly
+straightforward with me, I'd have nothing more to do with him--nothing
+whatever."
+
+Crane sat looking through the open window at John Porter as the latter
+went down the street. About his thin-lipped, square-framed mouth
+hovered an expression that might have been a smile, or an intense look
+of interest, or a touch of avaricious ferocity. The gray eyes peeped
+over the wall of their lower lids, and in them, too, was the
+unfathomable something.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, as though Porter still stood beside him, "if Langdon
+tried to deceive me, I'd crush him. Poor old Porter with his story of
+the strawberries!  If he were as clever as he is honest, he wouldn't
+have been stuck with a horse like Lauzanne. I told Langdon to get rid of
+that quitter, but I almost wish he'd found another buyer for him. The
+horse taint is pretty strong in that Porter blood. How the girl said
+that line,
+
+        'And a hush came over the clamorous mob;
+        Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing.'
+
+She's cleverer than her father."
+
+Crane sat for an hour. Porter had vanished from the landscape, but
+still the Banker's thoughts clung to his personality as though the
+peeping eyes saw nothing else.
+
+From the time of the first loan obtained upon Ringwood, Crane had
+coveted the place. It appealed to him with its elm-bordered, sweeping
+driveway, leading from gate to old colonial residence. Its thick-grassed
+fields and running water made it just the place for a man who tempered
+his passion for racing with common sense. And it would pass from
+Porter's hands right enough--Crane knew that. Porter might call it ill
+luck, but he, Crane the Banker, knew it was the lack of something, the
+inability to make money.
+
+"Made music to me on Crusader."  Yes, that was it. With the Porters it
+was jingle of spurs, and stride of the horse. All very fine in theory,
+but racing, as he looked at it, was a question of proper odds, and many
+other things connected with the betting ring.
+
+Why did the girl, Allis, with her jingling verse creep into his mind.
+Perhaps it was because she was so different from the woman who was
+always steeped in stephanotis. Of the one there was only the memory of
+an unmodulated voice and oppressive perfume; in truth, of the other
+there was not much more--just a pair of big, blue-gray, honest eyes,
+that somehow stared at him fearlessly, and withal with a great
+sweetness.
+
+Crane suddenly chuckled in dry disapprobation of himself. Grotesquely
+enough, all at once he remembered that he was forty--that very day
+forty. He ran his hand over his waistcoat, dipped two fingers into the
+pocket and drew out a cigar. Ordinarily the face of an alabaster Buddha
+was mobile and full of expression compared with Crane's. His mind
+worked behind a mask, but it worked with the clean-cut precision of
+clockwork. When his thoughts had crystallized into a form of
+expression, Crane was very apt to be exactly right in his deductions.
+
+Save for the curling smoke that streamed lazily upward from his cigar
+one might have thought the banker fast asleep in his chair, so still he
+sat, while his mind labored with the quiescent velocity of a spinning
+top. He had won a big stake over Lauzanne's victory. The race had
+helped beggar Porter, and brought Ringwood nearer his covetous grasp.
+If Porter failed to win the Eclipse, his finances would be in a pitiable
+state; he might even have to sell his good filly Lucretia. That would
+be a golden opportunity.
+
+From desiring the farm, insensibly Crane drifted into coveting the mare.
+He fell to wondering whether The Dutchman might not beat Lucretia. A
+question of this sort was one of the few he discussed with Langdon.
+Crane had smoked his cigar out, had settled the trend of many things,
+and developed the routine for his chessmen.
+
+"I'll give Porter rope enough, in the way of funds, to tangle himself,
+and in the meantime I'll run up to New York and see what Langdon thinks
+about The Dutchman," was the shorthand record of his thoughts as he
+threw away the end of his cigar, took his hat, and passed out of the
+bank.
+
+That evening he talked with his trainer.
+
+"What should win the Eclipse, Langdon?" he asked.
+
+"Well, I don't know what'll start," began the Trainer, with diplomatic
+caution, running over in his mind the most likely twoyear-olds.
+
+"Would Porter's mare have a chance?"
+
+"I think she would. I hear somethin' about a trial she gave them good
+enough to win--if I could find out her time--Porter don't talk much, an'
+Andy Dixon's like a clam. There's a boy in the stable, Shandy, that I
+might pump--"
+
+"Don't bother, Mr. Langdon; I dislike prying into anybody's business."
+
+The Trainer stared, but he didn't know that Porter had told Crane all
+about the trial, and so the latter could afford to take a virtuous pose.
+
+"Has The Dutchman a look in?" continued Crane.
+
+"On his runnin' he has; he wasn't half fit, an' got as bad a ride as
+ever I see in my life. The race ought to be between 'em--I ain't seen
+no two-year-olds out to beat that pair."
+
+"If I thought The Dutchman would win I'd buy him. I like game horses,
+and men, too--that'll take the gaff and try."
+
+"I don't know as the owner'd sell him."
+
+"Do you remember the buying of Silver Foot, Langdon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He was a good horse."
+
+"The best handicap horse in the country, an' he was sold for a song--
+seven thousand."
+
+"Less than that, the first time," corrected Crane.
+
+"Yes, they stole him from old Walters; made him believe the horse was no
+good."
+
+"Just so," commented Crane; "I've heard that story," and his smooth,
+putty-like face remained blank and devoid of all meaning, as his eyes
+peered vacantly over their lower lids at the Trainer.
+
+Langdon waited for the other to continue, but the Banker seemed wrapped
+up in a retrospect of the Silver Foot deal.
+
+"I know Billy Smith, that trains The Dutchman," hazarded Langdon; "he's
+a boozer."
+
+"I'm glad of that--I mean, that you know Smith," declared Crane. "I
+happen to know the owner--his name is Baker. His racing is what might
+be called indiscriminate, and like men of that class he sometimes
+blunders upon a good horse without knowing it; and I doubt very much but
+that if he knew all about the other race--how bad Lauzanne really is;
+how the mare, Lucretia--well--got shut off, and couldn't get through her
+horses, say--of course his own trainer, Smith, would have to tell these
+things, you understand. In fact, if he knew the exact truth, he might
+take a reasonable offer for The Dutchman."
+
+Langdon nodded approvingly. He loved his subtle master; cards up his
+sleeves tingled his nerves, and loaded dice were a joy for evermore.
+
+Crane proceeded to unwind the silken cord. "Naturally Smith would hate
+to lose a fair horse out of his stable, and would, perhaps, attempt to
+thwart any deal; so I think you might remunerate him for his loss."
+
+"When Silver Foot was sold, they gave him a bad trial before the sale--"
+
+"I'm not interested in Silver Foot," interrupted Crane; "and I shouldn't
+like to have anything--well, I don't want my name associated with
+anything shady, you understand, Langdon?  You are to buy The Dutchman as
+cheap as you can, and run him as your own horse in the Eclipse. I think
+Porter's mare will win it, so we needn't lose anything over The
+Dutchman."
+
+Langdon started. With all his racing finesse he was a babe. The
+smooth, complacent-faced man in front of him made him realize this.
+
+"But," he gasped, "there was a row over Lauzanne's race. If The
+Dutchman runs in my name, an' a lot o' mugs play him--it's dollars to
+doughnuts they will--an' he gets beat, there'll be a kick. I can't take
+no chances of bein' had up by the Stewards."
+
+"Wait a bit," replied Crane, calmly. "Supposing Porter's mare worked
+five and a half furlongs in 1.07, how would she go in the Eclipse?"
+
+"She'd win in a walk; unless The Dutchman was at his best when he might
+give her an argument."
+
+"Well, if I thought The Dutchman could beat the mare, I'd make him win,
+if he never carried the saddle again," declared Crane, almost fiercely.
+Then he interrupted himself, breaking off abruptly. Very seldom indeed
+it was that Crane gave expression to sentiment; his words were simply a
+motor for carrying the impact of his well-thought-out plans to the
+executive agents. "It will be doing Porter a good turn to-to-that is, if
+Lucretia wins. I fancy he needs a win. Bad racing luck will hardly
+stop the mare this time--not twice in succession you know, Langdon," and
+he looked meaningly at his jackal. "You buy The Dutchman, and be good
+to him."
+
+He laid marked emphasis on the words "be good to him."  The trainer
+understood. It meant that he was to send The Dutchman to the post half
+fit, eased up in his work; then the horse could try, and the jockey
+could try, and, in spite of it all, the fast filly of Porter's would
+win, and his subtle master, Crane, would have turned the result to his
+own benefit. Why should he reason, or object, or counterplot, or do
+anything but just follow blindly the dictates of this past master in the
+oblique game he loved so well?  Crane wanted The Dutchman because he was
+a good horse; he also wanted to have a heavy plunge on Lucretia; but
+with the son of Hanover in other hands the good thing might not come
+off. Somehow Langdon felt miserably inefficient in the presence of
+Crane--his self-respect suffered; the other man's mind was so
+overmastering, even to detail. The Trainer felt a sudden desire to
+right himself in Crane's estimation, give some evidence of ordinary
+intelligence, or capability to carry out his mission. "If The Dutchman's
+owner was made to think that the horse was likely to break down, throw a
+splint, or--"
+
+But Crane interrupted him in his quiet, masterful way, saying: "I know
+nothing of horse trading; I simply furnish the money, loan it to you, my
+dear Mr. Langdon, and you buy the animal in your own best way. You will
+pay for him with a check on my bank." No man could close out an
+interview so effectually as Crane. As Langdon slipped away as though he
+had been thrust bodily from the room, there was in his mind nothing but
+admiration of his master--the man who backed up his delicate diplomacy
+with liberal capital.
+
+In spite of what he had said to Langdon, there was little doubt in
+Crane's mind but that the son of Hanover was a better horse than
+Lucretia. A sanguine owner--even Porter was one at times--was so apt to
+overrate everything in his own stable, especially if he had bred the
+animal himself, as Porter had Lucretia. To buy The Dutchman and back
+him on such short ownership to beat Lucretia would have been the policy
+of a very ordinary mind indeed; he would simply be fencing, with rapiers
+of equal length, with John Porter.
+
+Crane had attained to his success by thinking a little deeper than other
+men, going a little beyond them in the carefulness of his plans. He
+knew intuitively--in fact Porter's unguarded conversation had suggested
+it--that Lucretia's owner meant to win himself out of his difficult
+position by backing the little mare heavily for the Eclipse, expecting
+to get his money on at good odds. By owning The Dutchman Crane could
+whipsaw the situation; forestall Porter in the betting by backing
+Lucretia down to a short price himself, and have Jakey Faust lay with a
+full vigor against the Hanover colt. He would thus confine Porter to
+stake money, and Ringwood would still lie chained to his bank by the
+golden links he had forged on the place.
+
+Almost insensibly, side by side with this weed of villainy there was
+growing in Crane's mind a most peculiar flower of sentiment, a love
+blossom. Strive as he would--though the apathy of his rebellion
+somewhat startled him--Crane could not obliterate from his thoughts the
+wondrous gray eyes of Allis Porter. Even after Langdon was gone, the
+atmosphere of the room still smirched by unholy underplay, thoughts of
+the girl came to Crane, jostling and elbowing the evil conceptions of
+his restless mind. Grotesquely incongruous as it was, Crane was actually
+in love; but the love flower, pure enough in itself, had rooted in
+marvelous ground. His passion was absolutely love, nothing else--love
+at first sight. But he was forty, and the methods of that many years
+must still govern his actions. Instinctively he felt that he must win
+the girl by diplomacy; and Crane's idea of diplomacy was to get a man
+irrevocably in his power. If John Porter were indebted to him beyond
+redemption, if he practically owned Ringwood, why should he not succeed
+with Allis?  All his life he had gone on in just that way, breaking men,
+for broken men were beyond doubt but potter's clay.
+
+Langdon bought The Dutchman. What methods he employed Crane took no
+pains to discover; in fact, stopped Langdon abruptly when he sought to
+enlarge on the difficulties he had overcome in the purchase. The price
+was the only item that interested Crane--seven thousand dollars; that
+included everything--even the secret service money.
+
+The horse acquired, Crane had one more move to make; he sent for Jakey
+Faust, the Bookmaker. Faust and Crane had a reciprocal understanding.
+When the Bookmaker needed financial assistance he got it from the
+Banker; when Crane needed a missionary among the other bookmakers, Faust
+acted for him.
+
+"I want to back Lucretia for the 'Eclipse,"' Crane said to the
+bookmaker.
+
+"Lucretia," ejaculated Faust. "She'll have a rosy time beatin' Dutchy
+on their last race. They'll put a better boy up on the colt next time,
+an' he ought to come home all by himself" "Yes, a fairish sort of a jock
+will have the mount I think-Westley's a good enough boy."
+
+"Westley?" came wonderingly from Faust.
+
+"Yes; Langdon owns The Dutchman now."
+
+The Cherub pursed his fat round lips in a soft whistle of enlightenment.
+It had staggered him at first that Crane, for whose acumen he had a
+profound respect, should have intended such a hazardous gamble; now he
+saw light.
+
+"Then my book is full on the Porter mare?" he said, inquiringly. Crane
+nodded his head.
+
+"An' I lay against the Hanover colt?"
+
+Again Crane nodded.
+
+"It's not bookmaking," continued Faust.
+
+"I'm not a bookmaker," retorted Crane. "And see here, Faust," he
+continued, "when you've got my money on the Porter mare--when and how I
+leave to you--I want you to cut her price short--do you understand?
+Make her go to the post two to one on, if you can; don't forget that."
+
+"If the mare goes wrong?" objected Faust.
+
+"I don't think she will, but you needn't be in a hurry--there's plenty
+of time."
+
+"What's the limit?" asked Faust.
+
+"I want her backed down to even money at least," Crane answered;
+"probably ten thousand will do it. At any rate you can go that far."
+
+Then for a few days Langdon prepared his new horse for the Eclipse
+according to his idea of Crane's idea; and Dixon rounded Lucretia to in
+a manner that gladdened John Porter's heart. They knew nothing of
+anything but that Lucretia was very fit, that they had Boston Bill's
+jockey to ride straight and honest for them, and that with a good price
+against the mare they would recoup all their losses.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The day of the race when John Porter went into the betting ring he was
+confronted with even money about his mare. If he had read on the ring
+blackboard a notice that she was dead, he would not have been more
+astonished. He fought his way back to the open of the paddock without
+making a bet.
+
+"Even money!" ejaculated Dixon when his owner told him of the ring
+situation, "why, they're crazy. Who's doin' it?"
+
+"Not the public," declared Porter, "for I was there just after the first
+betting. It must be your friend Boston Bill that has forestalled us;
+nobody else knew of the mare's trial."
+
+"Not on your life, Mr. Porter; Boston plays fair. D'ye think he could
+live at this game if he threw down his friends?"
+
+"But nobody else even knew that we'd got a good boy for the mare."
+
+"It don't make no difference," curtly answered Dixon; "it's a million
+dollars to a penny whistle that Boston hasn't a dollar on yet. Our
+agreement was that he'd send in his commission when they were at the
+post, an' his word's like your own, sir, as solid as a judge's decision.
+It's some one else. There's somebody behind that damned Langdon--he's
+not clever enough for all this. D'you know that The Dutchman's runnin'
+in Langdon's name to-day?"
+
+"He is?'
+
+"Yes; he's supposed to own him"
+
+"But what's that got to do with Lucretia's price?"
+
+"It means that we're goin' to be allowed to win. The other day they
+laid against her, an' she got beat; to-day they're holdin' her out, so I
+suppose she'll win, but somebody else gets the benefit."
+
+"Gad! that Langdon must be a crook," muttered Porter. "I'm going to
+speak to my friend Crane about him again. No honest man should have
+horses in his stable."
+
+"That they shouldn't," asserted Dixon. "But we've got our own troubles
+to-day. From what I see of this thing, I'd rather back the mare at even
+money than I would if she was ten to one. If I'm any judge we're being
+buncoed good and plenty."
+
+"I think you're right Dixon. I'll go back and have a good bet down on
+her at evens."
+
+But in five minutes Lucretia's owner was back in the paddock with the
+cheerful intelligence that the mare was now three to five.
+
+"I wouldn't back 'Salvator' among a lot of cart horses at that price,"
+commented Dixon; "leave it alone, an' we'll go for the Stake. We're up
+against it good and hard; somebody seems to know more about our own
+horse than we do ourselves"
+
+"I think myself that the gods are angry with us, Dixon," said Porter
+moodily; "and the mortals will be furious, too, whichever way the race
+goes. They've backed the little mare at this short price no doubt, an'
+if she's beaten they'll howl; if she wins they'll swear my money was on
+to-day, and that I pulled her in her last race."
+
+John Porter sat in the Grand Stand with his usual companion, Allis,
+beside him, as The Dutchman, Lucretia, and the other Eclipse horses
+passed down the broad spread of the straight Eclipse course to the five-
+and-a-half furlong post.
+
+Though Porter had missed his betting, he intuitively felt the joy of an
+anticipated win. Only a true lover of thoroughbreds can know anything
+of the mad tumult of exultation that vibrates the heart strings as a
+loved horse comes bravely, gallantly out from the surging throng of his
+rivals, peerless and king of them all, stretching his tapered neck with
+eager striving, and goes onward, past the tribunal, first and alone, the
+leader, the winner, the one to be cheered of the many thousands wrought
+to frenzy by his conquest.
+
+"Surely Lucretia will win to-day, father--don't you think so?" asked
+Allis; "I feel that she will."
+
+"She's got a big weight up," he answered. "She's a little bit of a
+thing, and it may drive her into the ground coming down the Eclipse
+hill. I expect they'll come at a terrible jog, too; they don't often
+hang back on that course."
+
+Now that the betting worry and the labor of getting an honest boy were
+over--that the horses had gone to the post, and that the race rested
+with Lucretia herself, Porter's mind had relaxed. Even at the time of
+the very struggle itself tension had gone from him; he was in a
+meditative mood, and spoke on, weighing the chances, with Allis as
+audience.
+
+"But they'll have to move some to beat the little mare's trial--they'll
+make it in record time if they head her, I think."
+
+"Isn't the horse that beat her the other day in, too, father?"
+
+"The Dutchman-yes, but I fancy his owner is backing my mare."
+
+"Father!"
+
+"It wouldn't make any difference, though; she'd beat him anyway. If I'm
+any judge, he's short."
+
+Allis felt a rustle at her elbow as though someone wished to pass
+between the seats. The faintest whiff of stephanotis came to her on the
+lazy summer air. Involuntarily she turned her head and looked for the
+harsh-voiced woman who had been verily steeped in the aggressive odor
+the day of Lauzanne's triumph. Two burly men sat behind her. They,
+surely, did not affect perfumery. Higher up the stand her eye searched
+--four rows back sat the woman Alan had said was Langdon's sister. There
+was no forgetting the flamboyant brilliancy of her apparel. But the
+almost fancied zephyr of stephanotis was mingling with the rustle at her
+elbow; she turned her head inquiringly in that direction, and Crane's
+eyes peeped at her over the stone wall of their narrow lids. He was
+standing in the passage just beyond her father, now looking wistfully at
+the vacant seat on her left.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Porter--how are you, Porter?  May I sit here with
+you and see Lucretia win?"
+
+"Come in, come in!" answered Porter, frankly.
+
+"I was sitting with some friends higher up in the stand, when I saw you
+here, and thought I'd like to make one of the victorious party."
+
+Allis knew who the friends were; the clinging touch of stephanotis had
+come with him. The discrepancy in Crane's sentiments jarred on Allis.
+That other day this woman had been his trainer's sister, recognized for
+politic purposes; to-day he had been sitting with "friends."
+
+Topping the rail in the distance, just where the course kinked a little
+to the left, Allis could see the blur of many colored silks in the
+sunlight. Then it seemed to flatten down almost level with the rail, as
+the horses broadened out to the earth in racing spread and the riders
+clung low to the galloping colts, for they had started.
+
+"There they come," said Crane. "What's in the lead, Porter?" Porter did
+not answer. A man could have counted thirty before he said, "The
+Dutchman's out in front--a length, and they're coming down the hill like
+mad."
+
+Allis felt her heart sink. Was it to be the same old story--was there
+always to be something in front of Lucretia?
+
+"Where is your mare?" Crane asked.
+
+His own glass lay idly in his lap. Though he spoke of the race, it was
+curious that his eyes were watching the play of Allis's features, as
+hope and Despair fought their old human-torturing fight over again in
+her heart.
+
+"Now she's coming!" Porter's voice made Crane jump; he had almost
+forgotten the race. To the close-calculating mind it had been settled
+days before. The Dutchman would not win, and Lucretia was the best of
+the others--why worry?
+
+They were standing now--everybody was.
+
+"Now, my beauty, they'll have to gallop," Porter was saying. They were
+close up, and Crane could see that Lucretia had got to the bay colt's
+head, and he was dying away. He smiled cynically as he watched Westley
+go to the whip on The Dutchman, with Lucretia half a length in the lead.
+Most certainly Langdon was an excellent trainer; The Dutchman was just
+good enough to last into second place, and Lucretia had won handily.
+What a win Crane had had!
+
+A little smothered gasp distracted his momentary thought of success,
+and, turning quickly, he saw tears in a pair of gray eyes that were set
+in a smiling face.
+
+"Like a babe on his neck I was sobbing," came back to Crane out of the
+poem Allis had recited.
+
+"I congratulate you, Miss Porter," he said, raising his hat. Then he
+turned, and held out his hand to her father, saying: "I'm glad you've
+won, Porter--I thought you would. The Dutchman quit when he was
+pinched."
+
+"It wasn't the colt's fault--he was short," said Porter. "I shouldn't
+like to have horses in that man's stable--he's too good a trainer for
+me."
+
+There was a marked emphasis on Porter's words; he was trying to give
+Crane a friendly hint.
+
+"You mean it's a case of strawberries?" questioned Crane.
+
+"Well I know it takes a lot of candles to find a lost quarter," remarked
+Porter, somewhat ambiguously. Then he added, "I must go down to thank
+Dixon; I guess this is his annual day for smiling."
+
+"I'm coming, too, father," said Allis; "I want to thank Lucretia, and
+give her a kiss, brave little sweetheart."
+
+After Allis and her father had left Crane, he sat for a minute or two
+waiting for the crowd of people that blocked the passageway after each
+race to filter down on the lawn. The way seemed clearer presently, and
+Crane fell in behind a knot of loud-talking men. The two of large
+proportions who had sat behind Allis, were like huge gate posts jammed
+there in the narrow way. As he moved along slowly he presently had
+knowledge of a presence at his side--a familiar presence. Raising his
+eyes from a contemplation of the heels in front of him, he saw Belle
+Langdon. She nodded with patronizing freedom.
+
+"I lost you," she said.
+
+"I was sitting with some friends here," he explained.
+
+"Yes, I saw her," she commented pointedly.
+
+At that instant one of the stout men in front said, with a bear's snarl,
+"Well that's the worst ever; I've seen some jobs in my time, but this
+puts it over anything yet."
+
+"Didn't you back the little mare?" a thin voice squealed. It was the
+'Pout.
+
+"Back nothin'!  The last time out she couldn't untrack herself; an'
+today she comes, without any pull in the weight, and wins in a walk from
+The Dutchman; and didn't he beat her just as easy the other day?"
+
+Belle Langdon looked into Crane's face, and her eyes were charged with a
+look of reciprocal meaning. Crane winched. How aggressively obnoxious
+this half-tutored girl, mistress of many gay frocks, could make herself!
+There was an implied crime-partnership in her glance which revolted him.
+Dick Langdon must have talked in his own home. Crane's conscience--
+well, he hardly had one perhaps, at least it was always subevident; to
+put it in another way, the retrospect of his manipulated diplomacy never
+bothered him; but this gratuitous sharing in his evil triumph was
+disquieting. The malicious glitter of the girl's small black eyes
+contrasted strongly with the honest, unaffected look that was forever in
+the big tranquil eyes of Allis.
+
+They were just at the head of the steps, and the Tout was saying to the
+fat expostulator: "I could have put you next; I steered a big bettor on
+--he won a thousand over the mare. I saw Boston's betting man havin' an
+old-time play, an' I knew it was a lead-pipe cinch. He's a sure thing
+bettor, he is; odds don't make no difference to him, the shorter the
+better--that's when his own boy's got the mount."
+
+"It's all right to be wise after the race," grunted the fat man.
+
+"G'wan! the stable didn't have a penny on Lucretia last time; an' what
+do you suppose made her favorite to-day?" queried the Tout, derisively.
+"It took a bar'l of money," he continued, full of his own logical
+deductions, "an' I'll bet Porter cleaned up twenty thousand. He's a
+pretty slick cove, is old 'Honest John,' if you ask me."
+
+The girl at Crane's side cackled a laugh. "He's funny, isn't he?" she
+said, nodding her big plumed hat in the direction of the man-group.
+
+"He's a talkative fool!" muttered the Banker, shortly. "The steps are
+clear on the other side, Miss Langdon, you can get down there. I've got
+to go into the paddock; you'll excuse me."
+
+Being vicious for the fun of the thing had never appealed to Crane; he
+raced as he did everything else--to win. If other men suffered, that
+was the play of fate. He never talked about these things himself,
+almost disliked to think of them. He turned his back on Belle Langdon
+and went down the right-hand steps. On the grass sward at the bottom he
+stopped for an instant to look across at the jockey board.
+
+Three men had just came out of the refreshment bar under the stand.
+They were possessed of many things; gold of the bookmakers in their
+pockets, and it's ever-attendant exhilaration in their hearts. One of
+them had cracked a bottle of wine at the bar, as tribute to the
+exceeding swiftness of Lucretia, for he had won plentifully. At that
+particular stage there was nothing left but to talk it over, and they
+talked. Crane, avaricious, unhesitating in his fighting, devoid of
+sympathy, was not of the eavesdropping class, but as he stood there he
+was as much a part of the other men's conversation as though he had been
+a fourth member of the brotherhood.
+
+"I tell you none of these trainers ain't in it with a gentleman owner--
+when he takes to racin'. When a man of brains takes to runnin' horses
+as a profesh, he's gen'rally a Jim Dandy."  It was he of the wine-
+opening who let fall these words of wise value.
+
+"D'you mean Porter, Jim?" asked number two of the trio.
+
+"Maybe that's his name. An' he put it all over Mister Langdon this
+trip."
+
+"As how?" queried the other.
+
+"Last time he runs his mare she's got corns in her feet the whole
+journey, an' all the time he owns the winner, Lauzanne, see?--buys him
+before they go out. Then Langdon thinks The Dutchman's the goods, an'
+buys him at a fancy price--gives a bale of long goods for him--I've got
+it straight that he parted with fifteen thousand. Then the gentleman
+owner, Honest John, turns the trick with Lucretia, an' makes The
+Dutchman look like a sellin' plater."
+
+"I guess Langdon'll feel pretty sick," hazarded number three.
+
+"I'd been watchin' the game," continued the wine man, "an' soon's I saw
+a move to-day from the wise guys in the ring, I plumped for the mare
+'toot sweet."'
+
+What an extraordinary thing manipulation was, Crane mused, as he
+listened; also how considerable of an ass the public was in its
+theoretical wisdom.
+
+Then the three men drifted away to follow some new toy balloon of
+erratic possibilities, and Crane wound through the narrow passage which
+led to the paddock. There he encountered Langdon.
+
+"He didn't run a very good horse, sir," began the Trainer.
+
+"I thought otherwise," replied Crane, measuring the immediate vicinity
+of listeners.
+
+"I had to draw it a bit fine," declared Langdon, with apologetic
+remonstrance.
+
+"Running second is always bad business, except in a selling race,"
+retorted his master.
+
+"I've got to think of myself," growled Langdon. "If he'd been beat off,
+there'd been trouble; the Stewards have got the other race in their crop
+a bit yet."
+
+"I'm not blaming you, Langdon, only I was just a trifle afraid that you
+were going to beat Porter's mare. He's a friend of mine, and needed a
+win badly. I'm not exactly his father confessor, but I'm his banker,
+which amounts to pretty much the same thing."
+
+"What about the horse, sir," asked the Trainer.
+
+"We'll see later on. Let him go easy for the present."
+
+"I wonder what he meant by that," Langdon mused to himself, as Crane
+moved away. "He don't make nobody a present of a race for love."
+Suddenly he stumbled upon a solution of the enigma. "Well, I'm damned if
+that wasn't slick; he give me the straight tip to leave Porter to him--
+to let him do the plannin'; I see."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Porter was an easy man with his horses. Though he could not afford,
+because of his needs, to work out his theory that two-year-olds should
+not be raced, yet he utilized it as far as possible by running them at
+longer intervals than was general.
+
+"I'll start the little mare about once more this season," he told Dixon.
+"The babes can't cut teeth, and grow, and fight it out in punishing
+races on dusty hay and hard-shelled oats, when they ought to be picking
+grass in an open field. She's too good a beast to do up in her young
+days. The Assassins made good three-year-olds, and the little mare's
+dam, Maid of Rome, wasn't much her first year out--only won once--but as
+a three-year-old she won three out of four starts, and the fourth year
+never lost a race. Lucretia ought to be a great mare next year if I lay
+her by early this season. She's in a couple of stakes at Gravesend and
+Sheepshead, and we'll just fit her into the softest spot."
+
+"What about Lauzanne?" asked the Trainer, "I'm afraid he's a bad horse."
+
+"How is he doing?"
+
+"He's stale. He's a bad doer--doesn't clean up his oats, an' mopes."
+
+"I guess that killing finish with The Dutchman took the life out of him.
+That sort of thing often settles a soft-hearted horse for all time"
+
+"I don't think it was the race, sir," Dixon replied; "they just pumped
+the cocaine into him till he was fair blind drunk; he must a' swallowed
+the bottle. I give him a ball, a bran mash, and Lord knows what all,
+an' the poison's workin' out of him. He's all breakin' out in lumps;
+you'd think he'd been stung by bees."
+
+"I never heard of such a thing," commented Porter. "A man that would
+dope a two-year-old ought to be ruled off, sure."
+
+"I think you oughter make a kick, sir," said Dixon, hesitatingly.
+
+"I don't. When I squeal, Andy, it'll be when there's nothing but the
+voice left. I bought a horse from a man once just as he stood. I
+happened to know the horse, and said I didn't want any inspection--
+didn't want to see him, but bought him, as I say, just as he stood.
+When I went to the stable to get him he wasn't worth much, Andy--he was
+dead. Perhaps I might have made a kick about his not standing up, but I
+didn't."
+
+"Well, sir, I'm thinkin' Lauzanne's a deuced sight worse'n a dead horse;
+he'll cost more tryin' to win with him."
+
+"I dare say you're right, but he can gallop a bit."
+
+"When he's primed."
+
+"No dope for me, Andy. I never ran a dope horse and never will--I'm too
+fond of them to poison them."
+
+"I'll freshen him up a bit, sir, and we'll give him a try in a day or
+two. Would you mind puttin' him in a sellin' race?--he cost a bit."
+
+"He couldn't win anything else, and if anybody wants to claim him they
+can."
+
+"I thought of starting Diablo in that mile handicap; he's in pretty
+light. He's about all we've got ready."
+
+"All right, Dixon," Porter replied. "It may be that we've broke our bad
+luck with the little mare."
+
+They were standing in the paddock during this conversation. It was in
+the forenoon; Dixon had come over to the Secretary's office to see about
+some entries before twelve o'clock. When the Trainer had finished his
+business, the two men walked across the course and infield to Stable 12,
+where Dixon had his horses. As they passed over the "Withers Course,"
+as the circular track was called, Dixon pointed to the dip near the
+lower far turn.
+
+"It's a deuced funny thing," he said, speaking reminiscently, "but that
+little hollow there settles more horses than the last fifty yards of the
+finish; it seems to make the soft ones remember that they're runnin'
+when they get that change, an' they stop. I bet Diablo'll quit right
+there, he's done it three or four times."
+
+"He was the making of a great horse as a two-year-old, wasn't he, Andy?"
+
+"They paid a long price for him, if that's any line; but I think he
+never was no good. It don't matter how fast a horse is if he won't try"
+
+"I've an idea Diablo'll be a good horse yet," mused Porter. "You can't
+make a slow horse gallop, but there's a chance of curing a horse's
+temper by kind treatment. I've noticed that a squealing pig generally
+runs like the devil when he takes it into his head."
+
+"Diablo's a squealing pig if there ever was one," growled Dixon.
+
+They reached the track stable, and, as if by a mutual instinct, the two
+men walked on till they stood in front of Lauzanne's stall.
+
+"He's a good enough looker, ain't he?" commented Dixon, as he dipped
+under the door bar, went into the stall, and turned the horse about.
+"He's the picture of his old sire, Lazzarone," he continued, looking the
+horse over critically; "an' a damned sight bigger rogue, though the old
+one was bad enough. Lazzarone won the Suburban with blinkers on his
+head, bandages on his legs, an' God knows what in his stomach. He was
+second in the Brooklyn that same year. I've always heard he was a mule,
+an' I guess this one got it all, an' none of the gallopin'."
+
+"How does he work with the others?" queried Porter.
+
+"Runs a bit, an' then cuts it--won't try a yard. Of course he's sick
+from the dope, an' the others are a bit fast for him. If we put him in
+a sellin' race, cheap, he'd have a light weight, an' might do better."
+
+Porter walked on to Lucretia's stall, and the trainer continued in a
+monologue to Lauzanne: "You big slob! you're a counterfeit, if there
+ever was one. But I'll stand you a drink just to get rid of you; I'll
+put a bottle of whisky inside of your vest day after to-morrow, an' if
+you win p'raps somebody'll buy you."
+
+Lauzanne did not answer-it's a way horses have. It is doubtful if his
+mind quite grasped the situation, even. That neither Dixon, nor
+Langdon, nor the jockey boys understood him he knew--not clearly, but
+approximately enough to increase his stubbornness, to rouse his
+resentment. They had not even studied out the pathology of his descent
+sufficiently well to give him a fair show, to train him intelligently.
+They remembered that his sire, Lazzarone, had a bad temper; but they
+forgot that he was a stayer, not 'given to sprinting. Even Lauzanne's
+dam, Bric-a-brac, was fond of a long route, was better at a mile-and-a-
+half than five furlongs.
+
+Lauzanne knew what had come to him of genealogy, not in his mind so much
+as in his muscles. They were strong but sluggish, not active but non-
+tiring. Langdon had raced Lauzanne with sprinting colts, and when they
+ran away from him at the start he had been unequal to the task of
+overhauling them in the short two-year-old run of half-a-mile. Then the
+wise man had said that Lauzanne's courage was at fault; the jockeys had
+called it laziness, and applied the whip. And out of all this
+uselessness, this unthinking philosophy, the colt had come with a soured
+temper, a broken belief in his masters--"Lauzanne the Despised."
+
+Porter's trust that his ill luck had been changed by a win was a faith
+of short life, for Diablo was most emphatically beaten in his race.
+
+And then came the day of forlorn hope, the day of Lauzanne's disgrace,
+inasmuch as it de-graduated him into the selling-platter class.
+
+Bad horse as Langdon knew Lauzanne to be, it occurred to him that Porter
+had planned a clever coup. He had an interview with Crane over the
+subject, but his master did not at all share the Trainer's belief.
+
+"What price would Lucretia, or The Dutchman, be in with the same lot?"
+Langdon asked, argumentatively.
+
+"About one to ten," Crane replied. "But the Chestnut's beating them had
+no bearing on this race. From what I see of Mr. Dixon, I don't at all
+class him with you as a trainer--he hasn't the same resource."
+
+Langdon stood silent, sullenly turning over in his mind this doubtful
+compliment.
+
+"I'm not sure," continued the Banker, "but that having stuck Porter with
+Lauzanne, you shouldn't give him a hint about--well, as to what course
+of preparation would make Lauzanne win a race for him. The ordinary
+diet of oats is hardly stimulating enough for such a sluggish animal."
+
+Langdon frowned. If Crane had not been quite so strong, quite so full
+of unexpressed power, he would have rebelled at the assertion that he
+had stuck Porter; but he answered, and his voice struggled between
+asperity and deprecation, "There ain't no call for me to give that
+stable any pointers; Porter put it to me pretty straight that the horse
+had been helped."
+
+"And what did you say?" blandly inquired Crane.
+
+"Told him to go to hell."
+
+This wasn't exactly truthful as we remember the interview, but its
+terseness appealed to Crane, and he smiled as he said: "Porter probably
+won't take your advice, Langdon; he's stubborn enough at times. And
+even if he does know that--that--Lauzanne' requires special treatment,
+he won't indulge him--he's got a lot of old-fashioned ideas about
+racing. So you see Lauzanne is a bad betting proposition"
+
+After Langdon had left Crane's thoughts dwelt on the subject they had
+just discussed.
+
+"From a backer's point of view Lauzanne is certainly bad business," he
+mused; "but the public will reason just as Langdon does. And what's bad
+for the backers is good for the layers; I must see Faust."
+
+"You had better make a book to beat Lauzanne," Crane said to Jakey
+Faust, just before business had commenced in the ring that afternoon.
+
+The Cherub stared in astonishment; his eyes opened wide. That was
+nearly the limit of his fat little face's expression, no matter what the
+occasion.
+
+"You don't own him now, do you, sir?" he blurted out, with unthinking
+candor.
+
+"I do not."
+
+"He's dropped into a soft spot--he rates best in the percentage card."
+
+"Figures sometimes lie," commented Crane.
+
+"Every handicapper tips him to win."
+
+"They're all broke because of their knowledge."
+
+"The books'll mark him up first choice."
+
+"That's why it will be worth while playing the field to beat him."
+
+"He's in with a gang of muts to-day, an' he beat some cracker-jacks last
+time out."
+
+"You were hypnotized that day, Mr. Faust; so was the Judge. Lauzanne
+didn't beat anything."
+
+"Didn't beat--what the hell--didn't the Chestnut get the verdict?"
+
+"He did; but--" and Crane looked at Faust, with patient toleration of
+his lack of perception.
+
+The Cherub waited for an explanation of these contradictory remarks.
+But he might have waited indefinitely--Crane had quite finished. The
+Cherub raised his little round eyes, that were like glass alleys, green
+and red and blue-streaked, to the other's face inquiringly, and
+encountered a pair of penetrating orbs peering at him over some sort of
+a mask--the face that sustained the eyes was certainly a mask--as
+expressionless. Then it came to Jakey Faust that there was nothing left
+to do but fill the Lauzanne column in his book with the many bets that
+would come his way and make much money.
+
+Crane watched Lauzanne go lazily, sluggishly down to the post for his
+race. He knew the horse's moods; the walk of the Chestnut was the
+indifferent stroll of a horse that is thinking only of his dinner.
+
+"They've given him nothing," the Banker muttered to himself; "the heavy-
+headed brute won't try a yard. But he'll fight the boy when he tries to
+ride him out."
+
+The whisky that Dixon had surreptitiously given Lauzanne had been as
+inefficacious as so much ginger beer; and in the race Lauzanne drew back
+out of the bustle and clash of the striving horses as quickly as he
+could. In vain his jockey used whip and spur; Lauzanne simply put his
+ears back, switched his tail, and loafed along, a dozen lengths behind
+his field.
+
+In the straight he made up a little of the lost ground, but he was
+securely out of the money at the finish. Fate still sat and threw the
+dice as he had for many moons--a deuce for John Porter, and a six for
+Philip Crane.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+It was late autumn; the legitimate racing season had closed. In August
+Porter had taken his horses back to Ringwood for the winter.
+
+When a man strives against Fate, when realization laughs mockingly at
+his expectations, there comes to him a time when he longs for a
+breathing spell, when he knows that he must rest, and wait until the
+wheel of life, slow-turning, has passed a little through the groove of
+his existence. John Porter had been beaten down at every point.
+Disastrous years come to all men, whether they race horses or point the
+truthful way, and this year had been but a series of disappointments to
+the master of Ringwood. After Lucretia's win in the Eclipse, Porter did
+not land another race. Lucretia caught cold and went off. He tried
+Lauzanne twice again, but the Chestnut seemed thoroughly soured. Now he
+was back at Ringwood, a dark cloud of indebtedness hanging over the
+beautiful place, and prospect of relief very shadowy. If Lucretia
+wintered well and grew big and strong she might extricate him from his
+difficulties by winning one or two of the big races the following
+summer. About any of the other horses there was not even this much of
+promise.
+
+Thoroughly distrusting Lauzanne, embittered by his cowardice, Porter had
+given him away--but to Allis. Strangely enough, the girl had taken a
+strong liking to the son of Lazzarone; it may have been because of the
+feeling that she was indirectly responsible for his presence at
+Ringwood. Allis Porter's perceptions had been developed to an
+extraordinary degree. All her life she had lived surrounded by
+thoroughbreds, and her sensitive nature went out to them, in their
+courage and loyalty, in a manner quite beyond possibility in a
+practical, routine-following horseman. To her they were almost human;
+the play of their minds was as attractive and interesting as the
+development of their muscles was to a trainer. When the stable had been
+taken back to Ringwood, she had asked for Lauzanne as a riding horse.
+
+"I'm going to give him away," her father had replied; "I can't sell him
+--nobody would buy a brute with such a reputation."  This word brought to
+Porter's mind his chief cause of resentment against the Chestnut. The
+public having got into its head that Porter was playing coups,
+generously suggested that he was pulling Lauzanne to get him in some big
+handicap light.
+
+"I won't feed such a skate all winter," he declared angrily, after a
+little pause.
+
+"Well, give him to me, father," the girl had pleaded; "I am certain that
+he'll make good some day; you'll see that he'll pay you for keeping your
+word."
+
+As Allis rode Lauzanne she discovered many things about the horse; that
+instead of being a stupid, morose brute, his intelligence was
+extraordinary, and, with her at least, his temper perfect.
+
+Allis's relationship with her father was unusual. They were chums; in
+all his trouble, in all his moments of wavering, buffeted by the waves
+of disaster, Allis was the one who cheered him, who regirt him in his
+armor:--Allis, the slight olive-faced little woman, with the big,
+fearless Joan-of-Arc eyes.
+
+"You'll see what we'll do next summer, Dad," she said cheerily. "You'll
+win with Lucretia as often as you did with her mother; and I'll win with
+Lauzanne. We'll just keep quiet till spring, then we'll show them."
+
+Langdon's horses, so silently controlled by Philip Crane, Banker, had
+been put in winter quarters at Gravesend, where Langdon had a cottage.
+Crane's racing season had been as successful as the Master of Ringwood's
+had been disastrous. He had won a fair-class race with The Dutchman--
+ostensibly Langdon's horse--and then, holding true to his nature, which
+was to hasten slowly, threw him out of training and deliberately planned
+a big coup for the next year. The colt was engaged in several three-
+year-old stakes, and Crane set Langdon to work to find out his
+capabilities. As his owner expected, he showed them in a severe trial
+gallop the true Hanover staying-power.
+
+Although Crane had said nothing about it at the time, he had his eye on
+the Eastern Derby when he commissioned Langdon to purchase this gallant
+son of Hanover. It was a long way ahead to look, to lay plans to win a
+race the following June, but that was the essence of Crane's existence,
+careful planning. He loved it. He was a master at it. And, after all,
+given a good stayer, such as he had in The Dutchman, the mile-and-a-half
+run of the Derby left less to chance than any other stake he could have
+pitched upon; the result would depend absolutely upon the class and
+stamina of the horses. No bad start could upset his calculations, no
+little interference in the race could destroy his horse's chance if he
+were good enough to win. The Dutchman's races as a two-year-old would
+not warrant his being made a favorite, and Langdon, properly directed,
+was clever enough to see that The Dutchman was at a comfortable price
+for betting purposes.
+
+Many things had crowded into this year of Crane's life. The bank, doing
+but a modest business always, was running so smoothly that it required
+little attention from the owner. This was one reason why he had thrown
+so much subtle energy into his racing; its speculation appealed to him.
+The plucking he had received as a moneyed youth rankled in his heart.
+The possession of such a faithful jackal as Langdon carried him to
+greater lengths than he would have gone had the obnoxious details been
+subject to his own execution. Though conscienceless, he was more or
+less fastidious. Had a horse broken down and become utterly useless, he
+would have ordered him to be destroyed without experiencing any feeling
+of compassion--he would have dismissed the matter entirely from his mind
+with the passing of the command; but rather than destroy the horse
+himself, he probably would have fed him. And so it was with men. If
+they were driven to the wall because of his plans, that was their own
+look out; it did not trouble Philip Crane.
+
+Porter he had known simply in a business way. From the first he had
+felt that Ringwood would pass out of its owner's possession, and he had
+begun to covet it. The Lauzanne race had been Langdon's planning
+altogether. Crane, cold-blooded as he was, would not have robbed a man
+he had business dealings with deliberately. He had told his trainer to
+win, if possible, a race with Lauzanne, and get rid of him. That
+Langdon's villainous scheme had borne evil fruit for John Porter was
+purely a matter of chance selection. There was a Mephistophelean
+restitution in not striving to wrest the Eclipse from Lucretia with The
+Dutchman.
+
+And now, in this year, had come the entirely new experience of an
+affection--his admiration for Allis Porter. It conflicted with every
+other emotion that governed his being. All his life he had been
+selfish--considering only Philip Crane, his mind unharrassed by anything
+but business obstacles in his ambitious career. Love for this quiet,
+self-contained girl, unadorned by anything but the truth, and honesty,
+and fearlessness that were in her big steadfast eyes, had come upon him
+suddenly and with an assertive force that completely mastered him. By a
+mere chance he had heard Allis give her recitation, "The Run of
+Crusader," in the little church at Brookfield. Crane was not an
+agnostic, but he had interested himself little in church matters; and
+the Reverend Dolman's concert, that was meant to top down many weeds of
+debt that were choking the church, had claimed him simply because an
+evening in Brookfield had come to hang heavily on his hands. Now when
+the Reverend Dolman received Philip Crane's check for fifty dollars the
+next day, to be applied to the church encumbrance, he sought to allay
+his surprise by attributing the gift to his own special pleading that
+evening, of course backed up by Providence. If anybody had stated that
+the mainspring of the gift had been the wicked horse-racing poem of
+their denunciation he would have been scandalized and full of righteous
+disbelief. It is quite likely that even Crane would have denied that
+Allis's poem had inspired him to the check; but nevertheless it had.
+
+The world of feeling and sympathy and goodness that had hung in her
+voice had set a new window in his soul slightly ajar--so slightly ajar
+that even now, months afterward, the lovelight was only beginning to
+stream through. When love comes to a man at forty he is apt to play the
+game very badly indeed; he turns it into a very anxious business, and
+moves through the light-tripping measure with the pedantic dignity of a
+minuet dancer. But Philip Crane was not given to making mistakes; he
+knew that, like Crusader, "His best racing days (in the love stakes)
+were over"--especially where the woman was but a girl. So he sat down
+and planned it all out as he planned to win the Brooklyn Derby months
+later. And all the time he was as sincerely in love as if he had
+blundered into many foolishness; but his love making was to be
+diplomatic. Even now all the gods of Fate stood ranged on his side;
+Allis's brother was in his bank, more or less dependent upon him;
+Ringwood itself was all but in the bank; he stood fairly well with John
+Porter, and much better with Allis's mother, for already he had begun to
+ingratitate himself with Mrs. Porter. He would cast from the shoulders
+of the Reverend Dolman a trifle more of the load he was carrying. He
+would send the reverend gentleman another check.
+
+Why he should think it necessary to prepare his suit with so much
+subtlety he hardly knew; in all reason he should be considered a fair
+match for Allis Porter. He was not a bad man as the world understood
+him; he did not profess Christianity, but, on the other hand, his life
+was extremely respectable; he did not drink; he was not given to profane
+language; even in racing his presence seemed to lend an air of
+respectability to the sport, and it was generally supposed that he raced
+purely for relaxation. In truth, it seemed to him that his marriage
+with Allis would be a deuced good thing for the Porters.
+
+In actuality there were just two things that stood in the way--two
+things which his position and wealth could not obviate--his age, and the
+Porter pride. If Porter had not been dubbed "Honest John" early in
+life, he might have been saddled with "Proud Porter" later on. The
+pride had come up out of old Kentucky with all the other useless things
+--the horse-racing, and the inability to make money, and the fancy for
+keeping a promise. Something whispered to Crane that Allis would never
+come to him simply out of love; it might be regard, esteem, a desire to
+please her parents, a bowing to the evident decree of fate. Perhaps
+even the very difficulty of conquest made Crane the more determined to
+win, and made him hasten slowly.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+As a rule few visitors went to Ringwood.
+
+John Porter had been too interested in his horses and his home life to
+care much for social matters. Mrs. Porter was a home-body, too, caring
+nothing at all for society--at best there was but little of it in
+Brookfield--except where it was connected with church work. Perhaps
+that was one reason why Allis had grown so close into her father's life.
+It was a very small, self-contained household.
+
+Mike Gaynor had become attached to the staff at Ringwood this winter as
+a sort of assistant trainer to Porter. Dixon only trained the Ringwood
+horses during the racing season, Porter always supervising them in
+winter quarters. Perhaps it was Porter's great cloud of evil fortune
+which had cast its sinister influence over Mike because of his sympathy
+for the master of Ringwood; certain it is that the autumn found him
+quite "on his uppers," as he graphically described his financial
+standing. An arrangement was made by which Mike's disconsolate horses
+were fed at Ringwood, and he took care of both strings. This delighted
+Allis, for she had full confidence in Gaynor's integrity and good sense.
+
+The early winter brought two visitors to Ringwood--Crane, who came quite
+often, and Mortimer, who went out to the farm a couple of times with
+Alan.
+
+George Mortimer might be described as an angular young man. His face,
+large-featured, square-jawed, and bold-topped by broad forehead,
+suggested the solemnity Alan had found so trying. Of course a young man
+of his make-up was sure to have notions, and Mortimer's mind was knotted
+with them; there seemed no soft nor smooth places in his timber. That
+was why he had reasoned with the butcher by energetically grasping his
+windpipe the evening that worthy gentleman had expressed himself so
+distastefully over Allis Porter's contribution to the Reverend Dolman's
+concert. Perhaps a young man of more subtle grace would have received
+some grateful recognition for this office, but the matter had been quite
+closed out so far as Mortimer was concerned; Alan tried to refer to it
+afterward, but had been curtly stopped.
+
+George Mortimer's chief notion was that work was a great thing,
+seemingly the chief end of man. Another notion almost equally
+prominent--he had derived it from his mother--was, that all forms of
+gambling were extremely bad business. First and foremost in this
+interdiction stood horse racing. The touch of it that hung like a small
+cloud over the Brookfield horizon had inspired Mrs. Mortimer, as it had
+other good people of the surrounding country, with the restricted idea
+that those who had to do with thoroughbred horses were simply gamblers--
+betting people. Her home was in Emerson, a dozen miles from Brookfield.
+
+Quite paradoxically, if Allis Porter had not given "The Run of
+Crusader"--most certainly a racing poem--in the little church, this
+angular young man with stringent ideas about running horses probably
+would have never visited Ringwood. Something of the wide sympathy that
+emanated from her as she told of the gallant horse's death struck into
+his strong nature, and there commenced to creep into his thoughts at odd
+intervals a sort of gratuitous pity that she should be inextricably
+mixed up with race horses. His original honesty of thought and the
+narrowness of his tuition were apt to make him egotistically sure that
+the things which appealed to him as being right were incapable of
+variation.
+
+At first he had liked Alan Porter, with no tremendous amount of
+unbending; now, because of the interest Allis had excited in him, the
+liking began to take on a supervisory form, and it was not without a
+touch of irritation in his voice that Alan informed his sister that he
+had acquired a second father, and with juvenile malignity attributed the
+incumbrance to her seductive influence.
+
+With all these cross purposes at work it can be readily understood that
+Mortimer's visits to Ringwood were not exactly rose-leaved. In truth,
+the actors were all too conventionally honest, too unsocialized, to
+subvert their underlying motives. Allis, with her fine intuition, would
+have unearthed Mortimer's disapprobation of racing--though he awkwardly
+strove to hide it--even if Alan had not enlarged upon this point. This
+knowledge constrained the girl, even drove her into rebellion. She took
+his misunderstanding as a fault, almost as a weakness, and shocked the
+young man with carefully prepared racing expressions; reveled with
+strange abandon in talks of gallops, and trials, and work-outs, and
+breathers; threw ironmouthed horses, pullers, skates, and divers other
+equine wonders at his head until he revolted in sullen irritation. In
+fact they misunderstood each other finely; in truth their different
+natures were more in harmony two miles apart, the distance that lay
+between the bank and Ringwood.
+
+By comparison Crane's visits to Ringwood were utopianly complacent.
+Strangely enough, Mrs. Porter, opposed to racing as she was, came quite
+readily under the glamor of his artistic unobtrusiveness. He had
+complete mastery over the science of waiting. His admission to the good
+lady of a passing interest in horses was an apology; there seemed such
+an utter absence of the betting spirit that the recreation it afforded
+him condoned the offense.
+
+There was this difference between the two men, the old and the young:
+Crane knew exactly why he went there, while Mortimer had asked himself
+more than once, coming back from Ringwood feeling that he had been
+misunderstood--perhaps even laughed at--why he had gone there at all.
+He had no definite plan, even desire; he was impelled to it out of some
+unrecognized force. It was because of these conditions that the one
+potter turned his images so perfectly, and the other formed only poor,
+distorted, often broken, dishes of inferior clay.
+
+It stood in the reason of things, however, that Mortimer, in spite of
+his uncompromising attitude toward racing, should be touched by its
+tentacles if he visited at Ringwood.
+
+His first baptism came with much precipitancy on the occasion of his
+fourth visit to the Porters. He had driven out with Alan to spend his
+Saturday afternoon at Ringwood. An afternoon is not exactly like an
+evening in the matter of entertaining a guest; something must be done;
+cigars, or music, or small chatter are insufficient. If one is on the
+western slope of life's Sierra perhaps a nap may kill the time
+profitably enough, but this was a case where a young man had to be
+entertained, a young man difficult of entertainment under the
+circumstances.
+
+Alan had some barbarous expedition of juvenile interest on hand; the
+unearthing of a woodchuck, or it might have been a groundhog, in a back
+field; but Allis would not become a party to the destruction of animal
+life for the sport of the thing. She had a much better programme mapped
+out for Mortimer. Some way she felt that if he could see the
+thoroughbred horses in their stalls, could come to know them
+individually, casually though it might be, he would perhaps catch a
+glimmer of their beautiful characters. So she asked Mr. Mortimer to go
+and have a look at her pets. Alan would none of it; he was off to his
+woodchuck or groundhog.
+
+"I'm glad you don't want to go and kill anything," she said, turning
+gratefully to Mortimer when he refused Alan's invitation, saying that he
+preferred to look at the horses. "I'll show you Diablo, and Lucretia,
+and Lauzanne the Despised--he's my horse, and I'm to win a big race with
+him next year. Gaynor is down at the stables; and I'll give you a tip"
+-Mortimer winced--"if you want to stand well in with Mike, let him
+suspect that you're fond of horses."
+
+At the stable door they met Mike Gaynor. Mike usually vacillated
+between a condition of chronic anger at somebody or something, and an
+Irish drollery that made people who were sick at heart laugh. Allis was
+as familiar with his moods as she was with the phases of Lauzanne's
+temper. On Mike's face was a map of disaster; the disaster might be
+trivial or great. That something was wrong the girl knew, but whether
+it was that a valuable horse was dead, or that a mouse had eaten a hole
+in a grain bag she could only discover by questioning Gaynor, for there
+were never degrees of expressed emotion in Mike's facile countenance;
+either a deep scowl or a broad grin were the two normal conditions.
+
+"What's the matter, Mike?" questioned Allis.
+
+"Mather, is it?" began Gaynor, "it's just this, Miss Allis; if yer
+father thinks I'm goin' to stand by an' see good colts spiled in their
+timper just because a rapscallion b'y has got the evil intints av ould
+Nick himself, thin he's mistook, that's all."
+
+"Who is it Mike--Shandy?"
+
+"That's him, Miss. He's the divil on wheels, bangin' thim horses about
+as though he was King Juba."
+
+Allis saw that Gaynor was indeed angry.
+
+"I'll speak to father about him, Mike," she answered; "I won't have the
+horses abused."
+
+"Mark my words, Miss Allis, Diablo'll take it out of his hide some day.
+The b'y'll monkey wit' him once too often, then there'll be no b'y
+left."
+
+"May we see the horses, Mike--are they having their lie-down, or
+anything?"
+
+"Not yet, Miss; they're gettin' the rub-down now; don't ye hear Diablo
+bastin' the boords av his stall wid that handy off hind-foot av his?"
+
+"There's a filly for yer life," exclaimed the Trainer, rapturously, as
+he opened gently the door of Lucretia's box stall. "There's the
+straightest filly iver looked through a halter," he continued, putting
+his arm with the gentleness of a woman over the brown mare's beautiful
+neck. "Come here, ould girl," he said, coaxingly, as he drew the
+haltered head toward the visitors.
+
+Mortimer looked with interest at the big, comfortable box stall,
+littered a foot deep with bright, clean, yellow straw. How contented
+and at home the mare appeared!  It seemed almost a complete recompense,
+this attentive care, for the cruelty he imagined race horses suffered.
+
+"You don't tie her up?" he asked.
+
+"Tie her up!" ejaculated Mike, a fine Celtic scorn in his voice; "I'd
+rather tie up a wife--if I had one," he added by way of extenuation.
+"No man would tie up a mare worth tin thousand dollars if she's worth a
+cent, an' take chances av her throwin' hersilf in the halter; av coorse
+she's hitched fer a bit after a gallop while she's havin' a rub-down,
+but that's all."
+
+Lucretia's black nozzle came timidly forward, and the soft, velvety
+upper lip snuggled Allis's cheek.
+
+"She knows ye, Miss," said Mike. "That's the way wit' horses--they're
+like children; they know friends, an' ye can't fool thim. Now she's
+sizin' ye up, Mister," as Lucretia sniffed suspiciously at Mortimer's
+chin, keeping a wary eye on him. "She'll know if ye like horses or not,
+an' I'd back her opinion agin fifty min's oaths."
+
+Allis watched with nervous interest the investigation. She almost felt
+that if Lucretia liked her companion--well, it would be something less
+to dislike in him, at all events. Lucretia seemed turning the thing
+over in her mind, trying to think it out. There was some mystery about
+this new comer. Evidently she did not distrust him entirely, else she
+would have put her ears back a trifle and turned away with a little
+impatient warning shake of her delicate head. She always turned in that
+cross manner from Shandy, the stable boy. She had also discovered that
+the visitor was not completely a horseman; she did not investigate his
+pockets, nor put her head over his shoulder, as she would have done with
+Mr. Porter or Mike, or even with one who was a stranger, as was
+Mortimer, had she felt the unmistakable something which conveyed to her
+mind that he was of the equine brotherhood.
+
+"Lucretia has found you out," said Allis, presently. "You do like
+horses; she knows it."
+
+"Oh, I like animals, I don't deny," Mortimer answered, "but I know very
+little about them--nothing about race horses."
+
+Mike frowned and looked disparagingly at the visitor. "He must be a
+quare duck," he muttered to himself. That a man should know nothing of
+thoroughbreds was perfectly inexplicable to Gaynor. He knew many racing
+men whose knowledge of horseflesh was a subject for ridicule, but then
+they never proclaimed their ignorance, rather posed as good judges than
+otherwise.
+
+But with startling inconsistency Mike explained: "There's many like ye,
+sir, only they don't know it, that's all; the woods is full av thim.
+Would ye like to give the filly a carrot, Miss?" he added, turning to
+Allis. "I'll bring some."
+
+When he returned Allis gave one to Lucretia, then they passed to the
+next stall.
+
+"That's a useful horse," explained the Trainer; "he's won some races in
+his 'time."
+
+"What's his name?" asked Mortimer.
+
+"Game Boy. He's by the Juggler. Ye remember him, don't ye?"
+
+Mortimer was forced to confess that he didn't quite remember Juggler.
+
+"That's strange," commented Mike, turning the big bay about with evident
+pride; "he won the 'Belmont,' at Jerome Park, did the ould Juggler. Ye
+must av heerd av that."
+
+Mortimer compromised by admitting that he had probably forgotten it.
+
+"Well, I haven't," declared Mike, reproachfully. "If Game Boy stands a
+prep this summer ye'll hear from him," he confided to Mortimer, as they
+left the stall. "Jist remember Game Boy; see, ye can't forget--a big
+bay wit' a white nigh fore leg, an' a bit rat-tailed. Yes, Game Boy's
+all right," monologued Mike; "but here's a better; this is Diablo. He
+must have tabasco in his head, fer he's got the divil's own timper. But
+he can gallop a bit; he can go like a quarterhorse, an' stay till the
+cows come home; but he's like Lauzanne acrost yonder, he's got a bee in
+his bonnet an' it takes a divil to ride him."
+
+"That's hard on me, Mike," expostulated Allis. "You see, Lauzanne goes
+better with me in the saddle than any of the boys," she explained to
+Mortimer.
+
+"The divil or angels, I was going to say, Miss, when ye interrupted me,"
+gallantly responded Mike.
+
+Diablo's head was tied high in a corner of the stall, for Shandy, the
+boy, was hard at work on him with a double hand of straw, rubbing him
+down. The boy kept up a peculiar whistling noise through his parted
+lips as he rubbed, and Diablo snapped impatiently at the halter-shank
+with his great white teeth as though he resented the operation.
+
+Mortimer gazed with enthusiasm at the shining black skin that glistened
+like satin, or watered silk. Surely there was excuse for people loving
+thoroughbreds. It was an exhilaration even to look at that embodiment
+of physical development. It was an animate statue to the excellence of
+good, clean living. Somehow or other Mortimer felt that though the
+living creature before him was only a horse, yet nature's laws were
+being adhered to, and the result was a reward of physical perfection and
+enjoyment of life. He began to feel that a man, or even a woman--it was
+the subtle presence of the woman at his side that made him involuntarily
+interject this clause into his inaudible thoughts--yes, even a woman of
+high moral attributes might find the most healthy form of interested
+amusement in watching the superb development of horses that were
+destined for no other purpose than to race and beget sons and daughters
+of the same wondrous stamina and courage and speed. His detestation of
+racing had been in reality an untutored prejudice; he had looked upon
+but one phase of the question, and that quite casually, as it introduced
+itself into his life by means of sensational betting incidents in the
+daily papers. To him all forms of betting were highly disastrous--most
+immoral. But here, like a revelation, came to him, in all its
+fascination, the perfect picture of the animal, which he was forced to
+admit stood next to man in its adornment of God's scheme of creation.
+
+As Shandy swept his wisp of straw along the sensitive skin of Diablo's
+stomach, the latter shrunk from the tickling sensation, and lashed out
+impatiently with a powerful hind leg as though he would demolish his
+tormentor.
+
+"He's not cross at all just," explained Mike; "he's bluffin', that's
+all. Shure a child could handle him if they'd only go the right way
+about it."
+
+Then he leaned over and whispered in an aside to the visitors--"Bot'
+t'umbs up!" (this was Mike's favorite oath). "Diablo hates that b'y an'
+some day he'll do him up, mark my words."
+
+"Here, Shandy," he cried, turning to the rubber, "loose the Black's head
+an' turn him 'round."
+
+Mortimer almost shrank with apprehension for the boy, for Diablo's ears
+were back on his flat, tapering neck, and his eyes looking back at them,
+were all white, save for the intense blue-shimmered pupil. To Mortimer
+that look was the incarnation of evil hatred. But the boy unsnapped the
+halter-shank without hesitation, and Diablo, more inquisitive than
+angry, came mincingly toward them, nodding his head somewhat defiantly,
+as much as to say that the nature of the interview would depend
+altogether upon their good behavior.
+
+"See that!" ejaculated Mike, a pleasant smile of satisfaction rippling
+the furrows of his face; "see how he picks out the best friend the
+stable's got."
+
+Diablo had stretched his lean head down, and was trying to nibble with
+gentle lip the carrot Allis held half hidden behind her skirt. There
+was none of Lucretia's timidity in Diablo's approach; it was full of an
+assumption of equality, of trust in the intentions of the stranger who
+had come with the mistress he hart faith in.
+
+"They're all like that when Miss Allis is about," explained Mike; "there
+never would be a bad horse if the stable-b'ys worked the same way. Tie
+him up, Shandy," he added. "Even the jockeys spoil their mounts,"
+Gaynor continued in a monotone; "the horse'll gallop better for women
+any time--they treat thim gentler, that's why."
+
+"Most interesting," hazarded Mortimer, feeling some acknowledgment of
+Mike's information was due.
+
+"It's the trut'. Miss Allis'd take Lauzanne, or the Black, or the
+little mare, an' get a better race out av thim than any jock I've seen
+ridin' hereabout."
+
+"Mike," exclaimed Allis, "you flatter me; you almost make me wish that I
+were a jockey."
+
+"Well, bot' t'umbs up!  Ye'd av made a good un, Miss, an' that's no
+disrespect to ye, I'm sayin'."
+
+Mortimer smiled condescendingly. Allis's quick eye caught his
+expression of amused discontent; it angered her. Mike's praise had been
+practically honest. To him a good jockey was the embodiment of courage
+and honesty and intelligence; but she knew that to Mortimer it simply
+meant a phase of life he considered quite outside the pale of recognized
+respectability. Somehow she felt that Mike's encomium had lowered her
+perceptibly in the opinion of this man whom she herself affected to look
+upon with but toleration.
+
+They visited all the other stalls, eight of them, and listened to Mike's
+eulogies on the inmates. Coming down the other side of the passage, the
+last occupied box stall contained Lauzanne.
+
+"Miss Porter'll tell ye about this wan," said Mike, diplomatically.
+"He's shaped like a good horse, an' his sire, old Lazzarone, landed many
+a purse, an' the 'Suburban,' too--won it on three legs, fer he was clean
+gone in his pins, I'll take me oath to that. He was a good horse--whin
+he liked. Perhaps Lauzanne'll do the same some day, fer all I know."
+
+There was such a tone of doubt in the Trainer's voice that even Mortimer
+noticed it. Neither was there much praise of the big Chestnut;
+evidently Mike did not quite approve of him, though hesitating to say so
+in the presence of his mistress.
+
+"Yes, Lauzanne is my horse," volunteered Allis. "I even ride him in all
+his work now, since he took to eating the stable-boy."
+
+"And you're not afraid?" asked Mortimer.
+
+For answer the girl slipped quietly into the stall, and going up beside
+the Chestnut, who was standing sulkily with his head in the corner of
+his box, took him by the ear and turned him gently around.
+
+"He's just a quiet-mannered chap, that's all," she said. "He's a big,
+lazy, contented old boy," and she laid her cheek against his fawn-
+colored nozzle. "You see," she explained, "he's got more brains than
+any of the other horses, and when he's abused he knows it."
+
+"But he's grateful when he's kindly treated," commented Mortimer.
+
+"Yes; that's why I like horses better than men."
+
+"Oh!" the exclamation slipped from Mortimer's lips.
+
+"Most men, I mean," she explained. "Of course, father, and Alan, and--"
+she hesitated; "you see," she went on to explain, "the number of my men
+friends is limited; but except these, and Mike, and Mr. Dixon, I like
+the horses best."
+
+"I almost believe you're right, Miss Porter," concurred Mortimer; "I've
+known men myself that I fancy were much worse than even Diablo."
+
+"Mike thinks Lauzanne is a bad horse," the girl said, changing the
+subject, "but he'll win a big race this coming season. You just keep
+your eye on Lauzanne. Here's your carrot, old chap," she said, stroking
+the horse's neck, "and we must go if we're to have that drive. Will you
+hitch the gray to the buggy for us, Mike?" she asked of Gaynor, as they
+came out of the stable, "we'll wait here."
+
+As Mike started off there came to their ears a sound of turmoil from
+Diablo's box; impatient kicks against the boards from the horse, and
+smothered imprecations from the boy.
+
+"Hear that fiend!" the girl exclaimed, and there was wrath in her voice.
+
+"He does seem a bad horse," concurred Mortimer.
+
+"I didn't mean Diablo; it's the boy. It's all his evil doing. Oh, I've
+only one glove," she exclaimed. "I know where it is, though; that
+mischievous rascal, Lauzanne, nibbled it from the front of my jacket; I
+saw him do it, but forgot to pick it up."
+
+"Allow me, Miss Porter; I'll get it for you."
+
+"No; please don't!" with emphasis. As he started back, she laid a
+detaining hand on his arm. "I'd much prefer to go myself; Lauzanne
+distrusts strangers and might make trouble."
+
+As the girl entered the stable, Mortimer sauntered on in the direction
+Mike had gone.
+
+Allis opened the door of Lauzanne's stall, passed in, and searched in
+the straw for the lost glove.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+The noise of strife in Diablo's box had increased. There came the sound
+of blows on the horse's ribs; a muttered oath, and suddenly a scream of
+terror from the boy, drowned in an instant by the ferocious battlecry of
+the enraged stallion. Mortimer, thirty yards away, heard it, and felt
+his heart stand still; he had never heard anything so demoniac in his
+life. He turned in such haste that his foot slipped on the frozen
+earth, and he fell heavily.
+
+At the first sound of blows Allis had started angrily toward Diablo's
+box. She was at the door when Shandy's cry of terror rang out. For an
+instant the girl hesitated; what she saw was enough to make a strong man
+quail. The black stallion was loose; with crunching jaws he had
+fastened on the arm of Shandy, in the corner of the stall, and was
+trying to pull the boy down that he might trample him to death. But for
+a second she faltered; if ever quick action were needed, it was now.
+
+"Back--back, Diablo! back!" she cried, as pushing past the black demon
+she brought her hunting-crop down with full force between his ears.
+
+Whether it was the sound of his mistress's voice, or the staggering
+blow, Diablo dropped the boy like a crushed rat, and, half rearing,
+looked viciously at the brave girl.
+
+"Quick! through the hay window!" commanded Allis, standing between
+Shandy and the horse, and drawing the whip back over her left shoulder,
+ready to give it to Diablo full in the throat should he charge again.
+
+Cowed, the boy clambered through the opening. Enraged at the sight of
+his assailant's escape, the horse gave another scream of defiance and
+sought with striking forefeet and spread jaws to pull down this new
+enemy. Not until then had Allis thought of calling for help; her one
+idea had been for the boy's safety.
+
+Like a flash the full peril of the situation dawned upon her; perhaps
+her life would be given for the boy who well deserved his punishment.
+She had seen two stallions fight, and knew that their ferocious natures,
+once roused, could only be quelled by a force stronger than she
+possessed. Yes, surely she would be killed-her young life trampled out
+by the frenzied animal. Incoherently but altogether these thoughts
+filled her mind; also the knowledge that Mike was beyond hearing.
+
+"Help, Mortimer!" she called.
+
+He heard it as he reached the stable door. Even then he would have been
+too late had not other rescue come more quickly.
+
+In rushing from Lauzanne's stall Allis had left the door swinging on its
+hinges. At the first cry of defiance from the black stallion Lauzanne
+had stretched high his head and sent back, with curled nostril, an
+answering challenge. Then with ears cocked he had waited for a charge
+from his natural enemy. When the mingled call of his mistress and
+Diablo's bugle note came to him he waited no longer, but rushed across
+the passage and seized the black horse by the crest just as he was
+overpowering the girl.
+
+It was at that instant Mortimer reached the scene--in his hand a stable
+fork he had grabbed as he raced down the passage. Even Lauzanne's
+attack, though it gave Allis a respite, would not have saved her life;
+the madly fighting horses would have kicked and trampled her to death.
+
+"My God!  Back, back, you devils!"  And pushing, crowding, hugging the
+side of the stall, Mortimer fought his way to the girl.
+
+Once Diablo's hoof shot out and the man's left arm, snapping like a
+pistol, dropped useless at his side. His brain reeled with the shock.
+The oddly swinging arm, dangling like a doll's, with the palm turned
+backward, seemed to fascinate him. Why was he there? What was he doing?
+Why was he hammering the horses over the head with a stable fork held
+tightly in his right hand?  He hardly knew; his mind was clouded; he was
+fighting by instinct, and always crowding along the wall toward the
+farther corner. The girl had quite faded from his sight. Somehow he
+felt that he must drive the horses back, back, out of the stall.
+
+Allis, too, was fighting; bringing the crop down with cutting force over
+the withers, neck, head, any part of the plunging mass in front of her.
+She could escape now through the opening where the boy had gone; but was
+not Mortimer in the same position she had been?  She had seen him drop
+to his knees when Diablo lashed out; he must be sorely hurt; now he was
+reeling like a drunken man as he fought the mad brutes.
+
+"This way," she panted, catching him by the coat, and pulling him toward
+the window.
+
+Ah, that was it!  He saw her now. It steadied his senses. It was the
+girl, and she had called him--"Mortimer!"
+
+"Back," he yelled irrelevantly, in answer, cutting Diablo across the
+face with the fork. It was pandemonium.
+
+"Get through the window!" the girl screamed in his ear. "Quick! Now!"
+and she pushed him toward it.
+
+"You--first--back, you devils!" and he pressed away from her, closer to
+the horses, thrusting and striking with the steel-pointed fork.
+
+The horses were giving way; Diablo was fighting half through the door,
+weakening before the onslaught of the powerful chestnut. Even in battle,
+as in a race, the stamina of the Lazzarone blood was telling; the
+bulldog courage of the strain was strong upon Lauzanne, now that he was
+roused.
+
+"Quick!  You can get out!" again called the girl.
+
+"You first!"
+
+This drear, repetition was the only expression Mortimer's numbed senses
+were equal to; but he fought with the ferocity of a tiger--his wound but
+enraged him.
+
+They could both escape, Allis knew, if she could bring Mortimer to
+understand; but they must do it quick, if at all. It was useless. He
+seemed conscious of but the one idea that he must drive the fighting
+animals out into the passage to save her. She was not afraid now; the
+man's presence had driven that all away. It was useless to speak to him
+of the window, neither would go first; so, with her riding whip she
+fought side by side with Mortimer; springing back from the swift-cutting
+forefeet; sometimes even hugging close to the side of a horse as he
+lashed out from behind; and once saving her companion from being cut
+down by pulling him swiftly from under a raised foot. In the end the
+stallions were forced out into the passage, just as Mike came rushing
+upon the scene.
+
+But the battle had waned. Twice Diablo had been pulled to his knees,
+forced down by the fierce strength that was Lauzanne's; the Black was
+all but conquered. The Trainer's voice checked Lauzanne's fury; even
+the boy had plucked up courage to return; and between them the Chestnut
+was driven into his stall. All the fight had been taken out of Diablo.
+He struggled to his feet, and stood trembling like a horse that had come
+out of a fierce cutting race. On his neck were the marks of Lauzanne's
+teeth, where they had snapped like the jaws of a trap; from his crest
+trickled a red stream that dripped to the floor like water from a
+running eave. All the fierce fire of hate had gone from his eyes. He
+hung his head dejectedly, and his flanks quivered. Lauzanne, too, bore
+evidence of the vicious strife. On one quarter, where Diablo's sharp
+hoof had ripped, was a cut as though he had been lashed with a sickle,
+and his withers were torn.
+
+Mortimer and Allis had come out of the stall. The man, exhausted by the
+struggle, leaned wearily, with pale, drawn face, against the wall; the
+floor seemed slipping from under him; he felt a sensation of swiftly
+passing off into nothingness. He was sleepy, that was all; but a
+sleepiness to fight against--he must still fight.
+
+"You are badly hurt."  It was the girl's voice. He was almost surprised
+that he recognized it, everything was so confused. He answered heavily,
+"Yes, I'm--I'm--I want--to lie down."
+
+"Here, lean on my shoulder."  It was Mike's voice this time. "This is
+bad business," the Trainer was saying; "we must get him out of this;
+he's nearly knocked out. Are ye all right, Miss?" turning to Allis.
+
+The wounded man turned guiltily; he had forgotten the girl. Yes, surely
+she had been in that hell of noises with him--fighting too.
+
+"I'm just frightened, that's all," answered Allis. "Mr. Mortimer saved
+me."
+
+Had he? he wondered. How had he come in there, anyway?  His mind
+refused to work out the problem; his side was so sore.
+
+"Yer arm's broke," said Mike, passing to Mortimer's right side. "Come,
+lean on me, sir. Can ye walk?  I'll put ye in the buggy and drive ye to
+the house."
+
+At the first step Mortimer staggered and swayed like a drunken man. In
+his side were many sharp things pulling him down like grappling irons;
+on his head was a great weight that crushed his feet into the hard
+planks; his knees gave under this load, and he would have fallen but for
+Mike's strong arm.
+
+"I'm--afraid;" then he set his teeth hard, his voice had sought to end
+the sentence in a groan of anguish; the thing that was tearing at his
+side had whistled in his lungs.
+
+Allis stepped forward swiftly, and passing her arm about his waist,
+helped Mike lead him to the door. Twice she put her left hand up and
+brushed tears from her eyes; the struggle had unnerved her. Very
+helplessly against her swayed the man she had laughed at half an hour
+before. And he had been crushed saving her!  But that was not why the
+tears came--not at all. She was unstrung. "And he's got grit," she kept
+muttering to herself; "he has never even groaned."
+
+Together they succeeded in getting him into the buggy; then, gently,
+Mike drove to the house.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Mrs. Porter, reading a book on the veranda, heard the crunch of wheels
+as a buggy, slow-moving, turned into the drive. She raised her eyes
+leisurely, the matter of the story still in her mind; but with a quick
+cry of "John!" she sprang to her feet, the volume, left to itself,
+rustling from her lap to the floor. The mother eyes saw that something
+was wrong, and the mother heart felt that some evil had come to Allis.
+Mrs. Porter had gone white in an instant. Over her hung heavy at all
+times the dread of some terrible accident coming to Allis through the
+horses.
+
+"Did you call, wife?" Porter asked as he came to the door. Then he
+sprang quickly across the veranda at sight of his wife's blanched face,
+and made to catch her in his arms. But she stopped him, pointing down
+the drive. "It's Allis, John; oh, my God!"
+
+"No, no," he answered, "they're just coming back; here, sit down again,
+I'll see," and he raced down the steps just as Mike pulled up.
+
+"What's the matter, girl?" he began.
+
+"The young gentleman's got a bit shook up, sir; nothin' bad loike," Mike
+broke in hastily. The diplomatic rider, "nothin' bad," was added for
+Mrs. Porter's benefit, his quick eye having seen her white face.
+
+"Miss Allis 's not hurt at all," he continued. "We'll help the young
+gintleman in, an' I'd best go for the docthor, I'm thinkin."
+
+Even as he was speaking they had helped Mortimer from the rig. He had
+not uttered a sound; his teeth were set hard against the agony that was
+in his side, and the queer dizziness that was over him left little
+beyond a consciousness that he was being looked after, and that if he
+could only keep going for a little, just use his legs a trifle, he would
+presently be allowed to sleep. Yes, that was what he wanted; he was so
+drowsy. As he went up the steps between the two men, a haggard face
+peered at him over the rail. It was familiar; he felt that some
+recognition was due, for it was a woman's face. He tried to smile.
+Then he was on a bed, and--and--sleep at last.
+
+When the three men with the silence of disaster over them passed
+struggling into the house, Mrs. Porter threw herself on Allis's neck,
+and a passion of tears flooded down and damped the girl's shoulder.
+
+"God be thanked, God be thanked!" gasped the troubled woman, and one
+hand that was over the girl's shoulder patted her with erratic rapidity.
+Then she interrupted herself. "What am I saying--it's wicked, and Mr.
+Mortimer like that. But I can't help it--I can't help it. Oh, Allis!
+my heart was in my mouth; I feel that some day you will come home like
+this."
+
+At that instant Gaynor dashed by them, leaped into the buggy, and
+called, as he drove off: "I'll have the docthor in a jiffy; the young
+man's all right!"  He was still talking as the whirr of swift-rushing
+wheels smothered out his voice, and the dust rose like a steam-cloud,
+almost blotting him from the landscape.
+
+"Oh, girl! I thought you'd been killed."
+
+"Here, sit down, mother; you're all worked up," and Allis put a cool
+hand on her mother's hot forehead.
+
+But the shock to her feelings had loosed the good woman's vocabulary.
+At all times smouldered in her heart a hatred of racing, even of the
+horses. "It's the anger of God," Mrs. Porter denounced vehemently.
+"This gambling and racing is contrary to His law. Never a night passes,
+Allis, that I do not pray to God that He may open your father's eyes to
+the sin of racing. No good can come of it--no good has ever come of it
+--nothing but disaster and trouble. In a day the substance of a year is
+wasted. There never can be prosperity living in sin."
+
+"Hush, mother," crooned Allis, softly. This outburst from Mrs. Porter
+startled the girl; it was so passionate, so vehement. When they had
+talked of racing in the home life the mother had nearly always preserved
+a reproachful silence; her attitude was understood and respected.
+
+"I must speak, girl," she said again; "this sinful life is crushing me.
+Do you think I feel no shame when I sit in meeting and hear our good
+minister denounce gambling and racing?  I can feel his eyes on me, and I
+cannot raise my voice in protest, for do not I countenance it?  My
+people were all church people," she continued, almost apologetically,
+"tolerating no sin in the household. Living in sin there can be no hope
+for eternal life."
+
+"I know, mother," soothed the girl; "I know just how you feel, but we
+can't desert father. He does not look upon it as a sin, as carrying any
+dishonor; he may be cheated, but he cheats no man. It can't be so
+sinful if there is no evil intent. And listen, mother; no matter what
+anybody may say, even the minister, we must both stick to father if he
+chooses to race horses all his life."
+
+"Ah, sweetheart!" John Porter cried out in a pleased voice, as he came
+out to them, "looking after mother; that's right. Cynthia has helped me
+fix up Mortimer. He'll be all right as soon as Mike gets back with
+Rathbone. I think we'd better have a cup of tea; these horses are
+trying on the nerves, aren't they, little woman?" and he nestled his
+wife's head against his side. "How did it happen, Allis?  Did Mortimer
+slip into Diablo's box, or--"
+
+"It was all over that rascally boy, Shandy. Diablo was just paying him
+back for his ill-treatment, and I went in to rescue him, and Mortimer
+risked his life to save mine."
+
+"He was plucky; eh, girl?"
+
+"He fought the Black like a hero, father. But, father, you must never
+think bad of Lauzanne again; if he hadn't come Mr. Mortimer would have
+been too late."
+
+"It's dreadful, dreadful," moaned the mother.
+
+Allis shot a quick look at her father. He changed the subject, and
+commenced talking about Alan--wondering where he was, and other
+irrelevant matters.
+
+Then there was fresh divertisement as Mike rattled up, and Doctor
+Rathbone, who was of a great size, bustled in to where Mortimer lay.
+
+Three smashed ribs and a broken arm was his inventory of the damage
+inflicted by Diablo's kick, when he came out again with Porter, in an
+hour.
+
+"I'm afraid one of the splintered ribs is tickling his lung," he added,
+"but the fellow has got such a good nerve that I hardly discovered this
+unpleasant fact. He'll be all right, however; he's young, and healthy
+as a peach. Good nursing is the idea, and he'll get that here, of
+course. He doesn't want much medicine; that we keep for our enemies,--
+ha! ha!" and he laughed cheerily, as if it were all a joke on the
+battered man.
+
+"Thim docthers is cold-blooded divils," was Mike's comment. "Ye'd a
+thought they'd been throwin' dice, an' it was a horse on the other
+gintleman. Bot' t'umbs! it was, too. Still, if ould Saw-bones had been
+in the box yonder wit' Diablo, he wouldn't a-felt so funny."
+
+"Mortimer behaved well; didn't he, Mike?" asked Porter.
+
+"Behaved well; is it?  He was like a live divil; punched thim two big
+stallions till they took water an' backed out. My word! whin first I
+see him come to the stable wit' Miss Allis, thinks I, here's wan av thim
+city chumps; he made me tired. An' whin he talked about Lauzanne's
+knees, m'aning his hocks, I had to hide me head in a grain bag. But if
+ye'd seen him handle that fork, bastin' the Black, ye'd a thought it was
+single sticks he was at, wit' a thousand dollars fer a knock-out."
+
+"One can't always tell how a colt will shape, can they, Mike?" spoke
+Porter, for Mike's fanciful description was almost bringing a smile to
+Mrs. Porter's troubled face.
+
+"Ye can't, sor, an' yer next the trut' there. I've seen a herrin'-
+gutted weed av a two-year-old--I remember wan now; he was a Lexington.
+It was at Saratoga; an' bot' t'umbs! he just made hacks av iverythin' in
+soight--spread-eagled his field. Ye wouldn't a-give two dollars fer
+him, an' he come out an' cleaned up the Troy Stake, like the great horse
+he was."
+
+"And you think Mortimer has turned out something like that; eh, Mike?"
+
+"Well, fer a man that knows no more av horses than I know av the
+strology av stars, he's a hot wan, an' that's the God's trut'."
+
+Mortimer's gallant act had roused the Irishman's admiration. He would
+have done as much himself, but that would have been expected of a
+horseman, constantly encountering danger; that an office man, to be
+pitied in his ignorance, should have fearlessly entered the stall with
+the fighting stallions was quite a different matter.
+
+Even Allis, with her more highly developed sense of character
+analyzation, felt something of this same influence. She had needed some
+such manifestation of Mortimer's integral force, and this had come with
+romantic intensity in the tragic box-stall scene. This drama of the
+stable had aroused no polished rhetoric; Mortimer's declamation had been
+unconventional in the extreme. "Back, you devils!" he had rendered with
+explosive fierceness, oblivious of everything but that he must save the
+girl. The words still rang in the ears of Allis, and also the echo of
+her own cry when in peril, "Mortimer!"  There must have been a
+foreshadowing in her soul of the man's reliability, though she knew it
+not.
+
+Even without the doctor's orders, it was patent that Mortimer must
+remain at Ringwood for a few days.
+
+It was as if Philip Crane, playing with all his intense subtlety, had
+met his master in Fate; the grim arbiter of man's ways had pushed
+forward a chessman to occupy a certain square on the board for a time.
+
+Mortimer had been most decisively smashed up, but his immense physique
+had wonderful recuperative powers. The bone-setting and the attendant
+fever were discounted by his vitality, and his progress toward recovery,
+was marvelous.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Crane heard of the accident on one of his visits to Brookfield a couple
+of days later, and of course must hurry to Ringwood to see his employee.
+It happened that the Reverend Mr. Dolman graced the Porter home with his
+presence the same evening that Crane was there.
+
+Naturally the paramount subject of interest was the narrow escape of
+Miss Allis; but the individuality of discussion gradually merged into a
+crusade against racing, led by the zealous clergyman. John Porter
+viewed this trend with no little trepidation of feeling.
+
+It was Mrs. Porter who precipitated matters by piously attributing
+Allis's escape to Providence.
+
+"Undoubtedly, undoubtedly!" Mr. Dolman said, putting the points of his
+fingers together in front of his lean chest. He paused a moment, and
+Porter groaned inwardly; he knew that attitude. The fingers were
+rapiers, stilettos; presently their owner would thrust, with cutting
+phrase, proving that they were all indeed a very bad lot. Perhaps John
+Porter would have resented this angrily had he not felt that the
+Reverend Inquisitor was really honest in his beliefs, albeit intolerably
+narrow in his conclusions.
+
+Dolman broke the temporary silence. "But we shouldn't tempt Providence
+by worshiping false images. Love of animals is commendable--
+commendable"--he emphasized this slight concession--"but race horses
+always appeal to me as instruments of the Evil One."
+
+"It wasn't the horse's fault at all, Mr. Dolman," Allis interposed, "but
+just a depraved human's. It was the boy Shandy's fault."
+
+"I wasn't thinking of one horse," continued the minister, airily; "I
+meant race horses in general."
+
+"I think Mr. Dolman is right," ventured Mrs. Porter, hesitatingly; "it's
+flying in the face of Providence for a girl to go amongst those race
+horses."
+
+"Bad-tempered men make them vicious, mother," Allis said; "and I believe
+that Shandy's punishment was the visitation of Providence, if there was
+any."
+
+The Reverend Dolman's face took on an austere look. It was an insult to
+the divine powers to assert that they had taken the part of a race
+horse. But he turned the point to his own ends. "It's quite wrong to
+abuse the noble animal; and that's one reason why I hold that racing is
+contrary to the Creator's intentions, quite apart from the evil effect
+it has on morals."
+
+"Are all men immoral who race, Mr. Dolman?" John Porter asked.
+
+His question forced Dolman to define his position. Porter always liked
+things simplified; racing was either wrong in principle or right.
+Dolman found him rather a difficult man to tackle. He had this
+irritating way of brushing aside generalization and forcing the speaker
+to get back to first principles.
+
+The reverend gentleman proceeded cautiously. "I should hardly care to
+go so far as that--to make the rule absolute; a very strong man might
+escape contamination, perhaps."
+
+Mrs. Porter sighed audibly. The minister was weakening most lamentably,
+giving her husband a loophole to escape.
+
+"I hardly think racing quite so bad as it is generally supposed to be,"
+interposed Crane, feeling that Porter was being pilloried somewhat. He
+received a reproachful look from Mrs. Porter for his pains.
+
+"I've never seen any good come of it," retorted Dolman. "A Christian
+man must feel that he is encouraging gambling if he countenances racing,
+for they contend that without betting racing is impossible."
+
+"Everything in life is pretty much of a gamble," Porter drawled, lazily;
+"there aren't any such things. The ships that go to sea, the farmer's
+crop--everything is more or less a matter of chance. If a man goes
+straight he has a fairly easy time with his conscience, no matter what
+he's at; but if he doesn't, well, he'd better go hungry."
+
+"A great many very honorable men are racing today," added Crane; "men
+who have built up large fortunes through honest dealing, and wouldn't be
+racing if they felt that it was either unchristian or dishonorable."
+
+"They can't be Christians if they countenance gambling," asserted the
+minister, doggedly.
+
+It occurred to Mortimer that whenever the discussion took broader lines,
+Dolman drew it back into the narrow cell of his own convictions.
+
+Porter scratched his head perplexedly. They had been discussing the
+moral influence of racing; this seemed more like theology. "It is
+certainly unchristian," commented Mrs. Porter, severely. "I haven't seen
+much Christian spirit in any business," said Porter, quietly; "they all
+seem more a matter of written agreements. In fact there's more done on
+honor in racing than in any of the business gambles. A man that's
+crooked in racing is sure to come to grief in the long run."
+
+Crane shifted in his chair, and Dolman coughed deprecatingly. "For my
+part," continued Porter, "I've never found it necessary to do anything
+I'm ashamed of in racing."
+
+His wife saw an opening. "But, John dear, you were treated most
+shamefully last year; a dishonest boy hauled your horse--"
+
+"Pulled, mother," interposed Allis; "pulled father's horse, you mean."
+
+"Perhaps, though I fail to see where the difference can be, if the horse
+ran the other way and your father lost."
+
+Porter smiled indulgently. "The boy was punished, Helen," he said.
+"Dishonesty is not tolerated on the race course."
+
+"Yes, but something is always happening," she continued in lament.
+"It's contrary to the law of the church, John. It seems just like a
+visitation of divine wrath the way things happen. And you're so
+sanguine, John; last year you were going to win a big race with Diablo
+when he threw his leg--"
+
+"Threw a splint, mother," prompted Allis.
+
+"I thought your father said it was his leg had something the matter with
+it," argued Mrs. Porter.
+
+"The splint was on his leg, mother dear."
+
+"Well, I'm not familiar with racing phrases, I must say, though I should
+be, goodness knows; I hear little else. And talk of cruelty to
+animals!" she turned to Mr. Dolman; "they burned the poor beast's leg
+with hot irons--"
+
+The minister held up his hands in horror.
+
+"It didn't give him as much pain as the doctor gave Mr. Mortimer setting
+his arm," declared Allis.
+
+"But it was racing injured the horse's leg," interposed Dolman.
+
+"But your horse has got a ringbone, Mr. Dolman," said Allis, "and a
+spavin, too. I've been looking at him. That's because you drive him
+too fast on hard roads. And his feet are contracted from neglect in
+shoeing. It's just cruel the way that poor old horse has been
+neglected. Race horses are much better taken care of."
+
+Allis's sudden onslaught switched Mr. Dolman from the aggressive to the
+defensive with great celerity.
+
+"I confess I know very little about horses," he was forced to apologize;
+then, with something of asperity, "the spiritual welfare of my
+congregation takes up my entire time"
+
+This rebuke caused a momentary silence, and Dolman, turning to Mortimer,
+said, "I hope you don't approve of racing, sir."
+
+Mortimer didn't, but a look from Allis's eyes inexplicably enough caused
+him to hedge very considerably in his reply.
+
+"I know nothing about the race course," he said, "but from what I see of
+the thoroughbreds I believe a man would have to be of very low order if
+their noble natures did not appeal to him. I think that courage, and
+honesty, and gentleness--they all seem to have it--must always have a
+good influence. Why, sir," he continued, with a touch of excitement, "I
+think a man would be ashamed to feel that he was making himself lower
+than the horses he had to do with."
+
+Allis looked grateful. Even Porter turned half about in his chair, and
+gazed with a touch of wonderment at the battered young man who had
+substituted common sense for sophistical reasoning.
+
+The reverend gentleman frowned. "It's not the horses at all," he said,
+"it's the men who are disreputable."
+
+Mrs. Porter gave a little warning cough. In his zealousness Mr. Dolman
+might anger her husband, then his logic would avail little.
+
+"The men are like the horses," commented Porter, "some bad and some
+good. They average about the same as they do in anything else, mostly
+good, I think. Of course, when you get a bad one he stands out and
+everybody sees him"
+
+"And sometimes horses--and men, too, I suppose--get a bad name when they
+don't deserve it," added Allis. "Everybody says Lauzanne is bad, but I
+know he's not."
+
+"That was a case of this dreadful dishonesty," said Mrs. Porter,
+speaking hastily. She turned in an explanatory way to Crane. "You know,
+Mr. Crane, last summer a rascally man sold my husband a crooked horse.
+Now, John, what are you laughing at?" for her husband was shaking in his
+chair.
+
+"I was wondering what a crooked horse would look like," he answered, and
+there were sobs in his voice.
+
+"Why, John, when you brought him home you said he was crooked."
+
+As usual, Allis straightened matters out: "It was the man who was
+crooked. Mother means Lauzanne," she continued.
+
+"Yes," proceeded the good woman, "a Mr. Langdon, I remember now, treated
+my husband most shamefully over this horse."
+
+Crane winced. He would have preferred thumbscrews just then. "John is
+honest himself," went on Mrs. Porter, "and he believes other men, and
+this horse had some drug given him to make him look nice, so that my
+husband would buy him."
+
+"Shameful," protested Dolman. "Are men allowed to give horses drugs?"
+he appealed to Mr. Porter.
+
+"No; the racing law is very strict on that point."
+
+"But evidently it is done," contended Dolman.
+
+"I think there's very little of it," said Porter.
+
+This turn of the conversation made Crane feel very uneasy. "Do you
+think, Mr. Porter," he asked, "that there was anything of that sort over
+Lauzanne?  Do you think Langdon would--"  He hesitated.
+
+"Mr. Langdon has a tolerable idea of what I think," answered Porter. "I
+shouldn't trust that man too much if I were you. He's got cunning
+enough, though, to run straight with a man like yourself, who has a
+horse or two in his stable, and doesn't go in for betting very heavily."
+
+"I know very little about him," protested Crane; "and, as you say, he
+will probably act quite straightforward with me, at least."
+
+"Yes," continued Porter, half wearily, as though he wished to finish the
+distasteful discussion; "there are black sheep in racing as there are in
+everything else. My own opinion is that the most of the talk we hear
+about crooked racing is simply talk. At least nine out of ten races are
+honestly run--the best horse wins. I would rather cut off my right hand
+than steal a race, and yet last summer it was said that I had pulled
+Lucretia."
+
+"I never heard of that, John," cried Mrs. Porter, in astonishment.
+
+"No, you didn't," dryly answered her husband.
+
+Allis smiled; she had settled that part of it with her father at the
+time.
+
+"If you'll excuse me," began Crane, rising, "I think Mr. Wortimer is
+getting tired. I believe I'll jog back to Brookfield."
+
+Reluctantly the Reverend Dolman rose, too. He felt, somehow, that the
+atmosphere of racing had smothered his expostulation--that he had made
+little headway. The intense honesty that was John Porter's shielded him
+about almost as perfectly as, a higher form of belief might have done.
+
+But with almost a worldly cunning it occurred to the clergyman that he
+could turn the drawn battle into a victory for the church; and as they
+stood for a minute in the gentle bustle of leave-taking, he said: "The
+ever-continuing fight that I carry on against the various forms of
+gambling must necessarily take on at times almost a personal aspect--"
+he was addressing Mr. Porter, ostensibly--"but in reality it is not
+quite so. I think I understand your position, Mr. Porter, and--and--
+what shall I say--personally I feel that the wickedness of racing
+doesn't appeal to you as a great contamination; you withstand it, but
+you will forgive me saying so, thousands have not the same strength of
+character."
+
+Porter made a deprecatory gesture, but Dolman proceeded. "What I was
+going to say is, that you possibly realize this yourself. You have acted
+so wisely, with what I would call Christian forethought, in placing your
+son, Alan, in a different walk in life, and--" he turned with a grave
+bow in Crane's direction--"and in good hands, too."
+
+"His mother wished it," Porter said, simply.
+
+"Yes, John was very good about Alan's future," the mother concurred.
+"But, husband, you quite agreed that it was much better for Alan to be
+in the bank than possibly drifting into association with--well, such
+dishonorable men as this Mr. Langdon and his friends. He is so much
+better off," she continued, "with young men such as Mr. Crane would have
+about him."
+
+The Reverend Dolman smiled meekly, but it was in triumph. He had called
+attention to an act which spoke far louder than Mr. Porter's disclaiming
+words.
+
+Porter was not at all deceived by the minister; in fact, he rather
+admired the other's cleverness in beating him on the post. He gave a
+little laugh as he said: "I should not have succeeded very well in a
+bank. I am more at home with the horses than I am with figures; but I
+expect I would have gone fairly straight, and hope the boy will do the
+same. I fancy one of the great troubles about banking is to keep the
+men honest, the temptation of handling so much money being great. They
+seem to have more chances to steal than men on the race course."
+
+As usual, Porter seemed to be speaking out of his thoughts and without
+malice; no one took offense. It was simply a straightforward answer to
+Dolman's charge.
+
+Porter had simply summed up the whole business in a very small nutshell.
+That there was temptation everywhere, and that honest men and thieves
+were to be found on race courses, in banks, in every business, but that,
+like the horses, a fair share of them were honest.
+
+"Speaking materially of race horses quite outside of the moral aspect,"
+said Crane, as he was taking his leave, "you'll have to be mighty
+careful of that Diablo, Mr. Porter, when Miss Allis is about; he seems a
+vindictive brute."
+
+"Yes, John; you'll have to sell him right away; I'll be frightened to
+death while he's about the place."
+
+"I shall never be a bit afraid of him," remonstrated Allis; "Shandy, who
+made all the mischief, has been discharged."
+
+"Diablo has always been more trouble than he's worth," said Porter. "I
+thought he was going to be a good horse, but he isn't; and if he has
+taken to eating people I'll give him away some day. I wouldn't sell him
+as a good horse, and nobody'd buy a man-eater."
+
+"I'll buy him when you make up your mind, Mr. Porter," exclaimed Crane,
+somewhat eagerly. "I have nobody sweet enough to tempt his appetite.
+In the meantime, Miss Allis, if I were you I should keep away from him."
+
+Then presently, with good-nights and parting words of warning about
+Diablo, the guests were gone; and Mortimer, having declined Porter's
+proffered help, was somewhat awkwardly--having but one good hand--
+preparing to retire in Alan's room.
+
+His mind worked somewhat faster than his fingers; several new problems
+had been given it to labor over within the compass of a single moon.
+That horse racing should ever become a disturbing interest in his life
+had seemed very improbable; now it was like a gale about his soul, it
+swayed him. He was storm-tossed in the disturbing element; he could
+come to no satisfying conclusion. On the one hand the thoroughbred
+horses were to be admired; they were brave and true, creatures of love.
+Also Porter was an honest man, the one thing he admired above all else.
+
+And Miss Allis!  Somehow or other his eyes wandered to a picture that
+rested on a mantelpiece in the room. He took it down, looking furtively
+over his shoulder as he did so, and taking it close under the lamp that
+was on the table sat and gazed steadfastly into the girlish face.
+
+Even in the photograph the big, wondrous eyes seemed to say, "What of
+wrong, if we are not wrong?"  That was the atmosphere so thoroughly
+straightforward and honest that wrong failed of contamination.
+
+Still it was unconvincing to Mortimer. The horses might be good, the
+man honest, and the girl pure and sweet, but the life itself was
+distasteful. Reason as one might, it was allied to gambling. Mortimer
+rose with a sigh, the whole thing wearied him. Why should he distress
+his mind over the matter?  As he put the photograph back on the mantel
+he held it for an instant, then suddenly; with a nervous, awkward
+gesture, brought it to his lips and kissed the eyes that seemed to
+command tribute.
+
+The movement twisted his broken-ribbed side and an agony of pain came to
+him in quick retribution. It was as though the involuntary kiss had
+lurched him forward into a futurity of misery. The spasm loosed beads
+of perspiration which stood cold on his forehead. Swift taken from the
+stimulant of his thoughts, his nerves overtaxed by the evening, jangled
+discordantly, and he crept into bed, feeling an unutterable depression
+as though the room, was filled with evil, threatening spirits.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+In coincidence the two men, Mortimer and Crane, had similar thoughts the
+day after Mr. Dolman's discussion; and, rather remarkably, their
+deductions were alike, having the same subject of mental retrospect--
+Allis Porter.
+
+It was evident that outside of her family little interested her but
+horses; certainly not a very lofty aspiration. When the conversation
+had dealt with broad principles, men and their shortcomings, the
+previous evening, she had centralized it in Lauzanne, picturing him as
+symbolical of good acts and evil repute. Patently it was difficult to
+become interested in such a young woman; actually she monopolized their
+thoughts. Inconsistently the fair offender felt no recoil of this
+somewhat distressing situation; her mind busied itself chiefly over the
+reclamation of Lauzanne.
+
+By inheritance all the qualities of a good horse had come to him except
+a submissive temper. Allis worked on the theory that his disposition
+had been set awry by injudicious handling; that unlimited patience would
+cause him to forget all that. He could gallop, else he had not won the
+race in which he beat The Dutchman. That he had needed a stimulant that
+day was because he had been soured and would not try with his wits about
+him. From the time of coming back to Ringwood Allis had ridden him in
+all his exercise gallops, and had asked Mike personally to supervise his
+stable education. It had taken all her great patience, all her youthful
+enthusiasm and faith, for the Chestnut had notions beyond all belief.
+At first, missing the abuse, he almost seemed to thirst for it; tried
+the gentle girl in every way--sulked, and loafed, and took little
+streaks of trying to cut the course, and made false breaks as though he
+were going to run with a full vigor; even laid hold of the horses with
+his teeth when opportunity offered. These antics did not break the
+girl's faith; she rode him with the gentle hand a woman knows and a
+horse soon learns to appreciate, and gave him to understand that he was
+to have fair treatment.
+
+Porter viewed this continuous performance with silent skepticism. He did
+not abuse horses himself, neither did he put up with too much nonsense
+from them. To him they were like children, needing a lot of tolerant
+kindness, but, also, at times, to be greatly improved by a sound
+whipping. Once when he suggested something of this sort to Allis,
+saying that Lauzanne was a spoiled child, she admitted he was, but that
+thoughtless cruelty and not indulgence had done the harm, therefore
+kindness was the cure. The first sign of regeneration was the implicit
+faith that Lauzanne began to place in his young mistress. At first when
+she put up a hand to pet him he would jerk his head away in affright;
+now he snuggled her shoulder, or nibbled at her glove in full spirit of
+comradarie. Then one day in a gallop came a stronger manifestation, a
+brief minute of exhilaration, with after-hours of thankfulness, and
+beyond that, alas for the uncertainty of a spoiled temper, an added
+period of wallowing in the Slough of Despond!
+
+It was on a crisp, sparkling morning, and with Shandy--it was before his
+downfall--on Lucretia, another stable lad, Ned Carter, on Game Boy, and
+Allis on Lauzanne, the three swung off for a working gallop of a mile or
+more. Lauzanne was in an inquisitive mood, as the other two raced on in
+front. What was his light-weighted rider up to anyway?  Why did she
+always leave it to him to do just as he liked?  Was she really deceiving
+him?  Did she wish him to lie back there behind the others always?  He
+fell to wondering what she would do if he were to take hold of the bit
+and spread his big muscles in one rushing gallop, and go on past the
+others and get home to the feed box first. He rattled the snaffle in
+his mouth with nervous indecision--he had a notion to try it.
+
+"Steady, my boy!" said Allis, as she slipped the reins back through her
+fingers till they stretched tight. A dozen times she had sought in vain
+to make him think she did not wish him to gallop, but something in the
+crisp air this morning threw him off his guard. Why should he be forced
+to lag behind?  He stretched the arch of his neck straight till the bit
+held hard in his mouth; the ears pitched forward in eager point; the
+great frame under the girl quivered and sank closer to earth; the roar
+of his beating hoofs came up to her ears, muffled by the drive of the
+wind that was now a gale as the Chestnut raced into it with the speed of
+an express. How her heart sang!  Here was speed, and with such stride--
+strong, and straight, and true!  Low she crouched, and her call to
+Lauzanne was but a joyous whisper. Her small hands were framed in
+steel, strength to steady the big Chestnut as he swung round the course
+glued to the rail. On Lauzanne sped, and to the rhythm of his big
+heaving quarters the girl's soul sang a song of delight. At last, at
+last was coming her reward.
+
+And then, just when everything had been achieved, when the great gallop
+had brought them half up the stretch, something came to Lauzanne--
+perhaps the memory of the whipping finishes; at any rate, he curled up
+like a dog, threw his ears back--Allis could feel the sudden stiff prop
+of the forelegs as he set himself against the rush of speed--and in a
+dozen strides he was Lauzanne again, Lauzanne the Despised.
+
+And so it had gone on for weeks, Allis working out her theory up to the
+time of the trouble over Diablo. There was something in the girl's
+quiet determination that was masterful; perhaps that was why she had
+always had her own way at home. Now this mastery was spreading out
+wonderfully; Lauzanne, and Mike, and her father, and Crane, and
+Mortimer, all in different degrees of subjection, but, as Fate knew, all
+subject.
+
+Mrs. Porter's continual lament on the subject of racing had given Crane
+a keynote for his line of action. It was the day following her scoring
+of the tolerant husband that Crane revisited Ringwood full of his new
+idea.
+
+He had an impulse to buy back Lauzanne. For almost the first time in
+his life he experienced twinges of remorse; this was because of Allis.
+Porter's affairs were in a bad way, and he would probably accept eagerly
+an ofer from Crane to lighten his load. Individually he cared little
+for Porter's financial troubles, but it was a good opportunity to
+prepare the way for a stronger pressing of his suit with the girl. With
+his usual fine discrimination he spoke to Mrs. Porter first, intimating
+never so slightly that her words had won his entire sympathy; that if
+her husband would sell any of the horses he would buy them.
+
+There was a convincing sincerity about Crane at all times; what he did
+he did with the full vigor of a man believing in its truth. One might
+almost have suspected that he deceived himself, that he had no
+conception of the unrighteousness of his acts. At any rate, he imposed
+most successfully upon the mother of Allis. Quite egotistically she
+attributed to herself the trend of his friendship. In racing phrase,
+Crane was out for a killing and playing his cards with consummate skill.
+
+With the master of Ringwood he went very straight to the point. This was
+possible, as Porter could not hesitate to discuss his financial
+condition with his banker. Crane offered to buy Lucretia; this with him
+was purely a speculation, but Porter would not part with his little
+mare. Then the banker spoke of Lauzanne, saying that he felt somewhat
+guilty since learning the previous evening that the horse had been
+doped. Porter failed to see where Crane had anything to do with it.
+But the latter insisted that he had unwittingly helped Langdon by
+speaking of Lauzanne as a good horse. He had known nothing of the
+matter, beyond that his trainer had assured him the horse would win; in
+fact, he had backed him.
+
+Porter laughed at the idea that responsibility could attach to Crane.
+As to the Chestnut, he was not worth a tenth of the three thousand he
+had cost--that was well known; and if Crane or any other man sought to
+buy him at that price it would savor too much of charity. At any rate,
+Lauzanne belonged to Allis, and Crane would have to bargain with her.
+
+Then there was Diablo, Crane said; his presence was a menace to Miss
+Porter.
+
+"I've nursed him for a good while," Porter replied, "and he's a bad
+betting proposition--he's too uncertain. You don't want such a horse as
+that--nobody does. I'll keep him a bit longer, and put him in a
+handicap or two where the purse will be worth running for, and I won't
+have to back him; he'll get in with a featherweight, and some day may
+take it into his head to gallop, though he's a rank bad one"
+
+Crane did not press the point; he understood Porter's motives
+throughout. He knew the master of Ringwood was an unchanging man, very
+set in his ways, adhering closely to his plans and opinions. So Crane
+went back to Brookfield without purchasing a horse, saying as he left,
+"I claim first privilege when you wish to sell."
+
+He had talked to Porter in the stable, and Mike, busy near by, heard
+that part of their conversation referring to the horses.
+
+"They haven't got money enough in the bank to take the little mare from
+us yet, have they, Mike?" Porter said to Gaynor, full of his pride in
+Lucretia.
+
+"That they haven't, sor," replied Mike, proudly. "But, faith, I wish
+th' gint hadn't come a-tryin' to buy her; it's bad luck to turn down a
+big offer fer any horse."
+
+Porter smiled indulgently. This stable superstition did not appeal to
+him.
+
+"It would a-broke the bad luck, sor, to have let him took the Black"
+
+"It would have broken his bank, you mean, Mike."
+
+"Well, he'll break somewan's back here yet, an' I'm tellin' you that
+sthraight. They say a black cat's full av th! divil, but Diablo's ould
+Nick hisself, though I'm sayin'it was th' b'y Shandy's fault sp'ilin'
+him. An' if it wasn't fer Miss Allis it's a pity you couldn't a-sold
+him the Chestnut. He's a sawhorse--he's as heavy in th' head as a bag
+of salt; he'll never do no good to nobody. Them's the kind as kapes a
+man poor, eatin' their heads off, an' wan horse, or maybe two, in the
+stable earnin' th' oats fer them. It's chaper to cut th' t'roats av
+such cattle."
+
+"I believe you're right, Mike," Porter answered, quietly, as he left the
+stable.
+
+Crane, driving back to Brookfield, turned over in his mind the matter of
+his mission. He was satisfied. He had succeeded in the main objective
+point. It would have been a good move to have acquired Lucretia, to
+have tempted her owner to part with her for ready money in sight. The
+money would soon have disappeared; then Porter, with a lot of bad horses
+on his hand, would almost certainly have come more firmly into the grasp
+of Crane. The offer to buy Lauzanne had been a bit of saving grace, a
+faint, generous impulse, begot of Allis's regenerating influence; but
+Crane had discovered that Porter did not at all suspect him of interest
+in the fraud--that was a great something. He had also established
+himself firmly in Mrs. Porter's good graces, he could see. It would be
+indeed strange if in the end he did not succeed completely.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Shandy's escapade with Diablo had brought a new trouble to Mike Gaynor.
+
+The boy had been discharged with a severe reprimand from Mr. Porter, and
+a punctuation mark of disapproval from the Trainer's horn-like hand. He
+had departed from Ringwood inwardly swearing revenge upon everybody
+connected with that place; against Diablo he was particularly virulent.
+
+Mike tried to secure a boy in the Brookfield neighborhood to ride Diablo
+in his work, but Shandy's evil tongue wagged so blatantly about the
+horse's bad temper that no lad could be found to take on in the stables.
+Ned Carter might have ridden Diablo at work, but the big Black was
+indeed a horse of many ideas. He had taken a notion to gallop kindly
+while accompanied by Lucretia and Lauzanne; worked alone he sulked and
+was as awkward as a broncho of the plains. Also he disliked Carter--
+seemed to associate his personality with that of Shandy's.
+
+Mike's discontent over the hitch spread to John Porter. It was too bad;
+the horses had been doing so well. For three days Diablo had no gallop.
+On the fourth Porter determined to ride the horse himself; he would not
+be beaten out by an ungrateful whelp like Shandy. In his day he had
+been a famous gentleman jock, and still light enough to ride work.
+
+"I don't like the idea, sor; it's not good enough," remonstrated Mike.
+
+But his master was obdurate. If Allis rode Lauzanne, why shouldn't he
+ride Diablo?
+
+Gaynor would have ridden the horse himself rather than have his master
+do so, but he had a bad leg. Once upon a time it had been crushed
+against the rail. Somebody must ride Diablo; the horse, naturally
+highstrung, was becoming wild with nervousness through being knocked out
+of his work.
+
+For three days after his discharge Shandy sat brooding with the low
+cunning of a forest animal over his fancied ill-treatment. More than
+once he had received money from Langdon for touting off to him Porter's
+stable matters; now in his unreasoning bitterness he contrasted Langdon
+and Porter.
+
+"Dick's white, he is, an' I'll go git a job from him. I gits half eat
+by that crazy skate, an' fired without a cent fer it. God drat 'em!" he
+muttered; "I'll get even, or know why. They'll put Ned up on Diablo,
+will they?  The sneak!  He split on me fer beltin' the Black, I know,
+damn him!  They ain't got another boy an' they won't git one. I'll fix
+that stiff, Carter, too; then they won't have no boy."
+
+He drank beer, and as it irritated his ferret mind a devilish plot came
+into his being and took possession of him--a plot easy of execution
+because of his familiarity with the Ringwood stables.
+
+That night he slipped through the dark, like a hyena pup, to Ringwood.
+That the stable was locked mattered not. More than once, out of
+laziness, Shandy had shirked going to Mike's quarters for the keys and
+had found ingress by a small window, a foot square, through which the
+soiled straw bedding was thrown into the yard. Standing on the dung
+heap, Shandy worked open the board slide that closed this window, and
+wormed his weasel-form through the small opening. He passed down the
+passage between the stalls and entered a saddle room at the farther end.
+
+"The bloomin' thing used to be on the fourth peg," he muttered, drawing
+his small figure up on tiptoe and feeling along the wall for something.
+"Blow me!" and he chuckled fiendishly as his fingers encountered the
+cold steel of a bit, "I'd know that snaffle in hell, if I got a feel of
+it."
+
+There was a patent device of a twist and a loose ring in the center of
+the bit he clutched, which Porter had devised for Diablo's hard mouth.
+
+Shandy gave the bridle a swing, and it clattered to the floor from its
+peg. Diablo snorted and pawed the planks of his stall nervously.
+
+"All right, my buck," hissed Shandy, "you wait till to-morror; you'll
+git the run of yer life, I'm thinkin', damn their eyes!" and he went off
+into a perfect torrent of imprecation against everybody at Ringwood,
+hushing his voice to a snarling whisper. Then he shut the door of the
+saddle room, sat down on the floor and pulled from his pocket a knife
+and stub of candle. He lighted the latter and held it flame down till a
+few drops of wax formed a tiny lake; into this he stuck the candle
+upright, shielding its flame with his coat. He opened the knife and
+laying it down, inspected minutely the bridle which lay across his leg.
+
+"It's Diablo's right enough," he said; "I couldn't be mistook on the
+bit, nor them strong lines."
+
+He picked up the knife, and holding the leather rein across the palm of
+his left hand started to saw it gently with the blade. Almost instantly
+he left off. "Of all the bloomin' ijits!  God drat me fer a goat!  He'd
+feel that cut the first slip through his fingers the leather took."
+
+He gathered in the rein until he had it six inches from the bit. There
+he cut, stopping many times, and doubling the leather close to the light
+to see how deep he had penetrated.
+
+"There, Mr. Bloody Ned!" he exclaimed at last, as inspection showed that
+only the outer hard shell of the leather remained intact. "That'll just
+hold till the Black takes one of his cranky spells, an' you give him a
+stiff pull. God help you then!"  Even this was a blasphemous cry of
+exultation; not a plea for divine assistance for the man he plotted
+against.
+
+His next move proved that his cunning was of an exceptional order. From
+his coat pocket he brought forth a pill box. In this receptacle Shandy
+dipped a forefinger, and rubbed into the fresh cut of the leather a
+trifle of blackened axle grease which he had taken from a wagon wheel
+before starting out. Then he wiped the rein with his coat tail and
+looked at it admiringly.
+
+"The bloke won't see that, blast him!"
+
+He hung the bridle up in its place, put out the candle, dropped it in
+his pocket and made his way from the stable.
+
+As he passed Diablo's stall the big Black snorted again, and plunged in
+affright.
+
+"You'll get enough of that to-morror," sneered the boy. "I hope you and
+Ned both break your damn necks. Fer two cents I'd drop somethin' in
+your feed-box that'd settle you right now; but it's the skunk as split
+on me I want to get even with."
+
+Shandy trudged back to where he nested in Brookfield and soon slept with
+calm restfulness, as though no evil had ever homed in his heart. In the
+first gray of the early morning he rose and went out to the race course.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+The course near Ringwood had formerly been a trotting track, and was
+still used at irregular intervals for the harness horses. In its
+primitive days a small, square, box-like structure had done duty as a
+Judges' Stand. With other improvements a larger structure had been
+erected a hundred yards higher up the stretch.
+
+It was to the little old stand that Shandy took his way. Inside he
+waited for the coming of Gaynor's string of gallopers as supremely happy
+in his unrighteous work as any evil-minded boy might be at the prospect
+of unlimited mischief.
+
+"Ned'll ride Diablo, sure; there's nothin' else to it," he muttered. "I
+hope he breaks his blasted neck. I'll pay 'em out fer turnin' me off
+like a dog," he continued, savagely, the small ferret eyes blazing with
+fury. "I'll learn the damn--Hello!" His sharp ears had caught the
+muffled sound of hoofs thudding the turf in a slow, measured walk. He
+peeped between the boards.
+
+"Yes, it's Mike. And the girl, too--blast her!  She blamed me fer near
+bein' eat alive by that black devil of a dope horse. Hell!"
+
+This ambiguous exclamation was occasioned by the sight of his former
+master springing into the saddle on Diablo's back.
+
+"That's the game, eh?  God strike me dead!  I hope you git enough of
+him. My arms ache yet from bein' near pulled out of the sockets by that
+leather-mouthed brute. Gee, if the boss hasn't got spurs on!  If he
+ever tickles the Black wit' 'em--say, boys, there'll be a merry hell to
+pay, and no pitch hot."
+
+The young Arab spoke to the boards as though they were partners in his
+iniquity. Then he chuckled diabolically, as in fancy he saw Porter
+being trampled by the horse.
+
+"The girl's on Lauzanne," he muttered; "she's the best in the lot, if
+she did run me down. A ridin' that sorrel mut, too, when she ought to
+be in the house washin' dishes. A woman ain't got no more business
+hangin' 'round the stable than a man's got in the kitchen. Petticoats
+is the devil; I never could abide 'em." Shandy sometimes harked back to
+his early English Whitechapel, for he had come from the old country, and
+had brought with him all the depravity he could acquire in the first
+five years of his existence there.
+
+"Ned's got the soft snap in that blasted bunch," as his eye discovered
+Carter on Lucretia. "He's slipped me this go, but I've nobbled the
+boss, so I don't care. I'm next 'em this trip."
+
+As the three horses and their riders came on to the course he pulled out
+a cheap stop-watch Langdon had equipped him with for his touting, and
+started and stopped it several times.
+
+"You'll pay fer their feed, you damn ole skinflint," he was
+apostrophizing Porter, "an' I'll be next the best they can do, an' stan'
+in on the rake-off. Gee! I thought they was out fer a trial," he
+muttered, looking disconsolately at the three as they cantered the first
+part of the journey. "I'll ketch 'em at the half, on the off chance,"
+he added.
+
+But though the timepiece in his hand clicked impatiently, after he
+pressed the stem with his thumb, as Diablo's black nozzle showed past
+the half-mile post, the three horses still cantered. Lauzanne was loping
+leisurely with the action of a wooden rocking-horse. Lucretia, her
+long, in-tipped ears cocked eagerly forward, was throwing her head
+impatiently into the air as though pleading for just one strong gallop.
+Diablo's neck was arched like the half of a cupid's bow; his head,
+almost against his chest, hung heavy in the reins tight-drawn in
+Porter's strong hands. His eyes, showing full of a suspicious
+whiteness, stood out from his lean, bony head; they were possessed of a
+fretful, impatient look. Froth flecked back from the nervous, quivering
+lips, and spattered against his black satin-skinned chest, where it hung
+like seafoam on holding sand.
+
+"Whoa!  Steady, old boy!" Porter was coaxing soothingly. "Steady, boy!"
+
+"The ease up has put the very deuce into this fellow," he flung over his
+shoulder to Allis, who was at Diablo's quarter. "He's a hard-mouthed
+brute if ever there was one."
+
+"He'll be all right, dad," she called forward, raising her voice, for
+the wind cut her breath; "Shandy rode him with a heavy hand, that's
+why."
+
+"I'll put a rubber bit in his mouth, to soften it," he pumped brokenly.
+"Let out a wrap, girl, and we'll breeze them up the stretch; come on.
+Carter, get to the front with the mare." A quarter of a mile from the
+finish the horses raced into a swinging stride. Diablo was simply mad
+with a desire to gallop; but in the saddle was his master; no horse ever
+did as he wished with John Porter. Battling against the sharps his
+honesty might handicap him out of the strife, but in the saddle the
+elation of movement crept into his sinews, and he was superb, a king.
+As a jockey, he would have been unsurpassed. It filled his heart with
+delight to play with the fierce, imperious animal he rode.
+
+"Steady, my boy--no you don't!"  This as Diablo stuck his neck straight
+out like an arrow and sought to hold the bit tight against the bridle
+teeth, that he might race at his own sweet will. Back came the right
+hand, then the left, three vicious saws, and the bit was loose and
+Diablo's head drawn down again close to the martingale. Lucretia and
+Lauzanne were pulling to the front.
+
+"Go on!" called Porter to Ned Carter; "I want to see the little mare in
+her stride. Take them out at three-quarter gallop down the back
+stretch. I'll be treading your heels off."
+
+By this they were opposite the old stand, where Shandy was hiding. The
+boy, surmising that a gallop was on, and anxious to see them as they
+rounded the turn going down the back, had knocked a board loose to widen
+the crack. As the horses came abreast, Shandy, leaning forward in his
+eagerness, dislodged it at the top, and it fell with a clatter, carrying
+him half through the opening. The wind was blowing fair across the
+little stand, so the scent of the boy came to Diablo's nostrils at the
+same instant the startling noise reached his nervous ears. In a swerve
+he almost stopped, every muscle of his big body trembling in affright.
+Porter was nearly thrown from his seat by this crouching side step; the
+horse seemed to shrink from under him. Just for an instant, but the
+reins had flapped loose against the wet neck and Diablo felt freedom.
+With a snort he plunged forward like a wounded buck, and raced madly
+after Lucretia, who had bolted when the crash came.
+
+Porter had lost a stirrup in the sudden twist, and the reins had slipped
+through his fingers as he grabbed the mane on Diablo's wither to pull
+his weight back into the saddle.
+
+Now the black neck was straight and taut, flatcapped by the slim ears
+that lay close to the throatlatch. The thunder of his pounding hoofs
+reached to the ears of Lucretia and Lauzanne in front, and urged them
+onward. Carter had sat down in the saddle, and taken a steadying pull
+at the brown mare. Even Lauzanne seemed lifted out of his usual
+lethargy, and, widemouthed, was pulling Allis out of the saddle.
+
+"Curse the brute!" gasped Porter, burying his knees in the saddle flaps,
+and searching for the dangling stirrup with the toe of his right foot.
+Once he almost had it, but missed; the iron, swinging viciously, caught
+Diablo in the flank--it made little difference, his terror was complete.
+All the time Porter was kneading the dangling reins back through
+forefinger and thumb, shortening his hold for a strong pull at the
+galloping brute's head.
+
+"Who-o-o-a-h, who-o-o-ah, stead-y!" and, bracing himself against the
+pummel he swung the weight of his shoulders on the reins. As well might
+he have pulled at the rock of Gibraltar. Diablo's head was up, his
+teeth set hard and the man's strength was as nothing against the full-
+muscled neck of the big horse. Diablo was cutting down the lead the
+other two held over him, galloping like a demon. Porter felt that he
+must loosen the bit and throw that set head down to get command of the
+horse. One fierce yank to the right and the black head swayed a trifle;
+another to the left and--God in heaven! the rein snapped, and its loose
+end came back, slashing the rider across the face. He reeled with the
+recoil, nearly bringing Diablo to his knees with the sudden swing of
+weight on the right rein. Porter's brain jerked foolishly for an
+instant; then he was the trained horseman again, and had let the
+remaining leather slip through his fingers a trifle.
+
+"Go on!" he shouted to those in front; "go on--give me a lead! Hang to
+the course!"
+
+He realized now that the crazed brute under him must run himself out.
+All he could do was to sit tight and wait till Diablo had raced himself
+to a standstill. To use the one rein meant a crash into the rail, and
+surely death. Before, he had thought only of the horse's welfare; now
+it was a matter of his own life. All that remained to him was to keep a
+cool head, a steady nerve, and wait.
+
+Freed of restraint, not battled with, the Black's stride lengthened, his
+nostrils spread wider, the hoofs pounded quicker and quicker until the
+earth echoed with their palpitating beat. The other horses heard the
+turmoil, and they, too, became more afraid, and took up the mad rush.
+
+Diablo's reaching nose was at Lauzanne's hip when Allis took one swift
+backward glance. She saw the dangling rein, the set look in her
+father's face, the devil eyes of the horse, and for one breath-gasp her
+heart fluttered in its beat. As quickly she put the fear from her, and
+swinging Lauzanne a shade wide, left Diablo more room next the rail.
+
+"On, Lauzanne!" she called through drawn lips; and hitched encouragingly
+in the saddle.
+
+Lucretia was still in front, her speed mocking at the swift rush of
+Lauzanne and Diablo. But how the Black galloped!  Every post saw him
+creeping up on the Chestnut, and Allis riding and nursing him to keep
+the runaway hemmed in at the turns, so that he could not crash through
+the outer rail. No one spoke again. Each knew that nothing was left to
+do but keep Diablo to the course, and ride, ride.
+
+Just in front of Lauzanne, with swinging stride raced the brown mare,
+waiting till the Chestnut should drop back beaten, to take up the
+running with Diablo. That was Carter's good judgment; and he rode as
+though it were the Derby, and he was nursing his mount for the last call
+at the finish.
+
+At the three quarters Lauzanne and Diablo were neck and neck; at the
+half, the Black was lapped on Lucretia; another furlong and she was
+laboring to keep her place, nose and nose with him.
+
+"I'm done," panted Carter, feeling the mare swerve and falter; "I'm
+done--God help us!"
+
+Still there was no check in the Black's gallop; he was like a devil that
+could go on forever and ever.
+
+They had turned into the straight with Lucretia a neck to the bad, when
+Carter heard the girl's voice faintly calling, "Pull out, Ned!"  The boy
+thought it fancy. Lauzanne the Despised couldn't be there at their
+heels. He had thought him beaten off long ago. But again the voice
+came, a little stronger, "Pull out, Ned!"
+
+This time there was no mistake. It might be a miracle, but it was his
+duty to obey. As he galloped, Carter edged Lucretia to the right.
+Without looking back he could feel Lauzanne creeping up between him and
+Diablo. Soon the Chestnut's head showed past his elbow, and they were
+both lapped on the Black. Halfway up the stretch Allis was riding
+stirrup to stirrup with her father. Porter's weight was telling on
+Diablo.
+
+"She's got him. Lauzanne'll hold him if he doesn't quit," Carter
+muttered, as he dropped back, for Lucretia was blown.
+
+Past the finish post Lauzanne was a head in front, and Diablo was
+galloping like a tired horse.
+
+"He's beat!" ejaculated Carter. "Hello! that's it, eh?  My word, what a
+girl!"
+
+He saw Allis reach down for the slack rein running from her father's
+hand to Diablo's mouth. "Missed!  She's got it!" he cried, eagerly.
+"The devil!"
+
+As Allis grasped Diablo's rein, the horse, with sudden fury at being
+drawn toward Lauzanne, his old foe, snapped at the Chestnut. As he did
+so, thrown out of his stride, his forelegs crossed and he went down in a
+heap with the rider underneath. The force of his gallop carried the
+Black full over onto his back. He struggled to his feet, and stood,
+shaking like a leaf, with low-stretched neck and fearcocked ears,
+staring at the crushed, silent figure that lay with its face smothered
+in the soft earth. In a dozen jumps Allis stopped Lauzanne, threw
+herself from the saddle, and leaving the horse ran swiftly back to her
+father.
+
+"Oh, my God! he's dead, he's dead!" she cried, piteously, the nerve that
+had stood the strain of the fierce ride utterly shattered and unstrung
+at sight of the senseless form.
+
+"He's not dead," said Carter, putting his hand over Porter's heart.
+"It's just a bad shake-up. Mike's coming, and we'll soon get him home.
+He'll be all right, Miss Allis--he'll be all right," he kept muttering
+in a dazed manner, as he raised her father's head to his knee.
+
+"Take Lucretia and gallop for the docthor, Miss 'Allis," commanded Mike
+coming up on the run. We'll get yer father home in the buggy."
+
+"In God's mercy, don't let him die, Mike," and bending down she pressed
+her lips to the cold forehead that was driven full of sand. "Get him
+home quick, and try not to let mother see. I'll take Lauzanne."
+
+Lauzanne had followed her and was standing waiting; his big eyes full of
+a curious wonderment. Mike lifted Allis to the saddle. As he drew back
+his hand he looked at it, then up at the girl. "Don't cry, Miss," he
+said, struggling a little with his voice that was playing him tricks;
+"yer father's just stunned a bit. The dochtor'll brace him up all
+right."
+
+"It's bad business, this," he continued, as Allis galloped on her
+errand, and he helped Carter lift the injured man. "There, that's
+roight; jist carry his legs; I'll take him under the back."
+
+As they moved slowly toward the buggy that stood in the paddock, Diablo
+followed at their heels as though he had done nothing in the world but
+take a mild gallop. "Ye black divil!" muttered Mike, looking over his
+shoulder; ye've murthered wan av the best min as iver breathed. If I'd
+me way, I'd shoot ye. I'd turn ye into cat meat; that's what ye'r fit
+for!"
+
+"What broke the rein?" he asked of Carter as they neared the buggy;
+"what started thim goin'?"
+
+"Somebody was in the old stand," Carter replied, as putting his foot on
+the step he raised himself and the dead weight of the limp man.
+
+"There, steady, Ned. Pull the cushion down in the bottom. Now ye've
+got it. Bot' t'umbs! it's as good as an ambulance. I'll hold his head
+in me lap, an' ye drive. Here, Finn," he continued, turning to the boy
+who had caught and brought up Lucretia, "take the wee filly an' that
+divil's baste back to the barn; put the busted bridle by till I have a
+good look at it after. Go on, Ned; slow; that's it, aisy does it. When
+we get out on the turnpike ye can slip along."
+
+When they had turned into the road he spoke again to Carter, "Ye were
+sayin', Ned, there was a guy in th' ould stan'."
+
+"Yes," replied Carter; "somebody was toutin' us off. A board broke, an'
+that frightened the boss's mount."
+
+"I t'ought I see a b'y skinnin' off the track," commented Gaynor. "First
+I t'ought it was Shandy, but what'd he be doin' there? Did ye see his
+face, Ned?"
+
+"I was too busy takin' a wrap on Lucretia; she was gettin' a bit out of
+hand."
+
+When they came to the gate which gave entrance to Ringwood house Mike
+said to Carter, with rough sympathy in his voice: "Slip in ahead, Ned,
+and tell the Misses that the boss has had a bit av a spill. Say he's
+just stunned; no bones broke. Bot' t'umbs! though, I fear he's mashed
+to a jelly. Ask fer a bottle of brandy till we give him a bracer.
+Ned!" he called, as Carter slipped from the buggy, "see if ye kin kape
+the Misses from seein' the boss till the docthor comes. Git hould of
+the girl Cynthie, an' give her the tip that things is purty bad. Go on
+now; I'll drive slow wid wan hand."
+
+Mike's kindly precautions were of little avail. Mrs. Porter saw the
+slow-moving conveyance crawling up the broad drive, and instinctively
+knew that again something terrible had occurred. That Allis was not
+there added to her fear.
+
+"He's just bad, ma'am," Carter was saying, as Mike reached the steps.
+But she didn't hear him; her face was white, and in her eyes was the
+horror of a great fear, but from her lips came no cry; her silence was
+more dreadful than if she had called out.
+
+"We'll carry him, ma'am," Mike said, as she came down the steps to the
+buggy, and clutching the wheel rim swayed unsteadily. "Jest git a bed
+ready, Misses," Gaynor continued, softly; "git a bed ready, an' he'll be
+all roight afther a bit. He's just stunned; that's all, just stunned!"
+
+It was curious how the sense of evil had limited each one's vocabulary.
+
+"Let me help," pleaded Mrs. Porter, speaking for the first time.
+
+"We'll carry him, Misses--he's just stunned," repeated Mike, in a dreary
+monotone, as feeling each step carefully with his toe he and Carter bore
+the still senseless form into the house. The wife had got one of the
+battered hands between her own, and was walking with wide, dry, staring
+eyes close to her husband.
+
+"O John, John!  Speak to me. Open your eyes and look at me. You're not
+dead; O God! you're not dead!" she cried, passionately, breaking down,
+and a pent-up flood of tears coming to the hot, dry eyes as the two men
+laid Porter on the bed that Cynthia had made ready.
+
+"There, Misses, don't take on now," pleaded Mike. "The boss is jest
+stunned; that's all. I've been that way a dozen toimes meself," he
+added, by way of assurance. "Where's the brandy? Lift his head, Ned;
+not so much. See!" he cried, exultantly, as the strong liquor caused
+the eyelids to quiver; "see, Misses, he's all roight; he's jest stunned;
+that's all. There's the dochtor now. God bless the little woman!  She
+wasn't long!"
+
+The sound of wheels crunching the gravel, with a sudden stop at the
+porch, had come to their ears.
+
+"Come out av the room, Ma'am," Mike besought Mrs. Porter; "come out av
+the room an' lave the docthor bring the boss 'round."  He signaled to
+Cynthia with his eyes for help in this argument.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Porter," seconded Cynthia, "go out to the porch; Miss Allis
+and I will remain here with the doctor to get what's needed."
+
+"Ah, a fall, eh," commented Dr. Rathbone, cheerily, coming briskly into
+the room. Then he caught Mike's eye; it closed deliberately, and the
+Irishman's head tipped never so slightly toward Mrs. Porter.
+
+"Now 'clear the room,' as they say in court," continued the doctor, with
+a smile, understanding Mike's signal. "We mustn't have people about to
+agitate Porter when he comes to his senses. I'll need Cynthia, and
+perhaps you'd better wait, too, Gaynor. Just take care of your mother,
+Miss Allis. I'll have your father about in a jiffy."
+
+"He's jest stunned; that's all!" added Mike, with his kindly, parrotlike
+repetition.
+
+It seemed a million years to the wife that she waited for the doctor's
+outcoming. Twice she cried in anguish to Allis that she must go in;
+must see her husband.
+
+"He may die," she pleaded, "and I may never see his eyes again. Oh, let
+me go, Allis, I'll come back, I will."
+
+"Wait here, mother," commanded the girl. "Doctor Rathbone will tell us
+if--if--" she could not finish the sentence--could not utter the dread
+words, but clasping her mother's hands firmly in her own, kept her in
+the chair. Once Mike came out and said, "He's jest stunned, Ma'am. The
+docthor says he'll be all roight by an' by."
+
+"He won't die--"
+
+"He's worth a dozen dead men, Ma'am; he's jest stunned; that's all!"
+
+There was another long wait, then Dr. Rathbone appeared.
+
+"Porter will be all right, Madame; it'll take time; it'll take time--and
+nursing. But you're getting used to that," he added, with a smile, "but
+" and he looked fixedly at Allis, "he must have quiet; excitement will
+do more harm than the fall."
+
+"Tell me the truth, doctor," pleaded Mrs. Porter, struggling to her
+feet, and placing both hands on his shoulders, "I can stand it--see, I'm
+brave."
+
+"I've told you the truth, Mrs. Porter," the doctor answered. "There's no
+fear for your husband's recovery if he has quiet for a few days."
+
+She looked into his eyes. Then crying, "I believe you, doctor; thank
+God for his mercy!" swayed, and would have fallen heavily but for Mike's
+ready arm.
+
+"She'll be better after that," said the doctor, addressing Allis. "It
+has been a hard pull on her nerves. Just bathe her temples, and get her
+to sleep, if you can. I'll come back soon. Your father is not
+conscious, or will he be, I'm thinking, for a day or two. He has heavy
+concussion. Cynthia has full directions what to do."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+After Dr. Rathbone had left Mike and Carter went down to the stables.
+
+"I'll jest have a look at that broke rein," said Gaynor; "that sthrap
+was strong enough to hang Diablo. If there's not some dirty business in
+this, I'll eat me hat. T'umbs up! but it was a gallop, though. The
+Black kin move whin he wants to."
+
+"But what do you think of old Lauzanne?" exclaimed Carter. "He just
+wore Diablo down, hung to him like a bulldog, an' beat him out."
+
+"It was the girl's ridin'; an' Lauzanne was feared, too. He's chicken-
+hearted; that's what he is. Some day in a race he'll get away in front
+av his horses, an' beat 'em by the length av a street. He'll be a
+hun'red to wan, an' nobody'll have a penny on."
+
+When they arrived at the stable Mike headed straight for the harness
+room. The light was dim, coming from a small, high, two-paned window;
+but Mike knew where every bridle and saddle should be. He put his hand
+on Diablo's headgear, and bringing it down carried it through the
+passage to a stable door where he examined it minutely.
+
+"Jest what I tought. Look at that," and he handed it to Carter for
+inspection. "How do ye size that up, Ned?"
+
+"The rein's been cut near through," replied Carter. "I wonder it held
+as long as it did."
+
+"A dirty, low-down trick," commented Mike. "I'll hang it back on the
+peg just now, but don't use it again fer a bit."
+
+As he reentered the saddle room briskly his heel slipped on the plank
+floor, bringing him down. "I'd take me oath that was a banana peel, if
+it was on the sidewalk," he exclaimed, after a gymnastic twist that
+nearly dislocated his neck. "Some of ye fellows is pretty careless wit'
+hoof grease, I'm thinkin'."
+
+More out of curiosity than anything else he peered down at the cause of
+his sudden slip. "What the divil is it, onyway?" he muttered, kneeling
+and lighting a match, which he held close to the spot. "Bot' t'umbs!"
+he exclaimed, "it's candle grease. Have aither of ye b'ys been in here
+wit' a candle?  It's agin the rules."
+
+"There isn't a candle about the barn, an' you know it, Mike," cried
+Carter, indignantly.
+
+Mike was prospecting the floor with another light.
+
+"Here's two burnt matches," he continued, picking them up. "An' they
+were loighted last night, too. See that, they're long, an' that means
+that they wasn't used for lightin' a pipe or a cigar--jes' fer touchin'
+off a candle, that's all. I know they was loighted last night," he
+said, as though to convince himself, "fer they're fresh, an' ain't been
+tramped on. If they'd been here fer two or three days, roight in front
+of the door, they'd have the black knocked off 'em wid ye boys' feet.
+This wan didn't light at all hardly, an' there's a little wool fuzz
+stickin' to it. Gee! that manes some wan sthruck it on his wool pants.
+Git the lantern, Ned, p'raps we'll fin' out somethin' more. The light
+from that high up winder ain't good enough fer trackin' a bear."
+
+When the lantern was brought, Mike continued his detective operations,
+nose and eyes close to the floor, like a black tracker.
+
+"What's that, Ned?" he asked, pointing his finger at a dark brown spot
+on the boards.
+
+Carter crouched and scrutinized Mike's find. "Tobacco spit," and he
+gave a little laugh.
+
+"Roight you are; that's what it is. Now who chaws tobaccie in this
+stable?" he demanded of Carter, with the air of a cross-examining
+counsel.
+
+"I don't."
+
+"Does Finn?"
+
+"No; I don't think so."
+
+"Didn't Shandy always have a gob of it in his cheek--the dirty pig?"
+
+"Yes, he did, Mike."
+
+"I t'ought so; I t'ought it was that blackguard. But how did the swine
+get in here?  The stable was locked, an' I had the key in me pocket.
+I'll take me oath to that"
+
+Carter took his cap off, ran a hand reflectively up and down the crown
+of his head, canvassing every possible entry there might be to the
+stalls. Suddenly he replaced his cap and whistled softly. "I know,
+Mike; he crawled through the dung window. I've seen him do it half a
+dozen times. When he was too lazy to go for the keys, he'd wiggle
+through that hole."
+
+Mike said nothing, but led the way to the back of the stable. There he
+climbed upon the pile of rotting straw, and examined closely the small,
+square opening, with its board slide, through which Shandy had passed
+the night before.
+
+"God! I t'ought so!" he ejaculated. "Here's more tobacco spit, where
+the cutt'roat divil stood when he opened the winder."
+
+Looking down, his eye caught the glint of something bright deep in the
+straw. He dug his hand down into the mass and brought up a knife.
+"Whose is that, Ned?" he queried.
+
+Carter looked at it closely. "Shandy's," he answered; "I'll swear to
+that. I've borrowed it from him more than once to clean out the horses'
+hoofs."
+
+"Bot' t'umbs up!  I'd hang that b'y to a beam if I had him here. He cut
+that rein as sure as God made little apples," declared Mike, vehemently.
+"An' the gall av him to go an' sit there in the ould stand to watch the
+Black run away wit' somewan an' kill 'em. Now jest kape yer mouth shut,
+Ned, an' we'll put a halter on this rooster. By hivins! when I git him
+I'll make him squale, too!"
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+The seriousness of Porter's accident became clearer to Doctor Rathbone
+the following day. He imparted this information to Allis; told her that
+in all probability it would be weeks before her father would be strong
+again.
+
+"In the meantime, little woman, what are you to do with all these hungry
+horses on your hands?" he asked.
+
+The girl's answer came quickly enough, for she had lain awake through
+all the dreary night, thinking out this problem. Without medical
+knowledge she had felt certain that her father was badly injured, and
+the gloomy future had come to her in the darkness instead of sleep.
+
+"I'll look after them," she answered the doctor, quite simply.
+
+A smile of skepticism hovered about his full lips, as he raised his eyes
+to the girl's face, but the look of determination, of confidence that he
+met put his doubts to flight. "I believe you can do it, if any man
+can," and he put his big hand on her slight shoulders, as much as to
+say, "I'm behind you; I believe in you."
+
+Of course an inkling of Porter's condition had to be given his wife,
+though the full gravity was masked. This was done by Allis, and Mrs.
+Porter immediately became a prey to abject despair.
+
+The first thing to be done was to get rid of Diablo. She was too gentle
+to ask that he be shot, but he must go, even if he be given away. She
+would willingly have sacrificed all the horses. Always with their
+presence had come financial troubles, spiritual troubles; now the lives
+of those dear to her were in actual peril. No wonder the good woman was
+rendered hysterical by the strong emotions that swayed her.
+
+In her depression she somewhat startled Allis by insisting that they
+must send for Mr. Crane at once. After all, it was not so unreasonable;
+with the master of Ringwood helpless, who else could they consult with
+over their entangled condition?  For, the past year Porter had found it
+necessary to keep in constant touch with the bank; so they must become
+familiar with the details of the entanglement.
+
+Mrs. Porter had come to have the utmost confidence in Crane's friendship
+and ability; he was the one above all others to have Diablo taken off
+their hands. So Philip Crane, to his intense delight, was summoned to
+Ringwood. This was his first knowledge of Porter's mishap, for he had
+been in New York.
+
+Crane was supposed to possess a rare magnetism; most certainly men came
+under his influence with a noiseless, cheerful complaisance. It may
+have been that there was a slight fascination in the oblique contour of
+his eyes, but in reality his power lay in his exquisite finesse; people
+delved for him under the impression that they were laboring according to
+the dictates of their own sweet wills. Figuratively speaking, he
+twisted Mrs. Porter round his finger, and so delightfully, that she was
+filled with gratitude because of Crane's kindness in their hour of
+trouble.
+
+The matter of Diablo was settled in a minute; he would buy the horse
+himself, and the price could be arranged when Mrs. Porter was able to
+discuss the matter--that is, definitely; in the meantime he would pay a
+thousand for him. He understood Porter had bough him for that price.
+With a touch of kindly humor, Crane declared that he would have a small
+bet on the horse for Allis the first time he started.
+
+Beyond parting with Diablo, Allis would not go farther in the matter of
+selling the horses; this was the full extent of her concession to the
+mother. Had she known that her father had entered Diablo in the
+Brooklyn Handicap she might even have refused to part with the horse.
+As it happened, Porter had entered both Lucretia and Diablo in the
+Brooklyn a day or so before his accident, but had not spoken of it.
+
+Crane assured Mrs. Porter that she need not distract her mind over money
+matters, the bank could easily carry their lead until her husband was
+himself again. No matter how things turned out, it was a delicate
+matter to touch upon, the possibility of Porter's condition taking a
+serious turn, but coming from Crane it seemed like an earnest of his
+sincerity--well, Mrs. Porter would find a friend in him, quite willing
+and able to smooth their difficult path.
+
+Crane had meant to defer any protestations of regard for Allis until a
+propitious future, but with his quick perception he saw that the
+psychological moment had been moved forward by the sudden effacement of
+the master of Ringwood. If he spoke now to Mrs. Porter it would give
+her a right to call upon his services. He would appear in the light of a
+debtor; it would break down barriers which might seem to exist because
+of their non-relationship.
+
+Crane had not been without a suspicion that the younger man, Mortimer,
+might prove a rival; heroics such as the Diablo episode were apt to give
+young people a romantic interest in each other; Fate had more than
+evened matters up by giving him the present opportunity. He thought
+with some satisfaction how perfectly helpless Mortimer was in the
+present instance, for he was most undeniably poor. It was an
+opportunity to be grasped; and Crane never let the tide pass its flood
+in the waters of his life.
+
+So the banker spoke to Mrs. Porter of his strong love for Allis; so
+delicately, and with so much sincerity, that she was completely won
+over. It is true, the ground had been prepared for the seed, for the
+mother had long feared that Allis might become attached to some one of
+Porter's racing associates. Though strong in spiritual matters, the good
+woman was not without worldly instinct. She was pleased with Crane
+personally; he was not by any means a racing man; a rich banker, who
+would make a most desirable husband for her daughter. Of course, it
+would rest with the girl herself. Mrs. Porter would not coerce nor
+influence her; but why should not Allis come to care for Crane under the
+influence of his strong love?
+
+Mrs. Porter's mind had rebounded from its dazed condition after her
+husband's accident, and was now acute. All these thoughts came to her
+with rapidity, as Crane talked with masterly judgment.
+
+To the mother's suggestion that he speak to Allis he put forward a plea
+of delicate consideration for the girl; he would rather deny himself; he
+would wait patiently until her mind was in a happier condition.
+Cleverly enough he knew that Mrs. Porter was now his ally, and would
+plead his cause with less chance of failure than if he startled Allis by
+the sudden fronting of life's great problem.
+
+When Crane had gone Allis found her mother calmed by his visit; his
+assurances had driven away distressing clouds of financial worry.
+
+Almost immediately Mrs. Porter transmitted to the girl what had come to
+her of Crane's declaration.
+
+"It seems almost like an answer to my prayer," she said to Allis; "not,
+of course"--she interrupted herself--"that I've been praying for a
+husband for you, but this wicked racing has warped the whole woof of my
+life; it seemed inevitable in the strength of its contaminating
+atmosphere that you would be wedded into it, though one were better dead
+than willingly choose a path of sin."
+
+"Then you've settled it, mother!" Allis's big eyes took on a dangerous
+look of rebellion.
+
+"No, daughter; you must choose for yourself; only you will be wise not
+to go contrary to your parent's wishes. I did--"
+
+"But you are not sorry, mother?" there was reproach in the girl's voice.
+
+"Not for having wedded your father, but because of his racing life. I
+should have been firmer, and asked him to give it up before I married
+him. He might have done it then. Mr. Crane is a gentleman, Allis.
+That is a great deal nowadays, and he loves you most sincerely. Words
+often mean very little, but one can tell--at least when they've come to
+years of discretion they can--from a man's voice whether he is in
+earnest or not. I suppose it is very worldly to speak of his riches,
+but in poverty one can do very little, very little good. I had rather
+that you didn't have to look with misgiving into the future, Allis; it
+has taken much joy out of my existence. The dread of poverty is a
+nightmare; it wears one's life threadbare. To the young, buoyed up by
+confidence in the rosy future, this may seem sordid, but this feeling of
+insecurity mars many lives which might otherwise be happy.
+
+"You see, Allis," her mother continued, "I know you are heart-whole, so
+I can't cause you any misery by my well-meant advice. You've been a good
+girl, and there has been nobody of your class about. Mr. Mortimer is, I
+dare say, a gentleman, and I must confess I was afraid that you might
+mistake a feeling of generosity to him for something stronger; but that
+was only an idle fancy, I see. It would have been unfortunate if it
+were otherwise, for he is very poor indeed. His small salary must be
+all taken up in keeping himself, his widowed mother, and a younger
+sister."
+
+Allis gave a sudden start. She had not known these particulars of
+Mortimer's life; but they carried certain explanations of his conduct.
+Quite casually she had formed an impression that he was penurious;
+something he had dropped about not being able to afford certain
+pleasures. That was where the money went--to support his mother and
+sister. Unwittingly her mother was pleading the cause of two men.
+
+The mother's talk depressed Allis greatly. Why should this troublesome
+matter come to her when she had so much to bear, so much to do. It gave
+her quite a shock to find that as her mother talked she was not thinking
+of Crane at all. She could not picture his face, even; just the narrow-
+lidded eyes peeped at her in her thoughts once or twice; it would be
+horrible to look into them forever and ever. The face of Mortimer, pale
+and firm-set as it had been in that day of strife, was always
+obliterating the other visage. Was her mother right?  Was she so heart-
+whole? As if her thoughts had bearing on her mother's mind, the latter
+said: "I wouldn't have spoken to you of this matter while your father is
+so ill if it weren't for the fact that our position is very precarious.
+I can't understand just how badly off we are, but if anything were to
+happen your father, I hardly know what would become of us"
+
+"And Mr. Crane has promised to help us if--if--"  There was a hard ring
+in the girl's voice as she spoke, getting not past the "if," refusing to
+put into words the distressing thought.
+
+"There is no 'if' about it, daughter. Mr. Crane is our friend, your
+father's friend, and he is going to help us; and he only spoke of his
+regard for you by way of an excuse--it was delicacy on his part,
+thinking that I would have less compunction in accepting his good
+offices. All I ask, girl, is that you will try to like Mr. Crane; if
+you can't, well, you won't find me making you unhappy. But I can tell
+you this, Allis, unless matters mend, and how the change is to come I
+can't say, your father will lose Ringwood and it will belong to Mr.
+Crane. Even if the horses were sold off, the money would not clear the
+debts; besides, I think that even the horses are encumbered."
+
+Allis stood in indecision for a little, thinking deeply; then she went
+up to her mother, and, taking her face in her hands, kissed her.
+
+"I understand, mother," she said, "you are worrying over the dear old
+place, over my future, and over father, and it is nothing but worry,
+worry, worry all the time. But I'll save Ringwood for you, mother. I
+hope father will soon be well again and that luck will change; but
+anyway, mother, I promise you that no matter what effort it costs me you
+sha'nt sacrifice the dear old place."
+
+Mrs. Porter's eyes were wet with tears of gratitude. She was thinking
+only of the redemption of the place through Crane; but Allis's words had
+meant far more than she had taken from them. They were inspired by a
+faith that she could save their fortunes without sacrificing herself to
+Crane. If not, if she failed, she was brave, she was a Porter, and
+would keep her word and save Ringwood, even at that price.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Journeying back to New York, Crane reviewed in detail his interview with
+Mrs. Porter. He congratulated himself upon his wisdom in having
+instituted his love suit by proxy. With all his masterfulness he was
+very considerably in awe of Miss Allis. There was a not-to-be-daunted
+expression in her extraordinary eyes which made him feel that a love
+tilt with her would be a somewhat serious business. He pictured himself
+as an ardent lover; he would cut a droll figure in that role, he knew;
+emotions were hardly in his line. He might feel such an assertive
+emotion as love quite as strongly as anyone, in fact, did, but could he
+express himself with faultless consistency?  He rather doubted it. His
+usual slow-advancing method was certainly ordained of this intricate
+endeavor; and he had made great progress with the mother, the one above
+all others to be placated; adversity, continuous as it promised to be,
+would probably settle Porter's influence in his favor. His plan of
+action plainly was to be often at Ringwood to familiarize the household
+with his presence. The acquiring of Diablo would facilitate that.
+
+Diablo--a skate!  He laughed to himself over his purchase. Certainly
+Langdon would laugh at him, too; not openly, of course; Crane wouldn't
+tolerate that. What an influence this girl had over him, to be sure!
+Any man who had endeavored to sell him a bad horse would have had a
+hopeless task; with but a nod of encouragement from Allis he would have
+bought every horse--all the useless crooks they had; the stable was full
+of them, Lauzanne among the rest.
+
+The influence was dividing his nature into a dual one; starting into
+life infantile thoughts of a generous morality; an unrest of great vigor
+was coming to him, retribution; possibly the power to feel the
+difference between an avariciousness, fathering dishonesty, and this new
+recognition of other rights.
+
+On his arrival in New York he sent for his trainer.
+
+"I bought a horse at Ringwood. I want you to look after him, Langdon,"
+he said. "Their man, Gaynor, will send him direct to your stables."
+
+The Trainer's face brightened. "Did you get Lucretia after all?"
+
+"No; I bought a big black, Diablo."
+
+The look of delight faded from Langdon's eyes quickly. "The devil!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+"That's what I said; that's his name."
+
+"But he's the most uncertain brute that ever wore a set of plates.
+You'll get no good of him, sir; he's bad, clean through. It's come down
+to him from his second sire, Robert the Devil, without a bit of the
+good, either. He'd break a man that would follow him."
+
+"He won't break me," answered Crane, quietly; "nor you, either, Langdon
+--you've got too much sense."
+
+This subtle tribute mollified the Trainer.
+
+Crane proceeded: "I remember the horse quite well. Four thousand was
+paid for him as a yearling; as a two-year-old he was tried out good
+enough to win the Futurity; but when it came to racing he cut it and
+finished in the ruck."
+
+"That's right," commented Langdon. "He owes me a good bit, that same
+Johnny; his people thought him a lead-pipe cinch, and I went down the
+line on him to my sorrow."
+
+"Just so. You know him as well as I do. It's a great way to get
+acquainted with them, isn't it, Langdon; put your money on, and have the
+good thing go down?"
+
+Langdon had the highest possible opinion of his master's astuteness and
+began to waver in his antipathy to Diablo.
+
+"You think he's really good, then, sir; did he show you a fast trial?"
+
+"I didn't even see the horse," Crane answered, looking dreamily out of
+the window. "I bought him to--"
+
+He paused in reflection; he couldn't tell Langdon why he had bought him,
+and he hardly cared to have his prestige with the Trainer destroyed. He
+continued, shifting the subject--matter a trifle, "You did John Porter
+up over Lauzanne last summer, Langdon--"
+
+"Me?" questioned 'the Trainer. Was Crane forgetting his share in the
+matter?
+
+"Yes, you!" affirmed the other, looking him steadily in the eye. "You
+sold him Lauzanne, and Lauzanne was loaded."
+
+Langdon said nothing. What the devil was coming?
+
+"Well," drawled Crane, "Porter's badly hurt; he's out of the race for
+some time to come. They're friends of mine"
+
+"They're friends," mused Langdon; "who in thunder are they?"
+
+"They're friends of mine, and I offered to buy Lauzanne back, just to
+help them out; but the old man's daughter has got the Chestnut for a
+hack, and she won't sell him. It was Diablo's fault that Porter got the
+fall, so they were willing to part with him, and I took the brute."
+
+This was certainly a new role for Crane to play, Langdon thought; his
+employer helping people out when they were in difficulties was a
+revelation. The Trainer felt inclined to laugh. No doubt there was
+something back of it all; some tout must have given Crane information of
+a fast gallop Diablo had done, and he had gone to Ringwood to buy the
+horse, thinking that Porter would be selling some of his racers owing to
+the accident.
+
+Langdon tried to remember what Shandy had said about Diablo, or whether
+the boy had mentioned his name at all.
+
+"I wonder what condition he's in?" the Trainer remarked, questioningly.
+
+"Physically I think he's all right; it seems he galloped something under
+forty miles with Porter before he came a cropper. But I understand they
+had an imp of a boy, Sheedy, or 'Shaney'--"
+
+"Shandy," corrected Langdon.
+
+"Yes, that's the name," affirmed Crane, drawing a semicircle in the air
+with his cigar, "and he's a devil on wheels, by all accounts. Diablo's
+no angel, as you've said, Langdon, and this boy made him a heap worse.
+You've handled some bad horses in your time, and know more about it than
+I do; but I'd suggest that you put Westley--he's a patient lad--to look
+after the Black; give him quite a bit of work, and when you've got him
+right, try him out with something, and if he shows any form we'll pick
+out a soft spot for him. Let me see, he's a maiden--fancy that, buying
+a four-year-old maiden!"
+
+Langdon laughed approvingly. Crane was evidently coming back to his
+view of the case.
+
+"Well, as I've said, he's a maiden, and we'll try and graduate him out
+of that class. It will be a great chance for a killing if we can round
+him into his early two-year-old form; and you can do it, Langdon, if
+anybody on earth can."
+
+"Now I've got him on his reputation," thought Crane, idly brushing
+specks of cigar ash from the front of his coat.
+
+"Just as I thought," mused Langdon; "the old man's got a horse after his
+own heart. Everybody thinks Diablo's no good, but the boss has found
+out something, and is on for the biggest kind of a coup."
+
+"How's The Dutchman coming on?" asked Crane, intimating by the question
+that the subject of Diablo bad been closed out, for the present, at
+least.
+
+"Great. He cleans up his four quarts three times a day, and is as big
+as a cart horse. I never had a better doer in my hands. If he keeps
+well, and I think he will, you have a great chance with him for the
+Brooklyn Derbv."
+
+"That's encouraging. There are some good horses in it, though, White
+Moth and others. However, I'll back The Dutchman to win fifty thousand,
+and there'll be ten thousand in that for you, Langdon, if it comes off."
+The Trainer's mouth watered. Money was his god. Horses were all right
+as a means to an end, but the end itself was gold. He would stop at
+nothing to attain that end; his avaricious mind, stimulated by Crane's
+promise, came at once to the disturbing element in the pleasant
+prospect, Shandy's report of Lucretia's good form.
+
+"Did you find out anything about Porter's mare Lucretia?  I know White
+Moth's form; both fit and well. The Dutchman holds him safe over the
+Derby journey."
+
+"No; I didn't hear anything about Porter's mare."
+
+"I have," said Langdon, decisively. "I paid a boy to keep an eye on
+her, and he says she'll be hard to beat."
+
+Crane frowned. "What boy?" he asked, abruptly.
+
+"Shandy."
+
+"Well, just drop that; chuck that game. John Porter has his own
+troubles. If he can win, let him. He can't if The Dutchman keeps well;
+but anyway, our own horses will keep us fully occupied."
+
+Langdon was dumbfounded. If Crane had opened the Bible and read a
+chapter from St. Luke he would not have been more astonished. It had
+occurred to him that he had done a remarkably smart thing; he had
+expected commendation for his adroitness in looking after his master's
+interests. This disapprobation of such a trivial matter as the touting
+off of an opponent's horses was another new discovery in his master's
+character. Where were they at, anyway? Presently Crane would be asking
+him to give the public a fair run for their money each time out.
+
+All at once a light dawned upon Langdon. Crane was doubling on him. He
+saw it like a flash. His employer had a tout on the ground himself;
+that was how he had got next some good performance of Diablo's. My, but
+it was clever; he could appreciate it. Crane rose in his estimation
+again.
+
+Quite humbly he answered: "Very, well; it's not my funeral; I'll bring
+The Dutchman to the post fit to run the race of his life. If Lucretia
+beats him it won't be my fault. I thought perhaps you might want to
+hedge a bit on Porter's mare."
+
+"I don't think it. I'll stand The Dutchman; there are too many in to
+start backing them all. Let me know if the Black gives you any
+encouragement, and I'll see about placing him."
+
+After Langdon had gone Crane lighted a fresh cigar and let his thoughts
+circle about Allis and Diablo. It would be just like the play of Fate
+for the horse to turn out good, now that John Porter had got rid of him.
+When evil fortune set its hard face against a man he could do little
+toward making the wicked god smile, and Porter, even when he was about,
+was a poor hand at compelling success.
+
+      .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+Jakey Faust learned of Diablo's transition from Porter's to Langdon's
+stable. This information caused him little interest at first; indeed,
+he marveled somewhat at two such clever men as Crane and Langdon
+acquiring a horse of Diablo's caliber.
+
+Faust's business relationship with Crane was to a certain degree
+tentative. Crane never confided utterly in anybody; if agents obeyed
+his behests, well and good; and each transaction was always completed in
+itself. He had discovered Faust and used him when it suited his
+purpose.
+
+Some time after the purchase of Diablo, Jakey, reading his Morning
+Telegraph, came with much interest upon the entries for the Brooklyn
+Handicap, published that day. They were all the old campaigning
+Handicap horses, as familiar to Faust as his fellow members of the
+betting ring. As his eye ran down the long list a sudden little pig
+grunt of surprise bubbled up through his fat throat. "Gee, Diablo! Oh,
+ho, Mr. Crane!"
+
+He tore out the list and put it in his pocket; then he sat for a time,
+thinking. The result was a run down to Gravesend to pay just a friendly
+visit to Langdon.
+
+As far as Crane was concerned, the Trainer and the Bookmaker were like
+two burglars suddenly coming upon each other while robbing the same
+house; they were somewhat in a condition of armed neutrality, toward
+each other.
+
+Faust hoped that Langdon would talk about Diablo; but the Trainer was
+like most of his guild generally, a close-mouthed man, so Jakey had to
+make his own running.
+
+"What's the boss goin' to do with Diablo?" he asked Langdon.
+
+"Must 've bought him for a work horse, I guess," the Trainer answered.
+
+"Is he any good?"
+
+"He can eat; that's all I see from him yet"
+
+"What did he buy him for?"
+
+"To help a snoozer that was sittin' in bad luck."
+
+Faust had an odd habit of causing his fat sides to ripple like troubled
+water when he wished to convey the impression that he was amused; he
+never laughed, just the rib ripple.
+
+"What's funny?" Langdon asked, eying Jakey, with querulous disfavor.
+
+"Crane buying a horse to help a man," answered the Cherub, wondering if
+Langdon was so devoid of humor as to take it seriously.
+
+"Crane told me so himself," said the Trainer; "Porter's hurt, an' I
+guess they're in a hole, an' the boss took over Diablo."
+
+"Say, Dick," and Faust edged close enough to tap the other man's ribs
+with his thumb, "were you born yesterday?  I say," continued the Cherub,
+for Langdon had turned away somewhat impatiently, "what's the good av
+givin' me that gup; you didn't stand for it yourself--not on yer life.
+Th' old man's pretty slick; buys a bad horse to help a poor mutt, an'
+enters him in the Brooklyn, eh?"
+
+"The Brooklyn!" exclaimed Langdon, thrown off his guard.
+
+With corpulent intensity the Cherub melodramatically drew from his
+pocket the Telegraph clipping and tendered it to Langdon, watching the
+latter's face closely. "That's the pea, Dick, eh?" he asked.
+
+Langdon was thinking. Was Crane doubling on him all around?  Why the
+devil hadn't he told him?
+
+"Now you ain't takin' in that fairy tale of Crane's any more'n I am,
+Dick. Why can't we do a bit for ourselves over this; it won't hurt the
+boss none. Won't throw him down. This horse was a good youngster, an'
+Crane didn't get him without seein' him do somethin'. You jest keep me
+posted, an' if he shapes good I can back 'm fer an old-time killin',
+see?  I'll divvy up straight."
+
+Langdon didn't answer at once--not with satisfaction to Faust; he knew
+that Crane held the butter for his bread, even the bread itself; but
+here was a man with cake, and he loved cake. Finally, in the glamour of
+Jakey's talk of untold wealth to be acquired, Langdon, swayed by the
+cupidity of his nature rather than his better judgment, promised half-
+heartedly to cooperate with Faust.
+
+But no sooner had the latter gone than the lode-star of Langdon's self-
+interest flickered clearly in view, and he promised Mr. Jakey, mentally,
+a long trip to a very hot place, indeed, rather than a surreptitious
+partnership over Diablo.
+
+It was some little time after this, while Faust was feeling somewhat
+irritated at the absence of information from Langdon, that he had an
+interview with Crane.
+
+"I want you to back The Dutchman to win fifty thousand for me over the
+Brooklyn Derby," the latter said.
+
+"But there's no winner book on it," objected Faust.
+
+"That's just where your cleverness will come in," suavely answered
+Crane. "There's no hurry, and there are always people looking for
+foolish money. There's one such in Chicago, O'Leary; and I fancy they
+could even be found in New York. But you ought to get fifty to one,
+about it, if you put it on easy."
+
+"I see you have Diablo entered for the Brooklyn," Faust put out as a
+feeler. "Don't you want a commission worked on him?"
+
+"I didn't enter him; that was somebody else's foolishness, and I don't
+want to back him."
+
+"He's a hundred to one."
+
+"A thousand would be short odds, I should say," answered Crane. "But
+wait a bit. I bought him just to--well, I took him from some people who
+were tired of his cannibal ways, and promised to have a small bet on him
+the first time he ran, for--for the man." The equivocation was really a
+touch of delicacy. "You might take the odds to fifty for me; there's
+not one chance in a million of his starting, but I might forget all
+about this little matter of the bet, even if I were foolish enough to
+pay post-money on him."
+
+"Hadn't I better dribble on more from time to time, if he has a chance?"
+
+"Not of my money, thanks!"  The "thanks" clipped like a steel trap, and
+the business was completed.
+
+Faust went away more than ever suspicious of Crane and Diablo. That
+fifty dollars being put on for anybody else was bunkum. What was Crane
+up to anyway?  If he really meant to back the horse he would not have
+started with such a trifle. Perhaps Diablo had been stuck in the
+Brooklyn simply to see how the handicapper would rate him.
+
+Faust was convinced that Crane had some big coup in view; he would wait
+a little, and at the first move have a strong play himself.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Langdon was a consummate trainer, a student of horse character. He knew
+that while biniodide of mercury would blister and put right a bowed
+tendon, or the firing iron take the life out of a splint, that a much
+finer knowledge than this was requisite to get fullhearted work out of a
+thoroughbred. Brain must be pitted against brain; so he studied his
+horses; and when Diablo came into his hands, possessed of a mind
+disease, he worked over him with considerable intelligent patience.
+
+This study of horse character was the very thing that had caused him to
+go wrong over Lauzanne. He had not gone quite far enough; had not
+waited for time to demonstrate clearly the horse's temperament, but had
+recourse to a cocaine stimulant. But with him Lauzanne's case had been
+exceptional.
+
+At first there was little encouragement over Diablo, but almost by
+accident Langdon discovered that the Black's bad temper was always
+fanned into a blaze by the sight of the boy Shandy.
+
+Then came a glint of hope. Diablo took a fancy to Westley, the jockey,
+who was experimentally put on his back in the working gallop. After
+that Shandy was kept out of the way; Westley took Diablo under his care,
+and the big horse began to show a surprising improvement.
+
+Crane had been quite honest in his statement that he thought Diablo a
+bad horse. His having been entered by Porter in the "Brooklyn"
+suggested the possiability that his former owner must have seen some
+merit in the horse. At any rate, he advised Langdon to give Diablo a
+patient trial. He really had very little idea that the horse would
+start in the Handicap--it seemed improbable. Langdon was also convinced
+that Porter had discovered something great in Diablo; that Crane knew
+this, and had paid a stiff price for the horse, and to his own ends was
+keeping it dark.
+
+As the winter turned into April he intimated to Crane that it was time
+for them to decide the placing of the horses, and suggested that they
+try them out. Crane had already decided to race The Dutchman this year
+in his own name and not in Langdon's. If The Dutchman came up to
+expectation they could give him a slow preparation up to Derby time;
+they could find out whether Diablo was worth keeping for--well, for
+Morris Park or Gravesend, or they could hurry him on a little, and start
+him at Aqueduct.
+
+Crane agreed with this reasoning, and it was decided to give the two
+horses a home trial.
+
+On the day that Langdon had said he would try Diablo and The Dutchman,
+Crane went down to Gravesend. When he got to the Trainer's house he
+found the latter waiting for him.
+
+"I sent the horses over with the boys," Langdon said; "if you'll just
+wait a minute, I'll have a buggy hitched up and we'll drive over."
+
+A stable-boy brought the trap to the door in a few minutes, and Langdon,
+telling Crane to get in, disappeared into the house, returning presently
+with two saddles, which he placed in the buggy.
+
+"A couple of favorite saddles of mine," he explained, "they're like old
+fiddles that great players carry about under their arms an' sleep with,
+an' never let no one but themselves touch."
+
+"Are you that particular with these?" asked Crane by way of
+conversation, not feeling at all interested in what he considered a fad
+of the Trainer's.
+
+"Yes; I mostly handle 'em myself. They cost a bit. I had 'em made to
+order. The boys is that careless, they'd smash anything."
+
+As they jogged along, Langdon kept up a monologue dissertation on the
+merits of the two horses. "It's a good day for a gallop," and he
+flicked the driving beast's quarter with the whip; "there's not much
+wind, an' the air's a bit sharp. They'll be on their mettle, the both
+of 'em, more 'specially Diablo. I had his plates changed. 'Pears to me
+he hadn't been shod in three moons; I'll bet the smith took an inch off
+his toes."  Then he broke off to chuckle awhile.
+
+Crane was not skilled in the anatomy of a horse, beyond as it worked out
+in winning races and money. That a horse had toes had never quite come
+into his knowledge, and Langdon's gurgle of mirth he put down to a
+suspicion that the Trainer was taking a rise out of him in what he had
+said.
+
+"I was thinking of Paddy Caramagh when he shod Diablo the other day. I
+think you've heard Pat swear. He holds the belt for cussin' in this
+part of the country. Well, he let it all out of him before he'd
+finished with the Black. Ha, ha, ha, ha!  I can hear him still, with
+the sweat running off his face like oats spilling from a feed bag. I
+says to Paddy, 'Rub his nose a bit,' for I could see it was more
+nervousness with the horse than sheer deviltry. 'With what?' says
+Paddy, 'the hammer?  Be gor!  You're right, though,' says he, and with
+that he tries to put a twister on Diablo's nose. Holy mother!  Diablo
+reached for him, and lifted the shirt clean off his back. Say, there
+was a scared Irishman, if you ever saw one in your life. He threw down
+the plate, cussin' as only Paddy can, and swore the brute could run till
+he'd wore his hoofs off, for all of him. Well, I takes hold of the
+Black's head, an' kids him a bit, only firm-like, and we shod him right
+enough."
+
+"He is bad tempered, then?" asked Crane.
+
+"No; just wants a fair deal; that's all. You make him believe you're on
+the square, an' he'll do what's right. But he hasn't got no use for any
+of the guys that gets a cranky play in on him; he won't stand it. I'm
+going to put Westley up on him to-day."
+
+"What about The Dutchman?"
+
+"Colley'll do. Any kid can ride him, if they sit still. He's just the
+easiest-tempered horse ever looked through a bridle; he knows what's
+doin' all the time. But Colley ain't no good on Diablo, an' if he can
+smell Shandy, that settles it--it's all over. I'll put Westley up; it
+takes a man to ride that horse."
+
+"What about this gallop?" asked Crane; "there'll be spies about trying
+to find out things, won't there?"
+
+"Bet yer life, there'll be somebody, sir. It's just like when I was out
+in Colorado; you couldn't see a vulture if you traveled forty days,
+perhaps, but plant a dead thing anywhere and in an hour the sky simply
+rained 'em down. These touts is most like vultures of anything I know;
+you've just got to work your stunt to give 'em the go-by, that's all."
+
+Crane took but an apathetic interest in the matters that held full sway
+over the Trainer's mind; looking after these incidents was Langdon's
+part of the contract.
+
+That was why they were so strong together. Langdon could do it. Just
+how the trial was to benefit them alone, with the inevitable tout at
+hand, Crane knew not, neither did he investigate; that was up to the
+Trainer.
+
+They drove into the paddock. Westley, Colley, and the two stable lads
+were there.
+
+"Shall we bring out the horses?" asked Westley, as Langdon sat swinging
+a leg loosely over the end of the buggy seat.
+
+"Any of the talent about, Bill?"
+
+"Quite likely, though I haven't seen none."
+
+"Well, we'll slip 'em now. Just saddle up careless like, and no
+preliminary, mind you. The sharks won't look for a brush till you've
+gone around once. Take your mounts down the stretch to the quarter
+post, an' then come away the first break; if there's anyone toutin' you
+off, they'll think it just a pipe opener, an' won't catch the time. Run
+out the mile-an'-a-quarter, make a race of it, but don't go to the bat.
+Diablo an' The Dutchman don't need no whip to give us about the best
+they've got."
+
+"All right, sir," answered Westley. "If I'm a judge, when the Black's
+through pullin', he's done racin', 'cause he's a keen one, so there
+won't be no call to put the bud to him. If any of the rail birds is
+lookin' they'll think we're goin' under a strong wrap, even when we're
+all out."
+
+Lang don nodded his head. He was a man not given to exuberant
+appreciation. The boys averred that when Dick Langdon didn't curse at
+them they had done pretty well, indeed.
+
+"What's your weight?" he asked of Westley, abruptly.
+
+"I've just tipped the scales at a hundred-and-three in my sweater."
+
+"One hundred and three," mused the Trainer, making a mental calculation.
+"What's Colley's weight?"
+
+"He's as near a hundred as you can make it."
+
+"Did you bring over a saddle?"
+
+"Yes; two of 'em; one apiece for the horses."
+
+"Tell Colley to take one, and some leads, and weigh out a hundred and
+twelve. That'll be three pounds above the scale for May, weight for
+age, for the three-year-old, The Dutchman. I guess he won't need more'n
+seven pounds dead weight, for it's a five-pound saddle, I think. Let me
+see, you said a hundred and three, you were."
+
+"Yes, sir; in the sweater; I can take that off--"
+
+"No; never mind. Take this saddle," and he lifted one from the buggy;
+"it'll just suit Diablo; he's got a herring-bone of a wither, an' this
+is high in the tree, an' won't cut him. Here's the cloth an' some
+leads; weigh out a hundred and twelve too. Weight for age--Diablo's a
+four-year-old; you ought to carry a hundred and twenty-six, but he's not
+The Dutchman's class, an' the ycungster'd lose him before they'd gone
+half the journey. We'll run 'em at level weights, an' he'll get closer
+to The Dutchman, an' the sharks won't have such a fairy tale to tell
+about our horse."
+
+"A hundred and twelve, you said, sir?" queried Westley, as he put the
+saddle that Langdon handed him over his left arm, slipped the thin
+sheets of lead in his pocket, and stood dangling the linen weight cloth
+in his right hand.
+
+"Yes; level weights--a hundred an' twelve pounds."
+
+"Westley," the Trainer called as the little man started off, "just bring
+the saddle back to me here when you've weighed. I'll put it on Diablo
+myself; he's a touchy cuss, and I don't want him ruffled by careless
+handlin'."
+
+"You take considerable trouble over it," remarked Crane. "One would
+think it was a big handicap you meant to capture this morning."
+
+Langdon started visibly. Was Crane thinking of the Brooklyn? Did this
+quiet, clever man sitting at his elbow already know as much as he hoped
+to discover in his present gallop?
+
+He answered: "Handicaps is usually won pretty much like this; they're
+generally settled before the horse goes to the post for the trip itself.
+When he goes through the paddock gate the day of the big race he's out
+of his trainer's hands; the man's got no more to do with the race
+himself than a kid sittin' up in the grand stand. Here's where I come
+in, if we mean to land the Brooklyn," and he looked searchingly at
+Crane, a misleading grin on his lips. But the latter simply joined in
+the laugh, doubtingly, perhaps.
+
+"A hundred and twelve, neat," declared Westley, as he returned, throwing
+some loose leads into the buggy. "Colley's gone to saddle The
+Dutchman."
+
+"All right," answered Langdon, getting down from the seat and taking the
+saddle. "Go and tell the boy to bring Diablo out of the stall. I'll
+saddle him in the open. He generally kicks the boards when I cinch him
+up, an' it puts him in a bad humor."
+
+Langdon started off with the jockey, but turned back, saying, "Oh, Mr.
+Crane, I wanted to ask you--"
+
+By this he had reached the buggy, while Westley continued on his way to
+the stalls.
+
+"It's a fine day, sir," continued Langdon, finishing his sentence, and
+exchanging the saddle held in his hand for the one that was in the
+buggy.
+
+"Going to put the other on?" asked Crane.
+
+"Yes; I fancy Diablo will like this better. Touchy brutes, these race
+horses; got to humor 'em. Come on over to the stalls--the horse'll
+stand."
+
+Diablo was being led around in a small circle by his boy. He was a
+magnificent creature, sixteen and a half hands high, and built on the
+same grand scale; perhaps a bit leggy for the huge barrel that topped
+the limbs; that was what caused him to go wrong in his younger days.
+His black skin glistened in the noonday sun.
+
+"That's what I call the mirror of health," said Langdon, in an unwonted
+burst of poetic eloquence, as he passed his hand across the horse's
+ribs. Then feeling that somehow he had laid himself open to a suspicion
+of gentleness, added, "He's a hell of a fine looker; if he could gallop
+up to his looks he'd make some of the cracks take a back seat."
+
+Even Diablo had resented either the mellifluous comparison or the rub of
+Langdon's hand, for he lashed out furiously, with a great farreaching
+leg that nearly caught Crane unawares.
+
+"Your polite language seems to be as irritating to him as the
+blacksmith's oaths," ejaculated Crane, as he came back from the hasty
+retreat he had beaten.
+
+"It's only play. Good horses is of two kinds when you're saddlin' 'em.
+The Dutchman there'll hang his head down, and champ at the bit, even if
+you bury the girt' an inch deep in his belly; he's honest, and knows
+it's all needed. That's one kind; and they're generally the same at the
+post, always there or thereabouts, waitin' for the word 'go.'  An' they
+race pretty much the same all the time. If you time 'em a mile in 1:40
+at home, they'll do it when the colors is up, an' the silk a-flappin'
+all about 'em in the race.
+
+"Whoa!  Hold still, you brute!  Steady, steady! Whoa!"  This to Diablo,
+for while talking he had adjusted the weight cloth with the gentleness
+of a cavalier putting a silk wrap about his lady love's neck, and had
+put a fold of soft woolen cloth over the high-boned wither.
+
+"Stand out in front of him and hold his head down a bit;" this to the
+boy. Then as he slipped the saddle into place and reached underneath
+for the girths, he continued his address to Crane on the peculiarity of
+racers.
+
+"Now this is a horse of another color, this one; he ain't takin' things
+easy at no stage of the game. He objects to everything, an' some day
+that'll land him a, winner, see?  He'll get it into his head that the
+other horses want to beat him out, an' he'll show 'em a clean pair of
+heels; come home on the bit, pullin' double. Whoa, boy!  Steady,
+steady, old man!"  Then he ceased talking, for he had taken the girth
+strap between his teeth, and was cinching up the big Black with the firm
+pull of a grizzly. Diablo squirmed under the torture of the tightening
+web on his sensitive skin, and crouched as though he would fall on the
+Trainer.
+
+"Yes, sir;" continued Langdon, as he ran the stirrups up under the
+saddle flap out of the way, and motioned to the boy to lead Diablo
+about. "Yes, sir; this fellow's different. He's too damn sensitive.
+At the post he's like as not to act like a locoed broncho, an' get one
+blamed for having 'juiced' him, but he don't need no dope; what he needs
+is steadying. If he gets away in front, them long legs of his will take
+some catchin'. He's the kind that wins when the books are layin' a
+hundred to one against him. But the worst of it is with his sort, like
+as not the owner hasn't a penny on them; but the public'll howl; they'll
+call it in-an'-out runnin'; an' the scribblers'll get their paper to
+print a notice that the stable ought to be ruled off; an' all the time
+you're breakin' your heart trying to get him to give his true--Hello!
+there's Colley out on The Dutchman; mount your horse, Westley--wait, you
+don't need no spurs; yes, carry a whip, an' give the guys that is
+watchin' a stage play with it; but don't hit the Black. We'll just see
+what he'll do himself, this trip," he added, addressing Crane.
+
+Taking Westley's small-booted foot in his hand, he lifted the lad to
+Diablo's back, and led the horse out through a gate to the course.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+The two boys cantered their mounts down to the quarter post carelessly,
+as though they were going around to the far side.
+
+"Look at 'em!" cried the Trainer; "isn't he a little gentleman?"
+
+To the uninitiated this might have been taken as a tribute to one of the
+boys, Westley, perhaps; but the Trainer was not even thinking of them.
+They were of no moment. It was the wine-red bay, The Dutchman,
+cantering with gentle, lazy grace, that had drawn forth this encomium.
+His head, somewhat high carried, was held straight and true in front,
+and his big eyes searched the course with gentle inquisitiveness, for
+others of his kind, perhaps.
+
+"He's a lovely horse," commented Crane, knowing quite well to what
+Langdon referred.
+
+"He's all that, but just look at the other devil."
+
+Diablo was throwing his nose fretfully up and down, up and down;
+grabbing at the bit; pirouetting from one side the course to the other;
+nearly pulling Westley over his neck one minute, as with lowered head he
+sought to break away, and the next dashing forward for a few yards with
+it stuck foolishly high, like a badmouthed Indian cayuse.
+
+"But Westley'll manage him," Langdon confided to Crane, after a period
+of silent observation; "he'll get his belly full of runnin' when he's
+gone a mile and a quarter with The Dutchman. Gad! that was neat; here
+they come;" for the two boys had whirled with sudden skill at the
+quarter post, and broke away, with Diablo slightly in the lead. "My
+God! he can move," muttered Langdon, abstractedly, and quite to himself.
+The man at his side had floated into oblivion. He saw only a great
+striding black horse coming wide-mouthed up the stretch. At the Black's
+heels, with dogged lope, hung the Bay.
+
+"Take him back, take him back, Westley!" yelled Langdon, leaning far out
+over the rail, as the horses raced by, Diablo well in front.
+
+The Trainer's admonition seemed like a cry to a cyclone, as void of
+usefulness. What power could the tiny dot lying close hugged far up on
+the straining black neck have over the galloping fiend?
+
+"Yes, that's the way," Langdon said, nodding his head to Crane, and
+jerking a thumb out toward the first turn in the course, where the two
+horses were hugging close to the rail; "that's the way he's worked
+here."
+
+"Which one?" asked his companion.
+
+"The Black, an' if he ever does that in a race--God help the others--
+they'll never catch him; they'll never catch him; they'll never catch
+him," he kept repeating, dwelling lovingly on the thought, as he saw the
+confirmation of it being enacted before his eyes; for across the new
+green of the grass-sprouted course he could see two open lengths of
+daylight between Diablo and The Dutchman.
+
+"Fifty-one and a half for the half-mile," he imparted to Crane, looking
+at his watch. "Now The Dutchman is moving up; Colley doesn't mean to
+get left if he can help it. I'm afraid Diablo'll shut up when he's
+pinched; his kind are apt to do that. The Dutchman is game, an' if he
+ever gets to the Black's throat-latch he'll chuck it. But it takes some
+ridin'; it takes some ridin', sir."  He was becoming enthusiastic,
+exuberant. The silent man at his side noticed the childish repetition
+with inward amusement. He had thought that Langdon would have been
+overjoyed to see the bay horse smother his opponent. Was not the
+Trainer to have ten thousand dollars if The Dutchman won the Handicap?
+But here he was pinning his satisfaction to the good showing of Diablo.
+He didn't know of the compact between Langdon and the Bookmaker Faust,
+but he strongly suspected from the Trainer's demeanor that the gallop he
+was witnessing foretold some big coup the latter scented.
+
+"He hasn't got him yet, he hasn't got him yet!" cried Langdon, joyfully,
+as the horses swung around the bottom turn, closer locked, but with
+Diablo still a short length in the lead.
+
+Crane saw no great cause for exhilaration. The Dutchman was certainly
+giving the Black twenty pounds the best of it in the weights, for one
+was a three-year-old while the other was four, and they each carried a
+hundred and twelve.
+
+"The mile in 1:42," chirped Langdon. "That's movin', if you like,
+considerin' the track, the condition of the horses, an' that they're
+runnin' under a double wrap. Now we'll see a ding-dong finish, if the
+Black doesn't show a streak of yellow. Dutchy's got him," he added, as
+through his glasses he saw them swing into the straight, neck and neck.
+
+"Clever Mr. Westlev!" for Diablo's rider, having the rail and the lead,
+had bored out slightly on the turn, so as not to cramp the uncertain
+horse he rode, and carried The Dutchman wide.
+
+Up the straight they came, the boys helping their mounts with leg and
+arm; the Black holding his own with a dogged persistence that quite
+upset Langdon's prognostication of cowardice.
+
+To the watchers it was as exciting as a stake race. The stamina that
+Langdon had said would stand The Dutchman in good stead over the mile
+and a half Handicap course now showed itself. First he was level with
+the Black, then gradually, stride by stride, he drew away from Diablo,
+and finished a short length in front.
+
+"A great trial," cried the Trainer, gleefully, holding out his watch for
+Crane's inspection. "See that!" pointing to the hand he had stopped as
+the Bay's brown nozzle flashed by the post; "two-nine on this course!
+Anything that beats that pair, fit and well, a mile and a quarter on a
+fast track'll have to make it in two-five, an' that's the record."
+
+"It looks good business for the Derby, Langdon."
+
+"Yes, it does. That's the first showing I've had from the colt as a
+three-year-old; but I knew he had it in him. Hanover was a great horse
+--to my mind we never had his equal in America--but this youngster'll be
+as good as his daddy ever was. I don't think you ought to start him,
+sir, till the Derby, if you're set on winnin' it."
+
+He had moved up to the gate as he talked, and now opened it, waiting for
+the boys to come back. They had eased down the horses gradually after
+the fierce gallop, turned them about and were trotting toward the
+paddock, where stood the two men. Langdon took Diablo by the bridle rein
+and led him in toward the stalls.
+
+"How did he shape under you, Westley?" he asked, as the boy slipped from
+the saddle.
+
+"I wouldn't ask to ride a better horse. I thought I had the colt
+beaten, sure; but my mount seemed to tire a little at the finish. He
+didn't toss it up, not a bit of it; ran as game as a pebble; he just
+tired at the finish. I think a mile is his journey. He held The
+Dutchman safe at a mile."
+
+"I guess you're right, Westley; a mile's his limit. At level weights
+with the three-year-old, which means that he had twenty pounds the best
+of it, he should have held his own the whole route to be a stayer, for
+the colt isn't more'n half ready yet."
+
+"I didn't hustle him none too much, sir; I might a-squeezed a bit more
+out of him. Did we make fair time?"
+
+"Quite a feeler, Mister Jockey," thought Langdon to himself; "it's news
+you want, eh?"  Then he answered aloud, with a diplomacy born of many
+years of turf tuition: "Fairish sort of time; it might have been better,
+perhaps--a shade under two-twelve. I thought they might have bettered
+that a couple of seconds. But they'll come on--they'll come on, both of
+them. If anybody asks you, Westley, The Dutchman was beaten off, see?
+I don't like to discourage the clever owners that has good 'uns in the
+Derby"  Then he added as a sort of after thought, and with wondrous
+carelessness:
+
+"It doesn't matter about the Black, you know; he's only a sellin'
+plater, so it doesn't matter. But all the same, Westley, when we find a
+soft spot for him, an over-night sellin' purse or somethin, you'll have
+the leg up, with a bet down for you at a long price, see?"
+
+"I understand, sir."
+
+By the time Langdon had slipped the saddle from Diablo's back the boy
+had thrown a hooded blanket over him, and he was led away. "Send them
+home, Westley. Now, Mr. Crane, we'll drive back to the house an' have a
+bit of lunch."
+
+As they drove along Crane brought up the subject of the trial.
+
+"The colt must be extra good, Langdon, or the Black is--well, as he was
+represented to be, not much account."
+
+"I guess Diablo's about good enough to win a big handicap, if he
+happened to be in one at a light weight."
+
+"He didn't win to-day."
+
+"He came pretty near it."
+
+"But where would he have been carrying his proper weight?"
+
+"About where he was, I guess."
+
+"You said as a four-year-old he should have had up a hundred and twenty-
+six, and he carried a hundred and twelve; and, besides, had the best boy
+by seven pounds on his back."
+
+"Just pass me that saddle, Mr. Crane," said Langdon, by way of answer.
+"No; not that--the one I took off Diablo."
+
+Crane reached down his hand, but the saddle didn't come quite as freely
+as it should have. "What's it caught in?" he asked, fretfully.
+
+"In itself, I reckon--lift it." "Gad! it's heavy. Did Diablo carry
+that?  What's in it?"
+
+"Lead-built into it; it's my old fiddle, you know. You're the first man
+that's had his hand on that saddle for some time, I can tell you."
+
+"Then Diablo did carry his full weight," commented Crane, a light
+breaking in upon him.
+
+"Just about, and carried it like a stake horse, too."
+
+"And you--"
+
+"Yes; I changed the saddles after Westley weighed. He's a good boy, and
+don't shoot off his mouth much, but all the same things will out while
+ridin' boys have the power of speech"
+
+"It looks as though Diablo had something in him," said Crane,
+meditatively.
+
+"He's got the Brooklyn in him. Fancy The Dutchman in at seventy pounds;
+that's what it comes to. Diablo's got ninety to carry, an' he gave the
+other twenty pounds to-day. You've got the greatest thing on earth
+right in your hands now--"
+
+Langdon hesitated for a minute, and then added: "But I guess you knew
+this all before, or you wouldn't have sent him here."
+
+"I bought him for a bad horse," answered Crane, quietly; "but if he
+turns out well, that's so much to the good. But it's a bit of luck
+Porter's not having declared him out to save nearly a hundred. He seems
+to have raced pretty loose."
+
+"I wonder if he thinks I'm taking in that fairy tale?" thought Langdon.
+Aloud, he said: "But you'll back him now, sir, won't you?  He must be a
+long price in the winter books."
+
+"Yes; I'll arrange that," answered the other, "and I'll take care of
+you, too. I suppose Westley will take the mount?"
+
+"Surely."
+
+"Well, you can just give him to understand that he'll be looked after if
+the horse wins."
+
+"It's the Brooklyn, sir, is it?"
+
+"Seems like it."
+
+"I won't say anything about the race to Westley, though."
+
+"I'll leave all that to you. I'll attend to getting the money on; you
+do the rest."
+
+When Crane had gone, Langdon paid further mental tribute to his master's
+astuteness. "Now I see it all," he muttered; "the old man just thought
+to keep me quiet; throw me of the scent till he duplicated the other
+trial, whenever they pulled it off. Now he's got a sure line on the
+Black, an' he'll make such a killin' that the books'll remember him for
+many a day. But why does he keep throwin' that fairy tale into me about
+buyin' a bad horse to oblige somebody?  A man would be a sucker to
+believe that of Crane; he's not the sort. But one sure thing, he said
+he'd look after me, an' he will. He'd break a man quick enough, but
+when he gives his word it stands. Mr. Jakey Faust can look after
+himself: I'm not goin' to take chances of losin' a big stable of bread-
+winners by doublin' on the Boss."
+
+Langdon's mental analysis of Crane's motives was the outcome of
+considerable experience. The Banker's past life was not compatible with
+generous dealing. His act of buying Diablo had been prompted by newborn
+feelings of regard for the Porters, chiefly Allis; but no man, much less
+Langdon, would have given him credit for other than the most selfish
+motives.
+
+True to his resolve, Langdon utterly refused to share his confidences
+with Jakey Faust.
+
+"We've tried the horses," he said, "and the Dutchman won, but Crane
+knows more about the whole business than I do. You go to him, Jake, or
+wait till he sends for you, an' you'll find out all about it. My game's
+to run straight with one man, anyway, an' I'm goin' to do it."
+
+That was all Faust could learn. When an occasion offered he slipped a
+ten-dollar note into Shandy's hand, for he knew the lad was full open to
+a bribe, but Shandy knew no more than did the Bookmaker. The Dutchman,
+had won the trial from the Black quite easily, was the extent of his
+knowledge. As to Diablo himself, Shandy gave him a very bad character
+indeed.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Faust was in a quandary. First Crane had confided in him over Diablo,
+but now his silence seemed to indicate that he meant to have this good
+thing all to himself.
+
+Then Langdon had promised to cooperate, now he, too, had closed up like
+a clam; he was as mute as an oyster.
+
+"Crane is dealin' the cards all the time," thought Faust; "but there's
+some game on, sure."
+
+He determined to back Diablo for himself at the long odds, and chance
+it.
+
+Two days later Crane received a very illiterate epistle, evidently from
+a stable-boy; it was unsigned:
+
+"DERE Boss, Yous is gittin it in the neck. de big blak hors he didn't
+carre the sadel you think the blak hors had on his bak. Yous got de
+duble cros that time. Der bokie hes axin me wot de blak is good fer der
+bokie is playin fer to trow yous downe.
+
+"No moar at presen."
+
+This was the wholly ambiguous communication that Crane had found under
+his door. There was no stamp, neither place nor date written in the
+letter; nothing but an evident warning from some one, who, no doubt,
+hoped to get into his good graces by putting him on his guard.
+
+As it happened, Crane had just made up his mind to make his plunge on
+Diablo while the odds were long enough to make it possible with the
+outlay of very little capital. He smoked a heavy Manuel Garcia over
+this new contingency. It did not matter about the saddles. Langdon had
+confided in him fully. But how had the writer of the ill-spelled
+missive known of that matter?
+
+Yes, he had better make his bet before these whisperings came to other
+ears.
+
+But the bookmaker mentioned?  That must be Faust. Why was he prowling
+about among stable lads?
+
+He sent for Faust. When the latter had come, Crane asked Diablo's price
+for the Brooklyn.
+
+"It's thirty to one now," replied the Bookmaker; "somebody's backin'
+him."
+
+Faust's small baby eyes were fixed furtively on Crane's pale, sallow
+face, as he imparted this information; but he might as well have studied
+the ingrain paper on the wall; its unfigured surface was not more
+placid, more devoid of indication, than the smooth countenance he was
+searching.
+
+Crane remained tantalizingly silent for a full minute; evidently his
+thoughts had drifted away to some other subject.
+
+"Yes," said Faust, speaking again to break the trying quiet, "some one's
+nibblin' at Diablo in the books. I wonder if it's Porter; did he think
+him a good horse?"
+
+"It can't be Porter, nor any one else who knows Diablo. It's some
+foolish outsider, tempted by the long odds. I suppose, however, it
+doesn't matter; in fact, it's all the better. You took that five
+thousand to fifty for me, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, just lay it off. You can do so now at a profit."
+
+"You don't want to back Diablo, then?  Shall I lay against him further?"
+
+"If you like--in your own book. I don't want to have anything to do
+with him, one way or the other. I always thought he was a bad horse,
+and--and--well, never mind, just lay that bet off. I shall probably
+want to back The Dutchman again shortly."
+
+When Faust had gone, Crane opened the little drawer which held his
+betting book, took it out, and drew a pencil through the entry he had
+made opposite Allis's name.
+
+"That's off for a few days, thanks to Mr. Faust," he thought. Then he
+ran his eye back over several other entries. "Ah, that's the man--
+Hummel; he'll do."
+
+Next he consulted his telephone book; tracing his finger down the "H"
+column he came to "Ike Hummel, commission broker, Madison 71184."
+
+Over the 'phone he made an appointment for the next day at eleven
+o'clock with Hummel; and the result of that interview was that Crane
+backed Diablo to win him a matter of seventy-five thousand dollars at
+the liberal odds of seventy-five to one; for Jakey Faust, feeling that
+he had made a mistake in backing the Black, had laid off all his own
+bets and sent the horse back in the market to the longer odds. Crane
+had completely thrown him of his guard.
+
+No sooner had Faust congratulated himself upon having slipped out of his
+Diablo bets than he heard that a big commission had been most skillfully
+worked on this outsider for the Brooklyn. In his new dilemma he went to
+Crane, feeling very much at sea.
+
+"They're backin' your horse again, sir," he said.
+
+"Are they?''
+
+"Yes; heavy."
+
+"If he's worth backing at all I suppose he's worth backing heavily."
+
+This aphorism seemed to merit a new cigar on Crane's part, so he lighted
+one.
+
+"He's travelin' up and down in the market," continues Faust. "He
+dropped to thirty, then went back to seventy-five; now he's at twenty; I
+can't make it out."
+
+"I shouldn't try," advised Crane, soothingly. "Too much knowledge is
+even as great a danger as a lesser amount sometimes."
+
+Faust started guiltily and looked with quick inquiry at the speaker,
+but, as usual, there was nothing in his presence beyond the words to
+hang a conjecture on.
+
+"I thought for your sake that I'd better find out."
+
+"Oh, don't worry about me; that is, too much, you know. I go down to
+Gravesend once in a while myself, and no doubt know all that's doing."
+
+A great fear fell upon Faust. Evidently this was an intimation to him
+to keep away from the stables. How did Crane know--who had split on
+him?  Was it Langdon, or Shandy, or Colley?  Some one had evidently
+aroused Crane's suspicion, and this man of a great cleverness had put
+him away while he worked a big commission through some one else. The
+thought was none the less bitter to Faust that it was all his own fault;
+his super-cleverness.
+
+"An' you don't want me to work a commission for you on Diablo?" he
+asked, desperately.
+
+"No; I sha'n't bet on him at present. And say, Faust, in future when I
+want you to do any betting on my horses, on my account, you know, I'll
+tell you. Understand?  You needn't worry, that is--other people. I'll
+tell you myself."
+
+"I didn't mean--" Faust had started to try a plausible explanation, but
+Crane stopped him.
+
+"Never mind; the matter is closed out now."
+
+"But, sir," persisted Faust, "if you've got your money all on, can I
+take a bit now?  Is it good business?  We've worked together a good deal
+without misunderstanding before."
+
+"Yes, we have," commented Crane.
+
+"Yes; an' I'd like to be in on this now. I didn't mean to forestall
+you."
+
+Crane raised his hand in an attitude of supplication for the other man
+to desist, but Faust was not to be stopped.
+
+"I made a mistake, an' I'm sorry; an' if you will tell me whether
+Diablo's good business for the Brooklyn, I'll back him now at the
+shorter price. There's no use of us bein' bad friends."
+
+"I think Diablo's a fairly good bet," said Crane, quietly, entirely
+ignoring the question of friendship.
+
+"It won't be poachin' if I have a bet, then?" asked the Cherub, more
+solicitous than he had appeared at an earlier stage of the game.
+
+"Poachers don't worry me," remarked Diablo's owner. "I'm my own game
+keeper, and they usually get the worst of it. But you go ahead and have
+your bet"
+
+"Thank you, there won't be no more bad breaks made by me; but I didn't
+mean to give you none the worst of it. Good day, sir," and he was gone.
+
+"Faust has had his lesson," thought Crane, as he took from a drawer the
+stable-boy's ill-favored note.
+
+"I wonder who sent me this scrawl?  It gave me a pointer, though. I
+suppose the writer will turn up for his reward; but the devil of it is
+he'll sell information of this sort to anyone who'll buy. Must weed him
+out when I've discovered the imp. At any rate Faust will go straight,
+now he's been scorched. I'll just re-enter that bet to the Little Woman
+while I think of it. 'Three thousand seven hundred and fifty to fifty,
+Diablo for the Brooklyn, laid to Miss Allis Porter.'"  Then he dated it.
+"She loses by this transaction, but that won't matter; it will be a
+pretty good win if it comes off. She may even refuse this, though she
+shouldn't, for it's a part of the bargain that I was to have a bet on
+for her, a small bet, of course. Yes, yes; I remember, a small bet.
+But this is a small bet. There was nothing said about the size of the
+winnings. She was probably thinking of gloves. Jingo, she has a lovely
+hand, I've noticed it; long slim fingers, even the palm is long; sinewy
+I'll warrant; nothing pudgy about that hand. Hey, Crane, you're silly!"
+he cried, half audibly, taking himself to task; "doing business in big
+moneys--a cool seventy-five thousand, if it materializes, perhaps even
+more--and then slipping off into a mooney dream, vaporing about a girl's
+slim hand. I suppose that's the love symptom. But at forty! it's
+hardly my normal condition, I fancy."
+
+The slim hand beckoned him off into a disjointed reverie. Was he the
+better for it?  What would the end be?  Before the new emotion he could
+look back upon his past struggles with sordid satisfaction. Men in
+battle were not given to uneasy qualms of compunction, nor questionings
+as to the method that had led to victory. His life had been one long-
+drawn-out battle; the financial soldiers that had fallen by the wayside
+because of his sword play did not interest him; they were dead; being
+dead, their memory harrassed him not at all. If there were commercial
+blood stains upon his hand, they were hidden by the glove of success.
+After a manner he had had peace; now all was disquiet; the turmoil of an
+awakened gentler feeling clashing with the polemics of self-satisfying
+selfishness. And all because of a girl!  To him that was the peculiar
+feature of the disturbance in his nature. He, Philip Crane, the strong
+man of strong men, to be shorn of his indifference to everything but
+success by a girl unskilled in managing anything but a horse.
+
+"It's all very fine to argue it out with one's self," he thought, "but I
+simply can't help it."  He was astonished to find that he was pacing up
+and down the floor of his apartment. Undoubtedly he was possessed of a
+tremendous regard for the girl Allis. But why not put it from him; why
+not conquer himself as he had always done?  To let it master him meant
+the giving up of things that were almost second nature. He could not
+love the girl as a good woman should be loved, and--and--well, the gray
+eyes that had their strength because of supreme honesty would surely
+bring him disquietude. It would indeed be difficult to change his
+nature much; his habits were almost like leopard's spots; they were
+grown into the woof of his existence. Even if he won her it must be
+almost entirely because of a superior diplomacy. Everything told him
+that his love was not returned. It seemed almost impossible that it
+should be; there was not more disparity in their years than in their two
+selves. "All very fine again," he muttered, somewhat savagely; "I want
+her, I want her, not because of anything but love. What she is, or what
+I am counts for nothing; love is all compelling; my first master, I
+salute thee," this in sarcastic sincerity.
+
+In his strength he relied upon his power to bring forth an answering
+love, at least regard, should he win Allis. Yes, it would surely come.
+He had not even a young rival to combat. Yes, he would win, first Allis,
+and afterward her love.
+
+"I'm quite silly," he ejaculated; "but I can't help it. But I can go
+out and get some fresh air, and I will."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+It was the middle of May. Down in the earth the strong heart of
+reawakened nature throbbed with a pulsating force that sent new life
+forth on its errand of rejuvenation. The apple trees had peeped out
+with pink eyes, and seeing the summer maiden stalking through the land,
+had thrown off their timid coyness and shaken loose a drapery of white,
+all rose-tinted and green-shaded, that turned their broad-acred homes
+into fairy ball rooms. And for music the bees, and the birds, and
+shrill fife-playing frogs volunteered out of sheer joyousness of life.
+
+Tiny shavings of green wag, the gentle spring grass, lay strewn about
+the ballroom floor, and glistened in the warm light that was of one
+high-hung chandelier, the sun.
+
+But all the newborn awakening, all the sweet strength of soul and life
+that was borne to the waiting land on the wings of soft winds, brought
+not the hoped-for allotment to John Porter.
+
+At Ringwood they had waited for the springtime. That would work the
+cure the doctor's skill had failed of. A man of outdoors, it was the
+house caging that was killing him, keeping him back.
+
+These things were said; but Doctor Rathbone only shook his wise, old
+head, with its world of good sense, and answered: "It is none of these
+things. The trouble is in his mind; he is fretting. A sensitive man,
+well in body, may be brought to illness by anticipated disaster. That
+could not have been the case with John Porter well, but John Porter ill
+is quite a different matter. It's as I have said before, give him hope,
+win him races."
+
+So Allis was really glad at the near approach of the time of her trial.
+The day was coming fast, soon, when She was to go forth with her little
+band of horses, as a man almost in everything, to strive for the
+fulfillment of that which had been put upon her.
+
+The nearness of the not-to-be-shirked responsibility drove into her
+veins an unlooked-for exhilaration of strength. She had thought that
+she would look with dread upon the going away from Ringwood; that a
+feeling much akin to stage fright would quite unnerve her at the very
+last. The riding at home, the horse lore, and the almost constant
+companionship with her father, always among horses and horsemen, though
+it appeared somewhat dreadful to the village folks had been as nothing
+to her. Now that she needed strength for the newer, stranger endeavor,
+it came to her, even as the blossoms came to the swaying apple trees,
+great and small.
+
+What wouldn't she do? she asked herself many times, to bring a strength-
+giving peace to her father's troubled mind. Even Mrs. Porter,
+implacably bitter against racing, must condone what was so evidently
+Allis's study, if it tended to their happiness; the mother had softened
+somewhat in the austerity of her opposition.
+
+Evening after evening they had discussed the gloomy outlook, with,
+always from Allis's side, a glimmer of hopeful light. The girl's
+patient resolve had worn down the mother's pessimistic dread of
+anticipated evil.
+
+"You know, Allis," she had said, "how I look upon this thoroughly
+unchristian pursuit. Nothing can justify it from a true woman's point
+of view, absolutely nothing--not even poverty. I would willingly suffer
+the loss of all we possess--that it is so little is due to this
+dreadful, immoral horse racing--but I would sacrifice even what remains,
+if your father were well and willing to start afresh in some occupation
+befitting his noble character. I would help him, to endure every
+hardship, even deprivation, without a murmur."
+
+"But, mother," interrupted Allis, "it's impossible now; I think it
+always was, for, as you know, father knew nothing of other business.
+Nothing would tempt him to be dishonest in racing, and he always enjoyed
+it because of his love for horses. But with all that, mother, if he had
+been in a position to please you, if he had felt that we--you, and Alan,
+and I--would not have suffered, I am sure he would have listened to your
+pleadings and given it up. He might perhaps have gone on breeding
+horses, for you wouldn't have objected to that, would you, mother?"
+
+"No, it's the wicked associations of the race course which I felt
+degraded a man of your father's character. But I'm not going to
+dishearten you, Allis, nor hamper you now in your brave acceptance of
+the task that has come to you, because of wrong done before. It is
+distasteful to me, of course; it would be to any right-minded mother, to
+have her daughter in a position so repellant; but, strange as it may
+seem  I'd rather you went with the horses than Alan."
+
+"Alan couldn't go, mother; he couldn't give up his place in the bank;
+besides, father has purposely kept him from racing."
+
+"I know it, Allis; I wasn't thinking of that, though. Alan has the
+gambling spirit born in him; it's not his fault; it's the visitation of
+the sins of the father upon the son. It came to your father in just the
+same way. No, I'm not even blaming your father for it; it has come down
+from generation to generation; but there has never been dishonor, thank
+God--there has never been a dishonest Porter in my husband's family,
+and, please God, there never may be. That would be too much!  It would
+kill me. And it's better that you go, Allis, for Alan is but a boy, and
+the temptations to a young man at the race course must be almost
+impossible to resist. Besides, your going may bring new life to your
+father; the doctor is so hopeful--he says it will. He was afraid that
+he had shocked me, when he said you were to win races for your father's
+good. It displeased the pastor; I know it did, but perhaps he doesn't
+quite understand how much we have at stake."
+
+"He's so narrow, mother."
+
+"The Reverend Mr. Dolman thinks only of our souls, daughter; naturally,
+too, and one can hardly be a Christian and race horses. But we have got
+so much to consider. I hope I am not wrong in feeling glad that you are
+able to look after our interests. I should like to pray for your
+success even, Allis. It might be wrong; I might feel guilty; but if it
+makes your father better, don't you think I'd be forgiven?"
+
+"I'm sure you would, mother, and it would make me stronger. I'm so
+glad. I didn't want to displease you. I wanted you to feel that I was
+doing right. It will be lighter now; I sha'n't mind what anybody says
+if you're with me, mother. Now everything will come out right; I know
+it will. And if it does, if father gets strong, just out of
+thankfulness, I'll coax him to try something else, for your sake,
+mother."
+
+"No, for his own, Allis. I think only of him in this matter." The
+prospective commencement of the racing campaign seemed to foreshadow a
+complete fulfillment of the doctor's prophecy should success smile upon
+this modern Joan of Arc; for the bustle of preparation was music to the
+ears of the stricken man, and he fought the lethargic fever of
+discontent that was over him until his eyes brightened and his face took
+on a hopeful look of interest.
+
+"Brave little woman," he said to Allis, "it's a shame for a great hulk
+as I am to lie up here, while you fight the sharks that were almost too
+much for your father."
+
+Then he spoke a little lower, as a man utters unfamiliar words for the
+first time. "Your mother said that Providence would look after you.
+Sounds strange, doesn't it, girl?  But I'm glad. Your mother was so
+bitter--I don't blame her--now she's turned right around. And, Allis, I
+believe with a little tempting, a little coaxing, she'd almost have a
+bet on Lucretia in your hands. Funny, isn't it?"  And he gave a little
+chuckle.
+
+Allis hadn't heard her father laugh for a long time. It wasn't much of
+a laugh, very dry, and very short lived, hardly lighting up his face at
+all, but still it was the feeble pulsation of humor which showed that
+the old John Porter spirit was not quite broken.
+
+"About the betting, Allis, you must have Dixon come down here to see me,
+for the horses are to go to his stable again, aren't they?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"That's right. I thought we had arranged it that way, but I seem to
+forget things since that bad tumble."
+
+"You don't forget much now, father; you're getting stronger in every
+way."
+
+"Blarney, girl. But I don't mind; your blarney is like the sunshine,
+that comes through the window every day at ten. Ah, I know to the very
+minute when to look for it. But about Dixon. Have him come down, for we
+must arrange to back Lucretia--she's worth it. She's been doing well,
+hasn't she, girl?  O God! why can't I go out into the open and see the
+little mare do just one gallop?  And then I'd like to sit and look at
+the trees sway back and forth in the wind. Their swing is like the free
+gallop of a good horse."
+
+He dropped the brief, fretful remonstrance against fate with an
+apologetic turning away of his head, and continued about the Trainer.
+
+"Lucretia's in the Brooklyn, Allis; you know that, of course. If Dixon
+starts her, the stake alone will be about enough to run for, for a
+three-year-old has a tough job ahead in that mob of picked horses. But
+you'll get a line on her there--I think she'll win with ninety-two
+pounds up; but if she shows good form, then she'll have to be backed for
+the Brooklyn Derby. Lucretia's the best three-year-old in the land, I
+know. We'll have to arrange for that money. There will be a couple of
+thousand to be had if it seems safe business. You and Dixon will judge
+of that. You're taking Lauzanne, girl. Is it worth while?"
+
+"Lauzanne is going to do great things for us, father. I'm sure of it."
+
+"Still young, Allis. I talked like that when I was your age. Fancy and
+horse racing go arm in arm always, and they're like an experienced man
+of forty hobnobbing with the little love god; they're just about as well
+mated."
+
+Porter's irrelevant simile caused Allis to start, and Crane's relentless
+eyes came and peeped at her through the narrow-slitted lids.
+
+"All right, though, little girl; your faith may make Lauzanne win, and I
+think Lucretia's speed will carry her to the front, so you may strike a
+bit of luck at last."
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+A few days later Mike Gaynor took the stable up to Gravesend. Dixon had
+a cottage there, which he occupied with his wife, and Allis was to stop
+with them.
+
+On the 20th of May the horses were settled in their racing quarters.
+Only four days remained for introducing Lucretia to the Gravesend track;
+on the 24th she would take up her ninety-two pounds and be tested to the
+utmost in the great Brooklyn Handicap.
+
+Dixon felt that several things were in her favor. She was as quiet as
+an old cow at the post; many false starts would improve rather than
+diminish her chances, for nothing seemed to excite the gallant little
+brown mare. Her great burst of speed would enable the jockey to get out
+of the ruck and steal a good place to lie handy at the leader's heels.
+She could be nursed to the last furlong of the stretch, for the sight of
+horses in front would not daunt her brave spirit.
+
+Against the mare were two or three rather important factors; she was
+slight of build, not overstrong, and the crush of contending horses
+might knock her out of her stride, should they close in. Then there was
+just a suspicion of lack of staying power in the Assassin strain;
+Lucretia might not quite last the mile and a quarter so early in the
+season, being a mare. However, she had a chance.
+
+"But I'd hardly call it a betting chance," Dixon said, speaking to
+Allis; "there's never been a three-year-old won the Brooklyn yet.
+There'll be openings enough to put down the money later on--in the
+Derby, if the mare pans out well."
+
+Andy Dixon was first of all 'a careful man. "There are risks enough in
+racin' without lookin' for them," he said. "When one has got an
+absolute lead-pipe cinch, it's two to one against its coming off."  That
+was another of his conservative aphorisms.
+
+Andy made no big wins, had never been booked as a successful plunger,
+had never skinned the ring; on the other hand, bringing the scales of
+equity to a dead level, he had never been forced to ask any man to pay
+his feed bills for him, nor let an account stand over for a time.
+
+Allis was in good hands, and, what added to the value of the situation,
+she knew it, and would take Dixon's advice. The Trainer's opinion was
+borne out by the betting market; Lucretia stood a long way down in the
+list. Even Diablo, bad horse as he was supposed to be, was at a shorter
+price; the heavy outlay of his owner, and some intangible rumors having
+caused the bookmakers to feel inclined to hold him close up against
+their chests. His work since his trial with The Dutchman had been quite
+satisfactory. He looked upon Westley, the jockey, as a friend, and
+strode along in his gallops as though he had never sulked or shown
+temper in his life.
+
+Favoritism for the Brooklyn was divided between The King, a five-year-
+old that had won it the year before, and White Moth, a three-year-old,
+winner of the last year's Futurity. Jockey Redpath had been riding
+Lucretia in her gallops since she had come to Gravesend. At last Dixon
+had been singularly fortunate in the matter of jockeys. Redpath was
+just making his reputation, making it as all jockey reputations are
+made, by winning races.
+
+This somewhat unstudied factor in racing had loomed large on his mental
+vision. It might be possible to acquire a reputation in other
+professions by good fortune or favor. As a jockey, a light weight might
+possibly make money by dishonest methods, though that itself seemed
+doubtful, but there was no way to rise to the top of the tree except by
+riding winners; verily there was one royal road to fame in the field.
+Knowing all this, Redpath rode to win.
+
+On the 22d Dixon gave Lucretia a good strong three-quarter gallop over
+the handicap course; on the 23d she had a quiet canter; and on the
+morning of the 24th, the eventful day, she poked her mouse-brown nozzle
+over the bar of her stall when Allis came to look at her and seemed to
+say, "I'll do my part to-day."
+
+Nothing could have been wished for in Lucretia's appearance that wasn't
+there, except just the faint suspicion of a sacrifice of strength to
+speed. But if the frame wasn't there, the good strong heart was; the
+courage and the gentleness, and the wisdom, and the full glow of perfect
+health.
+
+For hours the trains had borne to Long Island crowd after crowd of
+eager, impatient New Yorkers. Lovers of horses, lovers of gambling,
+pure and simple; holiday makers, and those who wished to see the
+Brooklyn run out of sheer curiosity; train after train whirled these
+atoms of humanity to the huge gates of the Gravesend arena, wherein were
+to battle that day the picked thoroughbreds, old and young.
+
+Even like bees, black-coated and buzzing, the eager ones swarmed from
+the cars and rehived in the great stand. Betting ring, and paddock, and
+lawn became alive because of their buzz; tier after tier, from step to
+roof, the serrated line of whitefaced humanity waited for the grand
+struggle.
+
+The first race was but a race, that was all. Horses galloped, but did
+they not gallop other days? It was not the Brooklyn. And also the
+second was but another race. How slow, and of what little interest were
+the horses!  Verily, neither was it the Brooklyn, and it was the
+Brooklyn forty thousand pairs of eyes had come to see.
+
+Down in the betting ring men of strong voices bellowed words of money
+odds, and full-muscled shoulders pushed and carried heads about that
+were intent on financial businesses. But what of that?  It was not the
+Brooklyn, it was gambling.
+
+Out in the paddock a small brown mare of gentle aspect, with big soft
+eyes, full of a dreamy memory of fresh-shooting grass, walked with easy
+stride an elliptical circle. Her fetlocks fair kissed the short grass
+in an unstable manner, as though the joints were all too supple. Inside
+of the circle stood Allis Porter and a man square of jaw and square of
+shoulder, that was Andy Dixon. Presently to them came Mike Gaynor.
+
+"We're gittin' next it now, Miss Allis; we'll soon know all about it."
+
+"We're all ready, Mike," said Dixon, with square solemnity. "When
+they've beat the little mare they'll be catchin' the judge's eye."
+
+"There's nothing left now, Mike, but just a hope for a little luck,"
+added the girl.
+
+"Ye'r talking now, Miss Allis. Luck's the trick from this out. The
+little mare'll have a straight run this trip. Here's the b'y comin'
+now, and a good b'y he is."
+
+A little man in blue jacket and white stars joined them, saluting Miss
+Allis with his riding whip. "Are you going to win, Redpath?" asked the
+girl.
+
+"I'm going to try, Miss. She's a sweet mare to ride, but it's a big
+field. There's some boys riding that ought to be in the stable rubbing
+horses."
+
+"You'll have to get out in front," said Dixon, speaking low; "your
+mare's too light to stand crowdin', an' even if you have to take her
+back for a breather after you've gone half the journey, she'll come
+again, for she's game."
+
+"Them Langdon fellows thinks they've got a great chance wit' our cast-
+off, Diablo," volunteered Mike. "I had a peep at him in the stall, an'
+he's lookin' purty fit."
+
+"He never was no class," objected Dixon.
+
+"If ye'd see him gallop the day he run away, ye'd think he had class,"
+said Mike. "Bot' tumbs up! ye'd a t'ought it was the flyin' Salvator."
+
+"Well, we'll soon know all about it," declared Dixon. "There's the
+saddlin' bell. Have you weighed out, Redpath?  Weight all right,
+ninety-two pounds?"
+
+"All right, sir. It was a close call to make it, though; there was a
+few ounces over."
+
+"All the better; it's a hot day, an' if they're long at the post it'll
+take them spare ounces out of you, I fancy."
+
+Dixon held up his finger to the boy that was leading Lucretia, and
+nodding his head toward the stall led the way.
+
+"We're number seven, Mike," said Allis, looking at the leather tag which
+carried the figure on Jockey Redpath's right arm.
+
+"'There's luck in odd numbers, said Rory O'Moore,'" quoted Mike.
+
+"I've a superstitious dread of seven," the girl said; "it's the one
+number that I always associate with disaster--I don't mind thirteen a
+bit."
+
+"We'll break the bad luck seven to-day," asserted little Redpath,
+bravely.
+
+"I hope so," answered Allis. "Let me put my finger on the number for
+good luck," and she touched the badge on his arm. "Now I'm going up to
+get a good seat in the stand," she continued; "I'll leave Lucretia to
+you, Redpath."
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+As the slight figure, looking slighter still in a long trailing race
+coat, passed through the paddock gate to the stand enclosure, Mike
+Gaynor spoke to the jockey.
+
+"Redpath, me b'y, it's up to ye to put yer best leg for'ard to-day.
+Ye'r ridin' for the greatest little woman in this big country. In all
+the stand up there, wit' their flounces and jewels, there isn't a lady
+like her. Not wan av them judys kin touch her as a rale proper lady.
+God bless me, she's de sweetest--" then he checked himself; he was going
+to say the sweetest filly, but even to his rough-hewn mind, tutored only
+by horse lore, it seemed sacrilege to speak of Miss Porter as anything
+but a lady.
+
+"You're right, Mike," concurred the little man; "I'd rather ride the
+mare for her than White Moth, or The King, or any of the favorites for
+their owners."
+
+"An' the ould man lyin' there at home on his back, eh, Redpath? He's as
+good as gold hisself; that's where the girl gets it; not sayin' a word
+ag'in Mrs. Porter; she don't understand, that's all. But ye'll put up
+the ride of your life, me b'y, won't ye?"
+
+"I'll do that, old chap."
+
+"Mike'll stand by ye," affirmed Gaynor. "Say, b'y," and he turned and
+looked squarely into the eyes of the little man, "I know if they beats
+ye to-day, 'twon't be yer fault 'cause why?"--and he put his hand on
+Redpath's shoulder-="'cause ye'r like many another man, sweet on the
+young Missis. Now, now, now stop that!" and he held up his finger
+warningly, as the other raised his voice in mild protest; "it's to yer
+credit. It'll do ye no good in wan way, av coorse, for, as ye say,
+she'll never know it." Redpath had not made the statement Mike
+attributed to him, but the latter was giving him a kindly pointer. "But
+it'll do ye no harm. The likin' av a good woman will sometimes make a
+man av a scoundrel, but ye'r a long way from bein' that, me b'y; so
+it'll do ye tons av good. There's the bugle; go an' mount, an' I'll
+watch how ye get on; an' good luck to ye."
+
+Regally, one after another, in stately file, the turf kings, decked out
+with the silken jackets that rested a-top--crimson, and gold, and blue,
+and white, and magpie, passed through the paddock gate to the newly
+smoothed course. Very modest and demure number seven, the little brown
+mare, looked beside the strong-muscled giants, bright bay, golden
+chestnut, and raven-wing black, that overshadowed her in the procession
+that caught the forty thousand pairs of eyes. Something of this thought
+came to Allis, sitting in the stand. What a frail little pair they
+were, both of them, and to be there battling for this rich prize that
+was so hardly fought for, by strong men athirst for gold, and great
+horses a-keen for the gallop!
+
+Ah, there was Diablo, the very number Allis had said carried no dread
+for her, thirteen. What a strange coincidence!  What a cruel twist of
+fate it would be if he were to win!--he looked equal to it. A man
+sitting at Allis's elbow suddenly cried in a voice enthused into the
+joyous treble of a boy's: "Look at that big Black; isn't he a beaut?
+Number thirteen. That's a hoodoo number, if you like; it's enough to
+give a backer cold feet."
+
+"I thought you weren't superstitious, Rex;" this was a woman's voice.
+
+"I'm not, an' I'm going straight down to back that Black, thirteen and
+all."
+
+On Allis's other side one of the party was ticking off the horses by
+their numbers as they passed; "One, two, that's White Moth; they say
+she'll win; three, Red Rover; four, what's that? that's George L.; five,
+six, seven; just look at that little runt. What is it?  Oh, Lucretia.
+Might as well run a big calf, I should think."
+
+"She's just lovely," declared a lady in the party. "She's as graceful
+as a deer, and I'm sure she'll run as fast as any of them."
+
+"Can't live in that mob; they'll smother a little thing like her,"
+declared the man, emphatically. "Where are we--ten, eleven, The King,
+that's the winner for a hundred. Look at him. He carries my money.
+It's all over now; they can't beat him. That's a fine looker, though,
+thirteen,--Diabo, eh?  What's that horse Diablo, George?" turning to one
+of the men.
+
+"No good--a maiden; I looked them all up in the dope book; how they
+expect to win the Brooklyn with a maiden gets beyond me."
+
+Somewhat tortured, Allis listened to the voluble man on her left, who
+was short and fat, and red of face, as he graded, with egotistical self-
+sufficiency, the thirteen competitors for the big Handicap. Lucretia he
+had passed over in disdain. Crude as his judgment seemed, arrogantly
+insufficient, it affected Allis disagreeably. Now that everything had
+been done, that the last minute of suspense was on, she was depressed.
+The exhilaration of preparation had gone from her, and the words of the
+captious man on her left, "that little runt," hung with persistent
+heaviness on her soul. All the vast theater of the stand was a buzz of
+eager chatter. Verily it was a race; it was the Brooklyn Handicap.
+Lips that smiled gave a mocking lie to drawn, strained faces, and
+nervous, shifting eyes, that told of the acceptance of too deep a
+hazard. The weeks and months of mental speculation embodied in heavy
+bets would have their fruit ripened and plucked within a brief half
+hour.
+
+Allis's gaze dropped to the grass lawn in front of the stand for a
+minute, her eyes seeking repose from the strain of watching the horses
+as they went down to the starting post. How fretfully erratic were the
+men who dotted its green sward with gray and solemn black!  The deeper
+interest Allis had over there on the course where was the little mare,
+seemed to lift her to a great height above them. How like ants they
+were, crossing and recrossing each other's paths, twisting and turning
+without semblance of an objective point, creatures of an impulse almost
+lower than instinct, devoid of this well-directed governing motive.
+Yes, they were like an army of ants that had been suddenly thrown into
+confusion. She saw one of them come hurriedly out of the paddock,
+talking impetuously with bended head--for he was tall--to a short man in
+gray tweed, beyond doubt a trainer. Suddenly the tall man broke away,
+hurried to the rail which separated the lawn from the course, leaned far
+over its top to take a last look at the horses, and then with a queer
+shuffling trot he hurried to the mob that was surging and pushing about
+the bookmakers. Allis noted with minute observance each little act in
+this pantomime of the last-minute plunge. Just beneath where she sat
+two men were having a most energetic duel of words. A slim, darkskinned
+youth, across whose fox-like face was written in large letters the word
+"Tout," was hammering into his obdurate companion the impossibility of
+some certain horse being defeated. Presently the other man's hand went
+into his pocket, and when it came forth again five ten-dollar bills were
+counted with nervous reluctance and hesitatingly made over to the Tout.
+Tight clutching his prize this pilot of the race course slipped from
+Allis's sight and became lost in the animated mass that heaved and
+swayed like full-topped grain in a harvest breeze.
+
+Within all that enclosure there seemed no one possessed of any calm. To
+the quiet girl it was a strange revelation; no one could have as much at
+stake as she had, and yet over her spirit there was nothing beyond the
+lethargy of depression. No; no one is calm, she thought. Ah, the
+assertion was too sweeping. Coming up the steps, just at her right, was
+a man who might have been walking in a quiet meadow, or a full-leafed
+forest, for all there was of agitation in his presence. A sudden new
+thought came to Allis; she had never seen that face distraught but once.
+The collected man was Philip Crane. A tinge of almost admiration
+tingled the girl's mind. To be possessed of calm where all was nervous
+strain was something.
+
+Suddenly the unimpassioned face lighted up; the narrow-lidded eyes
+gleamed with brightened interest. As eagerly as a boy their owner,
+Crane, came forward and saluted Allis. At that instant the man of many
+words on her left rose from his seat to chase through the interminable
+crowd on the lawn a new victim.
+
+Allis had sought to be alone in this short time of trial; she was hardly
+sure of herself. If Lucretia failed she might break down; for what
+would come to her father should the message home be one of disaster?
+Even if the little mare won her joy might lead her to commit strange
+pranks; she felt that her heart would burst out of sheer joy, if she did
+not shout in exultation, or caper madly, as she had seen others do in
+the hour of victory. She was sorry that Crane had come.
+
+"I was looking for you," he said; "I want to see you win this race; that
+is, if--I mean, like every other man here, I have harked back to my
+natural instinct of covetous acquisition and had a bet on."
+
+"Not Lucretia?"
+
+"No--I've bet on Diablo. Langdon thinks he'll win. Do you remember the
+agreement about his purchase?"
+
+"What was that?  I've half forgotten it."
+
+"Just a little bet on your account, you know."
+
+"Oh, I remember; but that was only in fun, wasn't it?"
+
+"It was part of the bargain, and it's on. You'll take it, won't you, if
+he wins--"
+
+"They're off!"  Some one had shouted the magic words from the head of
+the steps. In a second every voice of the thousands was stilled, and
+there was only the noise of shuffling feet, as eager watchers stood up
+to see the horses.
+
+"It's a false start," said Crane, quietly, turning toward the girl. "It
+would have been well for you, Miss Allis, had the starter let them go.
+Lucretia was well out in the lead; it was Diablo's fault, too, that they
+had to go back--he was left standing."
+
+Crane's voice was Fate's voice. Would there never be anything but
+Lucretia and Diablo, seven and thirteen, thirteen and seven?
+
+"Diablo's a bad horse at the post, sure," ejaculated Crane, letting his
+field glass rest for an instant on his knee; "he just backs up and
+shakes his head viciously; evidently he doesn't like the idea of so much
+company."
+
+"How is Lucretia acting, Mr. Crane?"
+
+"Perfectly. You must have instilled some of your own patience into
+her."
+
+The girl hardly heard the implied compliment.
+
+Would the patience be rewarded?  Or would thirteen, that was symbolical
+of evil, and its bearer, Diablo, who was an agent of evil, together
+snatch from her this prize that meant so much?  It was strange that she
+should not think of the other horses at all. It was as though there were
+but two in the race--Lucretia and Diablo--and yet they were both
+outsiders.
+
+"The Starter is having a bad time of it; that makes six false breaks,"
+said Allis's companion; "it will end by his losing patience with the
+boys, I fear, and let them go with something off in a long lead. But
+they say this Fitzpatrick is a cool hand, and gives no man the best of
+it. He'll probably fine Diablo's rider a hundred dollars; I believe
+it's customary to do that when a jockey persistently refuses to come up
+with his horses. Just look at that!--the black fiend has lashed out and
+nearly crippled something."
+
+"Not Lucretia, Mr. Crane!" gasped Allis.
+
+"No, it's a chestnut--there they go!  Good boy, Westley. I mean
+Diablo's jockey has done a fiendish clever thing. He came through his
+horses on the jump, carried them off their feet, they all broke--yes,
+the flag's down, and he's out with a clean lead."
+
+Down in front a bell was clanging viciously; people were rushing with
+frenzied haste from the betting ring, and clambering up the steps of the
+stand; in the stand itself the whole vast mob had risen to its feet, and
+even now the rolling beat of eager hoofs was in the aid, hushed of the
+mob's clamor.
+
+Yes, Crane had spoken truly; a great striding black, along whose neck
+hung close a tiny figure in yellow and red, was leading the oncoming
+horses. Allis strained her eyes trying to discover the little mare, but
+she was swallowed up in the struggling mob that hung at Diablo's heels.
+As they opened a little, swinging around the first turn, Allis caught
+sight of the white-starred blue jacket. Its wearer was quite fifth or
+sixth.
+
+"Lucretia is doing well," said Crane; "she's holding her own; she's
+lapped on White Moth."
+
+It seemed strange to Allis that any other thought should come into her
+mind at that time other than just concern for Lucretia, but she caught
+herself wondering at Crane's professional words of description. For the
+time he was changed; the quick brevity of his utterance tokened an
+interested excitement. He was not at all like the Crane she knew, the
+cold, collected banker.
+
+"Lucretia's doing better," her companion added a few seconds later. "If
+I were given to sentiment, I should say her gallop was the poetry of
+motion. She deserves to win. But honestly, Miss Allis, I think she'll
+never catch the Black; he's running like a good horse."
+
+Allis could not answer; the strain was too great for words. It would be
+all over in a minute or so; then she would talk.
+
+"Your mare is creeping up, Miss Allis; she's second to the Black now,
+and they've still a good three furlongs to go. You may win yet. It
+takes a good horse to make all his own running for a mile and a quarter
+and then in. His light weight may land him first past the post. There
+are only four in it now, the rest are beaten off, sure. Diablo is still
+in the lead; White Moth and Lucretia are a length back; and The King is
+next, running strong. It's the same into the stretch. Now the boys are
+riding; Lucretia is drawing away from White Moth--she's pressing Diablo.
+You'll win yet!"
+
+His voice was drowned by the clamor that went up from every side.
+"Diablo!  White Moth!  Lucretia!"  What a babel of yells! "He's beat!
+Come on!"  It was deafening. All the conjecture of months, all the
+hopes and fears of thousands, compressed into a few brief seconds of
+struggling endeavor.
+
+Allis had sat down. There was less frenzied excitement thus.
+
+"God of Justice!" it was Crane's voice, close to her ear; his hot breath
+was on her cheek; he had leaned down, so that she might hear him. "Your
+jockey has sold you, or else Lucretia quit. I thought I saw him pull
+her off. I'm sorry, Miss Allis, God knows I am, though I've won--for
+Diablo is winning easily."  Then he straightened up for an instant, only
+to bend down again and say, "Yes, Diablo has won, and Lucretia is beaten
+off. Perhaps it wasn't the boy, after all, for it's a long journey for
+a three-year-old mare. Can I do anything for you?  Let me see you down
+to the paddock."
+
+"Thank you," the girl answered, struggling with her voice. "Yes, I must
+go, for Dixon will be terribly disappointed. I must go and put a brave
+face on, I suppose. It's all over, and it can't be helped. But you've
+won, and I congratulate you."
+
+"Poor old dad!" she muttered to herself, "to have fairly given away
+Diablo just when he was ready to win a big race."  With a tinge of
+bitterness the girl thought how much her mother's opposition was to
+blame for this narrow missing of a great victory. She was glad to get
+away from the cataract of voices that smothered her like great falling
+waters. There was little exultation. If it had been any solace to her,
+she had much companionship in her dashed hopes; for Diablo, the winner,
+had not been backed by the general public; the favorite, White Moth, had
+been beaten.
+
+After the first outburst a sullen anger took possession of the race-
+goers. They had been wronged, deceived; another coup had been made by
+that trick manipulator, Langdon. How carefully he had kept the good
+thing bottled up. If the mob could have put into execution its half-
+muttered thoughts, every post about the Gravesend track would have been
+decorated with a fragment of Langdon's anatomy.
+
+Even the bookmakers were less jubilant than usual over this winning of
+an outsider, for Crane, and Langdon, and Faust, and two or three others
+who had either received a hint or stumbled upon the good thing, had
+taken out of the ring a tidy amount of lawful currency.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Crane accompanied Allis to the paddock gate; and she continued on to the
+fatal number seven stall. Lucretia had just been brought in, looking
+very distressed after her hard race. For an instant the girl forgot her
+own trouble at sight of the gallant little mare's condition. Two boys
+were busy rubbing the white-crusted perspiration and dust from her
+sides; little dark rivulets of wet trickled down the lean head that hung
+wearily.
+
+"Well, we lost!"  It was Dixon's voice at Allis's elbow. "That'll do,"
+to the boys; "here, put this cooler on, and walk her about."
+
+Then he turned to Allis again. "She was well up with the leaders half
+way in the stretch; I tho't she was goin' to win."
+
+"Was it too far for her, Dixon?"
+
+The Trainer did not answer at once; with him at all times questions were
+things to be pondered over. His knitted brows and air of hesitating
+abstraction showed plainly that this question of Allis's was one he
+would prefer to answer days later, if he answered it at all.
+
+"Didn't she stop suddenly?" Allis asked, again.
+
+"I couldn't just see from where I was what happened," he replied,
+evasively; "and I haven't asked the boy yet. She may have got shut in.
+Ah, here he comes now," as the jockey returned from the weighing scales.
+
+Redpath seemed to think that some explanation was necessary, as he came
+up to Allis and the Trainer, so he said: "The little mare seemed to have
+a chance when I turned into the stretch, an' I thought once I was goin'
+to win; but that big Black just kept galloping, galloping, an' I never
+could get to his head; I'd a been in the money, though, if somethin'
+hadn't bumped me; an' then my mount just died away--she just seemed to
+die away."  He repeated this is a falling decadence, as though it best
+expressed his reason for finishing in the ruck.
+
+"Well, we're beat, an' that's all there is to it," declared Dixon, half
+savagely; then he added, "an' by a cast-off out of your father's stable,
+too, Miss Allis. If there's any more bad luck owin' John Porter, hanged
+if I wouldn't like to shoulder it myself, an' give him a breather."
+Then, with ponderous gentleness for a big, rough-throwntogether man, he
+continued: "Don't you fret, Miss; the little mare's all right; she'll
+pull your father through all this; you just cheer up. I've got to go
+now an' look after her."
+
+When the Trainer had gone the jockey turned to Allis, hesitatingly, and
+said: "Dixon's correct about the little mare; she's all right. I
+wouldn't speak even afore him, though he's all right too, but" and he
+looked about carefully to see that nobody was within ear-shot. Two men
+were talking a little farther out in the paddock, and Redpath, motioning
+to Allis, stepped close to the stall that was next to the one Lucretia
+had occupied, "I could a-been in the money."
+
+The girl started. Crane had said that the jockey had stopped riding.
+
+"Yes, Miss; you mustn't blame me, for I took chances of bein' had up
+afore the Stewards."
+
+"You did wrong if you didn't try to win," exclaimed Allis, angrily.
+
+"I did try to win, but I couldn't. I saw that I'd never catch that big
+Black; he was going too strong; his long stride was just breaking the
+little mare's heart. She's the gamest piece of horseflesh--say, Miss
+Porter, believe me, it just hurt me to take it out of her, keeping up
+with that long-legged devil. If I could a-headed him once, just got to
+him once--I tried it when we turned into the straight--he'd have quit.
+But it was no use--the mare couldn't do it. With him out of the race
+I'd have won; I could a-been second or third as it was, but it might
+have done the little mare up so she wouldn't be any good all season. I
+thought a bit over this when I was galloping. I knew she was in the
+Brooklyn Derby, an' when I had the others beat at a mile, thinks I, if
+the public don't get onto it, Mr. Porter can get all his losses back in
+the Brooklyn Derby. That's why I eased up on the little mare. You
+don't think I could do anything crooked against you, Miss?  Give me the
+mount in the Derby, an' your father can bet his last dollar 'that
+Lucretia'll win."
+
+As he finished speaking Mike Gaynor shuffled moodily up to them. Usually
+Mike's clothes suggested a general despondency; his wiry body, devoid of
+roundness as a rat trap, seemed inadequate to the proper expression of
+their original design. The habitual air of endeavorless decay had been
+accentuated by the failure of Lucretia to win the Brooklyn. Mike had
+shrunken into his allenveloping coat with pathetic moroseness. The look
+of pity in his eye when it lighted upon Allis gave place to one of
+rebellious accusation as he turned his head slowly and glared at
+Redpath.
+
+"Ye put up a bad ride there, b'y," he commenced, speaking in a hard,
+dry, defiant tone; "a bad ride, an' no mistake. Mind I'm not sayin' ye
+could a-won, but ye might a-tried," and he waited for Redpath's defense.
+
+"She was all out, Mike, beat; what was the use of driving her to death
+when she hadn't the ghost of a chance?"
+
+"You're a little too hard on Redpath," remonstrated Allis; "he's just
+been telling me that he didn't wish to punish the mare unnecessarily."
+
+"His business was to win if he could, Miss," answered Mike, not at all
+won over. "It was a big stake, an' he ought to've put up a big finish.
+The Black would've quit if ye'd ever got to his throat-latch; he's soft,
+that's what he is. An' just where ye could have won the race, p'r'aps,
+ye quit ridin' an' let him come home alone. It's queer b'ys that's
+ridin' now, Miss," Gaynor added, fiercely, nodding his head in great
+decision, and, turning away abruptly, the petulant moroseness showing
+deeper than ever in his wrinkled face.
+
+"You mustn't mind Mike, Redpath," said Allis; "he's a good friend of our
+family, and is upset over the race, that's all."
+
+"I don't blame him," answered the jockey; "he would have rode it out and
+spoiled your chance with the mare--that would have done no good."
+
+"Still, I hardly like it," answered the girl. "I know you did it for my
+sake, but it doesn't seem quite right. Don't do anything like this
+again. Of course, I don't want Lucretia pushed beyond her strength, nor
+cut up with the whip, but she ought to get the place if she can. People
+might have backed her for the place, and we've thrown away their money."
+
+"The bettors will look after their own interests, Miss Porter, and they
+wouldn't help you a little bit if you needed it; they'd be more like to
+do you a bad turn. If I'd driven the mare to death, an' been beaten for
+the place, as I might have, the, papers would have slated me for
+cruelty. You must believe that I did it for the best, Miss."
+
+"I do, and I suppose I must thank you, but don't do it again. I'd rather
+you didn't carry your whip at all on Lucretia; she doesn't need it; but
+don't ease her up if you've got a chance till you pass the winning
+post."
+
+As the two finished speaking, and moved away, a thin, freckled face
+peered furtively from the door of stall number six. Just the ferret-
+like eyes and a knife-thin nose showed past the woodwork, but there
+could be no mistaking the animal. It was Shandy.
+
+"I've got you again," he muttered. "Blast the whole tribe of you! I'll
+just pip you on that dirty work, blowed if I don't"
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+The Brooklyn had been run and won; won by Langdon's stable, and lost by
+John Porter's. That night Allis spent hours trying to put into a letter
+to her mother their defeat and their hopes in such a way as to save
+distress to her father. She wound up by simply asking her mother to get
+Dr. Rathbone to impart as much information as he deemed advisable to his
+patient.
+
+They were a very depressed lot at Dixon's cottage that evening. Dixon
+was never anything else but taciturn, and the disappointment of the day
+was simply revolving in his mind with the monotonous regularity of a
+grindstone. They had lost, and that's all there was about it. Why talk
+it over?  It could do no good. He would nurse up Lucretia, and work
+back into her by mile gallops a fitting strength for the Brooklyn Derby.
+With incessant weariness he rocked back and forth, back and forth in the
+big Boston rocker; while Allis, at a little table in a corner of the
+room, sought to compose the letter she wished to send home.
+
+With apathetic indifference the girl heard a constrained knock at the
+cottage door; she barely looked up as Dixon opened to a visitor. It was
+Crane who entered.
+
+At almost any other time his visit would have been unpleasant. In his
+presence even the most trivial conversation seemed shrouded in a
+background of interested intentions; but to-night Dixon's constrained
+depression weighed heavy on her spirits and irritated her.
+
+"Luck was against you to-day, Dixon," exclaimed the visitor.
+
+"They were too strong for the little mare," answered the Trainer,
+curtly. "Our cast-off won, of course, but there were a half dozen in
+the race that would have beaten Lucretia, I fancy."
+
+Allis looked inquiringly at the Trainer; he had not talked that way to
+her. Then a light dawned upon the girl. She had not associated Dixon
+with diplomacy in her mind, she knew that he could maintain a golden
+silence, but here he was, actually throwing out to the caller a
+disparaging estimate of Lucretia's powers. This perpetual atmosphere of
+duplicity was positively distasteful. In the free gallop of the horses
+there was nothing but an inspiration to honest endeavor; but in this
+subtle diplomacy Allis detected the touch of defilement which her mother
+so strongly resented. Perhaps to-night she was more sensitive to
+depressing influences; at any rate she felt a great weariness of the
+whole business. Then the spirit of resolve rose in open rebellion
+against these questionings; almost Jesuitical she became at once. What
+mattered the ways or means, so that she did no wrong?  Was not the
+saving of her father's health and spirit, and his and her mother's
+welfare above all these trivial questionings; did not the end justify
+the means; might not her success, if the fates in pity gave her any,
+save her from--from--she did not even formulate in thought the
+contingency, for there stood the living embodiment of it-Crane;
+everything seemed crowding her into the narrow confines of her
+sacrificial crypt.
+
+Crane had spoken to her on his entry. As she was writing he had
+continued his discussion of the race with Dixon; perhaps, even--it was a
+hopeful thought, born of desire--he had come to see the Trainer.
+Crane's next words dispelled that illusion. It was in answer to an
+observation from Dixon that he was forced to go to the stables, that
+Crane said: "If Miss Porter has no objection I'll remain a little
+longer; I want to discuss a matter concerning her father."
+
+Allis felt quite like fleeing to the stables with Dixon; she dreaded
+that Crane was going to bring up again the subject of his affection for
+her. But the Trainer had passed out before she could muster sufficient
+moral courage to put in execution her half-formed resolve.
+
+"I wanted to speak about that wager on Diablo," began Crane. A thrill of
+relief shot through the girl's heart. Why had be troubled himself to
+come to her over such a trifling matter--a pair of gloves, perhaps half
+a dozen pairs even.
+
+"I put the bet on some time ago," he continued, "when Diablo was at a
+long price. It was only a trifle, as we agreed upon--" Allis noticed
+that he laid particular stress upon "agreed."  "But it has netted you
+quite a nice sum, three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars."
+
+Crane said this in a quiet voice, without unction; but it startled the
+girl--she stared in blank amazement. Her companion was evidently
+waiting for her to say something; seemed to expect an exclamation of
+joyous approval. She noticed that the gray eyes she so distrusted had
+taken on that distasteful peeping expression, as though he were watching
+her walk into a trap.
+
+"I cannot take it," answered Allis, decisively, after a pause.
+
+Crane raised his hand in mild protest.
+
+"It was good of you, kind; but how could I accept a large sum of money
+like that when I am not entitled to it?"
+
+"You are--it's yours. The bet was made in your name I entered it at the
+time in my book, and the bookmaker is ready to pay the money over."
+
+"I can't take it--I won't. No, no, no!"
+
+"Don't be foolishly sensitive, Miss Allis. Think what your father lost
+when he parted with Diablo for a trivial thousand dollars; and it was my
+fault, for I arranged the sale. Your father's needs--pardon me, but I
+know his position, being his banker--yes, he needs this money badly."
+
+"My father needs a good many things, Mr. Crane, which he would not
+accept as a gift; he would be the last man to do so. We must just go on
+doing the best we can, and if we can't succeed, that's all. We can't
+accept help, just yet, anyway."
+
+She was bitter; the reference to her father's troubles, though meant
+partly in kindness, angered her. It caused her to feel the meshes of
+the net drawing closer about her, and binding her free will. The fight
+was indeed on. More than ever she determined to struggle to the bitter
+end. Almost indefinably she knew that to accept this money, plausible
+as the offering was, meant an advantage to Crane.
+
+"You can't leave this large sum with the bookmaker," he objected. "He
+would like nothing better; he would laugh in his sleeve. I can't take
+it; it isn't mine."
+
+"I won't touch it."
+
+"Perhaps I had better speak to your father about it," said Crane,
+tentatively; "he can have no objection to accepting this money that has
+been won."
+
+"Father won't take it, either," answered the girl; "I know his ideas
+about such matters. He won't take it."
+
+Crane brought all his fine reasoning powers to bear on Allis, but failed
+signally in his object. He was unaccustomed to being balked, but the
+girl's firm determination was more than a match for his adaptable
+sophistry. He had made no headway, was quite beaten, when Dixon's
+opportune return prevented absolute discomfiture. Crane left shortly,
+saying to Allis as he bade them good night: "I'm sorry you look upon the
+matter in this light. My object in coming to-night was to give you a
+little hope for brightness in your gloomy hour of bad luck; but perhaps
+I had better speak to your father."
+
+"I'd rather you didn't," she answered, somewhat pleadingly. "Dr.
+Rathbone has cautioned us all against worrying father, and this could
+have no other result than but to distress him."
+
+Allis's letter had been completed, but she now added a postscript,
+telling her mother briefly of Crane's insistence over the bet, and
+beseeching her to devise some plan for keeping this new disturbing
+element from her father.
+
+Crane was remaining over night in Gravesend, and, going back to his
+quarters, he reviewed the evening's campaign. He had expected
+opposition from Allis, but had hoped to overcome the anticipated
+objections; he had failed in this, but it was only a check, not defeat.
+
+He smiled complacently over his power of self-control in having allowed
+no hint of his absorbing passion to escape him.
+
+Acceptance of this money by Allis, the money which was the outcome of an
+isolated generous thought, would have given him a real advantage. To
+have spoken, though never so briefly of his hopes for proprietary
+rights, would have accentuated the girl's sensitive alarm. He was too
+perfect a tactician to indulge in such poor sword play; he had really
+left the question open. A little thought, influenced by the desperate
+condition of Porter's fortunes, might make Allis amenable to what was
+evidently her best interest, should she be approached from a different
+quarter.
+
+Crane had made the first move, and met checkmate; the second move would
+be through Allis's mother; he determined upon that course. All his old
+cunning must have surely departed from him if he could not win this
+girl. Fate was backing him up most strenuously. Diablo had been cast
+into his hands--thrust upon him by the good fortune that so steadily
+befriended him. He was not in the habit of attributing unlooked-for
+success to Providence; he rarely went beyond fate for a deity.
+Unmistakably then it was fate that had cast the horoscope of his and
+Allis's life together. Never mind what means he might use to carry out
+this decree; once accomplished, he would more than make amends to the
+girl.
+
+He drew most delightful pictures of the Utopian existence his wealth
+would make possible for Allis. For the father he would provide a racing
+stable that would bring profit in place of disaster. Crane smiled
+somewhat grimly as he thought that under those changed circumstances
+even Allis's mother might be brought to condone her husband's
+continuance in the nefarious profession. If for no other reason than the
+great success he had made in the Brooklyn Handicap with Diablo, his
+spirits were that evening impossible of the reception of even a
+foreshadowing of failure. A suppressed exhilaration rose-tinted every
+projected scheme. He would win Allis, and he would win the Brooklyn
+Derby with his good colt, The Dutchman.
+
+He went to sleep in this happy glamour of assured success, and, by the
+inevitable contrariness of things, dreamed that he was falling over a
+steep precipice on The Dutchman's back, and that at the bottom Mortimer
+and Allis were holding a blanket to catch him in his fall. Even in his
+imaginative sleep, he was saved from a dependence upon this totally
+inadequate receptacle for a horse and rider, for he woke with a gasp
+after he had traveled with frightful velocity for an age through the
+air.
+
+Crane was a man not given to superstitious enthrallment; his convictions
+were usually founded on basic manifestations rather than fanciful
+visions; but somehow the night's dream fastened upon his mind as he
+lingered over a breakfast of coffee and rolls. Even three cups of
+coffee, ferociously strong, failed to drown the rehearsal of his
+uncomfortable night's gallop. Why had he linked Mortimer and Allis
+together?  Had it been fate again, prompting him in his sleep, giving
+him warning of a rival that stood closer to the girl than he?
+
+More than once he had thought of Mortimer as a possible rival. Mortimer
+was not handsome, but he was young, tall, and square-shouldered--even
+his somewhat plain face seemed to reflect a tall, square-shouldered
+character.
+
+Subconsciously Crane turned his head and scanned critically the
+reflection of his own face in a somewhat disconsolate mirror that
+misdecorated a panel of the breakfast room. Old as the glass was,
+somewhat bereaved of its quicksilver lining at the edge, it had not got
+over its habit of telling the truth. Ordinarily little exception could
+have been taken to the mirrored face; it was intellectual; no sign-
+manual of cardinal sin had been placed upon it; it was neither low, nor
+brutal, nor wolfishly cunning in expression. Its pallor rather loaned
+an air of distingue, but--and the examination was being conducted for
+the benefit of a girl of twenty--it was the full-aged visage of a man of
+forty.
+
+More than ever a conviction fixed itself in Crane's mind that, no matter
+how strong or disinterested his love for Allis might be, he would win
+her only by diplomacy. After all, he was better versed in that form of
+love-making, if it might be so called.
+
+Crane was expecting Langdon at ten o'clock. He heard a step in the
+breakfast room, and, turning his head, saw that it was the Trainer.
+Mechanically Crane pulled his watch from his pocket; he had thought it
+earlier; it was ten. Langdon was on time to a minute. Nominally what
+there was to discuss, though of large import, required little
+expression. With matters going so smoothly there was little but
+assurances and congratulations to be exchanged. Diablo's showing in the
+big Handicap confirmed Langdon's opinion that both the Black and The
+Dutchman had given them a great trial; probably they would duplicate
+their success with The Dutchman in the Brooklyn Derby. It was only a
+matter of a few days, and the son of Hanover had steadily improved; he
+was in grand fettle.
+
+Langdon's appreciation of Crane's cleverness had been enhanced by the
+successful termination of what he still believed was a brilliantly
+planned coup. He had never for an instant thought that Crane purchased
+the horse out of kindness to anyone. It was still a matter of mystery
+to him, however, why his principal should wish to keep dark just how he
+had learned Diablo's handicap qualities.
+
+Accustomed to reading Langdon's mind, Crane surmised from the Trainer's
+manner that the latter had something that he had not yet broached.
+Their talk had been somewhat desultory, much like the conversation of
+men who have striven and succeeded and are flushed with the full
+enjoyment of their success. Suddenly the Trainer drew himself together,
+as if for a plunge, and said: "Did you notice Porter's mare in the
+Brooklyn, sir?"
+
+"Yes; she ran a pretty good race for a three-year-old."
+
+"She did, an' I suppose they'll start her in the Derby. Do you happen
+to know, sir?"
+
+"I fancy they will," answered Crane, carelessly.
+
+"She stopped bad yesterday; but I've heard somethin'."
+
+Crane remembered his own suspicion as to Lucretia's rider, but he only
+said, "Well?"
+
+"After the race yesterday the jockey, Redpath, was talkin'--to the
+Porter gal--"
+
+Crane started. It jarred him to hear this horseman refer to Allis as
+"the Porter gal."
+
+"Redpath told her," proceeded Langdon, "that when he saw he eouldn't
+quite win he pulled his mount off to keep her dark for the Derby."
+
+"How do you know this?"
+
+"A boy in my stable happened to be in the stall an' heard 'em."
+
+"Who's the boy?  Can you believe him?"
+
+"It's Shandy. He used to be with the Porters."
+
+Like a flash it came to Crane that the spy must be the one who had
+written him the note about Faust and the change of saddles.
+
+"Well, that doesn't affect us, that I can see," commented Crane. "I'm
+not backing their mare."
+
+"It means," declared Langdon, with great earnestness, "that if Lucretia
+could have beat all the others but Diablo, she has a rosy chance for the
+Derby; that's what it means. The Black got away with a flyin' start,
+and she wore him down, almost beat him; I doubt if The Dutchman could do
+that much. She was givin' him a little weight, too."
+
+"Well, we can't help it. I've backed The Dutchman to win a small
+fortune, and I'm going to stand by it. You're in it to the extent of
+ten thousand, as you know, and we've just got to try and beat her with
+our colt; that's all there is to it."
+
+"I don't like it," muttered Langdon, surlily. "She's a mighty good
+three-year-old to put up a race like that."
+
+"She may go off before Derby day," suggested Crane; "mares are uncertain
+at this time of year"
+
+"That's just it; if she would go off we'd feel pretty sure then. I think
+the race is between them."
+
+"Well, we'll know race day; if she goes to the post, judging from what
+you say, it'll be a pretty tight fit."
+
+"She didn't cut much figure last year when Lauzanne beat her." Langdon
+said this with a drawling significance; it was a direct intimation that
+if Lucretia's present jockey could be got at, as her last year's rider
+had been--well, an important rival would be removed.
+
+Crane had not been responsible for the bribing of Lucretia's jockey,
+though he was well aware what had occurred; had even profited by it.
+
+"There'll be no crooked work this time," he said; "nobody will interfere
+with the mare's rider, I hope," and he looked significantly at Langdon.
+
+"I don't think they will," and the Trainer gave a disagreeable laugh.
+"From what Shandy tells me, I fancy it would be a bad game. The truth
+of the matter is that gosling Redpath is stuck on the gal."
+
+Crane's pale face flushed hot.
+
+"I believe that Shandy you speak of is a lying little scoundrel. I have
+an idea that he wrote me a note, a wretched scrawl, once. Wait, I've got
+it in my pocket; I meant to speak to you about it before."
+
+Crane drew from the inner pocket of his coat a leather case, and after a
+search found Shandy's unsigned letter, and passed it over to the
+Trainer.
+
+"It's dollars to doughnuts Shandy wrote it. Let me keep this, sir."
+
+"You're welcome to it," answered Crane; "you can settle with him. But
+about the Derby, I have reasons for wishing to win that race, reasons
+other than the money. I want to win it, bad. Do you understand?"
+
+"I think I do. When you say you want to win a race, you generally want
+to win it."
+
+"Yes, I do. But see here, Langdon, just leave their jockey to take
+orders from his own master, see?"
+
+"I wasn't goin' to put up no game with him, sir."
+
+"Of course not, of course not. It wouldn't do. He's a straight boy, I
+think, and just leave him to ride the best he knows how. We've got a
+better jockey in Westley. Besides, the Brooklyn Handicap has taken a
+lot out of their mare; they may find that she'll go back after it. I
+think you'd better get rid of that Shandy serpent; he seems ripe for any
+deviltry. You can't tell but what he might get at The Dutchman if
+somebody paid him. If I'm any judge of outlawed human nature, he'd do
+it. I've got to run down to Brookfield on a matter of business, but
+shall be back again in a day or so. Just keep an eye on The Dutchman--
+but I needn't tell you that, of course"
+
+"That two-year-old I bought at Morris Park is coughin' an' runnin' at
+the nose; I blistered his throat last night; he's got influenza,"
+volunteered the Trainer.
+
+"Keep him away from The Dutchman, then."
+
+"I've got him in another barn; that stuff's as catchin' as measles."
+
+"If The Dutchman were to get a touch of it, Porter would land the Derby
+with Lucretia, I fancy."
+
+"Or if they got it in their stable we'd be on Easy Street."
+
+"I suppose so. But Dixon's pretty sharp; he'll look out if he hears
+it's about. However, we've got to watch our own horse and let them do
+the same"
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+That evening Langdon and Jakey Faust were closeted together in a room of
+the former's cottage. An A1 piece of villainy was on, and they were
+conversing in low tones.
+
+"It's a cinch for The Dutchman if it wasn't for that damn mare
+Lucretia," Langdon observed, in an injured tone, as though somehow the
+mare's excellence was an unwarranted interference with his rights.
+
+"What about the jock?" asked Faust.
+
+"No good--can't be done. He's mooney on the gal."
+
+"Huh!" commented the Cherub. "Did you talk it over with the Boss? He's
+not a bad guy gettin' next a good thing."
+
+"He gave me the straight tip to give Redpath the go-by."
+
+"What's his little game?  Is he going to hedge on the mare?"
+
+"No; he'll stand his bet flat-footed. Say, he's the slickest! If he
+didn't give me the straight office that the mare might get sick, then
+I'm a Dutchman."
+
+"We're both Dutchmen."  The Cherub laughed immoderately at his stupid
+joke. "See, we're both standin' for The Dutchman, ain't we?"
+
+Langdon frowned at the other's levity. "You'll laugh out the other side
+your mouth if Lucretia puts up a race in the Derby like she did in the
+Handicap."
+
+"But ain't she goin' to get sick?  We could whip-saw them both ways
+then, that's if we knew it first. I could lay against her an' back your
+horse."
+
+"I wish the old man wasn't so devilish deep; he makes me tired
+sometimes; gives it to me straight in one breath that he's got reasons
+for wantin' to win the race, an' then he pulls that preacher mug of his
+down a peg an' says, solemn like: 'But don't interfere with their
+jockey.'  Then he talks about The Dutchman or Lucretia gettin' the
+influenza, an' that Andy Dixon is pretty fly about watchin' the mare.
+Now what do you make of all that, Jake?"
+
+"Well, you area mug. It don't need no makin' up. That book's all
+rounded to. He wants the mare stopped, an' don't want no muddlin' about
+with the jockey, see?  Wasn't there a row over stoppin' Lucretia last
+year?  Wasn't the boy set down for the meetin'?  You ought to know; you
+had to pay through the nose for shuttin' his mouth. But what made the
+old man talk about the mare gettin' sick?"
+
+Langdon searched his memory; just how was that subject started? "Damn
+it! yes, of course; I told him about the two-year-old havin' the
+influenza."
+
+"Well, Dick, my boy, you've guessed it, though you weren't trying.
+Crane would like to see the Porter mare coughin'."
+
+"But you can't take a strange horse into their stable, an' him sick,"
+objected the Trainer.
+
+"Right you are, Dick. But you could take the sickness there, if you had
+a boy with the sabe."
+
+"I was thinkin' of that," said Langdon, reflectively; "I was wonderin'
+if that's what the Boss meant."
+
+"Sure thing--that's his way; he never wants to stand in for none of the
+blame, but he likes to feel sure that he's goin' to win"
+
+"It looks a bit like it, damn me if it don't; an' I believe he was
+givin' me a pointer about the proper boy for the job, too. He said
+Shandy would get at a horse quick enough if he was paid for it."
+
+"There you are; what more do you want?  Would you have Crane get out on
+the housetop an' shout to you to go an' cruel Porter's mare?  He's
+slick, he is, an' if it can be done you've got a great chance."
+
+"I'm a poor man," whined Langdon, "an' I can't take no chances on
+loosin' ten thousand, if it can be helped."
+
+"It's got to be done right away, 'cause it'll take a couple of days to
+get the mare coughin'."
+
+"I told Shandy to come here," said the Trainer; "he ought to be turnin'
+up soon. When you hear him knock, just slip into that other room, an'
+leave the door open a little so that you can hear what takes place. God
+knows what that young imp wouldn't swear if a fellow had no witnesses.
+I think he's comin' here to-night to ask me to pay him to do some dirty
+job, an' I won't do it, see?" and he winked at Faust. "He's a bad boy,"
+said the Bookmaker, in a tone of mock condemnation.
+
+"There he is now," declared Langdon. "I hear a step on the gravel.
+Quick, slip into the room; he'll be peepin' through the windows; he's
+like a fox."
+
+There was a knock at the door. When Langdon opened it Shandy shuffled
+into the room with a peculiar little rocking-horse sort of gait, just
+like the trot of a skunk. His whole appearance somehow suggested this
+despised animal.
+
+"Have you heard anything from the Porter stable?" Langdon asked, when
+the boy had taken a seat.
+
+"The little mare's well," the boy answered, laconically.
+
+"That's bad luck for us, Shandy. We'll be poorer by the matter of a few
+thousand if they win the Derby."
+
+"Who's we?" questioned Shandy, with saucy directness.
+
+"The whole stable. A man has played The Dutchman to win a hundred
+thousand, an' he's goin' to give the boys, one or two of them, five
+hundred if it comes off."
+
+The small imp's weak, red-lidded eyes took on a hungry, famished look.
+"What're you givin' us is that straight goods?" he demanded, doubtingly.
+
+Langdon didn't answer the question direct; he said: "My man's afraid
+somebody'll get at The Dutchman. There's a lot of horse sickness about,
+an' if anyone was to take some of the poison from a sick horse's nose
+and put it in The Dutchman's nostrils at night, why he'd never start in
+the Derby, I reckon"
+
+A look of deep cunning crept into the boy's thin freckled face; his eyes
+contracted and blinked nervously.
+
+"What th' 'ell's the difference?  If the Porter mare starts Redpath
+thinks he's got a lead-pipe cinch."
+
+"You'd lose your five hundred; that's the difference," retorted Langdon.
+
+"An' if she doesn't start, an' our horse wins, I get five hundred?  Is
+that dead to rights?"
+
+"If The Dutchan wins you get the money," replied the Trainer,
+circumspectly. "You mustn't come to me, Shandy, with no game about
+takin' the horse sickness from, our two-year-old an' fixin' Porter's
+mare, 'cause I can't stand for that, see?"
+
+The boy would have interrupted, but Langdon motioned him to keep silent,
+and proceeded:
+
+"You see, if it leaked out an' we'd won a lot of money over The
+Dutchman, damn fools would say that I'd been at the bottom of it; an' if
+they had me up in front of the Stewards I couldn't swear that I'd had
+nothing to do with it."
+
+He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, held it in front of Shandy's
+eyes, and said: "What did you write that letter for?"
+
+The boy stared in blank amazement. He trembled with fear; it was the
+warning note he had sent to Crane.
+
+"Now if I was to show that to Faust he'd put a pug on to do you up, see?
+I wouldn't give three cents for your carcass after they'd finished with
+you."
+
+"I didn't mean nothin', s' help me God, I didn't," pleaded the boy;
+"give it back to me, sir."
+
+"You can take it, only don't play me the double cross no more. If you're
+doin' anything crooked, don't mix me up in it. You couldn't get into
+Porter's stable, anyway, if you tried to fix the mare."
+
+"I didn't say I was goin' to do no bloomin' job; but I could get in
+right enough."
+
+"Well, I ain't puttin' you next no dirty work, but if you hear that the
+mare gets this horse sickness that's goin' about, let me know at once,
+see?  Come here quick. If Faust got a chance to lay against the mare he
+probably wouldn't say anythin' about that note, if he did know."
+
+"I'll give you the office, sir, when she's took sick."
+
+"That's right. You ain't got any too many friends, Shandy, an' you'd
+better stick to them that'll help you."
+
+"Do I get that five hundred, sure?"
+
+"If Lucretia don't beat The Dutchman, you get it."
+
+When the boy had gone Faust came forth from his hiding like a badger.
+
+"That's a bad boy--a wicked boy!" he said, pulling a solemn face.
+"You're a good man, Langdon, to steer him in the straight an' narrer
+path. He'll take good care of The Dutchman for that five hundred"
+
+"Yes, if you don't pay these kids well they'll throw you down; an' I
+ain't takin' no chances, Faust."
+
+"The Porter mare might catch the influenza, eh, Dick?"
+
+"If she does, I'll let you know at once, Jake. But I ain't in it. I
+threatened to kick that kid out when he hinted at something crooked."
+
+"I heard you, Langdon, I'll take my oath to that. But I must be off
+now. You know where to find me if there's anything doin'."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+The next day, intent on persuading Porter to accept the money won over
+Diablo, Crane took a run down to Ringwood farm.
+
+As Allis had foreshadowed, his visit was of no avail, so far as Porter's
+acceptance of the winnings was concerned.
+
+With natural forethought Crane first talked it over with Mrs. Porter,
+but that good lady would have felt a sort of moral defilement in
+handling any betting money, much less this that seemed obscured in
+uncertainty as to its rightful ownership. She believed very much in
+Crane's bona fides, and had no doubt whatever but his statement of the
+case was absolutely truthful. But Allis had refused to accept the money;
+it would never do for her to go beyond her daughter's judgment. She
+even thought it unadvisable for Crane to discuss the matter with her
+husband; it would only worry him, and she was positive that, in his
+pride of independence, be would refuse to touch a penny that was not
+actually due him.
+
+"But there's a payment on Ringwood due in a few days," Crane argued,
+"and we must arrange for that at all events. If this money, which is
+rightfully your family's, could be applied on that, it would make a
+difference, don't you think?"
+
+"I suppose John must settle it," she said, resignedly; "perhaps you had
+better see him. I can't interfere one way or the other. I have no head
+for business," she added, apologetically; "I'm not sure that any of us
+have except Allis. We just seem to drift, drift, drift."
+
+Crane stated the facts very plausibly, very seductively, to John Porter.
+Porter almost unreasonably scented charity in Crane's proposal. He
+believed that the bet was a myth; Crane was trying to present him with
+this sum as a compensation for having lost Diablo. It wasn't even a
+loan; it was a gift, pure and simple. His very helplessness, his
+poverty, made him decline the offer with unnecessary fierceness. If
+Allis had refused it, if she were strong enough to stand without this
+charity, surely he, a man, battered though he was, could pass it by. He
+had received a hopeful message from Allis as to Lucretia's chances in
+the Derby; they felt confident of winning. That win would relieve them
+of all obligations.
+
+"I can't take it," Porter said to Crane. "Allis is more familiar with
+the circumstances of the bet--if there was one--than I. It must just
+rest with her; she's the man now, you know," he added, plaintively; "I'm
+but a broken wreck, and what she says goes."
+
+"But there's a payment on Ringwood falling due in a few days," Crane
+remonstrated, even as he had to Mrs. Porter.
+
+Porter collapsed, fretfully. He could stand out against prospective
+financial stringency, but actual obligations for which he had no means
+quite broke down his weakened energy. He had forgotten about this
+liability, that is, had thought the time of payment more distant. He
+would be forced to recall the money he had given Dixon to bet on
+Lucretia for the Derby, to meet this payment to the bank.
+
+Quite despondently he answered the other man. "I had forgotten all
+about it; this shake-up has tangled my memory. I can pay the money,
+though," he added, half defiantly; "it will hamper me, but I can do it."
+
+A sudden thought came to Crane, an inspiration. "I've got it!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+Porter brightened up; there was such a world of confidence in the
+other's manner.
+
+"We'll just let this Diablo money stand against the payment which is
+about due on Ringwood; put it in the bank to cover it, so to speak;
+later we can settle to whom it belongs. At present it seems to be
+nobody's money; it's seldom one sees a few thousand going abegging for
+an owner," he added, jocularly. "You say it isn't yours; I know it
+isn't mine; and most certainly it doesn't belong to the bookmaker, for
+he's lost it fair and square. We can't let him keep it; they win enough
+of the public's money."
+
+Reluctantly, Porter gave a half-hearted acquiescence. He would have
+sacrificed tangible interests to leave the money that was in Dixon's
+hands with him to bet on Lucretia. It would be like not taking the tide
+at its flood to let her run unbacked when her chances of winning were so
+good, and the odds against her great enough to insure a big return.
+
+It was after banking hours, quite toward evening, by the time Crane had
+obtained this concession. He had brought the winnings for John Porter's
+acceptance, should the latter prove amenable to reason. Now it occurred
+to him that he might leave the money with one of the bank staff, who
+could deposit it the next day.
+
+Crane drove back to the village and went at once to the cashier, Mr.
+Lane's house. He was not at home; his wife thought perhaps he was still
+in the bank. Crane went there in search of him. He found only
+Mortimer, who had remained late over his accounts. From the latter Crane
+learned that the cashier had driven over to a neighboring town.
+
+"It doesn't matter," remarked Crane; "I can leave this money with you.
+It's to meet a payment of three thousand due from John Porter about the
+middle of June. You can put it in a safe place in the vault till the
+note falls due, and then transfer it to Porter's credit."
+
+"I'll attend to it, sir," replied Mortimer. "I'll attach the money to
+the note, and put them away together."
+
+On his way to the station Crane met Alan Porter.
+
+"I suppose you'd like a holiday to see your father's mare run for the
+Derby, wouldn't you, Alan?" he said.
+
+"I should very much, sir; but Mr. Lane is set against racing."
+
+"Oh, I think he'll let you off that day. I'll tell him he may. But,
+like your mother, I don't approve of young men betting--I know what it
+means."
+
+He was thinking, with bitterness, of his own youthful indiscretions.
+
+"If you go, don't bet. You might be tempted, naturally, to back your
+father's mare Lucretia, but you would stand a very good chance of
+losing."
+
+"Don't you think she'll win, sir?" Alan asked, emboldened by his
+employer's freedom of speech.
+
+"I do not. My horse, The Dutchman, is almost certain to win, my trainer
+tells me."  Then he added, apologetic of his confidential mood, "I tell
+you this, lest through loyalty to your own people you should lose your
+money. Racing, I fancy, is very uncertain, even when it seems most
+certain."
+
+Again Crane had cause to congratulate himself upon the somewhat clever
+manipulation of a difficult situation. He had scored again in his
+diplomatic love endeavor. He knew quite well that Allis's determined
+stand was only made possible by her expectation of gaining financial
+relief for her father through Lucretia's winning the Derby. Should she
+fail, they would be almost forced to turn to him in their difficulties.
+That was what he wanted. He knew that the money won over Diablo, if
+accepted, must always be considered as coming from him. The gradual
+persistent dropping of water would wear away the hardest stone; he would
+attain to his wishes yet.
+
+He was no bungler to attempt other than the most gently delicate
+methods.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Encouraged by Jockey Redpath's explanation of his ride on Lucretia,
+Allis was anxious that Dixon should take the money her father had set
+aside for that purpose and back their mare for the Brooklyn Derby.
+
+"We had better wait a day or two," Dixon had advised, "until we see the
+effect the hard gallop in the Handicap has had on the little mare. She
+ain't cleanin' up her oats just as well as she might; she's a bit off
+her feed, but it's only natural, though; a gallop like that takes it out
+of them a bit."
+
+It was the day after Crane's visit to Ringwood that Dixon advised Allis
+that Lucretia seemed none the worse for her exertion.
+
+"Perhaps we'd better put the money on right away," he said. "She's sure
+to keep well, and we'll be forced to take a much shorter price race
+day."
+
+"Back the stable," advised Allis, "then if anything happens Lucretia we
+can start Lauzanne."
+
+The Trainer laughed in good-natured derision. "That wouldn't do much
+good; we'd be out of the frying pan into the fire; we'd be just that
+much more money out for jockey an' startin' fees; he'd oughter been
+struck out on the first of January to save fifty dollars, but I guess
+you all had your troubles about that time an' wasn't thinkin' of
+declarations."
+
+"It may have been luck; if Lauzanne would only try, something tells me
+he'd win," contended the girl.
+
+"And somethin' tells me he wouldn't try a yard," answered Dixon, in
+good-humored opposition. "But I don't think it'll make no difference in
+the odds we get whether we back the stable or Lucretia alone; they won't
+take no stock in the Chestnut's prospects."
+
+So Dixon made a little pilgrimage among the pencilers. He was somewhat
+dismayed and greatly astonished that these gentry also had a somewhat
+rosy opinion of Lucretia's chances. Her good gallop in the Brooklyn
+Handicap had been observed by other eyes than Crane's. Ten to one was
+the best offer he could get.
+
+Dixon was remonstrating with a bookmaker, Ulmer, when the latter
+answered, "Ten's the best I'll lay--I'd rather take it myself; in fact,
+I have backed your mare because I think she's got a great chance; she'll
+be at fours race day. But I'll give you a tip--it's my game to see the
+owner's money on," and he winked at the Trainer as much as to say, "I'll
+feel happier about it if we're both in the same boat."
+
+"It'll be on, sure thing, if I can get a decent price."
+
+"Well, you go to Cherub Faust; he'll lay you longer odds. I put my bit
+on with him at twelve, see?  If I didn't know that you an' Porter was
+always on the straight I'd a-thought there was somethin' doin', an'
+Faust was next it, stretchin' the odds that way. How's the mare doin--
+is she none the worse?"  Ullmer asked, a suspicious thought crossing his
+mind.
+
+"We're backin' her--an' money talks," said Dixon, with quiet assurance.
+
+"Well, Faust is wise to somethin'--he stands in with Langdon, an' I
+suppose they think they've got a cinch in The Dutchman. Yes, that must
+be it," he added, reflectively; "they made a killin' over Diablo, an'
+likely they got a good line on The Dutchman through him in a trial. But
+a three-year-old mare that runs as prominent in the big Handicap as
+Lucretia did, will take a lot of beatin. She's good enough for my
+money."
+
+Thanking him, Dixon found Faust, and asked of him a quotation against
+Porter's stable.
+
+"Twelve is the best I can do," answered the Cherub.
+
+"I'll take fifteen to one," declared Dixon.
+
+"Can't lay it; some of the talent--men as doesn't make no mistake, is
+takin' twelve to one in my book fast as I open my mouth."
+
+"I want fifteen," replied Dixon, doggedly. "Surely the owner is
+entitled to a shade the best of it."
+
+"What's the size of your bet?" queried the Cherub.
+
+"If you lay me fifteen, I'll take it to a thousand."
+
+"But you want it ag'in' the stable, an' you've two in; with two horses
+twelve is a long price."
+
+"I'm takin' it against the stable just because it's the usual thing to
+couple it in the bettin. It's a million to one against Lauzanne's
+starting if Lucretia keeps well."
+
+Faust gave a little start and searched Dixon's face, furtively. The
+Trainer's stolid look reassured him, and in a most sudden burst of
+generosity he said: "Well, I'll stretch a point for you, Dixon. Your
+boss is up ag'in' a frost good and hard. I'll lay you fifteen thousand
+to one ag'in' the stable, an' if Lauzanne wins you'll buy me a nice
+tiepin."
+
+His round, fat sides heaved spasmodically with suppressed merriment at
+the idea of Lauzanne in the Brooklyn Derby.
+
+"They must have a pretty good opinion of The Dutchman," Dixon thought,
+as he moved away after concluding the bet. "I'm naturally suspicious of
+that gang, when they get frisky with their money. It's a bit like I've
+heard about the Sultan of Turkey always givin' a present to a man before
+cutting his head off."
+
+The Trainer told Allis what he had done. He even spoke of his distrust
+at finding Faust laying longer odds against their mare than the other
+bookmakers. "But I don't see what they can do," he said, reflectively,
+studying the grass at his feet, his brow quite wrinkled in deep thought.
+"The mare's well, and we can trust the boy this time, I think."
+
+"Yes, you can trust Redpath," affirmed Allis, decisively. "If Faust is
+in with Langdon, as you say, it just means that they're goin' on their
+luck, and think their colt, The Dutchman, can't lose."
+
+"It must be that," concurred the Trainer, but in a hesitating tone that
+showed he was not more than half satisfied.
+
+"You backed the stable?" queried Allis, as an afterthought.
+
+"Yes, an' Lauzanne'll have a chance to-day to show whether he's worth
+the pencil that wrote his name beside Lucretia's."
+
+"You are starting him to-day?  I had almost forgotten that he was
+entered."
+
+"Yes, it'll give him a fair trial--it's a mile, an' there ain't no good
+horses, that is, stake horses, in the race. I'll put Redpath up on him,
+an' you might have a talk with the boy, if you like. You're onto
+Lauzanne's notions better'n I am."
+
+Allis gave Jockey Redpath the benefit of her knowledge of Lauzanne's
+peculiarities.
+
+"I'm afraid he won't take kindly to you," she said, regretfully; "he's
+as notional as most of his sire's line. But if he won't try he won't,
+and the more you fight him the sulkier he'll get. I wish I could ride
+him myself," she added, playfully; then fearing that she had hurt the
+boy's feelings by discounting his ability, added, hastily: "I'm afraid
+I've spoiled Lauzanne; he has taken a liking to me, and I've learned how
+to make him think he's having his own way when he's really doing just
+what I want him to do."
+
+Redpath's admiration for Allis Porter was limited to his admiration for
+her as a young lady. Being young, and a jockey, he naturally had
+notions; and a very prominent, all-absorbing notion was that he could
+manage his mount in a race much better than most boys. Constrained to
+silent acquiescence by respect for Allis, he assured himself, mentally,
+that, in the race his experience and readiness of judgment would render
+him far better service than orders--perhaps prompted by a sentimental
+regard for Lauzanne.
+
+The Chestnut was a slow beginner; that was a trait which even Allis's
+seductive handling had failed to eradicate.
+
+When the starter sent Lauzanne off trailing behind the other seven
+runners in the race that afternoon, Redpath made a faint essay,
+experimentally, to hold to Allis's orders, by patiently nestling over
+the Chestnut's strong withers in a vain hope that his mount would
+speedily seek to overtake the leaders. But evidently Lauzanne had no
+such intention; he seemed quite satisfied with things as they were.
+That the horses galloping so frantically in front interested him
+slightly was evidenced by his cocked ears; but beyond that he might as
+well have been the starter's hack bringing that gentleman along placidly
+in the rear.
+
+"Just as I thought," muttered the boy; "this skate's kiddin' me just as
+he does the gal. He's a lazy brute--it's the bud he wants."
+
+Convinced that he was right, and that his orders were all wrong, the
+jockey asserted himself. He proceeded to ride Lauzanne most
+energetically.
+
+In the horse's mind this sort of thing was associated with unlimited
+punishment. It had always been that way in his two-year-old days;
+first, the general hustle--small legs and arms working with concentric
+swing; then the impatient admonishment of fierce-jabbing spurs; and
+finally the welt-raising cut of a vicious, unreasoning whip. It was not
+a pleasurable prospect; and at the first shake-up, Lauzanne pictured it
+coming. All thoughts of overtaking the horses in front fled from his
+mind; it was the dreaded punishment that interested him most;
+figuratively, he humped his back against the anticipated onslaught.
+
+Redpath felt the unmistakable sign of his horse sulking; and he promptly
+had recourse to the jockey's usual argument.
+
+Sitting in the stand Allis saw, with a cry of dismay, Redpath's whip-
+hand go up. That Lauzanne had been trailing six lengths behind the
+others had not bothered her in the slightest--it was his true method;
+his work would be done in the stretch when the others were tiring, if at
+all.
+
+"If the boy will only sit still--only have patience," she had been
+saying to herself, just before she saw the flash of a whip in the
+sunlight; and then she just moaned. "It's all over; we are beaten
+again. Everything is against us--everybody is against us," she cried,
+bitterly; "will good fortune never come father's way?"
+
+By the time the horses had swung into the stretch, and Lauzanne had not
+in the slightest improved his position, it dawned upon Redpath that his
+efforts were productive of no good, so he desisted. But his move had
+cost the Porters whatever chance they might have had. Left to himself,
+Lauzanne undertook an investigating gallop on his own account. Too much
+ground had been lost to be made up at that late stage, but he came up
+the straight in gallant style, wearing down the leaders until he
+finished close up among the unplaced horses.
+
+Allis allowed no word of reproach to escape her when Redpath spoke of
+Lauzanne's sulky temper. It would do no good--it would be like crying
+over spilt milk. The boy was to ride Lucretia in the Derby; he was on
+good terms with the mare; and to chide him for the ride on Lauzanne
+would but destroy his confidence in himself for the other race.
+
+"I'm afraid the Chestnut's a bad actor," Dixon said to Allis, after the
+race. "We'll never do no good with him. If he couldn't beat that lot
+he's not worth his feed bill."
+
+"He would have won had I been on his back," declared the girl, loyally.
+
+"That's no good, Miss; you can't ride him, you see. We've just got one
+peg to hang our hat on--that's Lucretia."
+
+Lauzanne's showing in this race was a great disappointment to Allis; she
+had hoped that his confidence in humanity had been restored. Physically
+he had undoubtedly improved; his legs had hardened and smoothed down.
+In fact, his whole condition was perfect.
+
+She still felt that if Redpath had followed her advice and allowed
+Lauzanne to run his own race he would have won. The race did not shake
+her confidence in the horse so much as in the possibility of getting any
+jockey to ride him in a quiescent manner. When it was impossible of
+Redpath, who was eager to please her, whom else could they look to?
+They might experiment, but while they were experimenting Lauzanne would
+be driven back into his old bad habits.
+
+The next morning brought them fresh disaster; all that had gone before
+was as nothing compared with this new development in their run of
+thwarted endeavor.
+
+Ned Carter had given Lucretia a vigorous exercise gallop over the Derby
+course. As Dixon led the mare through the paddock to a stall he
+suddenly bent down his head and took a sharp look at her nostrils;
+another stride and they were in the stall. The Trainer felt Lucretia's
+throat and ears; he put his hand over her heart, a look of anxious
+dismay on his usually stolid face.
+
+"She coughed a little, sir, when I pulled her up," volunteered Carter,
+seeing Dixon's investigation.
+
+"I'm afraid she's took cold," muttered Dixon. "Have you had her near
+any horses that's got the influenza?" he asked, looking inquiringly at
+Carter.
+
+"She ain't been near nothing; I kept her away from everything, for fear
+she'd get a kick, or get run into."
+
+"I hope to God it's nothin'," said the Trainer; and his voice was quite
+different from his usual rough tone. Then a sudden suspicion took
+possession of him. Faust's readiness to lay long odds against the mare
+had haunted him like a foolish nightmare. Had there been foul play?  The
+mare couldn't have taken a cold--they had been so careful of her; there
+had been no rain for ten days; she hadn't got wet. No, it couldn't be
+cold. But she undoubtedly had fever. A sickening conviction came that
+it was the dreaded influenza.
+
+That morning was the first time she had coughed, so Faust could not have
+known of her approaching illness, unless he had been the cause of it.
+
+The Trainer pursued his investigation among the stable lads. When he
+asked Finn if he had noticed anything unusual about the mare, the boy
+declared most emphatically that he had not. Then, suddenly remembering
+an incident he had taken at the time to be of little import, he said:
+"Two mornin's ago when I opened her stall and she poked her head out, I
+noticed a little scum in her nose; but I thought it was dust. I wiped
+it out, and there was nuthin' more come that I could see."
+
+"What's the row?" asked Mike Gaynor, as he joined Dixon.
+
+When the details were explained to him Mike declared, emphatically, that
+some one had got at the mare. Taking Dixon to one side, he said: "It's
+that divil on wheels, Shandy; ye can bet yer sweet loife on that. I've
+been layin' for that crook; he cut Diablo's bridle an' t'rew th' ould
+man; an' he done this job, too."
+
+"But how could he get at her?" queried the Trainer. "The stable's been
+locked; an' Finn and Carter was sleepin' in the saddle room."
+
+"That divil could go where a sparrer could. How did he git in to cut
+th' bridle rein--t'rough a manure window no bigger'n your hat. He done
+that, as I know."
+
+"Well, if the mare's got it we're in the soup. Have you seen Miss
+Porter about, Mike?"
+
+"I did a minute ago; I'll pass the word ye want to see her--here she
+comes now. I'll skip. Damn if I want to see them gray eyes when ye
+tell about the little mare. It'll just break her heart; that's what
+it'll do. An' maybe I wouldn't break the back av the devil as put up
+this dirty job. It isn't Shandy that's as much to blame as the
+blackguard that worked him."
+
+Dixon ran over in his mind many contorted ways of breaking the news to
+Allis, and finished up by blurting out: "The mare's coughin' this
+mornin', Miss; I hope it ain't nothin', but I'm afraid she's in for a
+sick spell"
+
+Coming to the course, the girl had allowed rosy hope to tint the gray
+gloom of the many defeats until she had worked herself into a happy
+mood. Lucretia's win would put everything right; even her father,
+relieved of financial worry, would improve. The bright morning seemed
+to whisper of victory; Lucretia would surely win. It was not within the
+laws of fate that they should go on forever and ever having bad luck.
+She had come to have a reassuring look at the grand little mare that was
+to turn the tide of all their evil fortune. The Trainer's words, "The
+mare's coughin'," struck a chill to her heart. She could not speak--the
+misery was too great--but stood dejectedly listening while Dixon spoke
+of his suspicions of foul play.
+
+What villains there were in the world, the girl thought; for a man to
+lay them odds against their horse, knowing that she had been poisoned,
+was a hundred times worse than stealing the money from their Dockets.
+
+"I don't suppose we'll ever be able to prove it," declared Dixon,
+regretfully; "but that doesn't matter so much as the mare being done
+for; we're out of it now good and strong. If we'd known it two days ago
+we might a-saved the money, but we've burned up a thousand."
+
+"We'll have to start Lauzanne," said Allis, taking a brave pull at
+herself, and speaking with decision.
+
+"We might send him to the post, but that's all the good it'll do us, I'm
+feared."
+
+"I've seen him do a great gallop," contended Allis.
+
+"He did it for you, but he won't do it for nobody else. There ain't no
+boy ridin' can make him go fast enough for a live funeral. But we'll
+start him, an' I'll speak to Redpath about takin' the mount."
+
+Allis was thinking very fast; her head, with its great wealth of black
+hair, drooped low in heavy meditation.
+
+"Don't engage him just yet, Dixon," she said, looking up suddenly, the
+shadow of a new resolve in her gray eyes; "I'll talk it over with you
+when we go back to the house. I'm thinking of something, but I don't
+want to speak of it just now--let me think it over a little."
+
+Dixon was deep in thought, too, as he went back to his own stables. "We
+haven't got a million to one chance," he was muttering; "the money's
+burned up, an' the race is dead to the world, as far as we're
+concerned."
+
+That Allis could evolve any plan to lift them out of their Slough of
+Despond he felt was quite impossible; but at any rate he got a distinct
+shock when, a little later, a slight-formed girl, with gray eyes, set
+large and full in a dark face, declared to him that she was going to
+ride Lauzanne in the Derby herself.
+
+"My God, Miss!" the Trainer exclaimed, "you can't do it. What would
+people say--what would your mother say?"
+
+"People will say the race was well ridden if I'm any judge, and mother
+won't be interested enough to know whether Lucretia was hitched to a
+buggy in the Derby or not."
+
+"But the Judge would never allow a girl--"
+
+"There'll be no girl in it;". and Allis explained, in minute detail the
+result of her deep cogitation.
+
+"It won't work; you never could do it," objected Dixon, with despondent
+conviction. "That big head of hair would give you dead away."
+
+"The head of hair won't be in evidence; it will be lying in my trunk,
+waiting to be made up into a wig after we've won."
+
+"No, no; it won't do," the Trainer reiterated; "everybody'd know you,
+an' there'd be a fine shindy. I believe you could ride the horse right
+enough, an' if he has a chance on earth you'd get it out of him. But
+give up the idea, everybody'd know you."
+
+The girl pleaded, but Dixon was obdurate. He did not contend for an
+instant that she was not capable of riding the horse,--only in a race
+with many jockeys she would find it different from riding a trial
+gallop,--but his main objection was that she'd be known. Allis closed
+the discussion by saying that she was going home to encourage her father
+a little over the mare's defeat in the Handicap, and made Dixon promise
+not to engage Redpath for Lauzanne till her return next morning.
+
+"He can't take another mount," she said, "because he's retained for
+Lucretia, and we haven't declared her out yet."
+
+"I'm hopin' we may not have to," remarked Dixon. "Anyway, there's no
+hurry about switchin' the boy onto Lauzanne, so we'll settle that when
+you come back."
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Allis's visit to Ringwood was a flying one. Filial devotion to her
+father had been one motive, but not the only one. Her brother Alan's
+wardrobe received a visitation from hands not too well acquainted with
+the intricacies of its make-up.
+
+John Porter was undoubtedly brightened by the daughter's visit.
+Lucretia's defeat in the Handicap had increased his despondency. To
+prepare him gradually for further reverses Allis intimated, rather than
+asserted, that Lucretia might possibly have a slight cold--Digon wasn't
+sure; but they were going to run Lauzanne also. Like the Trainer, her
+father had but a very poor opinion of the Chestnut's powers in any other
+hands but in that of the girl's.
+
+"Who'll ride him?" he asked, petulantly. "It seems you can't trust any
+of the boys now-a-days. If they're not pin-headed, they're crooked as a
+corkscrew. Crane tells me that Redpath didn't ride Lucretia out in the
+Handicap, and whether he rides the mare or Lauzanne it seems all one--
+we'll get beat anyway."
+
+"Another boy will have the mount on Lauzanne," Allis answered.
+
+"What difference will that make?  You can't trust him."
+
+"You can trust this boy, father, as you might your own son, Alan."
+
+"I don't know about that. Alan in the bank is all right, but Alan as a
+jockey would be a different thing."
+
+"Father, you would trust me, wouldn't you?"
+
+"I guess I would, in the tightest corner ever was chiseled out"
+
+"Well, you can trust the jockey that's going to ride Lauzanne just as
+much. I know him, and he's all right. He's been riding Lauzanne some,
+and the horse likes him."
+
+"It's all Lauzanne," objected Porter, the discussion having thrown him
+into a petulant mood. "Is Lucretia that bad--is she sick?"
+
+"She galloped to-day," answered the girl, evasively. "But if anything
+happens her we're going to win with the horse. Just think of that,
+father, and cheer up. Dixon has backed the stable to win a lot of
+money, enough to-enough to--well, to wipe out all these little things
+that are bothering you, dad."
+
+She leaned over and kissed her father in a hopeful, pretty way. The
+contact of her brave lips drove a magnetic flow of confidence into the
+man. "You're a brick, little woman, if ever there was one. Just a tiny
+bunch of pluck, ain't you, girl?  And, Allis," he continued, "if you
+don't win the Derby, come and tell me about it yourself, won't you?
+You're sure to have some other scheme for bracing me up. I'm just a
+worthless hulk, sitting here in the house a cripple while you fight the
+battles. Perhaps Providence, as your mother says, will see you through
+your hard task."
+
+"I won't come and tell you that we've lost, dad; I'll come and tell you
+that we've won; and then we'll all have the biggest kind of a blow-out
+right here in the house. We'll have a champagne supper, with cider for
+champagne, eh, dad?  Alan, and Dixon, and old Mike, and perhaps we'll
+even bring Lauzanne in for the nuts and raisins at desert."
+
+"And the Rev. Dolman,--you've left him out," added the father.
+
+They were both laughing. Just a tiny little ray of sunshine had
+dispelled all the gloom for a minute.
+
+"Now I must go back to my horses," declared Allis, with another kiss.
+"Good-bye, dad--cheer up;" and as she went up to her room the smile of
+hope vanished from her lips, and in its place came one of firm, dogged
+resolve. Allis needed much determination before she had accomplished
+the task she had set herself--before she stood in front of a mirror,
+arrayed in the purple and fine linen of her brother. She had thought
+Alan small, and he was for a boy, but his clothes bore a terribly
+suggestive impression of misfit--they hung loose.
+
+Mentally thanking the fashion which condoned it, she turned the trousers
+up at the bottom. "I'll use my scissors and needle on them to-night,"
+she said, ruthlessly. Thank goodness, the jockeys are all little chaps,
+and the racing clothes will fit better.
+
+The coat was of summer wear, therefore somewhat close-fitting for Alan;
+but why did it hang so loosely on her?  She was sure her brother was not
+so much bigger. A little thought given to this question of foreign
+apparel brought a possible solution. The undergarments she had tumbled
+about in her search were much heavier than her own. Her crusade had its
+side of comedy; she chuckled as, muttering, "In for a penny, in for a
+pound," she reincarnated herself completely, so far as outward adornment
+was concerned. Then she examined herself critically in the glass. The
+mirror declared she was a passable counterfeit of her brother; all but
+the glorious crown of luxuriant hair. Perhaps she had better leave it
+as it was until she had met with the approval of Dixon--the terrible
+sacrifice might be for nothing. She wavered only for an instant--no half
+measure would do. "In for a penny, in for a pound."  The slightest
+weakness in carrying out her bold plan might cause it to fail.
+
+Twice she took up a pair of scissors, and each time laid them down
+again, wondering if it were little short of a madcap freak; then,
+shrinking from the grinding hiss of the cutting blades, she clipped with
+feverish haste the hair that had been her pride. It was a difficult
+task, and but a rough job at best when finished, but the change in her
+appearance was marvelous; the metamorphosis, so successful, almost
+drowned the lingering regret. She drew a cap over her shorn head,
+packed her own garments and a few of her brother's in a large bag,
+buttoned her newmarket coat tight up to her throat, and once more
+surveyed herself in the glass. From head to foot she was ready. Ah,
+the truthful glass betrayed the weak point in her armor--the boots. In
+an instant she had exchanged them for a pair of Alan's. Now she was
+ready to pass her mother as Allis in her own long cloak, and appear
+before Dixon without it as a boy. That was her clever little scheme.
+
+Before going up to her room she had asked that the stableman might be at
+the door with a buggy when she came down, to take her to the station.
+When she descended he was waiting.
+
+"I'm taking some clothes back with me, mother," she said. "Let Thomas
+bring the bag down, please."
+
+"You're getting dreadfully mannish in your appearance, daughter; it's
+that cap."
+
+"I have to wear something like this about in the open;" answered Allis.
+
+"But for traveling, girl, it seems out of place. Let me put a hat on
+you. I declare I thought it was Alan when you came into the room."
+
+"I can't wait; this will do. I must be off to catch my train. Goodbye,
+mother; wish me good luck," and she hurried out and took her seat in the
+buggy.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+Some hours later Dixon, sitting in his cottage, oppressed by the
+misfortune that had come to his stable, heard a knock at the door. When
+he opened it a neatly dressed, slim youth stepped into the uncertain
+light that stretched out reluctantly from a rather unfit lamp on the
+center table.
+
+"Is this Mr. Dixon?" the boy's voice piped modestly.
+
+"Yes, lad, it is. Will you sit down?"
+
+The boy removed his cap, took the proffered chair, and said somewhat
+hesitatingly, "I heard you wanted a riding boy."
+
+Well, I do, an' I don't. I don't know as I said I did, but,"--and he
+scanned the little figure closely, "if I could get a decent lightweight
+that hadn't the hands of a blacksmith, an' the morals of a burglar, I
+might give him a trial. Did you ever do any ridin'--what stable was you
+in?"
+
+"I've rode a good deal," answered the little visitor, ignoring the
+second half of the question.
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Mayne."
+
+"Main what?"
+
+"Al Mayne," the other replied.
+
+"Well, s'posin' you show up at the course paddocks to-morrow mornin'
+early, an' I'll see you shape on a horse. D'you live about here--can
+you bring your father, so if I like your style we can have things fixed
+proper?"
+
+The boy's face appealed to Dixon as being an honest one. Evidently the
+lad was not a street gamin, a tough. If he had hands--the head promised
+well--and could sit a horse, he might be a find. A good boy was rarer
+than a good horse, and of more actual value.
+
+"I guess I'll stay here to-night so as to be ready for the mornin',"
+said the caller, to Dixon's astonishment; and then the little fellow
+broke into a silvery laugh.
+
+"By Jimminy! If it isn't--well, I give in, Miss Allis, you fooled me."
+
+"Can I ride Lauzanne now?" the girl asked, and her voice choked a
+little--it might have been the nervous excitement, or thankfulness at
+the success of her plan in this its first stage.
+
+"Do they know at home?" the Trainer asked.
+
+"No, nobody is to know but you, Mr. Dixon--you and Mrs. Dixon."
+
+This suggested a thought to the Trainer. "The good wife's at work in
+the kitchen; I'll bring her in. Perhaps she'd like to hire a help," and
+he chuckled as he opened a door and called, "Come here for a minute.
+This is a boy"--he turned his head away--"I'm takin' on for Lauzanne."
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Dixon. Then, with severe politeness, "Good evenin',
+young man."
+
+The two figures in male attire broke into a laugh simultaneously. The
+good lady, oblivious to the humorous side of her greeting, flushed in
+anger. "Appears to be mighty funny," she said. "What's the joke?"
+
+"Oh, nuthin'," replied the husband, speaking hastily. "Can you give the
+lad a bed?  He wants to bunk here."
+
+"Why, Andy, you know I can't. There's only Miss Allis's room."
+
+"Give her--him that."
+
+"Are you crazy, Andy?"
+
+"It's too bad, Mrs. Dixon; I sha'n't let your husband tease you any
+more. I am Allis; but I'm glad you didn't know."
+
+"Oh, Miss Allis, where's your beautiful hair gone?  Surely you didn't
+cut that off just for a joke?"
+
+Then she was taken fully into their confidence; and before Allis retired
+Dixon had been quite won over to the plan of Allis's endeavor.
+
+In the morning the Trainer asked the girl whether she would ride
+Lauzanne a working gallop to get accustomed to the new order of things,
+or would she just wait until race day and take her place in the saddle
+then.
+
+"I'm afraid Mike'll spot you," he said--"even Carter may."
+
+"I'll ride to-day," declared Allis; "I musn't take any chances of losing
+this race through my inexperience. Even Lauzanne will hardly know me,
+I'm afraid. Mike and Carter needn't see much of me--I can slip away as
+soon as I've ridden the gallop."
+
+"Here's a boy's sweater, then," said Dixon; "the collar'll half hide
+your face. I'll get a pair of ridin' breeches an' boots for you by
+tomorrow. The little mare's in for it sure," he added; "her legs are
+swellin', an' she's off her feed--just nibbles at a carrot. I feel as
+bad as if it was a child that was sick, she's that gentle. She can't
+start, an' I'll just tell Redpath that he can take another mount if he
+gets it. You're still bound to ride the Chestnut?" he asked, by way of
+assurance.
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"Well, we'll get five pounds off the weight for 'prentice allowance--
+that's somethin'. I'll arrange about a permit for you. What did you
+say your name was, mister?"
+
+"Al Mayne, please, sir," this in the humble tone of a stable-boy.
+
+"Well, Miss--Al, I mean--you can carry Lauzanne around the course at
+nine o'clock sharp; then you'd better come back here an' rest up all
+day--lay low."
+
+"A new boy, I'm tryin'," Dixon explained to Gaynor, after he lifted a
+little lad to Lauzanne's back at the paddock gate, and they stood
+watching the big Chestnut swing along with his usual sluggish stride.
+
+"He's got good hands," said Mike, critically, "though he seems a bit
+awkward in the saddle. Ye couldn't have a better trial horse fer a new
+b'y. If Lauzanne's satisfied with him he can roide onythin'."
+
+When Allis, who was now Al Mayne, the boy, came around and back to the
+paddock, she slipped quietly from the horse, loitered carelessly about
+for a few minutes, and then made her way back to Dixon's quarters.
+Nobody had paid any attention to the modest little boy. Riding lads
+were as plentiful as sparrows; one more or less called for no comment,
+no investigation. Even Mike lost interest in the new boy in wondering
+why Miss Allis had not made her usual appearance.
+
+"How did the horse like it?" Dixon asked of the girl when he returned
+home.
+
+"Oh, he knew. I whispered in his ear as we cantered along, and he'll be
+all right--he'll keep my secret."
+
+"Well, I think he's due for a pipe opener to-morrow. It's just three
+days till the Derby, an' we've got to give him a strong workout.
+Besides, it'll put you next what you've got to do in the race.
+To-morrow mornin' you had better canter him just slow around once, an'
+then send him a full mile-an'-aquarter as though there was money hung up
+for it. I'll catch his time, an' we'll get wise to what he can do."
+
+This programme was carried out; and as Dixon looked thrice at his watch
+after the gallop to make sure that he was not mistaken in the time,
+2:11, he began to wonder if, after all, the girl was not nearly right in
+her prophetic hope that the despised Lauzanne would win the Brooklyn
+Derby.
+
+"He can move; he surprised me," the Trainer said to Allis as she
+dismounted. "He's not blown, either; he's as fresh as a daisy. Gad!
+we'll do those blackguards up yet, I believe."
+
+The gallop had attracted Mike's attention also. As Allis moved away he
+called after her, "I say, b'y, hould on a minute. What's yer name,
+ennyway?"
+
+"Al," answered the small voice.
+
+"Well, by me faith, ye didn't put up no bad roide. Ye handled that
+horse foine. Don't run away, lad," he added, hurrying after the
+retreating Allis.
+
+Before she could escape him, he had her by the arm, and turned about
+face to face. Even then he didn't recognize her, for Allis had taken a
+most subtle precaution in her make-up. The delicate olive of her cheeks
+was hidden under a more than liberal allowance of good agricultural
+cosmetique. It had been well rubbed in, too, made of a plastic
+adherence by the addition of mucilage.
+
+"Lord, what a doirty face!" exclaimed Mike. "But ye kin ride, b'y; so
+dirt don't count; clean ridin's the thing."
+
+If Allis hadn't laughed in his face, being full of the happiness of
+hope, Mike would not have recognized her--even then he didn't hit it off
+quite right.
+
+"Alan Porter!" he gasped. "Bot' t'umbs up! Is it ye, b'y?"
+
+"Hush!" and a small warning finger was held up.
+
+"Don't fear, b'y, that I'll give it away. Mum's the word wit' me. But
+I'm dahmned if I t'ought ye could roide like that. It's jus' in the
+breed, that's what it is; ye take to it as natural as ducks--"  Mike had
+a habit of springing half-finished sentences on his friends. "Yer
+father could roide afore ye; none better, an' Miss Allis can sit a horse
+foiner nor any b'y as isn't a top-notcher. But this beats me, t'umbs
+up, if it doesn't. I onderstand," he continued, as Allis showed an
+inclination to travel, "ye don't want the push to get on to ye. They
+won't, nayther--what did ye say yer name was, sonny?"
+
+"Al Mayne"
+
+"Ye'r a good b'y, Al. I hope Dixon lets ye roide the Chestnut in the
+Derby. I'd give wan av me legs--an' I needs 'em bot'--to see ye beat
+out that gang av highway robbers that got at the mare. They'll not git
+at the Chestnut, for I'll slape in the stall me self."
+
+As Allis moved away, Mike stood watching the neat figure.
+
+"That's the game, eh?" he muttered to himself; "the gal don't trust
+Redpath no more'n I do; palaver don't cut no ice wit' her. The b'y
+didn't finish on Lucretia, an' that's all there is to it. But how's Alan
+goin' to turn the trick in a big field of rough ridin' b'ys?  If it was
+the gurl herself" a sudden brilliant idea threw its strong light through
+Mike's brain pan. He took a dozen quick shufing steps after Allis, then
+stopped as suddenly as he had started. "Mother a' Moses! but I believe
+it's the gurl; that's why the Chestnut galloped as if he had her on his
+back. Jasus! he had. Ph-e-e-w-w!" he whistled, a look of intense
+admiration sweeping over his leather-like face. "Bot' t'umbs! if that
+isn't pluck. There isn't a soul but meself'll git ontil it, an' she all
+but fooled me."
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+The news that Lucretia was sick had got about. The Porter's stable
+traveled out in the betting for the Brooklyn Derby until a backer--if
+there had been one--could have written his own price, and got it.
+
+Langdon had informed Crane of this change in their favor, though he said
+nothing about the deal with Shandy which had brought about the poisoning
+of the mare.
+
+"I'm sorry that Porter's mare has gone wrong," Crane said. "I think we
+would have won anyway, but it'll just about ruin them."
+
+Figuratively, Langdon closed one eye and winked to himself. Crane must
+know that it was his implied desires that had led up to the stopping of
+Lucretia. Langdon thought Crane just about the most complete hypocrite
+he'd ever met; that preacher face of his could look honorably pious
+while its owner raked in a cool forty thousand over the Trainer's dirty
+work. However, that cut no figure, it was his ten thousand dollars
+Langdon was after.
+
+Just as they thought they had destroyed the chances of their strongest
+opponent, came a new disturbing feature. Other eyes than Dixon's has
+seen Lauzanne's strong gallop; other watchers than his had ticked of the
+extraordinary good time, 2:11 for the mile and a quarter, with the horse
+seemingly running well within himself, never urged a foot of the
+journey, and finishing strong, was certainly almost good enough to
+warrant his winning.
+
+This information had been brought to Langdon, but he also had observed
+the gallop. And the same boy was to ride Lauzanne in the race, he
+understood, for Redpath had been released, and was looking for another
+mount. It wasn't in the natural order of things that one small stable
+would have in it two horses good enough to win the Derby, especially
+when one of them was a cast-off; but there was the gallop; time, like
+figures, didn't lie, not often; and as he thought of it Langdon admitted
+that he had never seen such an improvement in a horse as had been made
+in Lauzanne. Shandy had told him that it was Miss Porter's doing, that
+she had cured him of his sulky moods; the gallop Langdon had witnessed
+seemed to bear out the truth of this. What was he to do?  They couldn't
+repeat the trick they had played on Lucretia. The Dutchman might win; he
+had worked the full Derby distance, a mile and a half, in 2:45, nearly
+all out at the finish. Lauzanne's gallop was only a mile and a quarter;
+he might not be able to stay the additional quarter. But there was ten
+thousand dollars at stake--for Langdon. He sought to discover the
+identity of Lauzanne's rider; but nobody knew him--Dixon had picked him
+up somewhere. Perhaps he could be got at; that would simplify matters
+greatly.
+
+The morning after her fast work on Lauzanne, Allis, draped as she was
+into the personification of Al Mayne, arrived at the course before their
+horses. As she was leaning over the paddock rail waiting for Lauzanne
+to come, Langdon, who had evidently determined upon a course of action,
+sauntered up carelessly to the girl and commenced to talk. After a free
+preliminary observation he said, "You're the boy that's ridin' for Andy
+Dixon, ain't you?"
+
+The small figure nodded its head.
+
+"I seen you gallop that Chestnut yesterday. Where you been ridin--
+you're a stranger here, I reckon?"
+
+"Out West," answered Allis, at a hazard.
+
+"Oh, San Francisco, eh?  Are you engaged to Dixon?"
+
+"I'm just on trial."
+
+"Goin' to ride the Chestnut in the race?"
+
+Again the boy nodded; under the circumstances it wasn't wise to trust
+too much to speech.
+
+"He ain't no good--he's a bad horse. I guess I've got the winner of
+that race in my stable. If he wins, I'd like to sign you for a year. I
+like the way you ride. I ain't got no good lightweight. I might give
+you a thousand for a contract, an' losin' and winnin' mounts when you
+had a leg up. How do you like ridin' for Dixon?" he continued, the
+little chap not answering his observations.
+
+"I ain't goin' to ride no more for him after this race," answered the
+other, quite truthfully enough, but possessed of a curiosity to discover
+the extent of the other's villainy.
+
+"I don't blame you. He's no good; he don't never give his boys a
+chance. If you win on the Chestnut, like as not they'll just give you
+the winnin' mount. That ain't no good to a boy. They ain't got no
+money, that's why. The owner of my candidate, The Dutchman, he's a rich
+man, an' won't think nothin' of givin' a retainer of a thousand if we
+won this race. That'll mean The Dutchman's a good horse, and we'll want
+a good light boy to ride him, see?"
+
+Allis did see. Langdon was diplomatically giving her as A1 Mayne to
+understand that if she threw the race on Lauzanne, she would get a place
+in their stable at a retainer of a thousand dollars.
+
+"We can afford it if we win the race," he continued, "for we stand a big
+stake. Come and see me any time you like to talk this over."
+
+After he had gone, just as Allis was leaving the rail, she was again
+accosted; this time by Shandy. She trembled an instant, fearing that
+the small red-lidded ferret eyes would discover her identity. But the
+boy was too intent on trying to secure his ill-earned five hundred
+dollars to think of anything else.
+
+"Good mornin', boy," he said, cheerily. "I used to be in Dixon's
+stable. It's hell; and he's a swipe. I see my boss talkin' to you just
+now. Did he put you next a good thing?"
+
+Allis nodded her head, knowingly.
+
+"He's all right. So's the other one--the guy as has got the mun; he's
+got a bank full of it. I'm on to him; his name's Crane--"
+
+Allis started.
+
+"You don't know him," continued the imp; "he's too slick to go messin'
+about. But if the old man promised you anything, see, God blast me,
+you'll git it. Not like that other skin-flint hole where you don't git
+nothin'. I stand in five hundred if our horse wins the Derby."
+
+"Do you ride him?" asked Al Mayne.
+
+"Ride nothin'. I don't have to. I've did my job already."
+
+"I don't believe they'll give you five hundred for nothin'," said Allis,
+doubtingly, knowing that the boy's obstinate nature, if he were crossed,
+would probably drive him into further explanation.
+
+"Say, you're a stiff. What'd the ole man want you to do--pull
+Lauzanne?"
+
+Allis nodded.
+
+"I knowed it. What was the use of stoppin' the mare an' let the
+Chestnut spoil the job?"
+
+"Is that what you get the five hundred for?" asked Allis, a sudden
+suspicion forcing itself upon her.
+
+"Say, what d' you take me fer, a flat car?  But she's sick, ain't she?
+An' you jes' take care of the Chestnut now, an' I'll give you a hundred
+out of my five, God bli' me if I don't."
+
+As he spoke Shandy looked hastily about to see that no one was
+listening, then he continued: "If you give me the double cross an'
+peach, I'll split yer head open."  His small eyes blazed with venomous
+fury. "Besides, it won't do no good, my word's as good as yours. But
+I'll give you the hundred, s'help me God!  I will, if you don't ride the
+Chestnut out. Mum's the word," he added, bolting suddenly, for Dixon
+had entered the paddock with his horses.
+
+With the horses also came Mike Gaynor. While their blankets were being
+taken off and saddles adjusted, he came over to Allis. There was a
+suppressed twinkle of subverted knowledge in his weatherbeaten eyes.
+
+"Good mornin', Al," he said, nodding in a very dignified manner, and
+putting a strong accent on the name.
+
+Now Mike had determined to keep from the girl the fact that he had
+penetrated her disguise. With proper Irish gallantry, crude as it might
+be in its expression, but delicate enough in its motive, he reasoned
+that his knowledge might make her uncomfortable.
+
+"I see that fly-by-night divil Shandy talkin' to ye as I come in. What
+new mischief is he up to now?"
+
+"He wants me to pull Lauzanne."
+
+"He ain't got no gall, has he?  That come from headquarters; it's
+Langdon put him up to that."
+
+"He was talkin' to me, too."
+
+"I t'ought he would be. But he didn't know ye, Miss Allis--"
+
+Heavens!  It was out. Mike's sun-tanned face turned brick-red; he could
+have bitten off his unruly Irish tongue. The girl stared at him
+helplessly, her cheeks, that were scarlet, tingling under the hot rush
+of blood.
+
+"There ye are, an' believe me, I didn't mean it. I was goin' to keep me
+mouth shut, but I never could do that."
+
+"You knew then, yesterday?"
+
+"Indade I didn't, an' that's a good sign to ye nobody'll know. But whin
+I t'ought wit' meself I knowed that Alan couldn't ride Lauzanne the way
+ye did; an' ye didn't deny ye was him, an' if ye wasn't him ye must be
+yerself, see?" which more or less lucid explanation seemed to relieve
+Mike's mind mightily. "I think ye're Jes doin' roight, Miss--Al, I
+mean; I must get used to that name; s'help me, I believe ye'll win on
+the Chestnut--that gallop was good enough."
+
+"Do you think I can do it, Mike, among all those jockeys?"
+
+"Sure thing, ye can, A--Al, me b'y; he won't need no ridin' in yer
+hands; all ye'll have to do is sit still an' keep him straight. He'll
+win the race in the stretch, an' there won't be many there to bother--
+they'll all be beat off. Now, it's a good thing that I do know about
+this, for I'll just kape close to ye an' kape any wan that's likely to
+spot ye away, if I have to knock him down."
+
+Mike had worked himself up to a fine frenzy of projected endeavor; he
+cast about for further services he could render his admired mistress.
+
+"An' ye know Carson the starter; he's jes the loveliest Irishman; there
+isn't a b'y on earth could git an inch the best av it from him on a
+start, not if they was to give him gold enough to weigh a horse down.
+But I'll jes' tip him the wink that ye'r a gurl, and--"
+
+"Mike, what are you saying?  Do you mean to ruin everything?"
+
+The rosy hue of eager joyousness that had crept into Gaynor's suntanned
+face vanished; his jaw drooped, and a pathetic look of sheepish apology
+followed.
+
+"That's so," he ejaculated, mournfully; "bot' tumbs up! but it's a pity.
+Carson's an Irish gintleman, an' if I could till him ye was a gurl, he'd
+knock the head plumb off any b'y that 'ud bother ye. Ye'd git away
+well, too."
+
+Then the girl told Mike all that Shandy and Langdon had said. It only
+confirmed Mike's opinion that between them they had poisoned Lucretia.
+He felt that with a little more evidence he would be able to prove both
+crimes--the one with Diablo and the one with Lucretia.
+
+The Brooklyn Derby was to be run the next day. Allis was glad that it
+was so near; she dreaded discovery. She was like a hunted hare, dodging
+everyone she fancied might discover her identity. She would have to run
+the gauntlet of many eyes while weighing for the race, and at the time
+of going out; even when she returned, especially if she won. But in the
+excitement over the race, people would not have time to devote to a
+strange jockey's visage. She could quite smear her face with dirt, for
+that seemed a natural condition where boys were riding perhaps several
+races in one afternoon. The jockey cap with its big peak well pulled
+down over her head would add materially to her disguise. Mike would
+fetch and carry for her, so that she would be in evidence for very few
+minutes at most. Dixon even, opposed to the idea as he had been at
+first, now assured her quite confidently that nobody would make her out.
+
+"It's the horses they look at," he said, "and the colors. An apprentice
+boy doesn't cut much ice, I can tell you. Why, I've been racin' for
+years," he went on with the intent of giving her confidence, "an' many a
+time I see a boy up on a horse that must have rode on the tracks over a
+hundred times, an' I can't name him to save my neck."
+
+At any rate there was nothing more to do until she made the great
+endeavor, until she went to the track at the time set for the Brooklyn
+Derby, dressed in the blue jacket with the white stars of her father's
+racing colors; that was the plan adopted. A buggy, with Mike driving,
+would take her straight to the paddock quite in time for the race.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+After Crane left the money for Porter's note with Mortimer the latter
+took the three one-thousand-dollar bills, pinned them to the note,
+placed them in a cigar box and put the box away carefully in the bank
+safe, to remain there until the 14th of June, when it became due.
+Incidentally Mortimer mentioned this matter to Alan Porter.
+
+Crane in writing to the cashier about other affairs of the bank touched
+upon the subject of Porter's obligation, stating that he had left the
+money with Mr. Mortimer to meet the note when it matured.
+
+The day before the Derby, the 12th of the month, Alan asked his day's
+leave and got it. The cashier more readily granted Alan's request, as
+Crane had intimated in his letter that it would please him if the lad
+were to have a holiday.
+
+Alan went up to New York that evening. Earlier in the day he somewhat
+hesitatingly confided to Mortimer that he had backed Lucretia when she
+was well and looked to have a good chance to win her race; now she was
+scratched, and his money was lost. Bearing in mind what Crane had said
+about The Dutchman's chances of winning, even with Lucretia in the race,
+he felt now that it appeared almost like a certainty for Crane's horse.
+If he could have a bet on The Dutchman he would surely recoup his
+losses. Alan explained all these racing matters very minutely and with
+great earnestness to Mortimer, for the latter was quite unfamiliar with
+the science of race gambling. Having stated his predicament and hoped-
+for relief, as an excuse for so doing, he wound up by asking his
+companion for a loan of two hundred dollars.
+
+Mortimer had little less horror of betting and its evil influence than
+Mrs. Porter, but under the circumstances he would perhaps have complied
+with the boy's request had he been provided with sufficient funds. As
+it was, he said: "I don't like the idea of lending you money to bet
+with, Alan; your mother wouldn't thank me for doing so; besides, if you
+lost it you'd feel uncomfortable owing me the money. At any rate, I
+haven't got it. I couldn't lend you two hundred, or half of it. I
+suppose I haven't got a hundred to my credit."
+
+"Oh, never mind then," answered Alan, angrily, stiffening up, because of
+Mortimer's lecture.
+
+"I'll lend you what I've got."
+
+"I don't want it. I can get it some other place."
+
+"You'd better take--"
+
+"Take nothing--I don't want it."
+
+"Very well, I'm sorry I can't oblige you. But take my advice and don't
+bet at all; it'll only get you into trouble."
+
+"Thanks; I don't need your advice. I was a fool to ask you for the
+money."
+
+"I say, Alan," began Mortimer, in a coaxing tone.
+
+"Please don't 'Alan' me any more. I can get along without your money
+and without your friendship; I don't want either."
+
+Mortimer remained silent. What was the use of angering the boy further?
+He would come to see that he had meant it in good part, and would be all
+right in a day or two.
+
+During the rest of the day Alan preserved a surly distance of manner,
+speaking to Mortimer only once--a constrained request for a bunch of
+keys in the latter's possession which unlocked some private drawers in
+the vault.
+
+The next morning it suddenly occurred to Mortimer that Porter's note
+fell due that day--either that day or the next, he wasn't sure. The
+easiest way to settle the question was to look at the date on the note.
+
+He stepped into the vault, took out the little cigar box, opened it, and
+as he handled the crisp papers a sudden shock of horror ran through his
+frame. One of the bills was gone; there were only two one-thousand-
+dollar notes left.
+
+The discovery paralyzed him for an instant. He was responsible; the
+money had been left in his charge. Then he looked at the note; it
+matured the next day. All the money had been in the box the morning
+before, for he had looked at it. Only the cashier and Alan Porter knew
+that it was in the vault.
+
+The whole dreadful truth came clearly to Mortimer's mind with absolute
+conviction. Alan, infatuated with the prospect of winning a large sum
+over The Dutchman, and failing to borrow from him, had taken the money.
+
+The gravity of the situation calmed Mortimer, and his mind worked with a
+cool method that surprised him. Bit by bit he pieced it out. The boy,
+inconsistently enough, had reasoned that the money was his father's, and
+that he was only borrowing family property. No doubt he had felt sure of
+winning, and that he would be back in time to replace the thousand
+before it was needed. This sophistical reasoning had, without doubt,
+tempted the lad to commit this--this--Mortimer felt a reluctance to
+bestow the proper name upon Alan's act, but undoubtedly it was stealing.
+
+And if the boy lost the money, what would happen?  He couldn't repay it;
+the shortage would be discovered and Allis's brother would be ruined,
+branded as a 'thief.
+
+Mortimer would willingly put the money back himself for Allis's sake;
+but he hadn't it. What was he to do?  If he could find Alan and force
+him to give up the stolen money he could yet save the boy. But Alan had
+gone to Gravesend.
+
+Like an inspiration the thought came to Mortimer that he must go after
+him and get the money before it was lost. He shoved the box back in its
+place, and came out into the office.
+
+It was half past ten by the clock. Luckily the cashier had not come
+yet. Mortimer's mind worked rapidly. He must make some excuse and get
+away; anything; he must even lie; if he saved the boy it would be
+justifiable. Why did not the cashier come, now that he was ready for
+him?  Each minute seemed an age, with the honor of Allis's brother
+hanging in the balance. He would need money. He drew a check for a
+hundred dollars. A hasty inspection showed that he still had a trifle
+more than this amount to his credit. Why he took a hundred he hardly
+knew; fate seemed writing the check. He had barely finished when the
+cashier appeared. At once Mortimer spoke to him.
+
+"I want leave of absence to-day, sir," he said, speaking hurriedly.
+
+The cashier frowned in astonishment. "Impossible We are short-handed
+with young Porter away."
+
+"I'll be back in the morning," pleaded Mortimer. "My mother is very
+ill. I've opened up, and Mr. Cass can manage, I'm sure, if you'll let
+me go. I wouldn't ask it, but it's a matter of almost life and death."
+He had nearly said of honor.
+
+Unwillingly the cashier consented. It probably meant extra work for
+him; he would certainly have to take a hand in the office routine.
+Theirs was not a busy bank, and that day was not likely to be a very
+pressing one, but still he would have to shoulder some of the labor.
+
+Full of the terrible situation, Mortimer cared not who worked, so that
+he got away in time to save Allis's brother from himself. At last he was
+free. He almost ran to the station.
+
+Looking from the window of the bank, the cashier seeing Mortimer's rapid
+pace, muttered: "I guess the poor man's mother is pretty bad; I'm glad I
+let him go. He's a good son to that mother of his."
+
+At eleven o'clock Mortimer got a train for New York. During the wait at
+the station he had paced up and down the platform with nervous stride.
+A dozen times he looked at his watch--would he be too late?  He had no
+idea how long it would take to reach Gravesend; he knew nothing of the
+race track's location. As the train whirled him through Emerson, where
+his mother lived, he could see the little drab cottage, and wondered
+pathetically what the good woman would say if she knew her son was going
+to a race meeting. At twelve he was in New York.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+Mortimer found that he could take an "L" train to the Bridge, and
+transfer there to another taking him direct to the course. At the
+Bridge he was thrust into a motley crowd, eager, expectant, full of
+joyous anticipation of assured good luck. He was but a tiny unit of
+this many-voiced throng; he drifted a speck on the bosom of the flood
+that poured into the waiting race train. He was tossed into a seat by
+the swirling tide, and as the train moved he looked at his fellow-
+passengers. There was a pleasant air of opulence all about him. Gold
+chains of fair prominence, diamonds of lustrous hue, decorated the
+always rotund figures. He fell to wondering why the men were all of a
+gross physique; why did the ladies wear dresses of such interminable
+variety of color; from whence came the money for this plethora of rich
+apparel?
+
+The race literature that had come Mortimer's way had generally dealt
+with the unfortunate part of racing. Somehow he had got the impression
+that everybody lost money at it. He was sure Alan Porter had, also the
+father.
+
+True, on the train were some bearing undeniable evidences of poverty;
+but not many. One man of this latter unfortunate aspect sat next him.
+His whole appearance was suggestive of the shady side of life. With the
+industry of a student he pored over a disheveled sporting paper for half
+an hour, then throwing it under the seat he cast a furtive look at his
+neighbor, and presently said, "Dere'll be big fields to-day."
+
+"That's too bad," Mortimer answered, through ignorance, thinking that
+the other referred to perhaps a considerable walk across country to
+reach the course.
+
+"I like it," declared the man of sad drapery; "it means long odds if
+you're next somethin' good."
+
+Mortimer confined his remarks to a brief "Oh!" for the other man might
+as well have been speaking Choctaw.
+
+"Have you doped 'em out for de Derby?" asked the stranger.
+
+Mortimer shook his head. Whatever it was it was connected with horse
+racing, and he felt sure that he hadn't done it.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you somethin'--will you put down a good bet if I steer
+you straight?"
+
+Mortimer was growing weary; his mind, troubled by the frightful disaster
+that threatened Allis's family, wanted to draw within itself and ponder
+deeply over a proper course of action; so he answered: "My dear sir, I'm
+afraid you're mistaken. I never bet on races. But I thank you for your
+kind offer."
+
+The unwashed face looked at him in blank amazement, then it wrinkled in
+a mirthful laugh of derision. "What d' 'ell you goin' to Gravesend for,
+den?  Blamed if I don't believe you dough--you look it. Say, is dat
+straight goods--did you never have a bet in your life?"
+
+"Never did."
+
+"Well, I'm damned!  Say, I believe you've got de best of it, dough.
+Wish I'd never bucked ag'in' de bookies."
+
+"Why don't you stop it now, then?"
+
+"Say, pard, do you drink?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Smoke?"
+
+"No."
+
+A hopeless air of utter defeat came into the thin, sharp face. Its owner
+had been searching for a simile. He wanted to point a moral and he
+couldn't find it. The young man at his elbow was too immaculate. He
+tried to explain: "Racin's like any other locoed t'ing--it's like
+tobacco, or drink, or stealin' money out of a bank--"
+
+Mortimer shivered. He had felt a moral superiority in denying the
+implied bad habits.
+
+"It's like any of 'em," continued the ragged philosopher; "a guy starts
+simply as a kid, an' he gets de t'row-down. He takes a bracer at
+himself, and swears he'll give it de go-by, but he can't--not on your
+life."
+
+Mortimer had read much about confidence men, and half expected that his
+self-imposed acquaintance would try to borrow money, but he was
+disillusionized presently.
+
+"But de ring ain't broke Ole Bill yet. I'll clean up a t'ousand to-day
+--say, I like your mug; you ain't no stiff, or I miss my guess, an' I'll
+put you, next a good t'ing, damme if I don't, an' you don't need to
+divvy up, neither. Dere's a chestnut runnin' in de Derby what dey call
+Larcen, an' I'm goin' to plank down a hun'red chicks on him."
+
+He detected a look of incredulous unbelief in Mortimer's face,
+evidently, for he added, "You t'ink I ain't got no dough, eh?" He dug
+down into the folds of his somewhat voluminous "pants" and drew forth a
+fair-sized roll. "See?  That wad goes to Larcen straight. I see him do
+a gallop good enough for my stuf; but dey got a stable-boy on him, an'
+dat's why he'll be ten to one. But dat don't cut no ice wit' me. He'll
+be out for de goods; it's a gal owns him, an' dere'll be nut'in' doin'.
+Gal's name's Porter."
+
+Again Mortimer started. What a little world it was, to be sure! Even
+here on the ferry boat, crowded with men of unchristian aspect, he heard
+the name of the woman he loved, and standing symbolical of honesty.
+
+"What's the name of this--this horse?" he asked.
+
+"Larcen."
+
+"Do you mean Lauzanne?"
+
+"Yes, dat's it. I jes' heered it, an' I t'ought it was Larcen. You've
+got it straight, stranger. Say, are you wise to anyt'in'?"
+
+"Not about the horse; but I know the people--the young lady; and they'll
+win if they can--that's sure."
+
+"Dere won't be many dead 'uns in de Derby. First money's good enough
+fer most of de owners. First horse, I see him gallop like a good 'un.
+An' I'm a piker; I like a bit of odds fer my stuff."
+
+Mortimer saw the other occupants of the train moving toward the front
+end.
+
+"I guess we're dere," said his companion; "perhaps I'll see you on de
+course. If you make a break to-day, play Larcen; he'll win. Say, I
+didn't catch your name."
+
+"Mortimer."
+
+"Well, take care of yourself, Mr. Morton. See you later."
+
+*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+In his ignorance of a race meet Mortimer had felt sure he would be able
+to find Alan Porter without trouble. The true difficulty of his quest
+soon dawned upon him. Wedged into the pushing, shoving, hurrying crowd,
+in three minutes he had completely lost himself. A dozen times he
+rearranged his bearings, taking a certain flight of steps leading up to
+the grand stand as the base of his peregrinations; a dozen times he
+returned to this point, having accomplished nothing but complete
+bewilderment.
+
+He asked questions, but the men he addressed were too busy to bother
+with him; some did not hear, others stared at him in distrust, and many
+tendered flippant remarks, such as "Ask a policeman;" "You'll find him
+in the bar;" "He's gone to Europe."
+
+Even Mortimer's unpracticed mind realized speedily that it would be
+nothing short of a miracle if he were to find anyone in all those
+inpatient thousands who even knew the person he was seeking. One young
+man he spoke to declared that he knew Alan Porter quite well; he was a
+great friend of his; he'd find him in a minute. This obliging
+stranger's quest led them into the long race track bar room, which
+somehow or other suggested to Mortimer a cattle shambles.
+
+Behind the bar young men in white coats, even some in their shirt
+sleeves, were setting forth on its top, with feverish haste, clinking
+glasses that foamed and fretted much like the thirsty souls who called
+vociferously for liquid refreshment. Everybody seemed on fire--burnt up
+by the thirst of a consuming fever, the fever of speculation.
+
+Mortimer's new friend suggested that they indulge in beer while waiting
+for the sought one's appearance, and waxing confidential he assured his
+quarry that he had a leadpipe cinch for the next race--it couldn't lose.
+The trainer was a bosom friend of his; a sort of hybrid brother in
+friendship. He himself was no tipster, he was an owner; he even went
+the length of flashing a bright yellow badge, as occult evidence of his
+standing.
+
+These matters did not interest the searcher in the slightest; they only
+wasted his precious time. If he did not find Alan Porter soon the
+stolen money would be lost, he felt sure.
+
+"I must find my friend," he said, cutting the garrulous man short.
+"Excuse me, I'll go and look for him."
+
+But the other was insistent; ferret-like, he had unearthed good meat--a
+rare green one--and he felt indisposed to let his prey escape. His
+insistence matured into insolence as Mortimer spoke somewhat sharply to
+him. Ignorant of racing as the latter was, he was hardly a man to take
+liberties with once he recognized the infringement. The enormity of his
+mission and the possibility that it might be frustrated by his
+undesirable tormentor, made him savage. Raised to quick fury by a
+vicious remark of the tout who held him in leash, he suddenly stretched
+out a strong hand, and, seizing his insulter by the collar, gave him a
+quick twist that laid him on his back. Mortimer held him there,
+squirming for a full minute, while men gathered so close that the air
+became stifling.
+
+Presently a heavy hand was laid on Mortimer's shoulder and a gruff
+policeman's voice asked, "What's the matter here?"
+
+"Nothing much," Mortimer replied, releasing his hold and straightening
+up; "this blackguard wanted me to bet on some horse, and when I refused,
+insulted me; that's all."
+
+The other man had risen, his face purple from the twist at his throat.
+The officer looked at him.
+
+"At it again, Mr. Bunco. I'll take care of him," he continued, turning
+to Mortimer. "He's a tout. Out you go," this to the other man. Then,
+tickled in the ribs by the end of the policeman's baton, the tout was
+driven from the enclosure; the spectators merged into a larger crowd,
+and Mortimer was left once more to pursue his fruitless search.
+
+As he emerged into the open of the lawn he saw a gentleman standing
+somewhat listlessly, self-absorbed, as though he were not a party to the
+incessant turmoil of the others, who were as men mad.
+
+With a faith born of limited experience, Mortimer risked another hazard.
+He would ask this complacent one for guidance. What he had to do
+justified all chances of rebuke.
+
+"Pardon me, sir," he began, "I am looking for a young friend of mine
+whose people own race horses. Where would I be likely to find him?"
+
+"If he's an owner he'll probably be in the paddock," replied the
+composed one.
+
+"Could you tell me where the paddock is?"
+
+"To the right," and sweeping his arm in that direction the stranger sank
+back into his inner consciousness, and blinked his eyes languidly, as
+though the unusual exertion of answering his inquisitor's questions had
+decidedly bored him.
+
+"That man is one in a thousand; yea, forty thousand, for he is a
+stranger to excitement," Mortimer said to himself, as he strode rapidly
+across the grass to a gate which opened in the direction the other had
+indicated. His eagerness had almost carried him through the gateway
+when a strong arm thrown across his chest, none too gently, barred his
+further progress.
+
+"Show your badge, please," cried a voice.
+
+Mortimer exposed the pasteboard he had acquired on his entry to the
+stand.
+
+"You can't pass in here," said the guardian; "that's only good for the
+stand."
+
+"But," began Mortimer.
+
+"Stand aside--make room, please!" from the gatekeeper, cut short his
+conversation.
+
+Others were waiting to pass through. In despair he gave up his
+untenable place, and once more was swallowed in the maelstrom of
+humanity that eddied about the stand enclosure.
+
+As he was heading for his rock of locality, the stairway, hurrying
+somewhat recklessly, he ran with disturbing violence full tilt into a
+man who had erratically turned to his left, when according to all laws
+of the road he should have kept straight on.
+
+"I beg pardon--" began Mortimer; then stared in blank amazement, cutting
+short his apology. The victim of his assault was Mr. Crane. The
+latter's close-lidded eyes had rounded open perceptibly in a look of
+surprise.
+
+"Mr. Mortimer!" he exclaimed, "You here?  May I ask who's running the
+bank?"
+
+Anxious about the stolen money the sudden advent of Crane on his
+immediate horizon threw the young man into momentary confusion. "My
+mother was ill--I got leave--I had to see Alan Porter--I've come here to
+find him. They'll manage all right at the bank without me."
+
+He fired his volley of explanation at his employer with the rapidity of
+a Maxim gun. Truth and what he considered excusable falsehood came
+forth with equal volubility. Crane, somewhat mollified, and feeling
+that at first he had spoken rather sharply, became more gracious. At
+sight of Mortimer he had concluded that it was to see Allis the young
+man had come, perhaps at her instigation.
+
+"Have you seen Alan Porter, sir?" Mortimer asked, anxiously.
+
+"I did, but that was about an hour ago. You will probably find him"--he
+was going to say--"in the paddock with his sister," but for reasons he
+refrained; "let me see, most likely sitting up in the grand stand."
+
+As Mortimer stood scanning the sea of faces that rose wave on wave above
+him, Mr. Crane said, "I hope you found your mother better. If I see
+Alan I'll tell him you are looking for him."
+
+When Mortimer turned around Crane had gone. He had meant to ask about
+the race Porter's horse Lauzanne was in, but had hesitated for fear he
+should say something which might give rise to a suspicion of his errand.
+He heard the rolling thunder of hoof beats in the air. From where he
+stood, over the heads of many people he could see gaudy colored silk
+jackets coming swiftly up the broad straight boulevard of the race
+course; even as he looked they passed by with a peculiar bobbing up-and-
+down motion. The effect was grotesque, for he could not see the horses,
+could not see the motive power which carried the bright-colored riders
+at such a terrific pace.
+
+A thought flashed through his mind that it might be the Derby.
+
+"What race is that?" he asked of one who stood at his elbow.
+
+The man's face wore a sullen, discontented look, and no wonder, for he
+had, with misplaced confidence, wagered many dollars on a horse that was
+even then prancing gaily in many yards behind the winner.
+
+"Do you know what race that was?" Mortimer repeated, thinking the silent
+one had not heard him.
+
+"Why don't you look at your race card?" retorted the jaundiced loser,
+transporting himself and his troubles to the haven of liquid
+consolation.
+
+His answer, curt as it was, gave Mortimer an inspiration. He looked
+about and saw many men consulting small paper pamphlets; they were like
+people in an art gallery, catalogue in hand.
+
+By chance, Mortimer observed a young man selling these race catalogues,
+as he innocently named them. He procured one, and the seller in answer
+to a question told him it was the third race he had just seen, and the
+next would be the Brooklyn Derby.
+
+There it was, all set forth in the programme he had just purchased.
+Seven horses to start, all with names unfamiliar except The Dutchman and
+Lauzanne. He had almost given up looking for Alan; it seemed so
+hopeless. At any rate he had tried his best to save the boy's honor;
+told deliberate lies to do it. Now it was pretty much in the hands of
+fate. He remembered what Alan had said about The Dutchman's certain
+chance of winning the coming race. He felt that if the horse won, Alan
+would put back the stolen thousand dollars; if not, where would the boy
+get money to cover up his theft?
+
+It had seemed to Mortimer a foolish, desperate thing to risk money on
+anything so uncertain as a horse race; but here was at stake the honor
+of a bright, splendid young man--even the happiness of his parents,
+which the poor, deluded boy had wagered on one horse's chance of winning
+against six others. It was terrible. Mortimer shuddered, and closed
+his eyes when he thought of the misery, the shame, that would come to
+Allis and her mother when they knew, as they must, if Crane's horse were
+beaten, that the son was a thief. Oh, God! why couldn't he find the boy
+and save him before it was too late?  Probably Alan had already betted
+the money; but even if that were so, he had vain visions of forcing the
+man who had received the stolen thousand to disgorge. No one had a
+right to receive stolen money; and if necessary, Mortimer would give him
+to understand that he was making himself a party to the crime.
+
+But the mere fact that he couldn't find Alan Porter rendered him as
+helpless as a babe; he might as well have remained in the bank that day.
+How willingly he would have hastened back and replaced the money if he
+but had it. For Allis's sake he would have beggared himself, would have
+sacrificed a hundred times that sum to save her from the unutterable
+misery that must come if her brother were denounced as a felon. The
+love that was in him was overmastering him.
+
+He was roused from his despondent train of thought by speech that struck
+with familiar jar upon his ear. It was the voice of the man who had
+descanted on the pleasures of betting during their journey from New
+York.
+
+"What dye t'ink of it, pard?" was the first salutation.
+
+Mortimer stammered the weak information that he didn't know what to
+think of it.
+
+"Dere ain't no flies on us to-day--I'm knockin' 'em out in great shape.
+Can't pick a loser, blamed if I can. I've lined up for a cash-in tree
+times, an' I'll make it four straight, sure. Larcen'll come home all
+alone; you see if he don't."
+
+"I hope so," rejoined Mortimer.
+
+"I say, Mister Morton, put down a bet on him--he's good business; put a
+'V' on, an' rake down fifty--dat'll pay your ex's. De talent's goin'
+for De Dutchman, but don't make no mistake about de other, he'll win."
+
+In an instant the young man knew why this persistent worrier of a
+tortured spirit had been sent him. Fate gave him the cue; it whispered
+in his ear, "Put down a hundred--you have it--and win a thousand; then
+you can save Alan Porter--can keep this misery from the girl that is to
+you as your own life."
+
+Mortimer listened eagerly; to the babbler at his side; to the whisper in
+his ear; to himself, that spoke within himself. Even if it were not all
+true, if Lauzanne were beaten, what of it?  He would lose a hundred
+dollars, but that would not ruin him; it would cause him to save and
+pinch a little, but he was accustomed to self-denial.
+
+"Will the betting men take a hundred dollars from me on this horse,
+Lauzanne?" he asked, after the minute's pause, during which these
+thoughts had flashed through his mind.
+
+"Will dey take a hundred?  Will dey take a t'ousand!  Say, what you
+givin' me?"
+
+"If Lauzanne won, I'd win a thousand, would I?"
+
+"If you put it down straight; but you might play safe--split de hundred,
+fifty each way, win an' show; Larcen'll be one, two, tree, sure."
+
+"I want to win a thousand," declared Mortimer.
+
+"Den you've got to plump fer a win; he's ten to one."
+
+Mortimer could hardly understand himself; he was falling in with the
+betting idea. It was an age since he stood at his desk in that bank,
+abhorrent of all gambling methods, to the present moment, when he was
+actually drawing from his pocket a roll of bills with which to bet on a
+horse.
+
+He took a despairing look through the thicket of human beings that made
+a living forest all about, in a last endeavor to discover Alan Porter.
+Not three paces away a uniquely familiar figure was threading in and out
+the changing maze-it was Mike Gaynor.
+
+Mortimer broke from his friend, and with quick steps reached the
+trainer's side.
+
+"I want to find Alan Porter," he said, in answer to Gaynor's surprised
+salutation.
+
+"He was in the paddock a bit ago," answered Mike; "he moight be there
+still."
+
+Almost involuntarily Mortimer, as he talked, had edged back toward his
+friend of disconsolate raggedness.
+
+"I wanted to go in there--I'd like to go now to find him, but they won't
+let me through the gate."
+
+"No more they will," answered Mike, with untruthful readiness, for all
+at once it occurred to him that if Mortimer got to the paddock he might
+run up against Allis and recognize her.
+
+"De gent could buy a badge and get in," volunteered Old Bill.
+
+The lid of Mike's right eye drooped like the slide of a lantern, as he
+answered: "He couldn't get wan now--it's too late; just wait ye here,
+sir, and if the b'y's there wit' the nags, I'll sind him out."
+
+Old Bill made no comment upon Mike's diplomatic misstatement anent the
+badge, for he had observed the wink, and held true to the masonry which
+exists between race-course regulars.
+
+"Yes, please send him out then, Mr. Gaynor; it's important."
+
+"I'm in a hurry meself," said Mike; "I just come out fer a minute; see
+here," and he nodded his head sideways to Mortimer. The latter walked by
+his side for a few steps.
+
+"Who's that guy?" asked the Trainer.
+
+"I don't know; he calls himself Old Bill."
+
+"Well, ye best look out--he looks purty tough. What's he playin' ye
+fer?"
+
+"He advised me to bet money on Lauzanne."
+
+"The divil he did!  What th' yellow moon does he know about the
+Chestnut; did ye back him?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Are ye goin' to?"
+
+"I don't know. Do you think Lauzanne might come in first?"
+
+A slight smile relaxed the habitually drawn muscles of Mike's grim
+visage; it was moons since he had heard anybody talk of a horse "coming
+in first;" he was indeed a green bettor, this, young man of the counting
+house. What was he doing there betting at all, Mike wondered. It must
+be because of his interest in the girl, his reason answered.
+
+"I tink he'll win if he does his best for her."
+
+"Does his best for who?"
+
+Mike got to cover; his ungoverned tongue was always playing him tricks.
+
+"Miss Allis is managin' the horses," he explained, very deliberately,
+"an' there's a new b'y up on Lauzanne's back, d'ye onderstand; an' if
+the Chestnut doesn't sulk, does his best fer the young misthress that'll
+be watchin' him here in the stand wit' tears in her eyes, he moight win
+--d'ye onderstand?"
+
+Yes, Mortimer understood; it seemed quite clear, for Mike had been to
+some pains to cover up the slip he had made.
+
+"Now I must go," he continued; "an' ye needn't come in the paddock--if
+the b'y is there, I'll sind him out."
+
+When Alan's seeker returned to Old Bill, he said, "Mr. Gaynor thinks
+your choice might come in first."
+
+"Why was Irish steerin' you clear of de paddock?" asked the other.
+
+"I suppose it was to save me the expense of buying a ticket for it."
+
+The other man said nothing further, but the remembrance of Mike's wink
+convinced him that this was not the sole reason.
+
+They waited for young Porter's appearance, but he did not come. "The
+geezer yer waitin' fer is not in dere or he'd a-showed up," said Old
+Bill; "an' if yer goin' to take de tip, we'd better skip to de ring an'
+see what's doin'."
+
+Mortimer had once visited the stock exchange in New York. He could not
+help but think how like unto it was the betting ring with its horde of
+pushing, struggling humans, as he wormed his way in, following close on
+Old Bill's heels. There was a sort of mechanical aptness in his
+leader's way of displacing men in his path. Mortimer realized that but
+for his guide he never would have penetrated beyond the outer shell of
+the buzzing hive. Even then he hoped that he might, by the direction of
+chance, see Alan Porter. The issue at stake, and the prospect of its
+solution through his unwonted betting endeavor, was dispelling his
+inherent antipathy to gambling; he was becoming like one drunken with
+the glamour of a new delight; his continued desire to discover young
+Porter was more a rendering of tithes to his former god of chastity
+which he was about to shatter.
+
+Two days before betting on horse races was a crime of indecent enormity;
+now it seemed absolutely excusable, justified, almost something to be
+eagerly approved of. Their ingress, though strenuous, was devoid of
+rapidity; so, beyond much bracing of muscles, there was little to take
+cognizance of except his own mental transformation. Once he had known a
+minister, a very good man indeed, who had been forced into a fight. The
+clergyman had acted his unwilling part with such muscular enthusiasm
+that his brutish opponent had been reduced to the lethargic condition of
+inanimate pulp. Mortimer compared his present exploit with that of his
+friend, the clergyman; he felt that he was very much in the same boat.
+He was eager to have the bet made and get out into the less congested
+air; his companions of the betting ring were not men to tarry among in
+the way of moral recreation.
+
+The mob agitated itself in waves; sometimes he and Old Bill were carried
+almost across the building by the wash of the living tide as it set in
+that direction; then an undertow would sweep them back again close to
+their starting point. The individual members of the throng were
+certainly possessed of innumerable elbows, and large jointed knees, and
+boots that were forever raking at his heels or his corns. They seemed
+taller, too, than men in the open; strive as he might he could see
+nothing--nothing but heads that topped him in every direction. Once the
+proud possessor of a dreadful cigar of unrivaled odor became sandwiched
+between him and his fellow-pilgrim; he was down wind from the weed and
+its worker, and the result was all but asphyxiation.
+
+At last they reached some sort of a harbor; it was evidently an inlet
+for which his pilot had been sailing. A much composed man in a tweed
+suit, across which screamed lines of gaudy color, sat on a camp stool,
+with a weary, tolerant look on his browned face; in his hand was a card
+on which was penciled the names of the Derby runners with their
+commercial standing in the betting mart.
+
+Old Bill craned his neck over the shoulder of the sitting man, scanned
+the book, and turning to Mortimer said, "Larcen's nine to one now;
+dey're cuttin' him--wish I'd took tens; let's go down de line."
+
+They pushed out into the sea again, and were buffeted of the human
+waves; from time to time Old Bill anchored for a few seconds in the tiny
+harbor which surrounded each bookmaker; but it was as though they were
+all in league--the same odds on every list.
+
+"It's same as a 'sociation book," he grunted; "de cut holds in every
+blasted one of 'em. Here's Jakey Faust," he added, suddenly; "let's try
+him."
+
+"What price's Laxcen?" he asked of the fat bookmaker.
+
+"What race is he in?" questioned the penciler.
+
+"Din race; what you givin' me!"
+
+"Don't know the horse."
+
+Mortimer interposed. "The gentleman means Lauzanne," he explained.
+
+Faust glared in the speaker's face. "Why th' 'll don't he talk English
+then; I'm no Chinaman, or a mind reader, to guess what he wants.
+Lauzanne is nine to one; how much dye want?"
+
+"Lay me ten?" asked Old Bill of the bookmaker.
+
+"To how much?"
+
+"A hun'red; an' me frien' wants a hun'red on, too."
+
+"I'll do it," declared Faust, impatiently. "Ten hundred to one,
+Lauzanne!" he called over his shoulder to his clerk, taking the bettor's
+money; an' the number is--?"
+
+"Twenty-five, tree-four-six!" answered Old Bill. "Pass him yer dust,"
+he continued, turning to his companion.
+
+The latter handed his money to Faust.
+
+"Lauzanne!" advised Old Bill.
+
+"A thousand-to-hundred-Lauzanne, win; an' the number is" he stretched
+out his hand, and turning over Mortimer's dangling badge, read aloud,
+"Twenty-five, three-five-seven."
+
+He took a sharp look at the two men; his practised eye told him they
+were not plungers, more of the class that usually bet ten dollars at the
+outside; they were evidently betting on information; two one-hundred-
+dollar bets coming together on Lauzanne probably meant stable money.
+
+"Let's git out, mister," cried Old Bill, clutching Mortimer's arm.
+
+"Don't I get anything--a receipt, or--"
+
+Faust heard this and laughed derisively. "You won't need nothin' to
+show for this money," he said.
+
+"We'll be roun' at de back in a few minutes fer a couple of t'ou',"
+retorted Old Bill. "Let's cut trough here," he added to his companion,
+making a passage between the bookmakers.
+
+Bill's knowledge of the local geography was good, and skirting the crowd
+they were soon out on the lawn.
+
+"Let's watch de parade," Mortimer's adjutant suggested, and he led the
+way down to the course, where they stood against the rail, waiting.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+During this time there was a bustle of much interest in the paddock.
+Allis, ready dressed in the Porter colors, had been driven to the course
+half an hour before the time set for the Derby. Her face was as
+satisfactorily disguised with dust as though she had ridden three races.
+
+Mike assiduously attended to every detail; even the weighing, thanks to
+his officious care, was a matter of not more than one minute. The
+girl's weight was one hundred and ten pounds, the saddle brought it up
+to one hundred and thirteen. She would have to ride at least two pounds
+overweight, for the horse's impost was one hundred and eleven. Lauzanne
+was being led in a circle by a boy, so Allis shielded herself from the
+general gaze in his empty stall. She felt quite sure that nobody there
+would recognize her, unless, perhaps, Philip Crane. He was rarely seen
+in the paddock, but might this day come out to view The Dutchman. The
+latter horse came in for a great deal of attention, for he had been
+steadily backed down to the position of equal favorite with White Moth.
+
+At last there was the summons to saddle, and Lauzanne was brought into
+the stall by Dixon. Then the door was shrouded by an ever-changing
+semicircle of curious observers. Allis gave a little start and turned
+her head away as Crane, pushing through the others, stood just inside
+the stall and spoke to Dixon.
+
+"Your horse looks very well; I hope you win, if I don't."
+
+"He's as good as we could make him," answered the Trainer, as he
+adjusted the weight cloth.
+
+"Is Miss Porter here?" were Crane's next words, quite in the tone of a
+casually interested friend.
+
+"She may be in the stand," Dixon answered, without turning his head.
+Mike had deliberately interposed his body between Allis and the doorway.
+To the girl's relief, without further comment, Crane quietly moved away.
+
+"Excuse me, Al, fer standin' in front av ye," said Mike, "but these
+outsiders is enough to make a b'y narvous the way they stare at him.
+Alan Porter was in the paddock a minute ago askin' fer his sister, but I
+hustled him out, telling him ye--I mean she--was in the stand."
+
+"Thank you, Mike; you're a good friend," replied the girl, gratefully.
+
+Dixon had never taken so much care over the preparation of a horse for a
+race in all his life; and at last everything was as perfect as it could
+possibly be made. Lauzanne's behavior gladdened the girl's heart; he
+was as supremely indifferent to the saddling, to the staring of the
+people, to the scent of battle that was in the soft summer air, as
+though he were in his own stable at home. Not a muscle of his huge
+flank trembled. Once, as the bridle rein was loosened for an instant, he
+half turned in the stall, curved his neck and stretched his golden
+nozzle toward the small figure in blue silk, as though he fain would
+make sure by scent that one of his natural enemies, a man jockey, had
+not been thrust upon him. Allis understood this questioning movement,
+and reaching out her hand rubbed the gray velvet of his nose. But for
+the restraining rein, tightened quickly by the boy who held him,
+Lauzanne would have snuggled his head against his little mistress.
+
+"They understand each other," said Dixon to Mike, in an undertone;
+"we'll get all that's in him this trip."
+
+"Bot' t'umbs up! if he doesn't come home alone I'll eat me hat. The
+sharks'll get a knock this journey, that'll make 'em take a tumble to
+themselves."
+
+Dixon stepped back to the corner where Allis was and said: "I guess I
+can't give you no orders. He's a bit sluggish at the post, an' a few
+false breaks won't hurt him none. Just don't be afraid, that's all. A
+mile an' a half's a long journey, an' you'll have plenty of time to take
+their measure. He's sure to get away last, but that won't matter;
+there'll be plenty of openin's to get through after you've gone a mile.
+Just keep your eye on The Dutchman--he's a stayer from 'way back; an'
+Westley may kid you that he's beat comin' up the stretch, for he's slick
+as they make them, an' then come with a rattle at the finish an' nose
+you out on the post. Don't never let up once you're into the stretch;
+if you're ten lengths ahead don't let the Chestnut down, but keep a good
+holt on him, an' finish as though they was all lapped on your quarter.
+There's a horse in the race I don't understand; he can no more get a
+mile an' a half than I could; it's the Indian, an' why they're puttin'
+up the startin' price beats me, unless"--and he lowered his voice to a
+whisper--"there's a job to carry Lauzanne, or White Moth, or somethin'
+off their feet. Just watch the Indian, an' don't let him shut you in on
+the rail if you can help it. They've put up Redpath, an' that beats me,
+too, for I think he's straight. But the Indian hasn't a ghost of a
+chance to win. You'd better take a whip."
+
+"I don't want either whip or spurs," answered the girl. "Lauzanne will
+do better without them."
+
+"I know that, but take a whip--something else in the race might need it;
+an' if you have to use it, use it good an' strong. If Langdon lodges an
+objection I can make him quit."
+
+Over at The Dutchman's stall there was a very confindent party. Their
+horse would go to the post as fit as any thoroughbred had ever stripped.
+Langdon was a great trainer--there was no doubt about that; if there had
+been Crane would have discovered it and changed his executive officer.
+The tall son of Hanover was lean of flesh, but gross in muscle. He was
+as though an Angelo had chiseled with sure hand from his neck, and ribs,
+and buttocks all the marble of useless waste, and left untouched in
+sinewy beauty layer on layer, each muscle, and thew, and cord. Flat-
+boned and wide the black-glossed legs, and over the corded form a silken
+skin of dull fire-red. From the big eyes gleamed an expectant delight
+of the struggle; not sluggishly indifferent, as was Lauzanne's, but
+knowing of the fray and joyous in its welcome.
+
+"He'll win on a tight rein," confided Langdon to Jockey Westley; "he's
+the greatest Hanover in the land. There's a dozen races bottled up in
+that carcass"--and he slapped the big Bay lovingly on the rump"--but if
+you're put to it, Bill, you can call on him fer the full dozen today.
+There's nothin' to it but yourself and White Moth."
+
+Carelessly he stepped to the back of the stall, touching Westley as he
+passed. Kicking the loose dirt with his toes, and bending his head to
+bury his voice, Langdon continued in a subdued tone: "The Indian'll cut
+out the pace so fast that it'll choke off Lauzanne. The Chestnut's a
+plugger an' ain't no good when it comes to gallopin'. If you was to all
+loaf aroun' he might hang on an' finish in front; but the pace'll kill
+him--it'll break his heart; the fast goin'll lay out White Moth, too,
+for she'll go to the front an' die away after a mile an' a quarter.
+Just nurse the Bay, an' let the others fight the Indian. But don't loaf
+an' let Lauzanne get near you, fer he can keep up a puddlin' gait all
+day. There ain't nothin' else in the race I'm afraid of; there ain't
+one of them can last a mile an' a half."  Then he added, with a
+disagreeable chuckle--it was like the slobbering laugh of a hyena--"I
+miss my guess if the boy on Lauzanne kills himself tryin' to win anyway.
+He seems a fair lad, but you can ride rings 'round him, Bill."
+
+"I'll put up a good ride on The Dutchman, an' I think we'll ketch the
+Judge's eye," replied Westley. "It doesn't seem to stand for it that a
+stable-boy on a bad horse like Lauzanne is goin' to beat me out."
+
+"The boss says you're to have two thousand fer winnin', Westley, so
+don't make no mistake. I wasn't goin' to tell you this afore you went
+out, fer fear it'd make you too eager. Many a race's been thrown away
+by a boy bein' too keen, an' makin' his run too early in the game; but
+you've a good head and might as well know what you're to have. There's
+the bugle; get up."
+
+Eager hands stripped the blanket that had been thrown over The Dutchman;
+Westley was lifted into the saddle, and the gallant Bay led out by
+Langdon.
+
+In front strode White Moth; one by one the others, and last, seventh,
+Allis's fatal number, lagged Lauzanne, lazily loafing along as though he
+regretted leaving the stall.
+
+As the horses passed to the course, Crane, who had followed The Dutchman
+to the gate, raised his eyes from scanning Lauzanne to the rider on his
+back. It was just a look of languid interest in the apprentice boy
+Dixon had put up instead of such a good jockey as Redpath. The face
+rivetted his attention; something in the line of the cheek recalled a
+face he had constantly in view.
+
+"For an instant I thought that was Alan Porter on Lauzanne," he said to
+Langdon, who was at his elbow. "A strange fancy--I'm going up to the
+stand to watch the race:"
+
+"It's all roight but the win now," said Mike to Dixon. "I'm goin' in be
+the Judges' box to watch the finish. You'll be helpin' the b'y pass the
+scales, Andy."
+
+As Allis passed the Judges' Stand in the parade she cast a quick,
+furtive look toward the people on the lawn. She seemed pilloried on an
+eminence, lifted up in pitiless prominence; would anyone detect her at
+the last moment?  Hanging over the rail in the very front she saw a pale
+face that struck a chill of fear to her heart--it was Mortimer's. She
+had not even thought of his being there. She had eluded the close
+scrutiny of all the others who were likely to recognize her, but there,
+within ten yards were eyes almost certain to penetrate her disguise.
+The girl turned her face away; she knew Mortimer well enough to think
+that if he did recognize her he would make no sign.
+
+"That's our horse," declared Old Bill, as Lauzanne passed. "He's all
+right, bet yer life; he's fit ter go all day. De geezer as trains him
+ain't no mug. Let's go up in de stand, where we can see de whole show;
+den we'll come down an' cash in. Say, pard, if dis goes through I'll
+blow you off to a bottle of de best; wine ain't none too good fer dis
+coop."
+
+Altogether it was as though Destiny had found pleasant domicile in the
+ancient clothing of Old Bill, and was using their unique wearer as a
+protective agent to ward off evil from both Mortimer and the girl. As
+they jogged toward the starting post Allis allowed Lauzanne to lag; she
+wished to avoid Redpath. But the Indian was a horse of uncertain
+temperament, and presently, with a foolish side rush, he cannoned fair
+into Lauzanne. In the melee Redpath looked full into Allis's eyes at
+short range. His face went white in an instant.
+
+"You!" he cried, pulling hard at his horse's mouth; "it's you, Miss--"
+He stopped suddenly. "God!  I'm glad I know this," he jerked between
+set teeth, as he fought the Indian, who was nearly pulling him out of
+the saddle.
+
+"It's because he'll gallop for you, isn't it?  You didn't think I was a
+wrong one--it wasn't because you couldn't trust me you took the mount
+away, was it?"
+
+The Indian, quieted by the sleepy Chestnut, was going steadier. "No;
+it's because Lauzanne won't give his running for anyone but me," the
+girl answered.
+
+The boy remained silent, thinking over why he was on the Indian. There
+was a moral obliquity about his present position; the new light of his
+discovery showed him this strongly. His feelings had been played upon
+by the owner of the Indian, at Langdon's instigation.
+
+He had been told that the Porters had not given him the mount on
+Lauzanne because they distrusted him. He had been put on the horse to
+make running for The Dutchman. There was nothing really patently
+dishonest about this arrangement, and Redpath's mind had been dulled to
+fine discrimination by the idea that he was falsely distrusted.
+
+Presently the boy spoke with sharp decision, in quick broken sentences,
+for they were nearing the Starter. "I'm in to make the running; this
+crock's got no license to win. Don't you bother about him--he'll come
+back to the others fast enough when he's done. When you want an opening
+to get through just come bang into me--I'll be next the rail; yell
+'Lauzanne,' an' I'll pull out. I'll give them blasted crooks something
+to stare at. Don't gallop your mount's head off chasing this sprinter;
+he'll be beat when we swing into the stretch. Don't go wide at the
+turn; you can have my place; I'll make it wide for something else
+though."
+
+They were at the post. Allis had not spoken; she had listened
+gratefully to Redpath's string of kindly directions. The presence of a
+friend in the race cheered her; the discovery she had dreaded had come
+as a blessing.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+Crane's words had started a train of thought in Langdon's mind. All at
+once he remembered that the face of Lauzanne's rider had a dream-like
+familiarity. He had not given it much thought before; but his owner's
+suggestion that the boy was like Alan Porter echoed in his ears. He had
+wondered where Dixon had got this new boy; why he was putting him up on
+Lauzanne instead of Redpath; it seemed a foolish thing to give the mount
+to an apprentice when a good jockey was to be had. Could it be that it
+really was Alan. The whole family were natural-born jockeys, father and
+son, even the girl, Allis.
+
+Langdon knew nothing of Alan Porter's movements--had not been interested
+enough to know. He had heard derogatory remarks about Redpath's riding
+of Lucretia in the Brooklyn Handicap; the Porters, no doubt
+dissatisfied--suspicious of the jockey--had put up Alan to insure an
+honest ride.
+
+Langdon had thought these thoughts as he passed swiftly from the paddock
+to the stand inclosure, where he stood not far from the rail, trying to
+get a good look at the lad on Lauzanne. Allis's persistently averted
+face thwarted this. The boy was inscribed on the jockey board "Al
+Mayne;" the permit to ride must be under that name. If it were really
+Alan Porter, why had he been called Mayne?  But the boy had retained the
+name "Al"--that was a contraction of Alan, no doubt.
+
+While Langdon labored over the problem of Mayne's Identity he had
+watched the horses at the post through his glasses. The Dutchman was
+behaving well, his trifle of eagerness to break away was even better
+than Lauzanne's indolent indifference. The other five were acting as
+three-year-olds are wont to act--with erratic indecision; one minute
+violent desire, and the next obstinate reluctance characterizing their
+interminable twistings, backings, and plungings. It was not for long; a
+neck or a length at the start meant little when a mile and a half
+stretched its tiring length between them and the finish post.
+
+Langdon's perplexity was cut short by the cry, "They're off!" the jingle
+of a bell, and the scurrying of many feet, as eager men rushed for
+higher points of observation in the stand.
+
+As the seven horses came thundering by, pulling double in eager
+ignorance of the long journey that lay before them, Langdon saw with
+evil satisfaction that the Indian was well out in the lead.
+
+The Dutchman was sixth, and behind, with a short awkward strength in his
+gallop, loafed Lauzanne.
+
+There was smoothness in the stride of Hanover's big son, The Dutchman;
+and his trainer, as he watched him swing with strong grace around the
+first turn, mentally fingered the ten thousand dollars that would
+shortly be his.
+
+"That skate win!" he sneered, as Lauzanne followed; "he gallops like a
+fat pig. He can't live the pace--he can't live the pace," he repeated,
+and his voice was mellow with a cheerful exultation.
+
+His observations seemed eminently truthful; Allis's horse trailed
+farther and farther behind the others. Out in front galloped with
+unseeming haste the Indian--a brown blotch of swift-gliding color. Two
+lengths from his glinting heels raced four horses in a bunch--two bays,
+a gray, and a black; so close together that they formed a small mosaic
+of mottled hue against the drab-gray background of the course stables
+beyond. Then The Dutchman, with his powerful stride, full of easy
+motion--a tireless gallop that would surely land him the winner, Langdon
+thought, as he hung with breathless interest on every move of Westley's
+body.
+
+Up in the stand Old Bill was expressing in florid racetrack speech to
+Mortimer his deductions.
+
+"Days a good kid on Larcen. See what he's doin'; he's trailin' 'em.
+Dat's where our horse gits it; he's a stretch runner, he is. Dey'll
+have bellows to mend when he tackles 'em."
+
+To Mortimer it appeared very much as though the other horses were too
+fast for Lauzanne. "Isn't he losing?" he asked of his exuberant friend.
+
+"Losin' nut'in'!  De kid ain't moved on him yet. De others is gallopin'
+der heads off; dey're chasm' de crazy skate in front. Dere's only two
+jocks in de race worth a damn--Bill Westley an' de kid on our horse. He
+knows he's got to beat Dutchy, an' he's lyin' handy by. When you see
+Dutchy move up Larcen'll come away, or I'm a goat."
+
+Mike Gaynor had taken his place on the little platform at the top of the
+steps leading to the stand. He was watching the race with intense
+interest. Would Lauzanne do his best for the girl--or would he sulk?
+He saw the terrific pace that the Indian had set the others. Would it
+discourage their horse. His judgment told him that this fast pace could
+not last, and that Lauzanne could gallop as he was going from end to end
+of the mile and a half; even faster if he so wished. Would his rider
+have the patient steadiness of nerve to wait for this fulfillment of the
+inevitable or would she become rattled and urge the horse. Mike set his
+teeth, and his nails were driven hard into his rough palms as he
+strained in sympathy with the girl's quietude.
+
+How long the Indian held on in his mad lead!  Perhaps even he might
+upset all clever calculation and last long enough to win. Already the
+gray, White Moth, had drawn out from the bunch and was second; the other
+three were dropping back in straggling order to The Dutchman, who was
+still running as he had been, strong. That was at the mile. At the
+mile and an eighth, White Moth was at the Indian's heels; The Dutchman
+had moved up into third place, two lengths away; and Lauzanne had become
+merged in the three that were already beaten. At the mile and a quarter
+a half thrill of hope came to Mike, for Lauzanne was clear of the ruck,
+and surely gaining on the leaders. And still his rider was lying low on
+the withers, just a blue blur on the dark gold of the Chestnut.
+
+"Bot' t'umbs! but they're a pair," muttered the Irishman; "be me soul, I
+t'ink they'll win."
+
+At the bottom turn into the stretch Mike could see that White Moth and
+The Dutchman had closed up on the Indian, so that they swung around the
+corner as one horse.
+
+"Gad, she's shut off!" he muttered. It was a living wall, and through
+little chinks in its quivering face he could see specks of blue close up
+where raced Lauzanne.
+
+"Poor gurl!" he gasped, "they've got her in a pocket. Damn them b'ys.
+Why did she hug the rail--she's fair t'rowed away the last chance."
+
+Halfway up the steps stood Langdon, and his coarse, evil face took on a
+look of unholy joy as Lauzanne was blotted into oblivion by the horses
+in front.
+
+"Pocketed, by God!  Clever Mister Dixon to put up a kid like that ag'in
+Westley an' the others," he sneered.
+
+Then a deafening roar went up from the stand. Somebody thrust a pair of
+broad shoulders in front of Mike's face; he leaned out far past the
+intruder, and saw the Indian sway drunkenly in his stride away from the
+rail, carrying White Moth and The Dutchman out; and into the opening he
+had left, glued to the rail, crept the chestnut form of Lauzanne.
+
+A wild yell of Irish joy escaped Mike; then he waited. Now it would be
+a race; but Lauzanne was trying, trying all by himself, for the rider
+was as still as death. Already the clamor of many voices was splitting
+the air; all over the stand it was, "The favorite wins!  The Dutchman
+wins!"  Even yet there was no beckoning call for Lauzanne; but Mike
+knew. He had said to Allis before she went out, "If ye ever get level
+wit' 'em in the straight, ye can win."
+
+And now Lauzanne's yellow head was even with the others; and soon it was
+in front. And then there were only two battling--Lauzanne and The
+Dutchman; and on the Bay, Westley was riding with whip and spur.
+
+"In a walk--in a walk, I tell you!" fairly screamed Old Bill, clutching
+at Mortimer's arm; "didn't I tell you?  We're a tousand to de good.
+Look at him, look at him!"  He had climbed halfway up Mortimer's strong
+back in his excitement. "Look at de kid! Never moved--in a walk, in a
+walk! L arcen all the way for a million!"
+
+His voice generally weak and tattered like his clothes; had risen to a
+shrill scream of exultation.
+
+It was past all doubt. Lauzanne, a length in front of The Dutchman, was
+opposite the stand; in two seconds they had flashed by the Judges' box,
+and Lauzanne had won.
+
+The wave of humanity that swept down the steps carried Mike in its front
+wash. He took his stand close to the Judges' box; there he would be
+handy for whatever might be needed. He saw Langdon with a face dark and
+lowering, full of an evil discontent, standing there too. Back the
+seven runners cantered. Lauzanne's rider saluted the judge with whip,
+and slipping from the horse stripped him of the saddle with deft
+fingers, and passed quickly into the scales. The weight was right. One
+after another the boys weighed.
+
+Watching, Mike saw Langdon pass up to the Stewards. There was a short
+consultation, the hush of something wrong, and a murmur of an objection.
+
+"What's the matter?" a voice questioned in Mike's ear. It was Alan
+Porter that had spoken.
+
+Mike pushed his way to the small gate, even through it, that led up to
+the Stewards' Stand. As he did so Langdon came back down the steps.
+One of the Stewards, following him with quick eyes, saw Mike and
+beckoned with a finger.
+
+"There's an objection to the rider of Lauzanne," said the official;
+"Trainer Langdon says Alan Porter rode the horse under a permit
+belonging to a boy named Mayne."
+
+"He's mistook, sir." answered Mike, respectfully; "there's Alan Porter
+standin' down there in the crowd. I'll sind him up, sir, an' ye can ask
+him yerself."
+
+Gaynor passed hurriedly down the steps, seized Porter by the arm, and
+whispered in his ear, "Tell the judge yer name--that a b'y named Mayne
+rode Lauzanne. Quick now."
+
+Then he stepped up to Langdon. The latter had seen Alan Porter go up
+the steps, and realized he had made a mistake. Mike drew him inside the
+little enclosure that surrounded the stand.
+
+"There's Alan Porter wit' the Stewards," Gaynor whispered close to the
+man's face; "an' ye'll withdraw the objection at once. If ye don't
+ye'll have to settle wit' the Stewards fer tryin' to bribe the b'y Mayne
+to pull Lauzanne. And Shandy has owned up that he was to get five
+hundred dollars fer dosin' Lucretia. Ye'll withdraw now, or get ruled
+off fer life; besides, p'isinin' a horse is jail business; an' I'll take
+me oath before God I can prove this, too. Now go an' withdraw quick.
+Ye're a damn blackguard."
+
+Mike had meant to restrict himself to diplomatic pressure, but his Irish
+was up like a flash, and he couldn't resist the final expression of
+wrath.
+
+A crowd of silent men had gathered about the box in a breathless wait.
+Fortunes depended upon the brief consultation that was being held
+between the Stewards.
+
+As Alan Porter came down Langdon went up the steps with nervous haste.
+"I've made a mistake, gentlemen," he said to the Stewards, "with your
+permission I'll withdraw the objection."
+
+"Yes, it's better that way," returned one of the Stewards; "the best
+horse won, and that's what racing's for. It would be a pity to spoil
+such a grand race on a technicality."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+After his first burst of aboriginal glee, ecstatically uncouth as it
+was, Old Bill's joy over the victory of Lauzanne took on a milder form
+of expression.
+
+"Let's line up fer a cash-in," he exclaimed to Mortimer, making a break
+down the steps to the lawn. On the ground he stopped, his mind working
+at fever heat, changing its methods quickly.
+
+"Let's wait till de kid's passed de scales; dere's no hurry. Dere won't
+be many drawin' down money over Larcen; he's an outsider."
+
+They were still waiting when the rumor of an objection floated like an
+impalpable shadow of evil through the enclosure. Old Bill's seamed face
+shed its mask of juvenile hilarity, and furrowed back into its normal
+condition of disgruntled bitterness. He had seen the slight mix-up when
+the Indian swerved in the straight. The objection must have to do with
+that, he thought. "What th' 'ell's th, difference," he said in fierce,
+imprecating anger; "de kid on Larcen didn't do no interferin', he jes
+come t'rough de openin' an' won-dey can't disqualify him."
+
+"What does it mean?" asked Mortimer; "what's wrong?"
+
+"De push's tryin' to steal de race; de favorite's beat, an' it's win,
+tie, or wrangle wit' 'em. If dey take de race away from Larcen we don't
+get de goods, see?  Our t'ou's up de spout. Dere he goes, dere he goes;
+look at de knocker," as Langdon came down from the Stewards.
+
+Mortimer's heart sank. An exultation such as he had never experienced
+in his life had flushed his breast hot; the back of his scalp had
+tickled in a creepy way as Lauzanne flashed first past the winning post.
+He had felt pride in the horse, in the boy on his back, in himself at
+having overcome his scruples; he would be able to save Alan Porter from
+dishonor. His heart had warmed to the tattered outcast at his side, who
+had been the means to this glorious end. It had been all over,
+accomplished; now it was again thrust back into the scales, where it
+dangled as insecure as ever. It wasn't the money alone that teetered in
+the balance, but the honor of Allis Porter's brother.
+
+He gave a sharp cry of astonishment, for going up the steps in front of
+them was the boy himself, Alan. Presently he came down again, his face
+looking drawn and perplexed. In his ignorance of everything pertaining
+to racing Mortimer feared for an instant the theft of the thousand
+dollars had been discovered, and the present inquiry had something to do
+with that, else why was Alan mixed up in it.
+
+As the boy came through the little gate Mortimer accosted him. "Hello,
+Alan!" he exclaimed, very gently, "what's the trouble?"
+
+"Just a silly mistake," answered Porter, a weak laugh following his
+words; "Langdon has claimed that I rode Lauzanne."
+
+"Is dat it?" interposed Old Bill; "an' did you tell dem dey was wrong-de
+stiffs!  Dere's cutt'roat Langdon up again; here he comes back, looking
+as tough he'd been fired fer splint--de crook! Hello! it's all right
+Hoo-ray!  Lauzanne gits de race!" For already the cry of "All right!"
+was ringing through the betting ring. "Come on, pard," called Old Bill,
+eagerly, to Mortimer; "let's go an' rake down de dough."
+
+"In a minute," the other answered; and turning to Alan Porter, took him
+by the arm and led him to one side. "I suppose you lost over The
+Dutchman," he said.
+
+"Yes, I'm broke," answered the boy, with a plaintive smile.
+
+"Well, I've won."
+
+"You betting!" exclaimed Alan, in astonishment.
+
+"Yes--strange, isn't it?  But I'm going to put that money of your
+father's back."
+
+The boy said nothing, and Mortimer fancied that his face flushed
+guiltily.
+
+"Yes, I can put it back now that Lauzanne's won," continued Mortimer;
+"but don't say a word to a soul about it, I don't want anybody to know I
+was betting."
+
+"But what money?" began Alan.
+
+"I've won a thousand dollars on Lauzanne--"
+
+"Come on, pard," said Old Bill, impatiently interrupting them, "let's
+get our rake off, an' den you kin buck to yer chum after."
+
+Mortimer yielded to the tattered one's command, for without his guidance
+he never would be able to find the man that held the money.
+
+"I'll be back in a little while," he said to young Porter; "don't go
+away."
+
+There was delay over the cashing in; being late, they found a line of
+Lauzanne men in front of them at the bookmaker's stand.
+
+When Mortimer returned to the lawn with eleven hundred dollars in his
+pocket Alan Porter had gone. He had dreaded that perhaps the boy might
+do something desperate, fearing discovery of the theft; he had thought
+even of taking Alan back to Brookfield with him; however, he had told
+him that the money would be replaced, the boy would understand that
+nothing could happen him and would go back, Mortimer felt sure. He
+spent a short time searching for Alan, but his former fruitless quest
+had shown him the hopelessness of trying to find a person in that
+immense throng. He thought kindly of the enveloping mob that had kept
+him hidden from Allis, as he thought. He had feared to meet her--
+something in his presence might cause her to suspect that something was
+wrong. The whole episode was like a fairy dream. It was a queer twist
+of Fate's web, his winning enough over Lauzanne--he, a man who had never
+betted in his life--to replace the money the brother had stolen.
+
+All at once it occurred to him that some reward was due the instigator
+of his success. The thousand he must keep intact. He had a few loose
+dollars in his pocket beyond his original hundred, quite sufficient to
+take him back to Brookfield. Taking the hundred from his pocket and
+turning to Old Bill, who was still with him, he said: "I'm going home,
+I've had enough horse racing for one day; you've done me a great
+kindness--will you take this hundred--I need the thousand badly, so
+can't spare more than this."
+
+"Not on yer life, pard. I give you de tip first, but you got de office
+straight from Irish, an' we're quits, see?  I wasn't playin' you fer a
+sucker, an' yer straight goods. Jes' shove de boodle in yer breast
+pocket, an' don't show it to no one. Dere's some here as would take it
+off you quick enough."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Dere ain't no buts in dis game--it's a straight deal, an' we've split
+even. If you'd been a crook, well, God knows how we'd a-panned out.
+But you ain't no geezer of dat sort--yer square, an' Old Bill wishes you
+good luck till de robins nest again. Yer goin', eh?  Say, pard, I'd
+a-been wearin' diamon's if I could quit when I was 'head of de game.
+Yer dead onto it. Here's my hand, Mr. Morton."
+
+"Mortimer--George Mortimer."
+
+"Well, shake, George. Where do you hang out?"
+
+"Brookfield."
+
+"My address is New York. Dat's as close a fit as I knows at present.
+If de run o' luck keeps up p'r'aps I'll write you from de Waldorf.
+Good-bye, of man."
+
+With a light heart Mortimer hastened from Gravesend, not waiting for the
+other races, and took his way to Brookfield. A genuine admiration of
+buffeted Old Bill filled his mind.
+
+In the morning he would be at the bank bright and early, and replace the
+stolen thousand dollars; nobody would know that it had been taken. The
+narrow escape that had come to Alan Porter might prove his salvation.
+Surely it would cure him of his desire to bet. Out of all this evil
+positive good would accrue.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+After winning on Lauzanne Allis had dodged the admiring crowd of paddock
+regulars that followed her. As Lauzanne was being blanketed she had
+kissed the horse's cheek and given him a mighty squeeze of thankfulness.
+How nobly he had done his part; good, dear old despised, misjudged
+Lauzanne. He had veritably saved her father from disaster; had saved
+her from--from many things.
+
+She had slipped into her long coat and stood waiting for Mike to drive
+her to Dixon's cottage when the rumor came of an objection. Then there
+had been the misery of terrible suspense, a wait of uncertainty. Was
+her sacrifice of womanly instinct to go for nothing?  Dixon had hurried
+to the scene of investigation; then he had come back after a little with
+Mike, and the good news that they had been given the race. If it had
+not been for prying eyes she would have knelt there at Lauzanne's feet
+and offered up a prayer of thankfulness. She had done all a woman could
+do, almost more; Providence had not forsaken her and her stricken
+father.
+
+Then Mike had hurried her to the buggy just as Crane, leaving the beaten
+Dutchman and Langdon, had come, asking Dixon where Miss Porter was, that
+he might tender congratulations. He wanted to see the boy that had
+ridden Lauzanne, also--wanted to take his hand and tell him what a grand
+race he had ridden. But Dixon had been ready with excuses; the boy was
+dead beat after the race--he was only a kid--and had gone to Dixon's
+home. Miss Porter was perhaps in the stand, or perhaps she had gone
+home also. Crane knew of Langdon's objection. It was a silly thing, he
+said, due to overeagerness. He had taken no part in it, he assured
+Dixon. Alan Porter, too, came into the paddock, asking for his sister;
+but fared pretty much as Crane had. He would certainly find her at the
+cottage, Dixon assured him.
+
+That night Allis wired the joyful tidings to her father, and that she
+would be home in the morning.
+
+Dr. Rathbone's prophecy as to the proper medication for John Porter
+stood a chance of being fulfilled in one day. Allis's telegram proved
+that the doctor had understood the pathology of Porter's treatment, for
+he became as a cripple who had touched the garment of a magic healer.
+
+It was thus that Allis found him when she reached Ringwood. Oh, but she
+was glad; and small wonder. What she had done was as nothing; it shrank
+into insignificance under the glamourous light of the change that had
+come over the home. What a magic wand was deserved success; how it
+touched with fairy aspect all that drooped with the fearsome blight of
+anticipated decay!  And even then they did not know the full extent of
+her endeavor. Mingled with her mother's gentle welcome, and her
+father's full-throated thanks, was praise for the, to him unknown, boy
+that had ridden Lauzanne so gallantly.
+
+The girl found tears of thankfulness glistening in her eyes as she
+listened to the praise that was wholly hers, though given in part to the
+jockey. They had not even heard his name--it had not mattered before;
+and now when her father asked for it, she answered that Mike called him
+Al something. Her father, generous in his salvation, was most
+solicitous as to a fitting present; a thousand dollars, or perhaps two,
+or even more, if Dixon advised so. What had he promised the lad?  But
+there were so many things to talk over and settle, and laugh about, and
+congratulate each other upon. Good fortune was a generous dame. They
+were all like children in their happiness. \ "Yes, Alan had been there,"
+the girl answered to a question from her father. Also it was a strange
+happening, a distortion of fate that Crane had beaten them in the
+Brooklyn with Diablo, and now they had beaten his horse, The Dutchman,
+with Lauzanne the Despised. All was content after the turmoil of
+endeavor. And of the horses, Lauzanne, who would gallop for no one but
+Allis, would be brought back to Ringwood, to be petted and spoiled of
+his young mistress for the good he had done. Lucretia, when
+convalescent, would also come to the farm to rest and get strong.
+
+In the midst of it all Dr. Rathbone came in, and of course, man-like and
+doctor-like, with pretended pomposity, said: "I told you so. What did I
+say?  Now Mrs. Porter, no more scolding over the ways of horsesa good
+horse is a delight, and a good daughter a joy forever."
+
+Dear old Dr. Rathbone, wise in his generation and big of heart!
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+At the bank down in the village--well, at nine o'clock Mortimer, feeling
+the virtue of early effort, with the money of redemption in his pocket,
+entered into the resumption of his duties. At the earliest moment after
+the vault was opened he made his way to the box that contained the
+Porter payment. One thing troubled him slightly. It was a thousand-
+dollar bill that had been taken; the money he had to replace was in
+hundreds and fifties. As he slipped them quietly into the box he
+thought it wouldn't really matter; he would transfer the three thousand
+to the account himself, and nobody would know of the change. Leaving
+the box where it was for a little, in the way of subtle strategy, he
+came out and busied himself over other matters.
+
+To Mortimer's slight astonishment, presently the cashier, Mr. Lane, came
+out from his office, and speaking somewhat carelessly, said: "Mr.
+Mortimer, you have that Porter note and money in charge. It is due
+today, isn't it?"
+
+Looking up, Mortimer saw Lane's eye fixed upon his face with piercing
+intensity. He flushed out of sheer nervousness.
+
+"Yes, sir," he stammered, "it is. I'll attend to it at once."
+
+"Ah!" there was a peculiar drawl in the cashier's voice as he spoke;
+"ah, I had a communication from Mr. Porter yesterday, asking if the note
+had been paid."
+
+Mortimer felt his knees shake-something was choking hire. Had the devil
+of mischance taken the salvation of Alan's good name out of his hands--
+had his work been for nothing.
+
+"I couldn't understand it," went on the cashier. His voice sounded like
+the clang of a fire bell to the listening man, though it was evenly
+modulated, cold and steady in its methodical precision. "I thought
+Porter knew the money was here to meet the note," said Lane, still
+speaking, "but my attention being called to the matter, I looked up the
+papers. I found one thousand dollars missing!"  He was looking steadily
+at Mortimer; his eyes were searching the young man's very soul. There
+was accusation, denunciation, abhorrence in the cashier's gaze.
+
+Mortimer did not speak. He was trying to think. His brain worked in
+erratic futility. The slangy babble of Old Bill thrust itself upon him;
+the roar of the race course was in his ears, deadening his senses; not a
+sane, relevant word rose to his lips. He was like a child stricken by
+fear. In an indistinct way he felt the dishonor that was Alan Porter's
+being given to him. The cashier waited for Mortimer to say something;
+then he spoke again, with reproach in his voice.
+
+"I at once sent a messenger to ask you to return from your home at
+Emerson to clear up this matter; he discovered that you had not been
+there; that your mother was not ill. May I ask where you were
+yesterday?"
+
+"I was at Gravesend, sir--at the races," answered Mortimer, defiantly.
+
+This speech broke the lethargy that was over him; his mind cleared--he
+commenced to think sanely.
+
+"Can you tell me," proceeded Lane, "where the balance of Mr. Porter's
+three thousand dollars is?"
+
+"It's in the box."
+
+"That's a--it is not."
+
+"It's in the box," repeated Mortimer, firmly.
+
+"We can soon settle that point," declared the cashier, going hurriedly
+into the vault and reappearing instantly with the box in his hand.
+
+He opened it and stared at the package of bills that rose up when freed
+from the pressure of the lid. With nervous fingers he counted the
+contents.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he exclaimed in a quick, jerky way. "The three
+thousand dollars is here, but these bills have been put in the box this
+morning; they were not there last night. It is not the money that was
+taken away, either. That was one bill, a thousand-dollar note; and here
+are"--he counted them again--"six one hundreds and eight fifties,
+besides the original two of one thousand. You put those notes back, Mr.
+Mortimer," he said, tapping the desk with two fingers of the right hand.
+
+"I did."
+
+"And you took the money yesterday or the day before?"
+
+"I did not."
+
+"Ah!" Lane repeated in a drier, more severe tone than he had used
+before. This "Ah" of the cashier's, with its many gradations of tone,
+had been a most useful weapon in his innumerable financial battles. It
+could be made to mean anything--everything; flung out at haphazard it
+always caught his opponent off guard; it was a subtle thrust, and while
+one pondered over its possible meaning, Lane could formulate in his mind
+more decisive expressions.
+
+"Ah," he repeated, adding, "if you did not steal the money, who did?
+And if you did not take it, why did you put it back?"
+
+With an expressive sweep of the hand outward the cashier stood waiting,
+his tall, narrow head, topped by carefully brushed gray hair, thrust
+forward in the attitude of a parrot about to strike with its beak.
+
+"I can't answer those questions," answered the man he was grilling.
+"The money to pay Mr. Porter's note is here; and I fancy that is all the
+bank needs to concern itself about. It was entrusted to me, and now I
+am prepared to turn it over."
+
+"Quite true; ah, yes, quite true; but it might have been vastly
+different. That is the point that most concerns the bank. Whoever took
+the money"--and he bowed, deprecatingly, with ironical consideration to
+Mortimer--"must have needed a thousand dollars for--well, some
+speculative purpose, perhaps. Good fortune has enabled the some one to
+make good, and the money has been replaced."
+
+The cashier straightened up, threw his head back, and actually smiled.
+He had scored linguistically--by a clever manipulation of the sentence
+he had made the some one who had stolen the money the some one who who
+had replaced it. That was accusation by inference, if you like. As the
+other did not speak, Lane added: "I will wire for Mr. Crane to come at
+once; this is a matter for investigation."
+
+Mortimer bowed his head in acquiesence; what could he say--what other
+stand could the bank take?
+
+"You might remain at your desk," the cashier said, "if there is any
+mistake we'll discover it, no doubt."
+
+Mortimer felt like one dead, indeed as a dishonored man he were better
+dead. The bank was like a mausoleum, and he a lost spirit haunting its
+precincts in quest of the undefiled body that had been his but
+yesterday. Cass, the teller, certainly shunned him as he would a leper.
+Lane, vindictively pleased that he had unearthed the villain, drew his
+small soul into a shell of cold, studious politeness; much as a sea
+spider might house his unpleasant body in a discarded castle of pink and
+white.
+
+Alan Porter was late--he had not come yet. Mortimer waited in suffering
+suspense for his appearance. What would come of it all. Now that the
+money was replaced, if the boy admitted his guilt to Crane, probably no
+further action would be taken, but he would be dishonored in the sight
+of his employer. Mortimer had sought to avert this; had not denounced
+Alan in the first instance; by good fortune had been able to replace the
+money; even now had refused to divulge the name of the thief. He was
+well aware of the mass of circumstantial evidence, the outcome of his
+own hurried actions, that pointed to himself as the guilty one. Better
+this than that he should denounce the boy. Dishonor to the lad might
+kill his father; for Mortimer was well aware of the doctor's edict. And
+Allis, the girl he loved as his life, would hang her head in shame for
+evermore. He was anxious to see Alan before the cashier did; he did not
+want the boy to deny taking the money at first, as he might do if he
+were unaware of the circumstances; it would place him in a wrong light.
+
+Just before twelve Alan Porter came hurriedly in. He had missed his
+train the night before, he explained in a general way to all. Mortimer
+stepped up to him almost at once, speaking with low, earnest rapidity;
+the cashier was in his own office and Mr. Cass was not within earshot.
+
+"I put the money back, but its loss had been discovered yesterday. I
+have been accused of taking it, but have denied it, accusing no one. I
+want you to say that you borrowed it, thinking it no great harm, as it
+was your father's money."
+
+Alan would have interrupted him, but Mortimer said, "Wait till I
+finish;" and then continued: "There will be nothing done to you, I feel
+sure, if you will take this stand, because of your father's connection
+with Crane. It will save me from dishonor--"
+
+"Mr. Porter."
+
+It was the cashier's voice of Damascus steel cutting in on Mortimer's
+low, pleading tones.
+
+Alan turned his head, and Mr. Lane, beckoning, said, "Will you step into
+my office for a minute?"
+
+The cashier's one minute drew its weary length into thirty; and when
+Alan Porter came out again, Mortimer saw the boy sought to avoid him.
+Had he denied taking the money?  My God! the full horror of Mortimer's
+hopeless position flashed upon him like the lurid light of a destroying
+forest fire. He could read in every line of the boy's face an
+accusation of himself. He had trembled when it was a question of Alan's
+dishonor; now that the ignominy was being thrust upon him, the bravery
+that he possessed in great part made him a hero. If through his
+endeavor to save the boy he was to shoulder the guilt, not of his own
+volition, but without hope of escape, he would stand to it like a man.
+What would it profit him to denounce the boy.
+
+Harking back with rapidity over his actions, and Alan's, he saw that
+everything implicated him. Once he thought of his mother and wavered;
+but she would believe him if he said he had not committed this dreadful
+crime. But all the world of Brookfield would despise the name of her
+son if it were thought that he had sought to testify falsely against his
+friend. And was not Alan the brother of Allis?
+
+Mentally his argument, his analysis of the proper course to pursue was
+tortuous, not definable, or to be explained in concise phraseology; but
+the one thought that rose paramount over all others was, that he must
+take his iniquitous punishment like a man. He had fought so strongly to
+shield the brother of the girl he loved that the cause in all its
+degradation had accrued to him.
+
+At one o'clock the president, Crane, arrived from New York, and in him
+was bitterness because of his yesterday's defeat. He had sat nearly the
+whole night through mentally submerged in the double happening that had
+swept many men from the chess board. Lauzanne, the despised, had kept
+from his hand a small fortune, even when his fingers seemed tightening
+on the coin, too. That was one happening. John Porter had gained over
+twenty thousand dollars. This made him quite independent of Crane's
+financial bolstering. The Banker's diplomacy of love had been weakened.
+That was the other happening.
+
+Crane was closeted with the cashier not more than ten minutes when
+Mortimer was asked to join the two men who had so suddenly become deeply
+interested in his affairs.
+
+The cashier's hand had been strengthened by Crane's contribution of
+evidence. Mortimer had told the same falsehood about his mother being
+ill to him at the race course. From Alan the cashier had learned that
+Mortimer had been betting heavily; he had admitted to the boy that he
+had won enough to replace the thousand dollars he had stolen.
+Mortimer's words had been contorted into that reading in their journey
+through two personalities. He had even begged young Porter not to speak
+of his betting transactions. He had denied taking the money--that was
+but natural; he had been forced to admit replacing it--that was
+conclusive. Indeed it seemed a waste of time to investigate further; it
+was utterly impossible to doubt his guilt. Mesh by mesh, like an
+enthralling net, all the different threads of convicting circumstances
+were drawn about the accused man.
+
+"Let us question him?" said Crane; and in his heart was not sorrow, nor
+hate, nor compassion, nor anything but just joy. Greater than the
+influence of money in his love ambition would be this degradation, this
+reducing to a felon a man he felt stood between him and Allis Porter.
+
+Yesterday they had won; to-day victory, almost, to him had come. Yes,
+bring the deliverer in; he would feast his eyes, the narrow-lidded eyes,
+upon the man whose young love might have conquered over all his
+diplomacy, and who would go forth from his hands branded as a felon.
+
+The probing of the already condemned man elicited nothing beyond a
+repeated denial of theft. With the precision of Mam'selle Guillotine,
+Cashier Lane lopped off everything that could possibly stand in
+Mortimer's defense, grafting into the cleaved places individual facts
+which confirmed his guilt. Mortimer contended nothing, threw suspicion
+upon no one. Was it Alan Porter?  Was it Cass?--but that was
+impossible. Was it the cashier himself?  Still more impossible.
+Mortimer answered nothing. He had not taken the money. Yes, he had
+replaced it--because he was responsible for its custody.
+
+"Can't you see," cried Crane, impatiently, "that this simple denial of
+yours is of no value as against so much that points to your--" he
+hesitated--"your implication?"
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+While Mortimer was still in the cashier's improvised inquisition room,
+Allis Porter came into the bank to arrange the payment of her father's
+note.
+
+The sunshine seemed to come with her into the counting house that was
+all gloom. Her glorious success, the consequent improvement in her
+father, the power to pay off his indebtedness--all these had turned that
+day into a day of thankfulness. The happiness that was in her rippled
+her face into smiles. When the door creaked on its hinges as it swung
+open, she laughed. It was a thriftless old door, such as bachelors
+kept, she murmured. Her brother's face, gloomy behind the iron screen,
+tickled her fancy. "You're like a caged bear, Alan," she cried, with a
+smile of impertinence; "I should hate to be shut up a day like this--no
+wonder you're cross, brother."
+
+"I'm busy," he answered, curtly. "I'll see you after bank hours, Sis; I
+want to see you."
+
+"I've come to pay father's note, busy-man-of-importance," she flung
+back, with the swagger of a capitalist.
+
+"It's paid, Allis."
+
+"Paid! I thought--"
+
+"Wait, I'll come out;" and opening a door in the rail, he passed around
+to the girl.
+
+"Father's note is paid," he resumed, "but there's fierce trouble over
+it. Crane left the money, three thousand dollars, with Mortimer, and he
+stole"--the boy's voice lowered to a hoarse whisper--"a thousand of it
+to bet at Gravesend."
+
+"That's not true, Alan; God knows it's not true. Mortimer wouldn't
+steal."
+
+"Yes, he did," persisted the brother, "and he begged of me to take the
+blame. He said it would ruin him, but that Crane wouldn't do anything
+to me. He's a vile, sneaking thief, Allis!"
+
+"Hush, Alan; don't say that. It's all some dreadful mistake. The money
+will be found somewhere."
+
+"It has been found; Mortimer put it back. Why should he replace the
+money if he had not stolen it?"
+
+"Where is Mr. Mortimer, Alan?"
+
+The boy pointed with his thumb to the door of the cashier's office.
+"Crane's in there, too. I hope Mortimer owns up. He can't do anything
+else; they caught him putting the money back."
+
+Allis remembered that she had seen Mortimer on the race course.
+
+"Mr. Mortimer doesn't bet," she said.
+
+"Yes, he does; he did yesterday, anyway; and when he saw that I knew
+about it, he begged me to say nothing--practically admitted that he had
+taken the money, and was going to put it back."
+
+"Why should he tell you that, Alan?"
+
+"I don't know, unless he feared it might be found out while he was away;
+or, perhaps he was so excited over winning a thousand dollars that he
+didn't know what he was saying. At any rate, he took it right enough,
+Allis, and you ought to cut him."
+
+"I shan't do that. He's innocent, I know he is--I don't care what they
+say. If he replaced the money, it was to shield the man who took it."
+She was looking searchingly into her brother's eyes--not that she was
+accusing him of the theft, she was just searching for the truth.
+
+"Do you mean it was to shield me--that I took it?  No one could have
+taken the money except Mortimer or myself."
+
+"I don't know," answered the girl, wearily; "it's all so terribly new; I
+only know that Mortimer did not steal it."
+
+While she was still speaking, the accused man came from the cashier's
+office, holding his head as erect as an Indian, not at all as a half-
+convicted felon should have slunk through the door; yet withal in his
+face was a look of troubled gravity.
+
+When Mortimer saw Allis his face flushed, then went pale in an instant.
+He felt that she knew; he had seen her talking earnestly to her brother.
+Probably she, too, would think him a thief. He admitted to himself that
+the evidence was sufficient to destroy anyone's faith in his innocence,
+and he was helpless, quite helpless; he was limited to simple denial,
+unless he accused her brother; even had he been so disposed, there was
+nothing to back up a denunciation of the boy. He felt a twinge of pain
+over Alan's ingratitude; the latter must know that he had put his neck
+in a noose to save him. Now that one of them needs be dishonored, why
+did not Alan prove himself a man, a Porter--they were a hero breed--and
+accept the gage of equity. Even worse, Alan was shielding himself
+behind this terrible bulwark of circumstantial evidence which topped
+him, the innocent one, on every side.
+
+As he resumed his place at his desk close to the brother and sister,
+Alan looked defiantly at him. He could see in the boy's eyes malignant
+detestation, a glimmer of triumph, as though he felt that Mortimer was
+irrevocably in the toils. The lad was like a strippling Judas; his
+attitude filled Mortimer with loathing. He stole a look into the girl's
+face. Would she, too, say with her, eyes, "Behold, here is Barabbas!"
+
+A thrill of ecstatic comfort warmed his being. In Allis's eyes was the
+first touch of kindness he had known in this hour of trial; faith, and
+sorrow, and cheer, and love were all there, striving for mastery; no
+furtive weakening, no uncertain questioning, no remonstrance of
+reproval--nothing but just unlimited faith and love. If the boy's look
+had angered him, had caused him to waver, had made the self-sacrifice
+seem too great when repaid with ingratitude, all these thoughts vanished
+in an instant, obliterated by that one look of unalterable love. In the
+hour of darkness the girl stood by him, and he would also stand firm.
+She would believe in him, and his sacrifice would be as nothing. He had
+undertaken to avert the sorrow of dishonor from her, from her brother,
+from her parents, and he would continue to the end. He would tell no
+one on earth but his mother the full truth; she must know. Then with
+the faith of the two women he loved, still his, he could brave the
+judgment of all others. Perhaps not willingly in the first place would
+he have taken upon himself the brand of Barrabas, but out of good motive
+he had incurred it.
+
+Mortimer heard the brother say, "I think you had better not," then the
+girl's voice, clear and decisive, answering, "I will, I must."
+
+In anger Alan left his sister's side, and she, stepping up to the
+wicket, said, "Will you please come out for a minute, Mr. Mortimer, I
+want to speak with you."
+
+He passed around to her side. Crane and the cashier were still closeted
+in the latter's office.
+
+"Let us go out into the sunshine," Allis said. "Can you--will it make
+any difference?"
+
+"I don't think it matters much," he answered, despondently; "things are
+as bad as they can be, I suppose."
+
+He took it for granted that she knew everything; but he was possessed of
+no shame, no diffidence, no reserve; he was innocent, and her eyes had
+assured him that she knew it. As they passed through the door it
+creaked again on its dry hinges. Before she had laughed at the weird
+complaining; now it sounded like a moan of misery. Outside the village
+street was deserted; there was no one to listen.
+
+"What is this dreadful thing all about?" and she laid her hand on his
+arm in a gesture of amity, of association. Her touch thrilled him; she
+had never gone that length in friendly demonstration before. He
+marveled at her generous faith. All but dishonored, the small, strong
+hand lifted him to a pedestal-her eyes deified him.
+
+"A thousand dollars was stolen from the bank, and I am accused of taking
+it," he answered, bitterly.
+
+"You didn't, did you?  I know you didn't, but I want to hear you say
+so."
+
+He looked full into the girl's eye, and answered with deliberate
+earnestness, "I did not steal the money."
+
+"Some one took it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you know who it was?"
+
+"I do not."
+
+"But you suspect some one?"
+
+He did not answer.
+
+"Did you put the money back?"
+
+He nodded his head.
+
+"To protect somebody's good name?"
+
+"Because it had been in my charge. I can't talk about it," he broke in,
+vehemently; "all I can say is, that I am innocent. If you believe that
+I don't care what they do. They'll be able to prove by circumstantial
+evidence that I took it," he added, bitterly, "and nothing that I can
+say will make any difference. My mother won't believe me guilty, and,
+thank God, you don't; and I am not; God knows I am not. Beyond that I
+will say nothing; it is useless--worse than useless; it would be
+criminal--would only cast suspicion on others, perhaps innocent. I
+don't know what they'll do about it; the money has been repaid. They
+may arrest me as a felon--at any rate I shall be forced to leave the
+bank and go away. It won't make much difference.--I am as I was before,
+an honest man, and I shall find other openings. It's not half so hard
+as I thought it would be; I feared perhaps that you--"
+
+She stopped him with an imploring gesture.
+
+"Let me finish," he said. "I must go back to the office. I thought
+that you might believe me a thief, and that would have been too much."
+
+"You cared for my poor opinion?" she asked. The quiver in her voice
+caused him to look into her face; he saw the gray eyes shrouded in
+tears. He was a queer thief, trembling with joy because of his sin.
+
+"Yes, I care," he answered; "and it seemed all so dark before you
+brought the sunlight in with you; now I'm glad that they've accused me;
+somebody else might have suffered and had no one to believe in him. But
+I must go back to--my prison it seems like now--when I leave you;" this
+with a weary attempt at brave mockery.
+
+Allis laid a detaining hand on his arm, the small gloved hand that had
+guided Lauzanne to victory. "If anything happens, if you are going
+away--I think you are right to go if they distrust you--you will see me
+before you leave, won't you?"
+
+"Will you care to see me if I stand branded as a thief?"  The word came
+very hard, but in his acridity he felt like not sparing himself; he
+wanted to get accustomed to the full obloquy.
+
+"Promise me to come to Ringwood before going away," she answered.
+
+"Yes, I will; and I thank you. No matter how dark the shadow may make
+my life your kindness will be a hope light. No man is utterly lost when
+a good woman believes in him."
+
+The creaking bank door wailed tremulously, irritably; somebody was
+pushing it open from the inside. With a whine of remonstrance it swung
+wider, and Crane stepped out on the sidewalk. He stared in astonishment
+at Mortimer and Allis, his brow wrinkled in anger. Only for an instant;
+the forehead smoothed back into its normal placidity and his voice, well
+in hand, said, in even tones: "Good afternoon, Miss Porter. Are you
+going back to Ringwood?" and he nodded toward Allis's buggy.
+
+"Yes, I am. I'm going now. Good day, Mr. Mortimer," and she held out
+her hand.
+
+Mortimer hesitated, and then, flushing, took the gloved fingers in his
+own. Without speaking, he turned and passed into the bank.
+
+"May I go with you?" asked Crane; "I want to see your father."
+
+"Yes, I shall be glad to drive you over," the girl answered.
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+When they had passed the edge of the village the Banker said: "I doubt
+if you would have shaken hands with Mr. Mortimer if you knew--I mean, he
+is under strong suspicion, more than strong suspicion, for he is
+practically self-accused of having stolen a sum of money from the bank.
+In fact, I'm not sure that it wasn't from your father he really stole
+it."
+
+"I do know of this terrible thing," she answered. "I shook hands with
+him because I believe him innocent."
+
+"You know more than we do?"  It was not a sneer; if so, too delicately
+veiled for detection; the words were uttered in a tone of hopeful
+inquiry.
+
+"Mr. Mortimer could not steal--it is impossible."
+
+"Have you sufficient grounds for your faith--do you happen to know who
+took the money, for it was stolen?"
+
+The girl did not answer at once. At first her stand had simply been one
+of implicit faith in the man she had conjured into a hero of all that
+was good and noble. She had not cast about for extenuating evidence;
+she had not asked herself who the guilty man was; her faith told her it
+was morally impossible for Mortimer to become a thief. Now Crane's
+questions, more material than the first deadening effects of Alan's
+accusation, started her mind on a train of thought dealing with motive
+possibilities.
+
+She knitted her small brows, and tapping the jogging horse's quarter
+with the whip sat for many minutes silently absorbed.
+
+Her companion waited for an answer with his usual well-bred patience.
+Perhaps the girl had not heard him. Perhaps she did not wish to answer
+a question so unanswerable. He waited.
+
+Mortimer, being innocent, replaced the stolen money, Allis's mind
+tabulated--she tickled this thought off on the horse with her whip--it
+was to shield some one. Her heart told her, his eyes had told her, that
+he would have taken upon himself this great risk but for one person, her
+brother. Yes, Mortimer was a hero! The horse, lazily going, jumped a
+little in the traces; she had struck him a harder tap with the whip.
+Allis continued her mental summing up. Why did Mortimer go to
+Gravesend?  It must have been to see Alan--the boy was there. If he had
+discovered that the money was missing, and thought Alan had taken it, he
+would do this; if he had suspected some other person he would have made
+the matter known to the cashier. He did not replace the money at once,
+because he hadn't it. She knew that Mortimer was poor. He had failed
+to find Alan until after Lauzanne's victory; her brother had told her
+this much, and that Mortimer had won a lot of money over the horse. Why
+he had bet on Lauzanne she knew not; perhaps Providence had guided, had
+helped him that much. But surely that was the money, his winnings, with
+which he had replaced the thousand dollars.
+
+The girl's mind had worked methodically, following sequence of action to
+sequence, until finally the conviction that Mortimer had sought to
+shield her brother, and chance or Providence working through herself and
+Lauzanne had placed in his hands the necessary funds, came to her as
+fixedly as though the whole past panorama of events lay pictured before
+her eyes.
+
+She saw all this mentally; but would it avail anything in actuality?  If
+the boy disclaimed guilt, as he had; if Mortimer limited his defense to
+a simple denial, refusing to implicate her brother, what could she do
+except give her moral support?  To her it seemed such a small reward for
+his heroism; her faith would not save him from the brand of felony, and
+to follow out her convictions publicly she must denounce her brother,
+cast upon him the odium of theft. Truly her position was one of extreme
+hopelessness. Two men she loved stood before her mentally, one accused
+of others as a thief, and one--her own brother--charged by her reason
+with the crime.
+
+Under the continued silence Crane grew restless; the girl, almost
+oblivious of his presence, deep in the intricacies of the crime, gave no
+sign of a desire to pursue the discussion.
+
+"Of course I am anxious to clear the young man if he is innocent,"
+hazarded the banker, to draw her gently back into the influence that he
+felt must be of profit to himself. This assertion of Crane's was only
+assimilatively truthful. As president of the bank, naturally he should
+wish to punish none other than the guilty man; as a rival to Mortimer
+for the girl's affection, he could not but be pleased to see the younger
+man removed from his path, and in a way which would forever preclude his
+aspiring to Allis's hand. Believe in Mortimer as she might, he felt
+sure that she would not run counter to the inevitable wishes of her
+mother and marry a man who stood publicly branded as a thief.
+
+Allis answered his observation--he distinctly felt the vibration of pain
+in her voice--with a startling depth of analytical discernment:--
+
+"While I believe in Mortimer's innocence, and will always believe in it,
+I am afraid that he has drawn such a web of circumstantial evidence
+about him, trying to shield some one else, that--that--it is too
+terrible!" she broke off, passionately--"he is innocent. For God's
+sake, Mr. Crane"--she took the reins in her whip hand, and put her left
+on his arm, pleadingly--"for God's sake, for his mother's sake, save
+him. You can do it--you can believe that he is innocent, and stop
+everything. The money has been paid back."
+
+"It isn't that, Miss Allis"--his voice was so cuttingly even after the
+erratic pump of her own--"in a bank one must not have a dishonest
+person. We must investigate to the end, and if Mortimer can clear
+himself by fastening the crime upon the perpetrator--"
+
+"He will never do that; he cannot if he would."
+
+"What can I do then, Miss Allis?  But why shouldn't he?"
+
+"Can't you see--don't you understand the man?  He commenced by shielding
+some one, and he will carry it through to the bitter end."
+
+"I am afraid there was no one to shield but himself--everything points
+to this conclusion. The money was locked up, he had the keys, no one
+touched them--except your brother, and that but for a minute--but if any
+suspicion could attach to your brother it is all dissipated by
+Mortimer's subsequent actions. It's unpleasant to even hint at such a
+contingency, but if Mortimer is innocent, then your brother must be the
+guilty one."
+
+He expected the girl to denounce indignantly such a possibility; he was
+surprised that she remained silent. Her non-refutation of this
+deduction told him as conclusively as though she had uttered the
+accusation that she thought Alan had taken the money and Mortimer was
+shielding him. It was but a phase of blind love; it was the faith women
+place in men they love, of which he had read and scoffed at.
+
+Against all evidence she was holding this man honest, believing her
+brother the thief.
+
+Surely a love like that was worth winning; no price was too great to
+pay. Her very faith in Mortimer, through which she sought to save him
+by inspiring Crane, determined the latter to crush utterly the man who
+stood between him and this great love. Intensity of hate, or love, or
+cupidity, never drew Crane out of his inherent diplomacy; he took refuge
+behind the brother of Allis.
+
+"You see," he said, and his voice was modulated with kindness, "I can't
+save Mortimer except at the expense of Alan; you would not have me do
+that. Besides, it is impossible--the evidence shines as clear as
+noonday."
+
+"If you bring this home to Mr. Mortimer you will punish him, arrest
+him?"
+
+"That would be the usual course."
+
+She had taken her hand off his arm; now she replaced it, and he could
+feel the strong fingers press as though she would hold him to her
+wishes.
+
+"You will not do this," she said, "for my sake you will not."
+
+"You ask this of me, and it is for your sake?"
+
+"Yes, if there is no other way; if Mr. Mortimer, innocent, must take
+upon himself this crime, then for my sake you will not punish him."
+
+The gray eyes were violet-black in their intensity.
+
+"If I promise--"  He had been going to ask for reward, but she broke in,
+saying: "You will keep your word, and I will bless you."
+
+"Nothing more--is that all?"
+
+The magnetism of the intense eyes broke down his reserve; he slipped
+back twenty years in a second. Love touched him with a fire-wand, and
+his soul ignited. Cold, passionless Philip Crane spoke in a tongue,
+unfamiliar as it was to him, that carried conviction to the girl--just
+the conviction that he was in earnest, that he was possessed of a
+humanizing love. She listened patiently while he pleaded his cause with
+much mastery. It was beyond her understanding, that, though Mortimer
+through all time had spoken not at all of love to her--at least not in
+the passionate words that came from this man's lips--yet she now heard
+as though it were his voice and not Crane's. Love was a glorious thing
+--with Mortimer.
+
+Crane's intensity availed nothing. When he asked why she held faith to
+a man who must be known for all time as a thief, her soul answered, "It
+is nothing--because he is innocent."
+
+Because of her Crane would do anything; the matter should be dropped as
+though it were all a hideous mistake. Mortimer might remain in the
+bank; his employer would even try to believe him innocent, taking the
+girl's protestation m conclusive proof. Her mother, her father,
+everyone would demand of her, however, that she give the dishonest one
+up as a possibility. Even in his vehemence he lost no delicacy of
+touch. Why should she chain herself to an impossibility?  It would but
+ruin the man she professed to regard.
+
+The banker made no threat, but Allis shuddered. She knew. The narrow-
+lidded eyes had closed perceptibly when their owner talked of the
+alternative. He, Crane, loved her--she felt that was true. He was
+rich; for her father, for her brother, for herself, even for Mortimer,
+he would use his wealth. He pleaded his cause like a strong man, and
+when he spoke of failure because of her preference for Mortimer, an
+acridity crept into his voice that meant relentless prosecution.
+
+She could not hold this full power over Crane without feeling its value.
+To pledge herself to him as wife was impossible; she could not do it;
+she would not. Fate played into his hands without doubt, but Fate was
+not Providence. A decree of this sort, iniquitous, was not a higher
+command, else she would not feel utter abhorrence of the alliance.
+Paradoxically the more vehemently Crane's love obtruded itself the more
+obnoxious it became; it was something quite distinct from the man's own
+personality. She did not detest him individually, for the honesty of
+his love impressed her; mentally she separated Crane from his affection,
+anal while rejecting his love absolutely as a compelling factor,
+appealed to him as a man having regard for her, a woman he believed in.
+
+It was a most delicate cleavage, yet unerringly she attained to its
+utmost point of discrimination. Perhaps it was the strength of her love
+for Mortimer that enabled her to view so calmly this passionate
+declaration. A year before, unsophisticated as she had been, it would
+have thrown her into an agitated confusion, but she was developing
+rapidly; responsibility had tempered fine the great will power which was
+hers in such a marked degree.
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Crane," she began, conventionally enough, "I am, sorry;
+I couldn't marry a man without loving him. What you have just told me
+must win regard for you, because I know that you feel strongly, and I
+think any woman should take an offer of honest love as the greatest of
+all compliments."
+
+"But I don't even ask for your love now," he interrupted.
+
+"Ah, but you should. You shouldn't marry a woman unless she loves you.
+At any rate I feel that way about it. Of course, if there were a chance
+of my coming to care for you in that way we could wait, but it would be
+deceiving you to give hope."
+
+"Is it because you care for--Mortimer?" he asked.
+
+"I think it is. I suppose if I am to help him I must be quite honest
+with you. I do not want to talk about it--it seems too sacred. I have
+even spoken less to Mr. Mortimer of love," she added, with a painful
+attempt at a smile. "You have said that you care for me, Mr. Crane, and
+I believe you; you have been generous to my father, also. Now won't you
+promise me something, just for the sake of this regard?  I suppose it is
+impossible to prove Mr. Mortimer's innocence"--she felt her own
+helplessness, and who else could or would care to accomplish it "but it
+is in your power to lessen the evil. Won't you take my word that he is
+innocent and stop everything?  As you say, either he or Alan must be
+suspected, and if it were brought home to my brother it would crush me,
+and my mother and father."
+
+"What can I do?--"
+
+"Just nothing. I know Mr. Mortimer has determined to accept the
+disgrace, and he will go away. You can make his load as light as
+possible, for my sake."
+
+The small hand on his arm was drawing him to acquiesence. He did not
+answer at once, but sat moodily diagnosing his position. If he refused
+and prosecuted Mortimer, the girl, more determined than many men, would
+change from a state of possibility, from simply not loving him, to a
+vigorous hate. If he hushed the matter up Mortimer would go away under
+a cloud, and his removal from the presence of Allis might effect a
+change in her regard. He would accelerate this wished-for elision of
+love by procuring absolutely indisputable proof of Mortimer's
+dishonesty. He saw his opening to that end; he could do it under the
+guise of clearing the innocent one of the suspected two; for Allis alone
+this would be. To him there was not the slightest ground for supposing
+Alan had taken the money, but blinded by her love, evidently Allis
+thought Mortimer was shielding her brother. Though it was to Crane's
+best interests, he pretended to consent out of pure chivalry. "What you
+ask," he said, "is very little; I would do a thousand times more for
+you. There is nothing you could ask of me that would not give me more
+pleasure than anything else in my barren life. But I could not bear to
+see you wedded to Mortimer; he is not worthy--you are too good for him.
+I don't say this because he is more fortunate, but I love you and want
+to see you happy."
+
+The girl was like a slim poplar. The strong wind of Crane's clever
+pleading and seeming generosity swayed her from her rigid attitude only
+to spring back again, to stand straight and beautiful, true to her love
+and faith in Mortimer.
+
+"You are kind to me," she said, simply; "I wish I could repay you."
+
+"Perhaps some day I may get a reward out of all proportion to this small
+service."
+
+She looked fair into his eyes, and on her lips hovered a weak,
+plaintive, wistful smile, as though she were wishing he could accept the
+inevitable and take her regard, her gratitude, her good opinion of him
+and not wed himself to a chimera which would bring only weariness of
+spirit in return for his goodness.
+
+"You will be repaid some day," she answered, "for I feel that Mr.
+Mortimer's name will be cleared, and you will be glad that you acted
+generously."
+
+"Well, this will give him a better chance," he said, evasively; "it's
+not good to crush a man when he's down. I will see that no one
+connected with the bank shows him the slightest disrespect. Of course
+he'll have to go, he couldn't remain under the circumstances--he
+wouldn't."
+
+The horse had jogged slowly. Allis had purposely allowed the old Bay to
+take his time. Unused to such a tolerance he had scandalously abused
+the privilege; once or twice he had even cast longing glances at a
+succulent bunch of grass growing by the roadside, as though it were a
+pure waste of opportunity to neglect the delicacy for work when he had
+to do with such indifferent overseers. But now Ringwood was in sight,
+and there was still the matter of the money that had been paid on her
+father's note to speak of. She asked Crane where it had come from.
+
+"You won it over Diablo in the Brooklyn Handicap," he answered, bluntly.
+
+"You won it," she corrected him; "I refused to accept it."
+
+"I remember that eccentricity," he replied. "I'm a busy man, and having
+the money thrown back on my hands, as it was not mine, caused me
+considerable inconvenience. I deposited three thousand of it against
+the note to save both your father and myself needless worry. There are
+still some hundreds due you, and I wish you would please tell me what I
+am to do with it."
+
+"I'd rather pay you back the three thousand now."
+
+"I can't accept it. I have enough money of my own to worry along on."
+
+"Well, I wash my hands of the whole affair. When father gets stronger
+he must settle it."
+
+They had turned into the drive to Ringwood House.
+
+"We are home now," she added, "and I want to say again that I'll never
+forget your kind promise. I know you will not repent of your goodness."
+
+Mrs. Porter saw Allis and Crane together in the buggy; it pleased the
+good woman vastly. Allis's success with Lauzanne had taken a load from
+her spirits. She was not mercenary, but there had been so much at
+stake. Now in one day Providence had averted disaster, and she had
+awakened from a terrible nightmare of debt. The sunshine of success had
+warmed her husband's being into hopeful activity, a brightness was over
+his spirits that had not been there for months. It was like an augury
+of completed desire that Crane should come the day of their good fortune
+with Allis. If she would but marry him there would be little left to
+worry about. So it was that Crane, perplexed by his recent love check,
+and Allis, mired in gloom over her hero's misfortune, stepped into a
+radiancy of exotic cheerfulness.
+
+The girl bravely sought to shake off her gloom, chiding her heavy heart
+for its unfilial lack of response. Crane, accustomed to mental
+athletics, tutored his mind into a seeming exuberance, and playfully
+alluded to his own defeat at the hands of Allis and the erratic
+Lausanne. There was no word of the bank episode, nothing but a paean of
+victory.
+
+Crane's statement to Allis that he was going out to Ringwood to see her
+father was only an excuse. He soon took his departure, a stableboy
+driving him back to the village. There he had a talk with the cashier.
+Mortimer was to be asked to resign his position as soon as his place in
+the bank could be filled. No further prosecution was to be taken
+against him unless Crane decided upon such a course, "In the meantime
+you can investigate cautiously," he said, "and keep quite to yourself
+any new evidence that may turn up. So far as Mr. Mortimer is concerned,
+the matter is quite closed."
+
+The cashier had always considered his employer a hard man, and, in
+truth, who hadn't?  He could scarcely understand this leniency; he had
+expected a vigorous prosecution of Mortimer; had almost dreaded its
+severity. Personally he had no taste for it; still, he would feel
+insecure if the suspected man, undeniably guilty, were to remain
+permanently in the bank. His dismissal from the staff was a wise move,
+tempered by unexpected clemency. If there were not something behind it
+all--this contingency always attached itself to Crane's acts--his
+employer had acted with fine, wise discrimination.
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+Crane returned to New York, his mind working smoothly to the hum of the
+busy wheels beneath his coach.
+
+This degrading humiliation of his rival must certainly be turned to
+account. With Allis Porter still believing in Mortimer's innocence the
+gain to him was very little; he must bring the crime absolutely home to
+the accused man, but in a manner not savoring of persecution, else the
+girl's present friendly regard would be turned into abhorrence. In
+addition to this motive he felt an inclination to probe the matter to
+its utmost depths. It was not his nature to leave anything to
+conjecture; in all his transactions each link in the chain of
+preparation for execution was welded whole. He felt that it would be
+but a matter of manipulation to environ Mortimer completely with the
+elements of his folly. He firmly believed him guilty; Allis, misled by
+her infatuation, mentally attributed the peculation to her brother.
+
+The Banker would go quietly to work and settle this point beyond
+dispute. He might have hesitated, leaving well enough alone, had he
+been possessed of any doubts as to the ultimate results of his
+investigation, but he wasn't. He reasoned that Mortimer had taken the
+thousand-dollar note thinking to win three or four thousand at least
+over his horse, The Dutchman, and then replace the abstracted money.
+Crane was aware that Alan Porter had told Mortimer of The Dutchman's
+almost certain prospect of winning; in fact, the boy had suggested that
+Mortimer had taken it for this purpose. Mortimer would not have changed
+the note; would have taken it straight to the race course. He must have
+lost it to some bookmaker over The Dutchman. Crane knew the number of
+the stolen note. The three one-thousand-dollar bills were new, running
+in consecutive numbers, B 67,482-83-84; he had noticed that quite by
+chance at the time; it was the middle one, B 67,483, that was missing.
+So he had a possible means of identifying the man who had taken the
+money. Mentally he followed Mortimer during the day at Gravesend. From
+Alan he knew of his winnings over Lauzanne.
+
+Crane reasoned that Mortimer, having risked the thousand on his horse,
+had been told that Lauzanne might win. This had perhaps frightened him,
+and being unfamiliar with the folly of such a course had backed two
+horses in the same race--had put a hundred on Lauzanne at ten to one to
+cover his risk on The Dutchman, feeling this made him more secure. He
+would either win a considerable stake or have sufficient in hand to
+cover up his defalcation. The first thing to do was to find the note if
+possible. Faust would be the man for this commission.
+
+Immediately upon his arrival in New York, Crane telephoned for Faust,
+asking him to bring his betting sheet for the second last day of the
+Brooklyn Meet. When Faust arrived at Crane's quarters the latter said,
+"I want to trace a thousand-dollar note, number B 67,483. I think it
+was betted on the Brooklyn Derby, probably on my horse."
+
+Faust consulted his betting sheet, Crane looking over his shoulder. "I
+didn't have no thousand in one bet on that race," he said.
+
+"What are those flgures," asked the other, pointing to two consecutive
+numbers of one thousand each.
+
+"That was the other way about," answered the Bookmaker; "that was pay.
+A thousand to one hundred twice over Lauzanne. I think it must have
+been stable money, for one of the guys was like a big kid; he didn't
+know 'nough to pick a winner in a thousand years."
+
+The coincidence of this amount with the win attributed to Mortimer,
+appealed to Crane's fancy. "You remember the man who made this bet,
+then?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sure thing. There was two of 'em, as you see. I remember him
+because it took some explainin' to get the bet through his noddle. He
+was a soft mark for a bunco steerer. I've seen some fresh kids playin'
+the horses, but he had 'em all beat to a standstill. It must abeen
+first-time luck with him, for he cashed."
+
+"Can you describe him?"
+
+The Cherub drew an ornate verbal picture, florid in its descriptive
+phraseology, but cognate enough to convince Crane it was Mortimer who
+had made one of the bets. His preconceived plan of the suspected man's
+operations was working out.
+
+"Now find this thousand-dollar note for me," he said; "take trouble over
+it; get help if necessary; go to every bookmaker that was in line that
+day. If you find the note, exchange other money for it and bring it to
+me."
+
+"There may be a chance," commented Faust, scratching his fat poll
+meditatively; "the fellows like to keep these big bills, they're easier
+in the pocket than a whole bundle of flimsies. The next day was
+getaway-day, an' they wouldn't be payin' out much. I'll make a play fer
+it."
+
+The next afternoon Faust reported at Crane's rooms with the rescued note
+in his possession. He had been successful. "I give a dozen of 'em a
+turn," he said, "before I run again' Jimmie Farrell. He had it snuggled
+away next his chest among a lot of yellow-backs, good Dutchman money."
+
+"Does he know who bet it?"
+
+"Not his name--some stranger; he'd know him if he saw him, he says."
+
+Crane grasped this new idea with avidity, the scent was indeed getting
+hot. Why not take Farrell down to Brookfield to identify Mortimer. He
+had expected the searching for evidence would be a tedious matter; his
+fortunate star was guiding him straight and with rapidity to the goal he
+sought.
+
+"I'm much obliged to you," he said to Faust. "I won't trouble you
+further; I'll see Farrell myself. Give me his address."
+
+That evening the Banker saw Farrell. "There was a little crooked work
+over that thousand Faust got from you," he said, "an' if you could find
+time to go with me for an hour's run into the country, I think you could
+identify the guilty party."
+
+"I can go with you," Farrell answered, "but it's just a chance in a
+thousand. I should be on the block down at Sheepshead, but, to tell you
+the truth, the hot pace the backers set me at Brooklyn knocked me out a
+bit. I'm goin' to take a breather for a few days an' lay again' 'em
+next week. Yes, I'll go with you, Mr. Crane."
+
+In the morning the two journeyed to Brookfield.
+
+"I won't go to the bank with you," Crane said; "I wish you would go in
+alone. You may make any excuse you like, or none at all. Just see if
+the man you got this note from is behind the rail. I'll wait at the
+hotel"
+
+In fifteen minutes he was rejoined by Farrell.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+"He's there, right enough."
+
+"A short dark little chap?" questioned Crane, hesitatingly, putting Alan
+Porter forward as a feeler.
+
+"No. A tall fellow with a mustache."
+
+"You are sure?"
+
+"Dead sure, unless he's got a double, or a twin brother."
+
+Crane felt that at last he had got indisputable proof; evidence that
+would satisfy even Allis Porter. He experienced little exhilaration
+over the discovery--he had been so sure before--yet his hand was
+strengthened vastly. Whatever might be the result of his suit with
+Allis, this must convince her that Mortimer was guilty, and unworthy of
+her love. There was also satisfaction in the thought that it quite
+cleared Alan of his sister's suspicion.
+
+How he would use this confirmation Crane hardly knew; it would come up
+in its own proper place at the right time, no doubt.
+
+"We can go back now," he said to Farrell; "we may as well walk leisurely
+to the station; we can get a train"--he pulled out his watch--"in twenty
+minutes."
+
+Crane had made up his mind not to show himself at the bank that day. He
+wished to bold his discovery quite close within himself--plan his course
+of action with habitual caution. It meant no increased aggression
+against Mortimer's liberty; it was of value only in his pursuit of Allis
+Porter.
+
+As they walked slowly toward the station Crane met abruptly the girl who
+was just then so much in his thoughts. Her sudden appearance quite
+startled him, though it was quite accidental. She had gone in to do some
+shopping, she explained, after Crane's greeting.
+
+Farrell continued on when his companion stopped. A sudden determination
+to tell the girl what he had unearthed took quick possession of Crane.
+His fine sense of reasoning told him that though she professed positive
+faith in Mortimer, she must have moments of wavering; it seemed only
+human. Perhaps his presiding deity had put this new weapon in his hands
+to turn the battle. He began by assuring her that he had prosecuted the
+inquiry simply through a desire to establish the innocence of either
+Mortimer or her brother, or, if possible, both.
+
+"You understand," he said, quite simply, "that Alan is like a brother--"
+he was going to say "son," but it struck him as being unadvisable, it
+aged him. He related how he had traced the stolen note, how he had
+discovered it, how he had brought the bookmaker down, and how, without
+guidance from him, Farrell had gone into the bank and identified
+Mortimer as the man who had betted the money.
+
+"It clears Alan," he said, seeking furtively for a look into the
+drooping face.
+
+The bright sun struck a sparkle of light from something that shot
+downward and splashed in the dust. The girl was crying.
+
+"I'm sorry," he offered as atonement. "Perhaps I shouldn't have told
+you; it's too brutal."
+
+The head drooped still lower.
+
+"I shouldn't have spoken had it not been for your brother's sake. I
+didn't mean to. It was chance drew you across my path just now. Though
+it is cruel, it is better that you should know. No man has a right to
+deceive you, you are too good. It is this very constancy and goodness
+that has taught me to love you."
+
+"Don't," she pleaded; "I can't bear it just now. Please don't talk of
+love, don't talk of anything. Can't you see--can't you understand?"
+
+"Yes, I know--you are suffering, but it is unjust; you are not fair to
+yourself. If this man would steal money, what difference would your
+love make to him?  He would be as unfaithful to you as he has been to
+his trust in the bank. You must consider yourself--you must give him
+up; you can't link your young, beautiful life to a man who is only saved
+from the penitentiary because of your influence."
+
+"Don't talk that way, Mr. Crane, please don't. I know you think that
+what you say is right, but what difference does it all make to me?  You
+know what love is like, you say it has come to you now. My heart tells
+me that Mortimer is guiltless. The time has been so short that he has
+had no chance to clear himself. If I didn't believe in him I wouldn't
+love him; but I still love him, and so I believe in him. I can't help
+it--I don't want to help it; I simply go on having faith in him, and my
+love doesn't falter. Can't you understand what a terrible thing it
+would be even if I were to consent to become your wife?  I know it
+would please my mother. But if afterward this other man was found to be
+innocent, wouldn't your life be embittered--wouldn't it be terrible for
+you to be tied to a woman who loved another man?"
+
+"But it is impossible that he is innocent, or will ever be thought so."
+
+"And I know that he is innocent."
+
+"Your judgment must tell you that this is only fancy."
+
+"My heart tells me that he is not guilty of this crime. My heart is
+still true to him; so, shall I decide against myself? Don't--don't stab
+me to death with words of Mortimer's guilt; it has no effect, and only
+gives me pain. I must wait--we must all wait, just wait. There is no
+harm in waiting, the truth will come out at last. But you will keep
+your promise?" she said, lifting her eyes to his face.
+
+"Yes, I meant no harm to Mortimer in searching for this evidence; it was
+only to clear your brother."
+
+They had come to the station by now.
+
+"Would you like to speak to Mr. Farrell?" Crane asked. "You are taking
+my word."
+
+"No, it is useless. I can do nothing but wait; that I can and will do."
+
+"Don't think me cruel," Crane said, "but the wait will be so long."
+
+"It may be forever, but I will wait. And I thank you again for your--
+for your goodness to me. I'm sorry that I've given you trouble. If you
+can--if you can--make it easier for Mortimer--I know he'll feel it if
+you could make him think that you didn't altogether believe him as--
+dishonest--will you, for my sake?"
+
+It was generally supposed that Crane's heart had been mislaid at his
+inception and the void filled with a piece of chiseled marble; for years
+he was a convert to this belief himself; but as he stood on the platform
+of the primitive little station and looked into the soft luminous gray
+eyes, swimming moist in the hard-restrained tears of the pleading girl,
+he became a child. What a wondrous thing love was! Mountains were as
+mole-hills before such faith. In the unlimited power of her magnetism,
+what a trifle she had asked of him!  With an influence so great she had
+simply said, "Spare of censure this man for my sake."  In thankfulness
+rather than in condescension he promised.
+
+Even in disgrace--a felon--how Mortimer was to be envied!  Above all
+else was such abiding love. In his, Crane's, victory was the bitterness
+of defeat; the other, beaten down, triumphed in the gain of this
+priceless love.
+
+A sharp material whistle, screeching through its brass dome on the
+incoming train, cut short these fantastically chaotic thoughts.
+
+"Good-bye, and thank you," said the girl, holding out her hand to Crane.
+
+"Good-bye," he repeated, mechanically.
+
+What had he accomplished?  He had beaten lower his rival and wedded
+firmer to the beaten man the love he prized above all else. In his ears
+rang the girl's words, "Wait, wait, wait." Irresponsibly he repeated to
+himself, "All things come to them that wait."
+
+Seated in the car swift whirled toward the city, he was almost surprised
+to find Farrell by his side. He was like a man in a dream. A vision of
+gray eyes, blurred in tears of regret, had obliterated all that was
+material. In defeat his adversary had the victory. He, Philip Crane,
+the man of calculation, was but a creature of emotion. Bah!  At forty
+if a man chooses to assume the role of Orlando he does it to perfection.
+
+With an effort he swept away the cobweb of dreams and sat upright--
+Philip Crane, the careful planner.
+
+"You nearly missed the train," said Farrell.
+
+"Did I?" questioned Crane, perplexedly. "I thought I got on in plenty
+of time."
+
+Farrell smiled knowingly, as befitted a man of his occupation--a New
+Yorker, up to snuff. The veiled insinuation disgusted Crane. Was
+everything in the world vile?  He had left a young life swimming
+hopelessly in the breakers of disaster, buoyed only by faith and love;
+and at his side sat a man who winked complacently, and beamed upon him
+with senile admiration because of his supposed gallantry.
+
+Perhaps a year before this moral angularity would not have affected him;
+it would not have appealed to him as being either clever or
+objectionable; he would simply not have noticed it at all. But Allis
+Porter had originated a revolution in his manner of thought. He even
+fought against the softer awakening; it was like destroying the lifelong
+habits of a man. His callousness had been a shield that had saved him
+troublous misgivings; behind this shield, even in rapacity, he had
+experienced peace of mind, absence of remorse. If he could have put
+away from him his love for the girl he would have done so willingly.
+Why should he battle and strive for an unattainable something as
+intangible as a dream?  It was so paradoxical that Allis's love for
+Mortimer seemed hopeless because of the latter's defeat, while his,
+Crane's love, was equally hopeless in his hour of victory.
+
+Farrell's voice drew him from this psychological muddle in tones that
+sounded harsh as the cawing of homing ravens at eventime.
+
+"Will it be a court case?" he queried.
+
+"What?" asked Crane, from his tangled elysium.
+
+"That high roller in the bank."
+
+"Oh!  I can't say yet what it will lead to."  Crane's caution always
+asserted itself first.
+
+"Well, I've been thinking it over. That's the guy, right enough, but
+when it comes to swearing to a man's identity in court, it's just a bit
+ticklish."
+
+Crane frowned. He disliked men who hedged. He always planned first,
+then plunged; evidently his companion had plunged first, and was now
+verifying his plans.
+
+Farrell continued, "You see what I mean?"
+
+"I don't," answered Crane, shortly.
+
+"You will if you wait," advised Farrell, a tinge of asperity in his
+tone. "I'm makin' a book, say. All the blazin' idiots in Christendom
+is climbin' over me wantin' to know what I'll lay this and what I'll lay
+that. They're like a lot of blasted mosquitos. A rounder comes up an'
+makes a bet; if it's small p'r'aps I don't twig his mug at all, just
+grabs the dough an' calls his number. He may be Rockefeller, or a tough
+from the Bowery, it don't make no difference to me; all I want is his
+goods an' his number, see?  But a bettor of the right sort slips in an'
+taps me for odds to a thousand. Nat'rally I'm interested, because he
+parts with the thousand as though it was his heart's blood. I size him
+up. There ain't no time fer the writin' down of earmarks, though most
+like I could point him out in a crowd, an' say, 'That's the rooster.'
+But sposin' a judge stood up another man that looked pretty much like
+him, an' asked me to swear one of the guys into ten years in Sing Sing,
+pr'aps I'd weaken. Mistaken identity is like grabbin' up two kings an'
+a jack, an' playin' 'em fer threes."
+
+"Which means, if I understand it, that you're guessing at the man--that
+I've given you all this trouble for nothing."
+
+Crane wished that Farrell had kept his doubts to himself; the case had
+been made strong by his first decision, and now the devil of uncertainty
+would destroy the value of identification.
+
+"Not by a jugful!" ejaculated Farrell. "I'm just tellin' you this to
+show you that we've got to make it complete--we've got to get collateral
+to back up my pickin'."
+
+"You mean some one else to identify him also?"
+
+"No, not just that; but that's not a bad thought. My clerk, Ned Hagen,
+must have noticed him too. I mean that the bettor's badge number will
+be in line with that bet, an' you can probably find out the number of
+the badge this rooster wore."
+
+An inspiration came with Farrell's words--came to Crane. Why had he not
+thought of that before?  Still it didn't matter. The badge number,
+Mortimer's number, would be in Faust's book where had been entered the
+hundred dollars Mortimer put on Lauzanne. He could compare this with the
+number in Farrell's book; no doubt they would agree; then, indeed, the
+chain would be completed to the last link. No man on earth could
+question that evidence.
+
+"It's a good idea, Farrell," he said.
+
+"Bet yer life, it's clear Pinkerton. You'd better come round to my
+place to-morrow about ten, an' we'll look it up."
+
+"I will," Crane answered.
+
+
+
+
+XLIII,
+
+
+The old bay horse that crawled back to Ringwood with Allis Porter after
+her interview with Crane must have thought that the millennium for
+driving horses had surely come. Even the ambition to urge the patriarch
+beyond his complacent, irritating dog trot was crushed out of her by the
+terrible new evidence the banker had brought in testimony against her
+lover.
+
+"I didn't need this," the girl moaned to herself. In her intensity of
+grief her thoughts became audible in expressed words. "Oh, God!" she
+pleaded to the fields that lay in the silent rapture of summer content,
+"strengthen me against all this falseness. You didn't do it, George--
+you couldn't--you couldn't! And Alan! my poor, weak brother; why can't
+you have courage and clear your friend?"
+
+Her heart rose in angry rebellion against her brother, against Crane,
+against Providence, even against the man she loved. Why should he
+sacrifice both their lives, become an outcast himself to shield a boy,
+who in a moment of weakness had committed an act which might surely be
+forgiven if he would but admit his mistake? yes, it might even be called
+a mistake. The punishment accepted in heroic silence by Mortimer was
+out of all proportion to the wrong-doing. It meant the utter ruin of
+two lives. Firmly as she believed in his innocence, a conviction was
+forced upon her that unless Alan stood forth and boldly proclaimed the
+truth the accumulated guilt--proof would cloud Mortimer's name, perhaps
+until his death. Even after that his memory might linger as that of a
+thief.
+
+The evening before Alan had been at Ringwood and Allis had made a final
+endeavor to get him to clear the other's name by confessing the truth to
+Crane. On her knees she had pleaded with her brother. The boy had
+fiercely disclaimed all complicity, protested his own innocence with
+vehemence, and denounced Mortimer as worse than a thief in having
+poisoned her mind against him.
+
+In anger Alan had disclosed Mortimer's treachery--as he called it--and
+crime to their mother. Small wonder that Allis's hour of trial was a
+dark one. The courage that had enabled her to carry Lauzanne to victory
+was now tried a thousandfold more severely. It seemed all that was left
+her, just her courage and faith; they had stood out successfully against
+all denunciation of Lauzanne, and, with God's help, they would hold her
+true to the man she loved.
+
+Even the pace of a snail lands him somewhere finally, and the unassailed
+Bay, with a premonition of supper hovering obscurely in his lazy mind,
+at last consented to arrive at Ringwood.
+
+Allis crept to her father like a fearsome child avoiding goblins.
+Providentially he had not been initiated into the moral crusade against
+the iniquitous Mortimer, so the girl clung to him as a drowning person
+might to a plank of salvation. She longed to tell him everything--of
+her love for Mortimer, perhaps he had guessed it, for he spoke brave
+words often of the sturdy young man who had saved her from Diablo.
+Perhaps she would tell him if she felt her spirit giving way--it was
+cruel to stand quite alone--and beseech him, as he had faith in her, to
+believe in her lover.
+
+Allis went to the tea table by her father's side, fearing to get beyond
+his hearing; she dreaded her mother's questioning eyes. What could be
+said in the accused man's defense, or in her own? Nothing; she could
+only wait.
+
+A square old-fashioned wooden clock on the mantelpiece of the sitting
+room had just droned off seven mellow hours, when the faint echo of its
+music was drowned by the crunch of gravel; there was the quick step of
+somebody coming up the drive; then the wooden steps gave hollow notice.
+The visitor's advent was announced again by the brass knocker on the
+front door.
+
+"I'll go," said Allis, as her mother rose. The girl knew who it was
+that knocked, not because of any sane reason; she simply knew it was
+Mortimer.
+
+When she opened the door he stepped back hesitatingly. Was he not a
+criminal--was he not about to leave his position because of theft?
+
+"Come in," she said, quietly; "I am glad you have come."
+
+"Shall I?  I just want to speak to you for a minute. I said I would
+come. But I can't see anybody--just you, alone."
+
+"I understand," she answered. "Come inside."
+
+"I am going away," he began; "I can't stand it here."
+
+"You have done nothing--nothing to clear yourself?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"And you won't?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Is this wise?"
+
+"It is the inevitable."
+
+They were silent for a little; they were both standing. The girl broke
+the stillness.
+
+"I am glad you have come, because I can tell you again that I know you
+are innocent. I know it, because my heart repeats it a thousand times a
+day. I listen to the small voice and I hear nothing else."
+
+"You never waver--you never doubt?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"You never will?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Then I care not. Other men have had misfortune thrust upon them and
+have borne it without complaint, have had less to solace them than you
+have given me now, and I should be a coward if I faltered. Some day
+perhaps, you will know that I am worthy of your faith: God grant that
+the knowledge brings you no fresh misery--there, forgive me, I have said
+too much; I am even now a coward. If you will say good-bye I'll go."
+
+"Good-bye, my hero."  She raised her eyes, blurred with tears, and held
+out her hand gropingly, as one searches in the dark, for the room
+whirled like a storm cloud, and just faintly she could see the man's
+strong face coming to her out of the gloom like the face of a god. He
+took her hand. "Good-bye," his voice vibrated brokenly; "if--if Justice
+wills that my innocence be known some day, may I come back?  Will you
+wait, believing in me for a little?"
+
+"Forever."
+
+He drew her to him by the hand he still clasped, and put his strong arms
+about her. What mattered it now that he had been falsely accused--what
+mattered it to either of them that he must accept the grim penalty of
+his endeavor?  With them in the soft gloom was nothing but love, and
+faith, and innocence; and within the strong arms a sense of absolute
+security, as though the false accusing world had been baffled, beaten
+down, and the victory theirs--love.
+
+He raised the girl's face and kissed her. "Let God witness that I press
+your brave lips in innocence," he said; "and in this pledge I love you
+forever and ever."
+
+"Amen," came from Allis involuntarily; it sounded to them both like the
+benediction of a high priest.
+
+"Amen,--" he responded. To speak again would have been sacrilege.
+
+He put her from him gently, turned away and walked quickly from the
+house.
+
+The girl sat for a long time a gray shadow in the gathering darkness.
+He was gone from her. It seemed as though she had scarce spoken the
+encouragement she wished to give him. It had been a meeting almost
+without words; but she felt strangely satisfied. The accusing
+revelation that had come from Crane in the afternoon had been a crushing
+blow. It was a mistake, of course; it wasn't true--somehow it wasn't
+true, but still it had stunned. Now in the gloaming she sat with an
+angel of peace; big, steadfast, honest eyes, full of thankfulness,
+looked lovingly at her from where he had stood. If she could sit there
+forever, with the echo of his deep "Amen" to their love lingering in her
+ears, she would ask no further gift of the gods.
+
+Mortimer, as with swinging stride he hurried toward the village, let his
+mind flit back to the room of gray shadows. How little he had said!
+Had there been aught spoken at all?  The strong arms still tingled with
+tender warmth where the impress of an angel had set them thrilling
+ecstatically. Yes, what mattered their speech?  There had been little
+of the future--no promise to send word of his well-being--but let the
+future look to itself. In the present he was king of a love realm that
+was greater than all the world.
+
+Field after field flitted by, studded here and there by square, gray
+specters of ghost-like houses that blinked at him with red dragon eyes.
+Sub-consciously he knew the eyes were searching out the secret that made
+him in all his misery of misfortune so happy. And he would answer to
+the eyes, dragon or human, without fear and without shame--because he
+was innocent--that it was love, the greatest thing in all the world, the
+love and faith sublime of a good, true woman. Woman had he said?--an
+angel!
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+As Farrell had suggested, Crane sought him at the office the next day at
+ten o'clock.
+
+Farrell and his clerk were busy planning an enterprising campaign
+against men who had faith in fast horses for the coming week at
+Sheepshead Bay.
+
+"Ah!" the Bookmaker exclaimed when Crane entered, "you want that badge
+number. Hagen, get the betting sheet for the second last day at
+Gravesend, and look up a bet of one thousand dollars we roped in over
+Mr. Crane's horse. I want the number to locate the man that parted--I
+wish there'd been more like him"
+
+"Do you mean Billy Cass?" queried the clerk.
+
+"Who the devil's Billy Cass?"
+
+"Why the stiff that played The Dutchman for a thou'."
+
+"You know him?"  This query from Farrell.
+
+"I should say!  He's a reg'lar. Used to bet in Mullen's book last year
+when I penciled for him."
+
+The clerk brought the betting sheet and ran his finger down a long row
+of figures.
+
+"That's the bet. A thousand calls three on The Dutchman. His badge
+number was 11,785. Yes, that's the bet; I remember Billy Cass takin'
+it. You see," he continued, explanatory of his vivid memory, "he's
+gen'rally a piker--plays a long shot--an' his limit's twenty dollars;
+so, when he comes next a favorite that day with a cool thou' it give me
+stoppage of the heart. Damn'd if I didn't get cold feet. Bet yer life
+it wasn't Billy's money--not a plunk of it; he had worked an angel, an'
+was playin' the farmer's stuff for him."
+
+"Are you sure, Mr. Hagen--did you know the man?" Crane asked.
+
+"Know him?  All the way--tall, slim, blue eyes, light mustache, hand
+like a woman."
+
+"That's the man," affirmed Farrell; "that's the man--I saw him yesterday
+in your place."
+
+Crane stared. For once in his life the confusion of an unexpected event
+momentarily unsettled him.
+
+"I thought you identified--which man in the bank did you mean?"
+
+"I saw three: a short, dark, hairless kid"--Alan Porter, mentally ticked
+off Crane; "a tall, dark, heavy-shouldered chap, that, judged by his
+mug, would have made a fair record with the gloves--"
+
+"Was not that the man you identified as having made the bet?"
+interrupted Crane, taking a step forward in his intense eagerness.
+
+"Not on your life; it was the slippery-looking cove with fishy eyes."
+
+"Cass," muttered Crane to himself; "but that's impossible--he never left
+the bank that day; there's some devilish queer mistake here."  Farrell
+had identified David Cass in the bank as the man who had bet with him,
+while the clerk asserted that one "Billy" Cass had made the same wager.
+Hagen's description of "Billy" Cass fitted David Cass in a general way.
+Again the badge number--11,785--was not Mortimer's, as registered in
+Faust's book.
+
+Crane stood pondering over the complication. He saw that until further
+investigation disproved it there could be but one solution of this
+intricate riddle. Billy Cass, the maker of the bet, was a race track
+frequenter; David Cass was not. They must be separate personalities;
+but they resembled each other; they were of the same name--they might be
+brothers. Billy Cass had been in possession of the stolen note; he must
+have got it from some one having access to it in the bank--Mortimer,
+Alan Porter, or Cass--the cashier was quite out of the question.
+
+The next move was to trace back through Billy Cass the man who had
+delivered to him the stolen money. There was still a chance that
+Mortimer, unfamiliar with betting and possibly knowing of Billy Cass
+through his brother in the bank--if they were brothers--had used this
+practical racing man as a commission agent. This seemed a plausible
+deduction. It was practically impossible that David Cass could have got
+possession of the bill, for it was locked in a compartment of which
+Mortimer had the key; the latter had admitted that the keys were not out
+of his possession.
+
+This far in his hurried mental retrospect Crane spoke to Farrell: "I
+think this is all we can do at present. I may find it necessary to ask
+you to identify this Cass, but I hope not to trouble you any further in
+the matter."
+
+"Hang the trouble!" energetically responded Farrell, with huge
+disclaiming of obligation; "I'll spend time and money to down a crook
+any day; I've no use for 'em; a few of that kidney gives the racin' game
+a black eye. If you need me or Hagen, just squeak, an' we'll hop onto
+the chap if he's a wrong one with both feet."
+
+Crane said nothing about the other number he had culled from Faust's
+book; he said nothing about his suspicions of a brotherhood; he wanted
+to go back to his quarters and think this new problem out.
+
+What if in seeking for conclusive evidence against Mortimer he should
+prove him innocent?  He was treading upon dangerous ground, pushing out
+of his path with a firebrand a fuse closely attached to a mine that
+might explode and shatter the carefully constructed fabric.
+
+Sitting in his own chamber he once more went over the whole
+extraordinary entanglement. Mistaken as it was, Farrell's
+identification at Brookfield must have strongly affected the mind of
+Allis Porter. At the time Crane had played an honest part in recounting
+it to the girl. He had firmly believed that Farrell, owing to his
+ambiguous report, had meant Mortimer; in fact, Cass had not entered his
+mind at all. Even yet Mortimer might be the guilty man--probably was.
+Why should he, Crane, pursue this investigation that might turn,
+boomerang-like, and act disastrously. Mortimer was either a thief or a
+hero; there could be no question about that. As a hero, in this case,
+he was pretty much of a fool in Crane's eyes; but Allis Porter would not
+look upon it in that light--she would deify him. Crane would commit
+diplomatic suicide in developing Mortimer's innocence. Again he asked
+himself why he should proceed. Mortimer was guilty in the strong,
+convicting light of the apparent evidence; better let it rest that happy
+way--happy for Crane. But still would he rest satisfied himself?  He
+was not accustomed to doing things by halves. If Cass had stolen the
+money it would never do to retain him in a position of trust. Then the
+devil of subtle diplomacy, familiar at all times to Crane, whispered in
+his ear that he need not blazen to the world the result of his further
+investigation; he might satisfy himself, and then if Mortimer were found
+still deeper in the toils it might be spoken of; but if he were found
+innocent--well, was Crane his brother's keeper? He could adopt one of
+two plans to get at the truth; he could trace out Billy Cass and extort
+from him the name of his principal; but if startled, the latter might
+refuse to divulge anything. Police pressure meant publicity. There was
+a better plan--Crane always found a better plan in everything. If David
+Cass had stolen the money he must have sent it to his brother; if that
+fact were established it would show a connection between the two.
+
+That afternoon Crane took a train to Brookfield. A visit to the village
+post office disclosed a hidden jewel. As far as Crane was concerned the
+fate of the two men was held in the hollow of the postmaster's hand.
+The latter, with little hesitation, allowed him to delve into official
+secrets.
+
+He learned that David Cass had sent a letter, with a quick-delivery
+stamp on it, to William Cass, at A B C, East Fourteenth Street, New
+York, at 3:30 p.m., on June 12. So far as guilt or innocence was
+concerned there was nothing left to discover; the connection between
+these two men was demonstrated. Farrell's misidentification established
+another truth--they were brothers. The letter, hastening to its
+destination, had contained the stolen money. Mortimer would not give it
+to Cass to send away; even if he had done so he would not then have gone
+to Gravesend. Alan Porter had also gone to Gravesend; if he had stolen
+the money he would have taken it with him.
+
+David Cass, the unsuspected, was the thief. Mortimer, condemned, having
+restored the money--having taken upon himself with almost silent
+resignation the disgrace--was innocent. And all this knowledge was in
+Crane's possession alone, to use as he wished. The fate of his rival was
+given into his hands; and if he turned down his thumb, so, better for
+Mortimer that he had been torn of wild beasts in a Roman arena than to
+be cast, good name and all, to the wolves of righteous humanity.
+
+As a dog carries home a bone too large for immediate consumption, Crane
+took back this new finding to his den of solitude in New York. At eight
+o'clock he turned the key in his door, and arm in arm with his now
+constant companion walked fitfully up and down, up and down, the floor.
+Sometimes he sat in a big chair that beckoned to him to rest; sometimes
+he raced with swift speed; once he threw himself upon his bed, and lay
+staring wide-eyed at the ceiling for hours. What mockery--hours! on the
+mantelpiece the clock told him that he had ceased his strides for a bare
+five minutes.
+
+Then he thrust himself back into a chair, and across the table opposite
+sat Wrong, huge--grinning with a devilish temptation; not gold, but a
+perfume of lilacs, and the music of soft laughter like the tinkle of
+silver bells, the bejeweled light of sweet eyes that were gray, and all
+the temptation that Wrong held in itself was the possession of Allis
+Porter.
+
+And Crane need commit no crime, unless inaction were a crime--just leave
+things as they were. In the eyes of the world Mortimer was a thief; he
+would never claim Allis so branded.
+
+Crane with a word could clear the accused man; he could go to David Cass
+and force him to confess. But why should he do it--sacrifice all he
+held dear in life?  Everything that he had valued before became
+obliterated by the blindness of his love for the girl. Yet still the
+love seemed to soften him. Into his life had come new, strange
+emotions. The sensuous odor of stephanotis, that had not repelled in
+the old life, had come to suggest a pestilence in his nostrils, made
+clean by the purity of lilac. As he swayed in contention, the face of
+Wrong fronting him became the face of Sin--repellent, abhorrent; how
+could he ruin her life, and by a criminal act?
+
+Hour by hour the struggle went on, until, exhausted, Crane flung himself
+upon his bed to rest a few minutes, and sleep, unsought, came and hushed
+the turmoil of his heart.
+
+Without decision he had cast himself down; his mind, tortured in its
+perplexity, was unequal to the task of guiding him. So wearied he
+should have slept for hours, but, as the first glint of sunlight came
+through the uncurtained window, he sprang from his couch with the call
+of an uncompleted something in his ears.
+
+But calm had come to him in his sleep; the question of right or wrong
+had been settled. He tried to remember how he had come to the
+conclusion that was alone in his rested mind. It must have been before
+he slept, though his memory failed him, for as he slumbered Allis Porter
+had come with the big gray eyes full of tears and asked him once again
+to spare Mortimer humiliation for her sake. And he had answered, "He is
+innocent."  God! he remembered it, even now it thrilled through his
+frame--she had bent over and kissed him on the forehead. Yes, that was
+what had wakened him. What foolish things dreams were. He had won just
+a kiss and had paid the price of his love; and now waking, and in the
+calm of a conflict passed, he had won over the demon that had tempted
+him with the perfume of lilacs. He had striven to the point when
+further strife became a crime. He had lost; but he would prove himself
+a good loser.
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+That day Crane went to Brookfield.
+
+In spirit he was like a man that had been cast into an angry sea, and
+had battled his way through hungry waves to shore. Saved, the utter
+weariness of fierce strife hung heavy over his soul, and exhaustion
+deadened his joy of escape. Just saved, bereft of everything, he looked
+back over the dark waters and shuddered. And before him a dreary waste
+of desert shore-land stretched out interminably, and he must wander
+alone over its vast expanse forever.
+
+Crane in all things was strong. It was strength drawn to right by the
+influence of the woman he loved that had saved him from the waters that
+were worse than the broad sands of a desolate life. But he still had
+something to do, the final act made possible by his redemption.
+
+At Brookfield he went to the hotel, secured an isolated sitting room
+upstairs, and with this as a hall of justice, followed out with his
+usual carefulness a plan he had conceived. First he wrote a brief note
+to Allis Porter asking her to come and see him at once. One line he
+wrote made certain the girl's coming, "I have important news to
+communicate concerning Mr. Mortimer." Then he sent the note off with a
+man. Next he despatched a messenger for David Cass. He pulled out his
+watch and looked at it. It was three o'clock. "I think five will do,"
+he muttered; "it should be all over by that time."  Another note
+addressed to Mortimer, asking him to call at the hotel at five o'clock,
+went forth.
+
+The village hotel throbbed with the pressure of unwonted business. The
+proprietor surmised that a financial matter of huge magnitude was
+afloat--another farm was being mortgaged, most like; more money for
+Ringwood probably, for had not a buggy gone out there to bring some one
+in to the great financier. Those race horses were the devil to put a
+man in a hole.
+
+David Cass came, treading on the heels of a much-whiskied howler who had
+summoned him.
+
+"You sent for me, sir?" he asked of Crane. It may have been the stairs
+--for he had come up hurriedly--that put a waver in his voice; or it may
+have been a premonition of trouble.
+
+"Take a seat, Mr. Cass," Crane answered, arranging a chair so that a
+strong light from the one window fell across the visitor's face.
+
+The hostler who had shown Cass to where the big man awaited him
+lingered, a jagged wobble of humanity, leaning against the door jamb.
+He expected an order for "Red Eye," as he had baptized strong drink
+since it had grown familiarly into his being. "Oh!" exclaimed Crane,
+"I'd forgotten; here's a quarter; much obliged. That's all."
+
+The hostler's unjointed legs, unstable because of recurrent debauchery,
+carried him disconsolately to lower levels. The Banker must be sure of
+his business, must have it well in hand, when he ignored the usual
+diplomatic mollifying preparation of a drink.
+
+The hostler had left the sitting-room door open; Crane closed it
+carefully, and, sitting with his back to the window, said to the bank
+clerk: "Mr. Cass, I am going to be very candid with you; I am going to
+tell you that I have discovered you stole the thousand dollars Mortimer
+has been accused of taking."
+
+Cass's face blanched a bluish white; his jaw dropped loosely like the
+jaw of a man who had been suddenly struck a savage blow. His weak,
+watery, blue eyes opened wide in terror; he gasped for breath; he
+essayed to speak--to give even a cry of pain, but the muscles of his
+tongue were paralyzed. His right hand resting on the arm of his chair,
+as Crane ceased speaking, fell hopelessly by his side, where it dangled
+like the cloth limb of a dummy.
+
+Crane saw all this with fierce satisfaction. He had planned this sudden
+accusation with subtle forethought. It even gave him relief to feel his
+suffering shifted to another; he was no longer the assailed by evil
+fortune, he was the assailant. Already the sustaining force of right
+was on his side; what a dreadful thing it was to squirm and shrink in
+the toils of crime. A thought that he might have been like this had he
+allowed Mortimer to stand accused flashed through his mind. He waited
+for his victim to speak.
+
+At last Cass found strength to say: "Mr. Crane, this is a terrible
+accusation; there is some dreadful mistake--I did not--"
+
+The other interrupted him. The man's defense must be so abjectly
+hopeless, such a cowardly weak string of lies, that out of pity, as he
+might have ceased to beat a hound, Crane continued, speaking rapidly,
+holding the guilty man tight in the grasp of his fierce denunciation.
+
+"You stole that note. You sent it, with a quick-delivery stamp to your
+brother, Billy Cass, in New York, and he bet it for you on my horse, The
+Dutchman, on the 13th, and lost it. Mortimer, thinking that Alan Porter
+had taken the money, replaced it, and you nearly committed a greater
+crime than stealing when you allowed him to be dishonored, allowed him
+to be accused and all but convicted of your foolish sin. It is useless
+to deny it, all this can be proved in court. I have weighed the matter
+carefully, and if you confess you will not be prosecuted; if you do not,
+you will be sent to the penitentiary."
+
+Cass, stricken beyond the hope of defense, rose from his chair,
+steadying himself with his hands on the table, leaned far over it, as
+though he were drawn physically by the fierce magnetism of his accuser,
+and spoke in a voice scarce stronger than the treble of a child's: "My
+God!  Mr. Crane!  Do you mean it, that you won't prosecute me?  Did you
+say that?"
+
+"Not if you confess."
+
+"Thank God--thank you, sir. I'm glad, I'm glad; I've been in hell for
+days. I haven't slept. Mortimer's eyes have stared at me all through
+the night, for I liked him--everybody liked him--he was good to me. Oh,
+God!  I should have gone out of my mind with more of it. I didn't steal
+the money--no, no!  I didn't mean to steal it; the Devil put it into my
+hands. Before God, I never stole a dollar in my life. But it wasn't
+that--it wasn't the money--it was to think that an innocent man was to
+suffer--to have his life wrecked because of my folly."
+
+How it was coming home to Crane. Had he not dabbled his hands in the
+same sin, almost committed it?
+
+"You have never known what it is to suffer in that way. But let me tell
+you all. I must. Then perhaps you will understand how I was tempted.
+For years I have been ground in poverty. My mother and my sister, even
+my brother have all looked to me. My brother should have supported
+them, but all his money went on the race course, gambling. When I heard
+Alan Porter tell Mortimer that your horse was sure to win, for the first
+time in my life I felt a desire to get money that way. But I had no
+money to bet. That day as I went into the vault I saw under a lower
+shelf--the Devil drew my eyes that way--a bank note. I hardly knew it
+was a bank note, for I saw but a piece of paper indistinctly in the dim
+light. I picked it up. Oh, God! if I hadn't touched it!  I looked at
+it. My heart jumped in my throat and choked me; my head swam. In my
+ears were strange voices, saying: 'Take it! Put it in your pocket!'
+Perhaps it was because it was so large--a thousand dollars--perhaps it
+was because it seemed lost, out of place, I don't know. I had handled
+thousands and thousands before, and never felt that way.
+
+"The devil voices that were in my ears said: 'This is your chance. Take
+it, borrow it, no one will know. Bet it on the horse that will surely
+win, and you will get many thousands; then you can replace it, and for
+once in your life you will know what it is to have something of your
+own'
+
+"I tried to put it back. I couldn't. The voices called me a fool, a
+coward. I thought of my mother, my sister, what I could do if I had the
+courage. I tried to take it in to Mr. Lane and say that I had found it.
+I couldn't. Oh, my God! you don't know what it is to be tempted!  You
+have been successful, and don't know how miserably weak ill-fortune
+makes a man. I yielded--I took it; then when its loss was discovered,
+and Mortimer was accused, I tried to confess--I couldn't; I was a
+coward, a traitor, a Judas. Oh, God!"
+
+The overwrought man threw himself face down on the table in front of his
+grim accuser, like a child's broken doll, and wept with great sobs that
+shook his frame as the wind lashes the waters into turmoil.
+
+An exultation of righteous victory swept through Crane's soul. He might
+have been like that; he had been saved from it by his love for a good
+woman. He could not despise the poor broken creature who confessed so
+abjectly, because all but in deed he also had sinned. The deepest cry
+of despair from Cass was because of the sin he had committed against his
+friend--against Mortimer.
+
+Crane waited until Cass's misery had exhausted itself a little, and when
+he spoke his voice was soft in pity.
+
+"I understand. Sit in your chair there and be a man. Half an hour ago
+I thought you a thief--I don't now. You had your time of weakness,
+perhaps all men have that; you fell by the wayside. I don't think you'll
+do it again"
+
+"No, no, no!  I wouldn't go through the hell I've lived in again for all
+the money in the world. And I'm so glad that it is known; I feel
+relief."
+
+"Well, it is better that the truth has come out, because everything can
+be put right. I was going to make you pay back the thousand dollars to
+Mortimer--I was going to drive you from the bank--I was going to let it
+be known that you had stolen the money, but now, I must think. You must
+have another chance. It's a dangerous thing to wreck lives--"
+
+"My God! it is; that's what haunted me night and day. I felt as though
+I had murdered a man who had been my friend. I knew he thought young
+Porter had taken it and was shielding him. The memory of the misery in
+Mortimer's face at being counted a thief would have stuck to me if I had
+lived a hundred years."
+
+Cass had interrupted Crane. When he ceased again out of exhaustion,
+Crane proceeded, "Mortimer must be paid back the money."
+
+"I'll save and work my fingers off till I do it."
+
+"You can't. Those dependent upon you would starve. I'll attend to that
+myself."
+
+"And you will let me go without--"
+
+"No, you can't go."
+
+"My God!  I'm to be prosecuted?"
+
+"No, you can stay in the bank. I don't think you'll ever listen to the
+voices again; it's bad business."
+
+Cass sat and stared at the strange man who said these things out of
+silly expressionless eyes that were blurred full of tears.
+
+"Yes, you can go right on as you have been. It will be understood that
+the money was found, had been mislaid; I'll think that out. It's
+nobody's business just now; I run the bank and you take orders from me.
+Go back to your desk and stay there. I've got to tell Mortimer and Miss
+Porter that you made this mistake, and Lane, too, I suppose, but nobody
+else will ever know of it. I was going to make you sign a confession,
+but it's not needed. You may go now."
+
+Cass rose, his thin legs seeming hopelessly inadequate to the task of
+carrying his body, and said, "Will you take my hand, sir?"
+
+"Of course I will. Just do right from this on, and forget-no, better
+not forget; remember that there is no crime like weakness; all crime
+comes from weakness. Be strong, and listen to no more voices. But I
+needn't tell you. I know from this out I can trust you further than a
+man who has never been tried."
+
+At the door Cass turned and looked back at the man who had reached down
+into the abyss, pulled him up, and stood him on his feet. The man was
+sitting quite still, his back to the light, his head drooped, and Cass
+could not see his face. He strove futilely for some adequate expression
+of gratitude, but his senses were numb from the shock of what he had
+escaped; he simply nodded twice toward the sitting figure, turned, and
+passed out into the street, where the sunlight baptized him with warmth
+as though he had been born again.
+
+"Poor, weak devil!" muttered Crane; then he shivered. Had the
+imbecile's talk of voices got on to his nerves?  Surely a voice had
+whispered derisively in his ear, "Which one is the poor, weak devil?"
+And in answer within his soul Crane knew that the margin was indeed of
+infinitesimal narrowness. Cass, hastened in his temptation, yielding to
+the first insane impulse, not knowing that the damnation of a friend
+hung on his act, had fallen. He, Crane, in full knowledge that two
+innocent lives might be wrecked by his doing, had been kept to the right
+only after hours of struggle, and by the supporting influence of a
+supreme love. To have gained Allis Porter by the strategy of a villain
+could not be the method of holy passion. To sacrifice his desire and
+give her back her lover was love, love worthy of the girl.
+
+For an hour he waited; then there was turmoil on the stairway; horses
+were surely coming up. At the door a thick voice explained the
+diversion. The hostler had again arrived, with an hour of increased
+drunkenness pulling mercilessly at his erratic legs.
+
+"John Porter's gal 'sh here, an'--an'--" the hostler wrestled with the
+mental exercise that had been entrusted to his muddled brain. He'd
+swear that she was there, for his eyes had seen her, two of her; and
+also he had a hazy idea that when he essayed the stairs she had
+entrusted to him some message. He groped fitfully among the wheels that
+buzzed in his skull for the elusive something connected with her advent.
+The heredity of habit came to his assistance.
+
+"D'ye want a drink?" he asked, with a sudden brightening.
+
+"Drink!" a voice cried. "I don't want any drink"  A strong hand had him
+by the collar, and the house was rocking violently to and fro; he could
+scarcely keep his feet.
+
+"Wake up, you're drunk. Is Miss Porter down stairs?"
+
+"Porter, Porter, yesh, Portersh gal; thatsh what I said. Whatsh matter
+with you?--leg-go. Keep cool, don't get excited."
+
+"Here, get out--go down stairs!"  And he did, hurriedly.
+
+Crane had followed him down. Allis was standing just within the hall
+door.
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss Porter," he said. "It was good of you to come.
+I've got something very important to tell you, and it's better that we
+have quiet--it doesn't seem quite the usual order of things here.
+Should you mind coming upstairs to the sitting room, where we shall be
+undisturbed?"
+
+"I don't mind," answered the girl, simply.
+
+"Have a chair," he said, motioning to the one Cass had lately sat in.
+
+Crane did not take the other seat, but paced restlessly up and down the
+room; it cooled the fever of his mind.
+
+"I hope it isn't more bad news, Mr. Crane," Allis said; for her
+companion seemed indisposed to break the silence.
+
+"It is--" the girl started--"for me," Crane added, after a little pause;
+"and yet I am glad."
+
+"That sounds strange," Allis commented, wonderingly.
+
+"What I am going to say to you means the destruction of the dearest hope
+I have in life, but it can't be helped. Now I wouldn't have it any
+other way."
+
+Suddenly he stopped in his swift pace, faced the girl, and asked, "You
+are quite sure you can't love me?"  He was waiting for an answer.
+
+"No, I can't--I hate to cause you misery, but I must speak the truth;
+you have asked for it."
+
+"And you've answered honestly. I know it was foolish in me to ask the
+impossible. Just one more question and then I will tell you why I
+brought you here. Do you still believe in Mortimer's innocence--do you
+love Mortimer?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"If I were to tell you that he is innocent, that I have discovered the
+guilty one."
+
+"Oh, my God!"  It was a cry of sudden joy, incapable of exact
+expression, irrelevant in its naming of tho Deity, but full in its
+exultation of soul. Then, in quick transformation, the girl collapsed,
+as Cass had done, and huddled in her chair, stricken by the sudden
+conviction that the crime had been brought home to her brother. Her
+lover was guiltless; but to joy over it was a sin, inhuman, for was not
+Alan the thief, if Mortimer were innocent?
+
+Crane understood. He had forgotten. He stepped quickly to the girl's
+side, put his hand tenderly on her head; her big gray eyes stared up at
+him full of a shrinking horror.
+
+"Poor little woman!" he said, "your big, tender heart will be the death
+of you yet. But I've got only good news for you this time. Neither
+Mortimer nor Alan took the money--it was Cass."
+
+"They are both innocent?"
+
+"Yes, both."
+
+"Oh, my God, I thank Thee."  She pulled herself up from the chair,
+holding to Crane's arm, and looking in his face, said, "You did this;
+you found the guilty man for me?"
+
+Crane nodded his head; and it came to the girl as she looked, that the
+eyes she had thought narrow in evil grew big and round and full of
+honesty, and soft with gentleness for her.
+
+"How can I thank you--what can I do or say to repay you?"  She knew what
+it must have cost the man to clear his rival's name.
+
+"It was your doing, Miss Allis; it is I who must thank you. You made a
+man of me, brought more good into my life than had been there for forty
+years. I will be honest. I did not do this of myself, my own free
+will. In my love for you, and desire to have you with me always, I
+almost committed a crime. I was tempted to conceal the discovery I had
+made; I knew that if I cleared Mortimer you were lost to me. I
+struggled with temptation and fell asleep still not conquering it. In
+my sleep I dreamed--I don't think it was a dream--it was like a vision--
+you came to me, and when I said that Mortimer was innocent, you kissed
+me on the forehead. I woke then, and the struggle had ceased--the
+temptation had passed. I came down here, and Cass has confessed that he
+took the money."
+
+"Would you like it--would you think it wrong--it seems so little for me
+to do--may I kiss you now, as I did in your dream, and thank you from
+the bottom of my heart for making me so happy?  It all seems like a
+dream to me now."
+
+For answer Crane inclined his head, and Allis, putting her hand upon his
+shoulder, kissed him on the forehead, and through him went a thrill of
+great thankfulness, of joy such as he knew would never have come to him
+had he gained through treachery even this small token of conquest.
+
+"There," he said, taking Allis by the arm, and gently drawing her back
+to the chair; "now I am repaid a thousandfold for not doing a great
+wrong. You have beaten me twice within a few days. I fancy I should
+almost be afraid to be your husband, you master me so easily."
+
+"That's Mortimer coming," Crane said, suddenly, as a step with more
+consistency in its endeavor than pertained to the hostler's, sounded,
+coming up the stairs. "I sent for him," he added, seeing the look of
+happy confusion in Allis's face.
+
+"Come in," he called cheerily, in answer to a knock on the door.
+
+"You sent for me--" Then Mortimer stopped suddenly, and stood staring
+first at Allis, then at Crane, alternately, back and forth from one to
+the other.
+
+Crane turned his back upon the younger man and busied himself wondrously
+over the manipulation of a chair. A strange dread crept into Mortimer's
+heart; it smothered him; he felt dizzy. Why did Allis look so happy--why
+were there smiles on her lips when she must know there were ashes of
+gloom in his soul?  Why was she alone there with Crane?  Was it but
+another devilish trick of the misfortune that pursued him?
+
+"Good afternoon, Miss" the words stuck in Mortimer's throat, and he
+completed his greeting with a most dreadfullv formal bow.
+
+The girl laughed outright; how droll it was to see a man trying to make
+himself unhappy when there was nothing but happiness in the world.
+Through the open window she could hear the birds singing, and through it
+came the perfume of clover-buried fields; across the floor streamed
+warm, bright sunlight from a blue sky in which was no cloud. And from
+their lives, Mortimer's and her own, had been swept the dark cloud--and
+here, in the midst of all this joy was her lover with a long, sad face,
+trying to reproach her with a stiff, awkward bow.
+
+Her laugh twirled Crane about like a top. He saw the odd situation;
+there was something incongruous in Mortimer's stiff attitude. Crane had
+a big cloud of his own not quite driven from his sky, but a smile
+hovered on his thin lips. This happiness was worth catching.
+
+Mortimer noticed the distasteful mirth reflected in the other man's
+face, and he repeated with asperity, "You sent for me, sir--may I ask--"
+
+"Will you take a chair," said Crane, and he pushed the one he had been
+toying with toward Mortimer. The latter remained standing.
+
+Allis sprang forward and caught him by the arm--Crane turned away,
+suddenly discovering that from the window the main street of Brookfield
+was a most absorbing study.
+
+"I'm so happy," began Allis. Mortimer shivered in apprehension. Why had
+Crane turned his face away--what was coming?  How could she be happy,
+how could anyone in the world be happy?  But evidently she was. She
+stole a quick look at Crane--to be exact, Crane's back, for his head and
+shoulders were through the window.
+
+Then the girl--she had to raise on her tiptoes--kissed the sad man on
+the cheek. I'm ashamed to say that he stared. Were they all mad--was
+he not standing with one foot in the penitentiary?
+
+She drew him toward the chair, calling to Crane: "Will you please tell
+Mr. Mortimer the good news. I am too happy; I can't."
+
+A fierce anger surged in Mortimer's heart; it was true, then--his
+disgrace had been too much for Allis. The other had won; but it was too
+cruel to kiss him.
+
+Crane faced about, and coming forward, held out his hand to the man of
+distrust. "I hope you'll forgive me."
+
+Mortimer sprang to his feet, shoving back his chair violently, and stood
+erect, drawn to his full height, his right hand clenched fiercely at his
+side. "Shake hands?  No, a thousand times no!" he muttered to himself.
+
+Crane saw the action, and his own hand dropped. "Perhaps I ask too
+much," he said, quietly; "I wronged you--"
+
+Mortimer set his teeth and waited. There were great beads of
+perspiration on his forehead, and his broad chest set his breath
+whistling through contracted nostrils. A pretty misdirected passion was
+playing him. This was why they had sent for him--the girl he would have
+staked his life on had been brought to believe in his guilt, and had
+been won over to his rival. Ah--a new thought; his mind, almost
+diseased by unjust accusation, prompted it--perhaps it was to save him
+from punishment that Allis had consented to become Crane's wife.
+
+"But I believed you guilty--" Mortimer started as Crane said this "now I
+know that you are innocent, I ask--"
+
+Mortimer staggered back a step and caught at the chair to steady
+himself. He repeated mechanically the other's words: "You know I'm
+innocent?"
+
+"Yes, I've found the guilty man."
+
+"Then Alan--oh, the poor lad!  It's a mistake--you are wrong. The boy
+didn't take the money--I took it."
+
+Crane looked at him in admiration, an indulgent smile on his lips.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear sir!" he exclaimed, dryly; "Alan did not take the
+money--neither did you. Cass took it, and you wasted a day of the
+bank's time covering the crime for him."
+
+"Cass took it?" asked Mortimer in a dazed way, looking from Crane to
+Allis.
+
+"Yes; he has confessed, so you see he's ahead of you in that line"  He
+went on, speaking hurriedly: "I ask you to forgive me now for my
+suspicions. Your innocence is completely established. You acted like a
+hero in trying to shield Alan Porter, and I like men of that stamp. The
+thousand dollars you paid in will be restored to you; it is yours. We
+will devise some scheme for clearing up the matter as far as your good
+name is concerned that will shield poor Cass from people who have no
+business in this affair"
+
+"But how did Cass manage to get the note?"
+
+"Found it on the floor of the vault, he says"
+
+"I don't see how it could have fallen out of the box, because the three
+bills were pinned to the note."
+
+Crane drew forth a pocket book, and opening it took out the bill that
+had been stolen. He examined it closely, holding it up in front of the
+window.
+
+"I think you are mistaken," he said, "there are no pin holes in this
+bill; I see," he continued, "the pin had not gone through this one;
+being detached, in handling the box, it has slipped out."
+
+"It must have," concurred Mortimer. "I remember in putting the box in
+the compartment once I had to turn it on its edge; the bill being loose,
+as you say, has slipped to the floor, and as the vault was dark I did
+not notice it."
+
+"It doesn't matter," added Crane. "I must go now. Good-bye, Miss
+Allis."
+
+Turning to Mortimer he held out his hand.
+
+"Good-bye, and long happiness to you both," he said; "I trust you will
+think kindly of me and poor Cass. I am sure we are sorry for what has
+been done."
+
+As Crane went down the stairs he wondered why he had coupled himself
+with Cass. Was the difference so slight--had they been together in the
+same boat up to the point of that silly, fantastic dream. Perhaps they
+had.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+With the going of Crane an awkward restraint came over the two who were
+left; the man who had suffered so much for the woman's sake, and the
+girl who had endeavored so much.
+
+He was like a man suddenly thrust into a new world of freedom; he
+indulged in a physical manifestation of its exhilaration, drinking in a
+long, deep draught of the clover-scented air, until his great lungs
+sighed with the plethora. It seemed a lifetime that he had lived in the
+noisome atmosphere of a felon's cell. But now the crime had dropped from
+him; a free man in every sense of the word, he could straighten himself
+up and drink of the air that was without taint.
+
+Allis watched Mortimer curiously; she was too happy to speak--just to
+look upon him standing there, her undefiled god, her hero, with his
+heroism known and applauded, was a suffusing ecstasy. He was so great,
+so noble, that anything she might say would be inane, tawdry,
+inconsequent; so she waited, patiently happy, taking no count of time,
+nor the sunshine, nor the lilt of the birds, nor even the dissolution of
+conventionality in the unsupervised tete-a-tete.
+
+The ecstatic magnetism of congenial silence has always a potency, and
+its spell crept into Mortimer's soul and laid embargo on his tongue. He
+crossed over to Allis, and taking her slender hand in his own, crouched
+down on the floor beside her chair, and looked up into her face, just as
+a great St. Bernard might have done, incapable of articulating the
+wealth of love and gratitude and faithfulness that was in his heart.
+
+Even then the girl did not speak. She drew the man's strong rugged head
+close up to her face, and nestled her cheek against his. Love without
+words; love greater than words. It was like a fairy dream; if either
+spoke the gentle gossamer web of it would float away like mist, and of
+needs they must talk of the misery that had passed.
+
+In the end the girl spoke first, saying like a child having a range of
+but few words, "You are happy now, my hero?"
+
+"Too happy--I almost fear to wake and find that I've been dreaming."
+
+She kissed him.
+
+"Yes, it's real," he answered; "in dreams happiness is not so positive
+as this. You did not doubt?" he queried.
+
+"Never."
+
+"You would have waited?"
+
+"Forever."
+
+"And now--and now, we must still wait"
+
+"Not forever."
+
+They talked of the wonderful necromancy the gods had used to set their
+lives to the sweet music of happiness. How Lauzanne the Despised had
+saved Ringwood to her father; how he had won Alan's supposed price of
+redemption for Mortimer; how he had stood sturdy and true to the girl of
+much faith and all gentleness. And the room became a crypt of
+confessional when she, in penitence, told of her ride on the gallant
+Chestnut.
+
+Just a span of Fate's hand from these two happy mortals, and twice the
+sand had sifted through the hour glass, sat a man all alone in his
+chamber. On his table was the dust of solitariness; and with his finger
+he wrote in it "Forever."  But he looked fearlessly across the board,
+for there sat no grinning demon of temptation, nor remorse, nor fear.
+But a fragrance as of lilacs and of sweet clover coming through an open
+window was in his nostrils; and in his memory was the picture of a face
+he loved, made like unto an angel's with gratitude, and on his forehead
+still burned, like a purifying fire, a kiss that reached down into his
+soul and filled him with the joy of thankfulness.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Thoroughbreds, by W. A. Fraser
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+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
+
diff --git a/old/thbds10.zip b/old/thbds10.zip
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/thbds10.zip