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 padd