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 off