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 shou