e 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 enoug