butted his bull-dog nose into the seat
of Lizzette's sulky, and clung determinedly there, right up to the
wire, beaten only by a length.

Lizzette had won the heat. The judge hung out:

_3rd Heat:_ _Lizzette, 1st_; _Ben Butler, 2nd_; _Trumps distanced._
_Time_, 2:20.

Lizzette had won, but the crowd had begun to see.

"The old pacer--the old pacer!"--they yelled.

Travis bit his lip--"what did it all mean? He had won the heat.
Trumps was shut out, and there they were yelling for the old pacer!"

The Bishop was pale to the roots of his hair when he got out of the
sulky.

"Great hoss! great! great!" yelled Bud as he trotted along bringing
the blanket.

The old man bowed his head in the sulky-seat, a moment, amid the
crash of the band and the noise of the crowd:

"Dear God--my Father--I thank Thee. Not for me--not for Ben
Butler--but for life--life--for Shiloh--and Cap'n Tom. Help us--old
and blind--help us! O God--"

Col. Troup grasped his hand. The Tennesseans, followers of Flecker,
flocked around him. Flecker, too, was there--chagrined, maddened--he
too had joined his forces with the old Bishop.

"Great Scott, old man, how you do drive! We've hedged on you--me and
the Colonel--we've put up a thousand each that you'll win. We've
cooked ourselves good and hard. Now drive from hell to breakfast next
heat, and Travis is yo' meat! Fools that we were! We've cut each
other to pieces like a pair of cats tied by the tails. Travis is at
your mercy."

"Yes, sah, Flecker is right. Travis is yo' meat, sah," said the
Colonel, solemnly.

The old man walked around with his lips moving silently, and a great
pulsing, bursting, gripping pain in his heart--a pain which was half
a hope and half despair.

The crowd was on tip-toe. Never before had such a race been paced in
the Tennessee Valley. Could he take the next heat from Lizzette? If
he could, he had her at his mercy.

Grimly they scored down. Travis sullen that he had to fight the old
pacer, but confident of shutting him out this time. Confident and
maddened. The old man, as was his wont in great emergencies, had put
a bullet in his mouth to clinch his teeth on. He had learned it from
Col. Jeremiah Travis, who said Jackson did it when he killed
Dickinson, and at Tallapoosa, and at New Orleans.

"GO!"

And he heard Travis whirl away with a bitter curse that floated back.
Then the old man shot out in the long, stealing, time-eating stride
the old pacer had, and