THOROUGHBREDS

by W. A. Fraser



Dedicated to a THOROUGHBRED MY WIFE



I

Less than a hundred miles from the city of Gotham, across broad green
fields, dotted into squares and oblong valleys by full-leafed maple, and
elm, and mulberry, was the village of Brookfield. A hundred years of
expansion in the surrounding land had acted inversely with the little
hamlet, and had pinched it into a hermitical isolation.

The Brookfieldians had discovered a huge beetle in the amber of their
serene existence; it was really the Reverend Dolman who had unearthed
the monster. The beetle in the amber was horse racing, and the prime
offender, practically the sole culprit, was John Porter.

By an inconsistent twist of fate he was known as Honest John. His father
before him had raced in old Kentucky to considerable purpose, and with
the full vigor of a man who races for sport; and so to the son John, in
consequence, had come little beyond a not-to-be-eradicated love of
thoroughbreds. To race squarely, honestly, and to the glory of high-
couraged horses was to him as much a matter of religion as the
consistent guardianship of parish morals was to the Reverend George