"Langdon's a betting man; Porter's an owner, and a good judge," objected
Danby; "and he's got a good boy up, too, McKay," he added, slowly
focusing his field glasses on the jockey board opposite the Stand.

"Crooked as a dog's hind legs," snarled Lewis, biting viciously at his
cigar.

"Bob, it's damned hard to find a straight-legged dog," laughed Danby.
"And when John Porter starts a horse, there's never anything doing.
Here's six hundred; put' it on the mare--straight."

As Lewis pushed his way into the shoving, seething, elbowing crowd in
the betting ring, he was suddenly struck in the chest by something which
apparently had the momentum of an eight-inch shell; but it was only John
Porter, who, in breaking through the outer crust of the living mass, had
been ejected with more speed than was of his own volition.

Bob smothered the expletive that had risen to his lip when he saw who
the unwitting offender was, and asked, "What are they doin' to the mare
in the ring?"

"Not much," answered his assailant, catching his breath; "there's a
strong play on Langdon's horse, and if I didn't know my boy pretty well,
and Lucretia better, I'd have weakened a bit. But she can't lose, she
can't lose!" he repeated in the tone of a man who is reassuring himself.

Lewis battled his way along till he stood in front of a bookmaker with a
face cast very much on the lines of a Rubens' cherub; but the cherub-
type ended abruptly with the plump frontispiece of "Jakey" Faust, the