"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 shoulders of the great jockey
thrust his mount forward, always forward--forward at each stride; fairly
lifting him, till the very lurches of Lauzanne carried him toward the