chief cause of resentment against the Chestnut.
The public having got into its head that Porter was playing coups,
generously suggested that he was pulling Lauzanne to get him in some big
handicap light.

"I won't feed such a skate all winter," he declared angrily, after a
little pause.

"Well, give him to me, father," the girl had pleaded; "I am certain that
he'll make good some day; you'll see that he'll pay you for keeping your
word."

As Allis rode Lauzanne she discovered many things about the horse;
that instead of being a stupid, morose brute, his intelligence was
extraordinary, and, with her at least, his temper perfect.

Allis's relationship with her father was unusual. They were chums; in
all his trouble, in all his moments of wavering, buffeted by the waves
of disaster, Allis was the one who cheered him, who regirt him in
his armor:--Allis, the slight olive-faced little woman, with the big,
fearless Joan-of-Arc eyes.

"You'll see what we'll do next summer, Dad," she said cheerily. "You'll
win with Lucretia as often as you did with her mother; and I'll win with
Lauzanne. We'll just keep quiet till spring, then we'll show them."

Langdon's horses, so silently controlled by Philip Crane, Banker, had
been put in winter quarters at Gravesend, where Langdon had a cottage.
Crane's racing season had been as successful as the Master of
Ringwood's had been disastrous. He had won a fair-class race with The
Dutchman--ostensibly Langdon's horse--and then, holding true to his
nature, which was to hasten slowly, threw him out of training and
deliberately planned a big coup for the next year. The colt was engaged
in several three-year-old stakes, and Crane set Langdon to work to find
out his capabilities. As his owner expected, he showed them in a severe
trial gallop the true Hanover staying-power.

Although Crane had said nothing about it at the time, he had his eye on
the Eastern Derby when he commissioned Langdon to purchase this gallant
son of Hanover. It was a long way ahead to look, to lay plans to win a
race the following June, but that was the essence of Crane's existence,
careful planning. He loved it. He was a master at it. And, after all,
given a good stayer, such as he had in The Dutchman, the mile-and-a-half
run of the Derby left less to chance than any other stake he could have
pitched upon; the result would depend absolutely upon the class and
stamina of the horses. No bad start could upset his calculat