r dark looks, and even angry expressions of strong
disapproval, and when he gained the green sward of the lawn, hurried to
his friend's box.

"Did you get it on?" queried the latter.

"No; I don't like the look of it. Faust is holding out Lauzanne, and
stretched me half a point about the mare. He and Langdon are in the same
boat."

"But that won't win the race," remonstrated Danby. "Lauzanne is a
maiden, and Porter doesn't often make a mistake about any of his own
stock."

"I thought I'd come back and tell you," said Bob Lewis, apologetically.

"And you did right; but if the mare wins, and I'm not on, after getting
it straight from Porter, I'd want to go out and kick myself good and
hard. But put it on straight and place; then if Lauzanne's the goods
we'll save."

Lewis was gone about four minutes.

"You're on," he said, when he returned; "I've two hundred on the
Chestnut for myself."

"Lauzanne?"

"It's booked that way; but I'm backin' the Trainer, Langdon. I went on
my uppers two years ago backing horses; I'm following men now."

"Bad business," objected his stout friend; "it's bad business to back
anything that talks."

When John Porter reached the saddling paddock, his brown mare, Lucretia,
was being led around in a circle in the lower corner. As he walked down
toward her his trainer, Andy Dixon, came forward a few paces to meet
him.

"Are they hammerin' Crane's horse in the ring, sir?" he asked, smoothing
down the grass with the toe of one foot, watching this physical process
with extreme interest.

"Just what you'd notice," replied Porter. "Why?"

"Well, I don't like the look of it a little bit. Here's this Lauzanne
runs like a dog the last time out--last by the length of a street--and
now I've got it pretty straight they're out for the stuff."

"They'd a stable-boy up on him that time."

"That's just it," cried Dixon. "Grant comes to me that day--you know
Grant, he works the commission for Dick Langdon--and tells me to leave
the horse alone; and to-day he comes and--" he hesitated.

"And what?"

"Tells me to go light on our mare."

"Isn't Grant broke?" asked Porter, with seeming irrelevance.

"He's close next it," answered the Trainer.

"Aren't his friends that follow him all broke?"

"A good many of them have their address in Queer Street."

"Look here, Andy," said the owner, "there isn't a man with a horse in
this stake that doesn't think he's going to win; and when it's all over