ock gate; and she continued on to
the fatal number seven stall. Lucretia had just been brought in, looking
very distressed after her hard race. For an instant the girl forgot her
own trouble at sight of the gallant little mare's condition. Two boys
were busy rubbing the white-crusted perspiration and dust from her
sides; little dark rivulets of wet trickled down the lean head that hung
wearily.

"Well, we lost!" It was Dixon's voice at Allis's elbow. "That'll do," to
the boys; "here, put this cooler on, and walk her about."

Then he turned to Allis again. "She was well up with the leaders half
way in the stretch; I tho't she was goin' to win."

"Was it too far for her, Dixon?"

The Trainer did not answer at once; with him at all times questions
were things to be pondered over. His knitted brows and air of hesitating
abstraction showed plainly that this question of Allis's was one he
would prefer to answer days later, if he answered it at all.

"Didn't she stop suddenly?" Allis asked, again.

"I couldn't just see from where I was what happened," he replied,
evasively; "and I haven't asked the boy yet. She may have got shut in.
Ah, here he comes now," as the jockey returned from the weighing scales.

Redpath seemed to think that some explanation was necessary, as he came
up to Allis and the Trainer, so he said: "The little mare seemed to have
a chance when I turned into the stretch, an' I thought once I was goin'
to win; but that big Black just kept galloping, galloping, an' I never
could get to his head; I'd a been in the money, though, if somethin'
hadn't bumped me; an' then my mount just died away--she just seemed to
die away." He repeated this is a falling decadence, as though it best
expressed his reason for finishing in the ruck.

"Well, we're beat, an' that's all there is to it," declared Dixon, half
savagely; then he added, "an' by a cast-off out of your father's stable,
too, Miss Allis. If there's any more bad luck owin' John Porter, hanged
if I wouldn't like to shoulder it myself, an' give him a breather."
Then, with ponderous gentleness for a big, rough-throwntogether man, he
continued: "Don't you fret, Miss; the little mare's all right; she'll
pull your father through all this; you just cheer up. I've got to go now
an' look after her."

When the Trainer had gone the jockey turned to Allis, hesitatingly,
and said: "Dixon's correct about the little mare; she's all right. I
wouldn't speak even afore him