wick on Saraday. Told Mar, too. And she never
said No. Look to me like a sign like." He blinked up at the young man.
"You ain't clean'd out, sir, are you--not mopped up with the sponge?" he
asked anxiously.

"There'll be a few thousands left when it's finished, I guess," replied
the other.

The old man lifted on his stockinged toes.

"Put a thousand on," he whispered. "I'll do it for ye, so there's no
talk. If he wins, thar's a hundred thousand back. If he don't, well,
it's gone down the sink and h'up the spout same as its fathers afore
it."

The young man brimmed with quiet mirth.

"Will he win?" he asked.

Old Mat swung his nose from side to side across his face in a way styled
by those who knew him trunk-slinging.

"He's up against something mighty big," said Jim, nodding at the wall.

On it was pinned a great coloured double-page picture from _The Sporting
and Dramatic_ of the famous American mare Mocassin. Beside it were
various cuttings from daily papers, recounting the romantic history of
the popular favourite, and beneath the picture were three lines from the
Mocassin Song--

_Made in the mould,
Of Old Iroquois bold,
Mocassin, the Queen of Kentucky_.

Ikey indeed had found his horse at last; and she was American--Old
Kentucky to the core. It was said that Chukkers had discovered her on
one of his trips home. Certainly he had taken her across to Australia,
where she had launched on her career of unbroken triumph, carrying the
star-spangled jacket to victory in every race in which she ran. Then he
had brought her home to England, her reputation already made, and
growing hugely all the while, suddenly to overwhelm the world, when she
crowned her victories on three continents by winning the Grand National
at Liverpool--only to be disqualified for crossing amid one of the
stormiest scenes in racing history. After that Mocassin ceased to be a
mare. She became a talisman, an oriflamme, a consecrated symbol. She was
American--youthful, hopeful, not to be put upon by the Old Country,
quietly resolute to have her rights.

For the past twelve months indeed the Great Republic of the West had
fixed her two hundred million eyes upon the star-spangled jacket across
the sea in a stare so set as to be almost terrifying.

True that for a quarter of a century now her sons had followed that
jacket with sporadic interest. But since the affair at Liverpool, that
interest had become conce