," began the Colonel, "but--"

Frank's face fell, instantly, and his shoulders drooped despairingly.
"Then it's all wrong."

"Not yet," said the Colonel, "score again." He raised the telegram and
read from it: "'Can't take mare without positive proof that she's all
right. Let her run in the Ashland Oaks, to-day. If she wins, we take
her.'" The Colonel looked up beamingly. "Do you hear? They take her!"

The condition which, now, the Dyer brothers made, when, before this,
they had made none, bothered Frank. The telegram did not elate him quite
as much as the old horseman had supposed it would. "Ah, if she wins!"
said he.

Miss Alathea spoke up, eagerly. "Oh, Frank, of course she'll win."

"She's _got_ to win!" exclaimed the Colonel with much emphasis.

Frank was in a pessimistic mood. "I'm not so sure," said he, a little
gloomily. The strain of the past days had been a hard trial for the
youth. "If that imp of a jockey, Ike, should get in range of a whiskey
bottle--however, he has promised not to leave his room."

The Colonel laughed. "Ike leave his room?" he said. "You're right--he
won't; but it will not be his promise that will keep him from it. He
couldn't leave it if he would."

"Why not?" inquired Miss 'Lethe.

"Because," the Colonel answered, "I have got his clothes!"

"His clothes!" said Frank, astonished.

"Yes--a Napoleonic device. When I went to see him, this morning, I found
him in bed. I knew how it might be if he got out, so I saw to it that
his meals would reach him promptly, and borrowed the one suit of clothes
he brought with him, under pretence of needing them to help me order a
new jockey-suit for him to wear in the great race. I've been fair about
it, too--I've got the new clothes for him." He pointed to the bundle
which he had just brought in. "They're in there--and they'll not
disgrace Queen Bess. They're the best I could get."

Frank, less interested in the clothes than in the fact that the jockey,
now, was quite secure against temptation, sighed with satisfaction.
"Then he's safe," said he.

The Colonel nodded, notably well satisfied with his performance. Miss
Alathea, shocked, as she tried to be, by all this business, adjunct of
gambling, every bit of it, yet smiled admiringly at the big horseman.
Only Madge, learned, through much experience with mountaineers, whose
greatest curse is whisky, in the ways of men addicted to its use, was
not convinced that all was surely well.

"I'd k