be dar!" Neb exclaimed. "Kain't swaller dat, suh. Ef you should
miss dat race, why, you'd drop daid."

"I believe you, Neb--believe you. I say, Neb, look here. I have promised
on the honor of a Kentuckian, never to enter another race-track. I must
keep my word; but, for the Lord's sake, isn't there a knot-hole, that
you know of, somewhere in the fence, which would let me see the race
without going inside?"

Neb knew that race-track as he knew the plot of hard-trodden ground
before the little cabin where he had been born back of the big house out
at Woodlawn. Many a race had he seen surreptitiously when he had not
funds to buy admission to the track. He grinned, remembering talk which
he had heard between the Colonel and Miss 'Lethe, and understanding,
now. He laughed. "Oh, I yi!" he cried. "Marse Cunnel, dar ain't
nobody'll git ahead of you! You bet dar is a knot-hole, not fur off frum
de gran'-stan', neither, an' a tree, too, you could climb, stan's mighty
handy."

The Colonel groaned. "I climb a tree to peek above a race-track fence!"
said he. "No; never. They'd think I was trying to save my admission
fee! The knot-hole will have to do for me, Neb. You've saved me. Heaven
bless you! Have a cigar--they're good."

"T'ankee, suh," said Neb, reaching for the weed the Colonel now held
toward him. "Lawsy, ain't dat jus' a whoppuh? Whah you-all git sech
mon'sous big cigahs as dat?"

"I'm only smoking half as many, now, so I get 'em double size," the
Colonel answered, sighing but not wholly miserable.

Neb did not see the humor of this detail. He was thinking of the race
and of Queen Bess. "Hooray fo' de Cunnel!" he exclaimed, irrelevantly,
to a little group of colored men who had been gathering. "Whatever he
says yo' kin gamble on. Lawsy, ain't I glad I's got my money on Queen
Bess? Golly, won't Marse Holton jes' feel cheap when he done heahs dis
news? Seen him down dar in de pool-room, not so long ago, a-puttin' up
his money plumb against Queen Bess. Goin' to lose it, suah, he will." He
went off, muttering, and shaking his old head. "Somehow I jes' feels it
in mah bones dat he ain't true to Marse Frank, yessuh. If I evah fin's
it out fo' suah, I'll jes' _paralyse_ him!"

He had quite forgotten that he had come out to find Miss Alathea, and
was not looking for her when he actually stumbled into her.

"Why, Neb, what are you doing?" she said, recoiling.

"Pahdon, pahdon, please, Miss 'Lethe," said the negro. "I was