" Emily was saying, the little silver pot
poised in her hand, when the door burst open and Dick hurried,
actually hurried, into the room.

"He's won! He's got it!" he cried, brandishing the morning newspaper.
"The first time for an American car with an American driver. And how
he won it! He distanced every car on the track except the two big
Italian and French machines. Those he couldn't get, of course; but the
Frenchman went out in the fourth hour with a broken valve. Then he
was set down for second place--second place, Emily, with every other
big car in the country entered. They say he drove like, like--I don't
know what. A hundred and some miles an hour on the straight
stretches."

"Oh," Emily faltered, setting down the coffee-pot in her plate.

He stopped her eagerly, half turning toward Mr. Ffrench, who had put
on his pince-nez to contemplate his nephew in stupefaction, not at his
statement, but at his condition.

"Wait. In the last hour, the Italian car lost its chain and went over
into a ditch on a back stretch, three miles from a doctor. People
around picked the men out of the wreck, and Lestrange came up to find
that the driver was likely to die from a severed artery before help
got there. Emily, he stopped, stopped, with victory in his hands, had
the Italian lifted into the mechanician's seat, and Rupert held him in
while they dashed around the course to the hospital. He got him there
fifteen minutes before an ambulance could have reached him, and the
man will get well. But Lestrange had lost six minutes. He had rushed
straight to the doctor's, given them the man, and gone right on, but
he had lost six minutes. When people realized what he'd done, they
went wild. Every one thought he'd lost the race, but they cheered him
until they couldn't shout. And he kept on driving. It's all here," he
waved the gaudy sheet. "The paper's full of it. He had half an hour to
make up six minutes, and he did it. He came in nineteen seconds ahead
of the nearest car. The crowd swarmed out on the course and fell all
over him. Old Bailey's nearly crazy."

To see Dick excited would have been marvel enough to hold his auditors
mute, if the story itself had not possessed a quality to stir even
non-sporting blood. Emily could only sit and gaze at the head-lines of
the extended newspaper, her dark eyes wide and shining, her soft lips
apart.

"He telegraphed to Bailey," Dick added, in the pause. "Ten words:
'First across line in