er all
were only the shadows of deeper troubles, of which other members of his
household were bearing, unaided, the more direct brunt. He was asking
her, whose life had known chapters of tragedy, to give him such sympathy
as a woman has the right to give in exchange for a man's whole love. Had
he no sense of fairness, even the fairness of good sportsmanship? But
close on the heels of that realization came another which banished the
wrath. God had chosen to paint him in soft and tender colors. God had
given to his soul-pattern a certain beauty, and if there had gone into
the design no bold strokes, he himself was no more to blame than he
would have been for the failure to see, had he been born blind. His
weakness doubtless carried its own penalty of suffering. Perhaps had the
guidance been there, the wanted qualities might have been trained into
him. Hamilton had seen that, but Hamilton's hand had not had the light
touch for the delicacy of the task's beginnings.

Her mind flashed back to her girlhood. She was standing at the paddock
fence of her grandfather's stock-farm in Kentucky.

Even in her childish heart there had been a mighty pride for the old
gold and blue that were the colors of her grandfather's stables. They
were silks that raced true to tradition, for no mere gambler's
venturing, but for the gentleman's pride in his horse-flesh and his
inherent love of sport. Much of the stamina that had kept her heart from
breaking had been instilled in those lessons of the gallantry of the
long struggle and the endurance of the home-stretch.

She remembered a certain chestnut colt whose name had gone down in turf
history. She had known that colt from a weanling and to her he had not
been an animal, but a personality.

Yet that splendid-hearted creature which could out-game his fields in a
smothering drive when his heart was near bursting had been a
disappointment in two-year-old form because he had seemed to sulk and
falter and lack courage. Under the whip his speed died and his petulance
cropped out. It had only been when a jockey was found whose soft touch
of the reins nursed the head and held it up and encouraged, that the
horse had come in to his own and made his name great. Might it not be so
with a man as well as with a horse?

"Yes," she said, "it has been a bit of a trial, but it has been funny,
too," and straightway she launched into a flow of anecdote that touched
up with whimsical and delightful humor ever