nk of
condition. Like her so-famous ancestors, a bay with black points,
neither under nor over size, with a fine, lean head, a long neck, and
four splendid legs, it was a marvel that she could so utterly lack any
trace of equine comeliness. Her chest was noticeably narrow, her
barrel out of proportion to shoulders and quarters. Still, against
those patent blemishes, a judge of conformation would have set the
splendid sloping shoulders, the reaching forearm, the bunches of massy
muscle in the long loin, the quarters well let down into perfect
houghs, the fine, clean bone of knees and ankles, the firm,
close-grained hoofs spreading faintly from coronet to base.

Clean-limbed throughout, with ears that, if they drooped, had no trace
of coarseness and were set wide apart above a basin face, the mare
showed race indisputably, notwithstanding the white in her forehead
was too smudgy to be called a star, or that, though her muzzle tapered
finely, the lower lip habitually protruded a bit. A four-year-old, she
was still a maiden--consequently had but a feather on her back in the
Far and Near. The handicapper had laughed, half wearily, half
compassionately as he allotted it, muttering something about the
jockey club robbing the cradle and the grave--that poor old Major
Meriwether, it was well known, hadn't any money to spare; what he did
have was the gambler's instinct to sit into any game where the stakes
were big.

The race was open to three-year-olds and upward, and run over a
distance--two miles and a half. The distance kept out the sprinters--it
also, now and again, played hob with racing idols. To win a horse must
be able to go--also to stay. With twenty thousand of added money,
there was sure to be always a long list of entries. The conditions
held one curious survival from the original fixture--namely, that,
horses brought over three hundred miles to run in it got a three-pound
allowance if they reached the course less than a week before the day
of the race.

Major Meriwether had chuckled whenever he thought of that. He knew
"the weight of a stable key may win or lose a race." And the
Heathflower thing was a splendid traveler, coming out of her padded
stall as ready to run as when she went into it. She had got to the Bay
Park only two days back, in charge of her rubber, Amos, and Black Tim,
her jockey. Tim stood at her head, Amos was giving her lank sides
their last polish, as Allys and her train swept down upon them.