"Is that straight goods?" asked Gaynor, losing confidence in the justice
of his wordy assault.

"Yes, you're wrong, Mike," they all asserted.

In five minutes Gaynor had found Carson, and apologized with the full
warmth of a penitent Irishman.




V


For a week John Porter brooded over Lucretia's defeat, and, worse still,
over the unjust suspicion of the unthinking public. Touched in its
pocket, the public responded in unsavory references to Lucretia's race.
Porter loved a good horse, and liked to see him win. The confidence of
the public in his honesty was as great a reward as the stakes. The
avowed principle of racing, that it improved the breed of horses, was
but a silent sentiment with him. He believed in it, but not being rich,
raced as a profession, honestly and squarely. He had asserted more than
once that if he were wealthy he would never race a two-year-old. But
his income must be derived from his horses, his capital was in them; and
just at this time he was sitting in a particularly hard streak of bad
luck; financially, he was in a hole; morally, he stood ill with the
public.

His reason told him that the ill-fortune could not last; he had one
great little mare, good enough to win, an honest trainer--there the