John Porter had been too interested in his horses and his home life to care much for social matters. Mrs. Porter was a home-body, too, caring nothing at all for society—at best there was but little of it in Brookfield—except where it was connected with church work. Perhaps that was one reason why Allis had grown so close into her father's life. It was a very small, self-contained household.

Mike Gaynor had become attached to the staff at Ringwood this winter as a sort of assistant trainer to Porter. Dixon only trained the Ringwood horses during the racing season, Porter always supervising them in winter quarters. Perhaps it was Porter's great cloud of evil fortune which had cast its sinister influence over Mike because of his sympathy for the master of Ringwood; certain it is that the autumn found him quite “on his uppers,” as he graphically described his financial standing. An arrangement was made by which Mike's disconsolate horses were fed at Ringwood, and he took care of both strings. This delighted Allis, for she had full confidence in Gaynor's integrity and good sense.

The early winter brought two visitors to Ringwood—Crane, who came quite often, and Mortimer, who went out to the farm a couple of times with Alan.

George Mortimer might be described as an angular young man. His face, large-featured, square-jawed, and bold-topped by broad forehead, suggested the solemnity Alan had found so trying. Of course a young man of his make-up was sure to have notions, and Mortimer's mind was knotted with them; there seemed no soft nor smooth places in his timber. That was why he had reasoned with the butcher by energetically grasping his windpipe the evening that worthy gentleman had expressed himself so distastefully over Allis Porter's contribution to the Reverend Dolman's concert. Perhaps a young man of more subtle grace would have received some grateful recognition for this office, but the matter had been quite closed out so far as Mortimer was concerned; Alan tried to refer to it afterward, but had been curtly stopped.

George Mortimer's chief notion was that work was a great thing, seemingly the chief end of man. Another notion almost equally prominent—he had derived it from his mother—was, that all forms of gambling were extremely bad business. First and foremost in this interdiction stood horse racing. The touch of it that hung like a small cloud over the Brookfield horizon had inspired Mrs. Mortimer, as it had other good people of the surrounding country, with the restricted idea that those who had to do with thoroughbred horses were simply gamblers—betting people. Her home was in Emerson, a dozen miles from Brookfield.

Quite paradoxically, if Allis Porter had not given “The Run of Crusader”—most certainly a racing poem—in the little church, this angular young man with stringent ideas about running horses probably would have never visited Ringwood. Something of the wide sympathy that emanated from her as she told of the gallant horse's death struck into his strong nature, and there commenced to creep into his thoughts at odd intervals a sort of gratuitous pity that she should be inextricably mixed up with race horses. His original honesty of thought and the narrowness of his tuition were apt to make him egotistically sure that the things which appealed to him as being right were incapable of variation.

At first he had liked Alan Porter, with no tremendous amount of unbending; now, because of the interest Allis had excited in him, the liking began to take on a supervisory form, and it was not without a touch of irritation in his voice that Alan informed his sister that he had acquired a second father, and with juvenile malignity attributed the incumbrance to her seductive influence.

With all these cross purposes at work it can be readily understood that Mortimer's visits to Ringwood were not exactly rose-leaved. In truth, the actors were all too conventionally honest, too unsocialized, to subvert their underlying motives. Allis, with her fine intuition, would have unearthed Mortimer's disapprobation of racing—though he awkwardly strove to hide it—even if Alan had not enlarged upon this point. This knowledge constrained the girl, even drove her into rebellion. She took his misunderstanding as a fault, almost as a weakness, and shocked the young man with carefully prepared racing expressions; reveled with strange abandon in talks of gallops, and trials, and work-outs, and breathers; threw ironmouthed horses, pullers, skates, and divers other equine wonders at his head until he revolted in sullen irritation. In fact they misunderstood each other finely; in truth their different natures were more in harmony two miles apart, the distance that lay between the bank and Ringwood.

By comparison Crane's visits to Ringwood were utopianly complacent. Strangely enough, Mrs. Porter, opposed to racing as she was, came quite readily under the glamor of his artistic unobtrusiveness. He had complete mastery over the science of waiting. His admission to the good lady of a passing interest in horses was an apology; there seemed such an utter absence of the betting spirit that the recreation it afforded him condoned the offense.

There was this difference between the two men, the old and the young: Crane knew exactly why he went there, while Mortimer had asked himself more than once, coming back from Ringwood feeling that he had been misunderstood—perhaps even laughed at—why he had gone there at all. He had no definite plan, even desire; he was impelled to it out of some unrecognized force. It was because of these conditions that the one potter turned his images so perfectly, and the other formed only poor, distorted, often broken, dishes of inferior clay.

It stood in the reason of things, however, that Mortimer, in spite of his uncompromising attitude toward racing, should be touched by its tentacles if he visited at Ringwood.

His first baptism came with much precipitancy on the occasion of his fourth visit to the Porters. He had driven out with Alan to spend his Saturday afternoon at Ringwood. An afternoon is not exactly like an evening in the matter of entertaining a guest; something must be done; cigars, or music, or small chatter are insufficient. If one is on the western slope of life's Sierra perhaps a nap may kill the time profitably enough, but this was a case where a young man had to be entertained, a young man difficult of entertainment under the circumstances.

Alan had some barbarous expedition of juvenile interest on hand; the unearthing of a woodchuck, or it might have been a groundhog, in a back field; but Allis would not become a party to the destruction of animal life for the sport of the thing. She had a much better programme mapped out for Mortimer. Some way she felt that if he could see the thoroughbred horses in their stalls, could come to know them individually, casually though it might be, he would perhaps catch a glimmer of their beautiful characters. So she asked Mr. Mortimer to go and have a look at her pets. Alan would none of it; he was off to his woodchuck or groundhog.

“I'm glad you don't want to go and kill anything,” she said, turning gratefully to Mortimer when he refused Alan's invitation, saying that he preferred to look at the horses. “I'll show you Diablo, and Lucretia, and Lauzanne the Despised—he's my horse, and I'm to win a big race with him next year. Gaynor is down at the stables; and I'll give you a tip"-Mortimer winced—“if you want to stand well in with Mike, let him suspect that you're fond of horses.”

At the stable door they met Mike Gaynor. Mike usually vacillated between a condition of chronic anger at somebody or something, and an Irish drollery that made people who were sick at heart laugh. Allis was as familiar with his moods as she was with the phases of Lauzanne's temper. On Mike's face was a map of disaster; the disaster might be trivial or great. That something was wrong the girl knew, but whether it was that a valuable horse was dead, or that a mouse had eaten a hole in a grain bag she could only discover by questioning Gaynor, for there were never degrees of expressed emotion in Mike's facile countenance; either a deep scowl or a broad grin were the two normal conditions.

“What's the matter, Mike?” questioned Allis.

“Mather, is it?” began Gaynor, “it's just this, Miss Allis; if yer father thinks I'm goin' to stand by an' see good colts spiled in their timper just because a rapscallion b'y has got the evil intints av ould Nick himself, thin he's mistook, that's all.”

“Who is it Mike—Shandy?”

“That's him, Miss. He's the divil on wheels, bangin' thim horses about as though he was King Juba.”

Allis saw that Gaynor was indeed angry.

“I'll speak to father about him, Mike,” she answered; “I won't have the horses abused.”

“Mark my words, Miss Allis, Diablo'll take it out of his hide some day. The b'y'll monkey wit' him once too often, then there'll be no b'y left.”

“May we see the horses, Mike—are they having their lie-down, or anything?”

“Not yet, Miss; they're gettin' the rub-down now; don't ye hear Diablo bastin' the boords av his stall wid that handy off hind-foot av his?”

“There's a filly for yer life,” exclaimed the Trainer, rapturously, as he opened gently the door of Lucretia's box stall. “There's the straightest filly iver looked through a halter,” he continued, putting his arm with the gentleness of a woman over the brown mare's beautiful neck. “Come here, ould girl,” he said, coaxingly, as he drew the haltered head toward the visitors.

Mortimer looked with interest at the big, comfortable box stall, littered a foot deep with bright, clean, yellow straw. How contented and at home the mare appeared! It seemed almost a complete recompense, this attentive care, for the cruelty he imagined race horses suffered.

“You don't tie her up?” he asked.

“Tie her up!” ejaculated Mike, a fine Celtic scorn in his voice; “I'd rather tie up a wife—if I had one,” he added by way of extenuation. “No man would tie up a mare worth tin thousand dollars if she's worth a cent, an' take chances av her throwin' hersilf in the halter; av coorse she's hitched fer a bit after a gallop while she's havin' a rub-down, but that's all.”

Lucretia's black nozzle came timidly forward, and the soft, velvety upper lip snuggled Allis's cheek.

“She knows ye, Miss,” said Mike. “That's the way wit' horses—they're like children; they know friends, an' ye can't fool thim. Now she's sizin' ye up, Mister,” as Lucretia sniffed suspiciously at Mortimer's chin, keeping a wary eye on him. “She'll know if ye like horses or not, an' I'd back her opinion agin fifty min's oaths.”

Allis watched with nervous interest the investigation. She almost felt that if Lucretia liked her companion—well, it would be something less to dislike in him, at all events. Lucretia seemed turning the thing over in her mind, trying to think it out. There was some mystery about this new comer. Evidently she did not distrust him entirely, else she would have put her ears back a trifle and turned away with a little impatient warning shake of her delicate head. She always turned in that cross manner from Shandy, the stable boy. She had also discovered that the visitor was not completely a horseman; she did not investigate his pockets, nor put her head over his shoulder, as she would have done with Mr. Porter or Mike, or even with one who was a stranger, as was Mortimer, had she felt the unmistakable something which conveyed to her mind that he was of the equine brotherhood.

“Lucretia has found you out,” said Allis, presently. “You do like horses; she knows it.”

“Oh, I like animals, I don't deny,” Mortimer answered, “but I know very little about them—nothing about race horses.”

Mike frowned and looked disparagingly at the visitor. “He must be a quare duck,” he muttered to himself. That a man should know nothing of thoroughbreds was perfectly inexplicable to Gaynor. He knew many racing men whose knowledge of horseflesh was a subject for ridicule, but then they never proclaimed their ignorance, rather posed as good judges than otherwise.

But with startling inconsistency Mike explained: “There's many like ye, sir, only they don't know it, that's all; the woods is full av thim. Would ye like to give the filly a carrot, Miss?” he added, turning to Allis. “I'll bring some.”

When he returned Allis gave one to Lucretia, then they passed to the next stall.

“That's a useful horse,” explained the Trainer; “he's won some races in his 'time.”

“What's his name?” asked Mortimer.

“Game Boy. He's by the Juggler. Ye remember him, don't ye?”

Mortimer was forced to confess that he didn't quite remember Juggler.

“That's strange,” commented Mike, turning the big bay about with evident pride; “he won the 'Belmont,' at Jerome Park, did the ould Juggler. Ye must av heerd av that.”

Mortimer compromised by admitting that he had probably forgotten it.

“Well, I haven't,” declared Mike, reproachfully. “If Game Boy stands a prep this summer ye'll hear from him,” he confided to Mortimer, as they left the stall. “Jist remember Game Boy; see, ye can't forget—a big bay wit' a white nigh fore leg, an' a bit rat-tailed. Yes, Game Boy's all right,” monologued Mike; “but here's a better; this is Diablo. He must have tabasco in his head, fer he's got the divil's own timper. But he can gallop a bit; he can go like a quarterhorse, an' stay till the cows come home; but he's like Lauzanne acrost yonder, he's got a bee in his bonnet an' it takes a divil to ride him.”

“That's hard on me, Mike,” expostulated Allis. “You see, Lauzanne goes better with me in the saddle than any of the boys,” she explained to Mortimer.

“The divil or angels, I was going to say, Miss, when ye interrupted me,” gallantly responded Mike.

Diablo's head was tied high in a corner of the stall, for Shandy, the boy, was hard at work on him with a double hand of straw, rubbing him down. The boy kept up a peculiar whistling noise through his parted lips as he rubbed, and Diablo snapped impatiently at the halter-shank with his great white teeth as though he resented the operation.

Mortimer gazed with enthusiasm at the shining black skin that glistened like satin, or watered silk. Surely there was excuse for people loving thoroughbreds. It was an exhilaration even to look at that embodiment of physical development. It was an animate statue to the excellence of good, clean living. Somehow or other Mortimer felt that though the living creature before him was only a horse, yet nature's laws were being adhered to, and the result was a reward of physical perfection and enjoyment of life. He began to feel that a man, or even a woman—it was the subtle presence of the woman at his side that made him involuntarily interject this clause into his inaudible thoughts—yes, even a woman of high moral attributes might find the most healthy form of interested amusement in watching the superb development of horses that were destined for no other purpose than to race and beget sons and daughters of the same wondrous stamina and courage and speed. His detestation of racing had been in reality an untutored prejudice; he had looked upon but one phase of the question, and that quite casually, as it introduced itself into his life by means of sensational betting incidents in the daily papers. To him all forms of betting were highly disastrous—most immoral. But here, like a revelation, came to him, in all its fascination, the perfect picture of the animal, which he was forced to admit stood next to man in its adornment of God's scheme of creation.

As Shandy swept his wisp of straw along the sensitive skin of Diablo's stomach, the latter shrunk from the tickling sensation, and lashed out impatiently with a powerful hind leg as though he would demolish his tormentor.

“He's not cross at all just,” explained Mike; “he's bluffin', that's all. Shure a child could handle him if they'd only go the right way about it.”

Then he leaned over and whispered in an aside to the visitors—“Bot' t'umbs up!” (this was Mike's favorite oath). “Diablo hates that b'y an' some day he'll do him up, mark my words.”

“Here, Shandy,” he cried, turning to the rubber, “loose the Black's head an' turn him 'round.”

Mortimer almost shrank with apprehension for the boy, for Diablo's ears were back on his flat, tapering neck, and his eyes looking back at them, were all white, save for the intense blue-shimmered pupil. To Mortimer that look was the incarnation of evil hatred. But the boy unsnapped the halter-shank without hesitation, and Diablo, more inquisitive than angry, came mincingly toward them, nodding his head somewhat defiantly, as much as to say that the nature of the interview would depend altogether upon their good behavior.

“See that!” ejaculated Mike, a pleasant smile of satisfaction rippling the furrows of his face; “see how he picks out the best friend the stable's got.”

Diablo had stretched his lean head down, and was trying to nibble with gentle lip the carrot Allis held half hidden behind her skirt. There was none of Lucretia's timidity in Diablo's approach; it was full of an assumption of equality, of trust in the intentions of the stranger who had come with the mistress he hart faith in.

“They're all like that when Miss Allis is about,” explained Mike; “there never would be a bad horse if the stable-b'ys worked the same way. Tie him up, Shandy,” he added. “Even the jockeys spoil their mounts,” Gaynor continued in a monotone; “the horse'll gallop better for women any time—they treat thim gentler, that's why.”

“Most interesting,” hazarded Mortimer, feeling some acknowledgment of Mike's information was due.

“It's the trut'. Miss Allis'd take Lauzanne, or the Black, or the little mare, an' get a better race out av thim than any jock I've seen ridin' hereabout.”

“Mike,” exclaimed Allis, “you flatter me; you almost make me wish that I were a jockey.”

“Well, bot' t'umbs up! Ye'd av made a good un, Miss, an' that's no disrespect to ye, I'm sayin'.”

Mortimer smiled condescendingly. Allis's quick eye caught his expression of amused discontent; it angered her. Mike's praise had been practically honest. To him a good jockey was the embodiment of courage and honesty and intelligence; but she knew that to Mortimer it simply meant a phase of life he considered quite outside the pale of recognized respectability. Somehow she felt that Mike's encomium had lowered her perceptibly in the opinion of this man whom she herself affected to look upon with but toleration.

They visited all the other stalls, eight of them, and listened to Mike's eulogies on the inmates. Coming down the other side of the passage, the last occupied box stall contained Lauzanne.

“Miss Porter'll tell ye about this wan,” said Mike, diplomatically. “He's shaped like a good horse, an' his sire, old Lazzarone, landed many a purse, an' the 'Suburban,' too—won it on three legs, fer he was clean gone in his pins, I'll take me oath to that. He was a good horse—whin he liked. Perhaps Lauzanne'll do the same some day, fer all I know.”

There was such a tone of doubt in the Trainer's voice that even Mortimer noticed it. Neither was there much praise of the big Chestnut; evidently Mike did not quite approve of him, though hesitating to say so in the presence of his mistress.

“Yes, Lauzanne is my horse,” volunteered Allis. “I even ride him in all his work now, since he took to eating the stable-boy.”

“And you're not afraid?” asked Mortimer.

For answer the girl slipped quietly into the stall, and going up beside the Chestnut, who was standing sulkily with his head in the corner of his box, took him by the ear and turned him gently around.

“He's just a quiet-mannered chap, that's all,” she said. “He's a big, lazy, contented old boy,” and she laid her cheek against his fawn-colored nozzle. “You see,” she explained, “he's got more brains than any of the other horses, and when he's abused he knows it.”

“But he's grateful when he's kindly treated,” commented Mortimer.

“Yes; that's why I like horses better than men.”

“Oh!” the exclamation slipped from Mortimer's lips.

“Most men, I mean,” she explained. “Of course, father, and Alan, and—” she hesitated; “you see,” she went on to explain, “the number of my men friends is limited; but except these, and Mike, and Mr. Dixon, I like the horses best.”

“I almost believe you're right, Miss Porter,” concurred Mortimer; “I've known men myself that I fancy were much worse than even Diablo.”

“Mike thinks Lauzanne is a bad horse,” the girl said, changing the subject, “but he'll win a big race this coming season. You just keep your eye on Lauzanne. Here's your carrot, old chap,” she said, stroking the horse's neck, “and we must go if we're to have that drive. Will you hitch the gray to the buggy for us, Mike?” she asked of Gaynor, as they came out of the stable, “we'll wait here.”

As Mike started off there came to their ears a sound of turmoil from Diablo's box; impatient kicks against the boards from the horse, and smothered imprecations from the boy.

“Hear that fiend!” the girl exclaimed, and there was wrath in her voice.

“He does seem a bad horse,” concurred Mortimer.

“I didn't mean Diablo; it's the boy. It's all his evil doing. Oh, I've only one glove,” she exclaimed. “I know where it is, though; that mischievous rascal, Lauzanne, nibbled it from the front of my jacket; I saw him do it, but forgot to pick it up.”

“Allow me, Miss Porter; I'll get it for you.”

“No; please don't!” with emphasis. As he started back, she laid a detaining hand on his arm. “I'd much prefer to go myself; Lauzanne distrusts strangers and might make trouble.”

As the girl entered the stable, Mortimer sauntered on in the direction Mike had gone.

Allis opened the door of Lauzanne's stall, passed in, and searched in the straw for the lost glove.