Mrs. Porter, reading a book on the veranda, heard the crunch of wheels as a buggy, slow-moving, turned into the drive. She raised her eyes leisurely, the matter of the story still in her mind; but with a quick cry of “John!” she sprang to her feet, the volume, left to itself, rustling from her lap to the floor. The mother eyes saw that something was wrong, and the mother heart felt that some evil had come to Allis. Mrs. Porter had gone white in an instant. Over her hung heavy at all times the dread of some terrible accident coming to Allis through the horses.

“Did you call, wife?” Porter asked as he came to the door. Then he sprang quickly across the veranda at sight of his wife's blanched face, and made to catch her in his arms. But she stopped him, pointing down the drive. “It's Allis, John; oh, my God!”

“No, no,” he answered, “they're just coming back; here, sit down again, I'll see,” and he raced down the steps just as Mike pulled up.

“What's the matter, girl?” he began.

“The young gentleman's got a bit shook up, sir; nothin' bad loike,” Mike broke in hastily. The diplomatic rider, “nothin' bad,” was added for Mrs. Porter's benefit, his quick eye having seen her white face.

“Miss Allis 's not hurt at all,” he continued. “We'll help the young gintleman in, an' I'd best go for the docthor, I'm thinkin.”

Even as he was speaking they had helped Mortimer from the rig. He had not uttered a sound; his teeth were set hard against the agony that was in his side, and the queer dizziness that was over him left little beyond a consciousness that he was being looked after, and that if he could only keep going for a little, just use his legs a trifle, he would presently be allowed to sleep. Yes, that was what he wanted; he was so drowsy. As he went up the steps between the two men, a haggard face peered at him over the rail. It was familiar; he felt that some recognition was due, for it was a woman's face. He tried to smile. Then he was on a bed, and—and—sleep at last.

When the three men with the silence of disaster over them passed struggling into the house, Mrs. Porter threw herself on Allis's neck, and a passion of tears flooded down and damped the girl's shoulder.

“God be thanked, God be thanked!” gasped the troubled woman, and one hand that was over the girl's shoulder patted her with erratic rapidity. Then she interrupted herself. “What am I saying—it's wicked, and Mr. Mortimer like that. But I can't help it—I can't help it. Oh, Allis! my heart was in my mouth; I feel that some day you will come home like this.”

At that instant Gaynor dashed by them, leaped into the buggy, and called, as he drove off: “I'll have the docthor in a jiffy; the young man's all right!” He was still talking as the whirr of swift-rushing wheels smothered out his voice, and the dust rose like a steam-cloud, almost blotting him from the landscape.

“Oh, girl! I thought you'd been killed.”

“Here, sit down, mother; you're all worked up,” and Allis put a cool hand on her mother's hot forehead.

But the shock to her feelings had loosed the good woman's vocabulary. At all times smouldered in her heart a hatred of racing, even of the horses. “It's the anger of God,” Mrs. Porter denounced vehemently. “This gambling and racing is contrary to His law. Never a night passes, Allis, that I do not pray to God that He may open your father's eyes to the sin of racing. No good can come of it—no good has ever come of it—nothing but disaster and trouble. In a day the substance of a year is wasted. There never can be prosperity living in sin.”

“Hush, mother,” crooned Allis, softly. This outburst from Mrs. Porter startled the girl; it was so passionate, so vehement. When they had talked of racing in the home life the mother had nearly always preserved a reproachful silence; her attitude was understood and respected.

“I must speak, girl,” she said again; “this sinful life is crushing me. Do you think I feel no shame when I sit in meeting and hear our good minister denounce gambling and racing? I can feel his eyes on me, and I cannot raise my voice in protest, for do not I countenance it? My people were all church people,” she continued, almost apologetically, “tolerating no sin in the household. Living in sin there can be no hope for eternal life.”

“I know, mother,” soothed the girl; “I know just how you feel, but we can't desert father. He does not look upon it as a sin, as carrying any dishonor; he may be cheated, but he cheats no man. It can't be so sinful if there is no evil intent. And listen, mother; no matter what anybody may say, even the minister, we must both stick to father if he chooses to race horses all his life.”

“Ah, sweetheart!” John Porter cried out in a pleased voice, as he came out to them, “looking after mother; that's right. Cynthia has helped me fix up Mortimer. He'll be all right as soon as Mike gets back with Rathbone. I think we'd better have a cup of tea; these horses are trying on the nerves, aren't they, little woman?” and he nestled his wife's head against his side. “How did it happen, Allis? Did Mortimer slip into Diablo's box, or—”

“It was all over that rascally boy, Shandy. Diablo was just paying him back for his ill-treatment, and I went in to rescue him, and Mortimer risked his life to save mine.”

“He was plucky; eh, girl?”

“He fought the Black like a hero, father. But, father, you must never think bad of Lauzanne again; if he hadn't come Mr. Mortimer would have been too late.”

“It's dreadful, dreadful,” moaned the mother.

Allis shot a quick look at her father. He changed the subject, and commenced talking about Alan—wondering where he was, and other irrelevant matters.

Then there was fresh divertisement as Mike rattled up, and Doctor Rathbone, who was of a great size, bustled in to where Mortimer lay.

Three smashed ribs and a broken arm was his inventory of the damage inflicted by Diablo's kick, when he came out again with Porter, in an hour.

“I'm afraid one of the splintered ribs is tickling his lung,” he added, “but the fellow has got such a good nerve that I hardly discovered this unpleasant fact. He'll be all right, however; he's young, and healthy as a peach. Good nursing is the idea, and he'll get that here, of course. He doesn't want much medicine; that we keep for our enemies,—ha! ha!” and he laughed cheerily, as if it were all a joke on the battered man.

“Thim docthers is cold-blooded divils,” was Mike's comment. “Ye'd a thought they'd been throwin' dice, an' it was a horse on the other gintleman. Bot' t'umbs! it was, too. Still, if ould Saw-bones had been in the box yonder wit' Diablo, he wouldn't a-felt so funny.”

“Mortimer behaved well; didn't he, Mike?” asked Porter.

“Behaved well; is it? He was like a live divil; punched thim two big stallions till they took water an' backed out. My word! whin first I see him come to the stable wit' Miss Allis, thinks I, here's wan av thim city chumps; he made me tired. An' whin he talked about Lauzanne's knees, m'aning his hocks, I had to hide me head in a grain bag. But if ye'd seen him handle that fork, bastin' the Black, ye'd a thought it was single sticks he was at, wit' a thousand dollars fer a knock-out.”

“One can't always tell how a colt will shape, can they, Mike?” spoke Porter, for Mike's fanciful description was almost bringing a smile to Mrs. Porter's troubled face.

“Ye can't, sor, an' yer next the trut' there. I've seen a herrin'-gutted weed av a two-year-old—I remember wan now; he was a Lexington. It was at Saratoga; an' bot' t'umbs! he just made hacks av iverythin' in soight—spread-eagled his field. Ye wouldn't a-give two dollars fer him, an' he come out an' cleaned up the Troy Stake, like the great horse he was.”

“And you think Mortimer has turned out something like that; eh, Mike?”

“Well, fer a man that knows no more av horses than I know av the strology av stars, he's a hot wan, an' that's the God's trut'.”

Mortimer's gallant act had roused the Irishman's admiration. He would have done as much himself, but that would have been expected of a horseman, constantly encountering danger; that an office man, to be pitied in his ignorance, should have fearlessly entered the stall with the fighting stallions was quite a different matter.

Even Allis, with her more highly developed sense of character analyzation, felt something of this same influence. She had needed some such manifestation of Mortimer's integral force, and this had come with romantic intensity in the tragic box-stall scene. This drama of the stable had aroused no polished rhetoric; Mortimer's declamation had been unconventional in the extreme. “Back, you devils!” he had rendered with explosive fierceness, oblivious of everything but that he must save the girl. The words still rang in the ears of Allis, and also the echo of her own cry when in peril, “Mortimer!” There must have been a foreshadowing in her soul of the man's reliability, though she knew it not.

Even without the doctor's orders, it was patent that Mortimer must remain at Ringwood for a few days.

It was as if Philip Crane, playing with all his intense subtlety, had met his master in Fate; the grim arbiter of man's ways had pushed forward a chessman to occupy a certain square on the board for a time.

Mortimer had been most decisively smashed up, but his immense physique had wonderful recuperative powers. The bone-setting and the attendant fever were discounted by his vitality, and his progress toward recovery, was marvelous.