"They take the mare?" he asked, all eagerness."
"N-o," began the Colonel, "but—"
Frank's face fell, instantly, and his shoulders drooped despairingly. "Then it's all wrong."
"Not yet," said the Colonel, "score again." He raised the telegram and read from it: "'Can't take mare without positive proof that she's all right. Let her run in the Ashland Oaks, to-day. If she wins, we take her.'" The Colonel looked up beamingly. "Do you hear? They take her!"
The condition which, now, the Dyer brothers made, when, before this, they had made none, bothered Frank. The telegram did not elate him quite as much as the old horseman had supposed it would. "Ah, if she wins!" said he.
Miss Alathea spoke up, eagerly. "Oh, Frank, of course she'll win."
"She's got to win!" exclaimed the Colonel with much emphasis.
Frank was in a pessimistic mood. "I'm not so sure," said he, a little gloomily. The strain of the past days had been a hard trial for the youth. "If that imp of a jockey, Ike, should get in range of a whiskey bottle—however, he has promised not to leave his room."
The Colonel laughed. "Ike leave his room?" he said. "You're right—he won't; but it will not be his promise that will keep him from it. He couldn't leave it if he would."
"Why not?" inquired Miss 'Lethe.