"A false start," he answered, scarcely even glancing down at her. "They'll make it this time, though," he added, and she could see his knuckles whiten with the strain as he gripped a rough limb of the tree with vise-like fingers.
A moment later and the shouting became a very tempest of sound.
"They're off!" he cried, staring through his field glasses in an excitement which promised, if he did not curb it, to send him tumbling from his shaky foothold. "Oh, what a splendid start!"
"Who's ahead?" inquired Miss Alathea, very much excited. "Colonel, who's ahead?"
"Catalpa sets the pace, the others lying well back."
"Why doesn't Queen Bess come to the front?" Miss Alathea cried, as if he were to blame for the disquieting news he had reported to her. "Oh," she exclaimed, to the Colonel's great astonishment, "if I were only on that mare!"
"At the half," the Colonel shouted, beside himself with worry, "Evangeline takes the lead ... Catalpa next ... the rest are bunched."
Miss Alathea, at the moment, was trying to see satisfactorily, through the very knot-hole which the Colonel had abandoned. She sprang from it hastily, however, and to the foot of the tree which acted as his pedestal, when he exclaimed:
"Oh, great heavens! There's a fall ... a jam ... and Queen Bess is left behind three lengths!" He leaned so far out that he heard the limb beneath him crack, and, in hastening to a firmer footing, almost lost his balance. This startled him, and, for an instant, took his eager gaze away from the struggling horses on the track within, but he quickly regained poise. "She hasn't the ghost of a show!" he cried, disheartened. "Look! Look!"
Miss Alathea hugged the tree and looked, not at the horses, for that was quite impossible, but up at him with wide, imploring eyes.