Coming to the course, the girl had allowed rosy hope to tint the gray gloom of the many defeats until she had worked herself into a happy mood. Lucretia's win would put everything right; even her father, relieved of financial worry, would improve. The bright morning seemed to whisper of victory; Lucretia would surely win. It was not within the laws of fate that they should go on forever and ever having bad luck. She had come to have a reassuring look at the grand little mare that was to turn the tide of all their evil fortune. The Trainer's words, “The mare's coughin',” struck a chill to her heart. She could not speak—the misery was too great—but stood dejectedly listening while Dixon spoke of his suspicions of foul play.
What villains there were in the world, the girl thought; for a man to lay them odds against their horse, knowing that she had been poisoned, was a hundred times worse than stealing the money from their Dockets.
“I don't suppose we'll ever be able to prove it,” declared Dixon, regretfully; “but that doesn't matter so much as the mare being done for; we're out of it now good and strong. If we'd known it two days ago we might a-saved the money, but we've burned up a thousand.”
“We'll have to start Lauzanne,” said Allis, taking a brave pull at herself, and speaking with decision.
“We might send him to the post, but that's all the good it'll do us, I'm feared.”
“I've seen him do a great gallop,” contended Allis.
“He did it for you, but he won't do it for nobody else. There ain't no boy ridin' can make him go fast enough for a live funeral. But we'll start him, an' I'll speak to Redpath about takin' the mount.”
Allis was thinking very fast; her head, with its great wealth of black hair, drooped low in heavy meditation.
“Don't engage him just yet, Dixon,” she said, looking up suddenly, the shadow of a new resolve in her gray eyes; “I'll talk it over with you when we go back to the house. I'm thinking of something, but I don't want to speak of it just now—let me think it over a little.”
Dixon was deep in thought, too, as he went back to his own stables. “We haven't got a million to one chance,” he was muttering; “the money's burned up, an' the race is dead to the world, as far as we're concerned.”