bred colt. As they passed the half-mile maple, the black muzzle was even with the white flank. The Gray Eagle's rider urged him openly, and the veteran answered with a magnificent burst of speed. Still the colt did not lag. His ears were laid back, the white teeth showed as he champed the bit, and his eyes flashed wickedly ; but he neither gained nor lost. The boy patted his neck and spoke soothingly to him, his hand bearing lightly on the rein. They passed the three-quarter post, and now the colt began to gain. The rider of Gray Eagle is using the spur! They are twenty lengths away from the big beech, and the black nose is on a line with the white one. Now the boy leans forward, shaking the reins and speaks sharply to the colt. The Gray's jockey plies the whip. The old horse responds nobly, but in vain. The colt is half a length ahead as they pass under the string.

The gun is fired. A shout goes up. The marshals, sitting on their horses along the course, wave their red flags to show that the bay has won. Then the shout echoes back and forth. Seth Goodwin smiles contentedly, and his wife, standing behind his chair in the front doorway, waves a greeting to the boy, who glances toward her before he jumps down and runs into the tent, leaving the colt to be cared for by the others.

Kincaid gave some directions to his jockey, and Horace Goodwin whispered a word in Jack's ear as he tossed him to his seat for the second heat. The boy was pale and his set lips were white to their very edges. There was some trouble about getting away, and again the Gray Eagle got the lead and kept it all the way, win ning by a length and more. The time, as nearly as it could be computed, was nothing like as good as in the first heat. As soon as the result was announced, Goodwin's friends scattered themselves along the southern part of the track. Kincaid's followers cheered loudly, but the shout lacked the volume that comes from numbers.

When the gun was fired for the third heat the Gray was again in the lead and remained there for the first quarter. Then the colt closed up. At the half-mile they were neck to neck. Then the bay suddenly shot ahead, and at the third quarter there were a dozen lengths between them. A roar of triumph rolled before him down the line.

“No chance for a foul there,” said Horace Goodwin, standing on the end of the work-bench, to the stranger at his side, in a tone of exultant satisfaction. Everybody was straining to see the finish and shouting in anticipation.

“Ah!” exclaimed the stranger, gazing with a look of horror up the track. What he saw froze his blood with terror! Horace Goodwin's eyes followed his startled gaze. A man, brandishing a club above his head, had rushed out of the

west line of spectators and was standing directly in the path of the rushing steed, threatening the colt and his rider. A cry of angry warning went up from the excited crowd. Even at that distance Horace knew him. He was his enemy; his brother's enemy, too. Dan Marvin meant revenge. The crowd thought so. Women shrieked and closed their eyes that they might ņot see the young lad's death.

“Get off the track! Ride him down ! Kill him!” were cries heard amid the tumult. A dozen men started toward the intruder. It was too late! The bay, with outstretched neck and gnashing teeth, was rushing down upon him. The man brandished his club and shouted. The boy's long whip went back over his head. He leaned forward, and it cut down into the man's face before he came in range of the brandished club. Marvin shrank back with a howl of agony. The colt rose to leap over him, hardly pausing in his strides. The bent knees struck the man in the breast and he was thrown down. The horse's feet cleared him by a yard, and the son of Abdallah came home a winner by some twenty lengths, not having swerved a hair's breadth from his course!

The Gold Louis.

ADAPTED. WHEN Lucien de Hem had seen his last 100 francnote raked in by the banker and had risen from the roulette table where he had just lost the remains of his small fortune, he experienced a sort of vertigo and almost fell.

With reeling brain and failing limbs he tottered over to the leather bench that encircled the room and threw himself on it. He heard the soft friction of the gold on the felt and realized his loss, his ruin; but he remembered that at home, in a bureau drawer there were two army pistols that had been bravely used by his father, Gen. de Hem, in the attack of Zaatcha. Then utterly worn out, he slept soundly.

He awoke with a parched throat and glancing at the clock saw that he had barely slept a halfhour.

An imperative need to breathe the night air came over him. The hands marked a quarter to midnight, and, on rising and stretching his arms, Lucien recollected that it was Christmas eve, and by an ironical freak of memory, he saw himself a little child again putting his shoes in front of the chimney at bedtime.

Just then old Dronski, the Pole, a fixture of the place, in threadbare, braided livery, came up to Lucien and mouthed a few words in his dirty beard.

“ Lend me five francs, Monsieur. Here are two days since I have been out of the club and seventeen has not turned up once. Laugh at me if you will, but you may cut off my fist if seventeen does not come out in a few minutes when the clock strikes midnight."

Lucien de Hem shrugged his shoulders; he had not even the wherewithal in his pockets to pay the tax known by the house habitues as “ The Pole's Pence.”

He passed into the hall, put on his hat, his coat, then descended the stairs with the haste of a fevered person. During the four hours he has been indoors heavy snow has fallen, and the street, a central one, walled in by high houses, was all white. Multitudes of cold stars shone in the blue-black purged sky.

The ruined man walked rapidly, revolving desperate thoughts in his mind, and was more than ever drawn to the pistol box in his dressing case drawer.

Suddenly he stopped. He was confronted by a heart-breaking scene.

On a stone bench, placed according to the oldtime custom beside the monuinental door of a palace, a little girl of six or seven, barely covered by a ragged black frock, was sitting in the snow. She had gone to sleep there, in spite