“Raceland!” “Raceland!” “Raceland by a length!” shouted the crowd.

“Who’s second?” a fat man shouted at another fat man.

“Firefly,” called back the second, joyously, “and I’ve got her for a place and I win eight dollars.”

“Ah!” said Van Bibber, as he slipped his one hundred dollars back in his pocket, “good thing I got here a bit late.”

“What’d you win, Van Bibber?” asked a friend who rushed past him, clutching his tickets as though they were precious stones.

“I win one hundred dollars,” answered Van Bibber, calmly, as he walked on up into the boxes.  It was delightfully cool up there, and to his satisfaction and surprise he found several people there whom he knew.  He went into Her box and accepted some pate sandwiches and iced champagne, and chatted and laughed with Her so industriously, and so much to the exclusion of all else, that the horses were at the starting-post before he was aware of it, and he had to excuse himself hurriedly and run to put up his money on Bugler, the second on his list.  He decided that as he had won one hundred dollars on the first race he could afford to plunge on this one, so he counted out fifty more, and putting this with the original one hundred dollars, crowded into the betting-ring and said, “A hundred and fifty on Bugler straight.”

“Bugler’s just been scratched,” said the bookie, leaning over Van Bibber’s shoulder for a greasy five-dollar bill.

“Will you play anything else?” he asked, as the young gentleman stood there irresolute.

“No, thank you,” said Van Bibber, remembering his vow, and turning hastily away.  “Well,” he mused, “I’m one hundred and fifty dollars better off than I might have been if Bugler hadn’t been scratched and hadn’t won.  One hundred and fifty dollars added to one hundred makes two hundred and fifty dollars.  That puts me ’way ahead of the game.  I am fifty dollars better off than when I left New York.  I’m playing in great luck.”  So, on the strength of this, he bought out the man who sells bouquets, and ordered more champagne to be sent up to the box where She was sitting, and they all congratulated him on his winnings, which were suggested by his generous and sudden expenditures.

“You must have a great eye for picking a winner,” said one of the older men, grudgingly.

“Y-e-s,” said Van Bibber, modestly.  “I know a horse when I see it, I think; and,” he added to himself, “that’s about all.”

His horse for the third race was Rover, and the odds were five to one against him.  Van Bibber wanted very much to bet on Pirate King instead, but he remembered his vow to keep to the list he had originally prepared, whether he lost or won.  This running after strange gods was always a losing business.  He took one hundred dollars in five-dollar bills, and went down to the ring and put the hundred up on Rover and returned to the box.  The horses had been weighed in and