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.

“Because,” the Colonel answered, “I have got his clothes!”

“His clothes!” said Frank, astonished.

“Yes—­a Napoleonic device.  When I went to see him, this morning, I found him in bed.  I knew how it might be if he got out, so I saw to it that his meals would reach him promptly, and borrowed the one suit of clothes he brought with him, under pretence of needing them to help me order a new jockey-suit for him to wear in the great race.  I’ve been fair about it, too—­I’ve got the new clothes for him.”  He pointed to the bundle which he had just brought in.  “They’re in there—­and they’ll not disgrace Queen Bess.  They’re the best I could get.”

Frank, less interested in the clothes than in the fact that the jockey, now, was quite secure against temptation, sighed with satisfaction.  “Then he’s safe,” said he.

The Colonel nodded, notably well satisfied with his performance.  Miss Alathea, shocked, as she tried to be, by all this business, adjunct of gambling, every bit of it, yet smiled admiringly at the big horseman.  Only Madge, learned, through much experience with mountaineers, whose greatest curse is whisky, in the ways of men addicted to its use, was not convinced that all was surely well.

“I’d keep a watch on him, just the same,” she said.  Now that she understood the vast importance of this race to Layson her whole heart was wrapped up in its fortunes.  “When a man wants whisky he gener’ly finds a way to git it.”

“You’re right, Madge,” Frank agreed.  “I think I’ll go and look after him, now.”

He started toward the door just as a knock sounded on it.  When he opened it he found Horace Holton standing waiting for admittance.  The man seemed to be excited.

“I don’t want to intrude, sar,” said the ex-merchant in slaves, “but I come to tell you what you’d orter know.  Th’ news of th’ fire, last night, hev set ev’rybody wild.  They’re lookin’ to you, sar, to sw’ar out a warrant for Joe Lorey an’ set th’ sheriff on his track.”

Frank came back into the room with the old man, worried by the news which he had brought.  He had been thinking of this very matter and he was not at all convinced that he wished to swear a warrant out for Lorey.  Finally, after a few seconds of silent and deep thought, he shook his head.  “I want more proof, first,” he declared.