The youth’s face fell.  “Twenty-five thousand dollars!” he exclaimed.  “Why, Colonel, I have not one fifth of it!”

“Ah,” said the Colonel, smiling, “but here, like a good angel, comes in your dear Aunt ’Lethe!” He smiled at her.  “Isn’t it so, Miss ’Lethe?”

Frank spoke up quickly.  “Surely,” he exclaimed to her as she advanced toward him, with smiles, “you know I’d never take your money!”

“You must, Frank,” she insisted.  “The Colonel says it is the chance of a lifetime.”

“Why, Auntie, it’s your whole fortune.  I wouldn’t risk it.”

“But you could pay it all back in a month.”

“How?” he asked, not understanding in the least.

“By selling Queen Bess.”

He flinched.  The thought had not occurred to him.  “Sell Queen Bess!” said he.  “The prettiest, the fastest mare in all Kentucky!  Never!”

“My boy,” said the Colonel, “the odds are far too heavy—­a million against the mare.  You can’t stand ’em.”

“Oh, Frank,” said his Aunt, impulsively, “if you’ll only take the money and give up racing!”

He laughed.  Miss Alathea’s strong prejudice against the race-tracks was proverbial.  “So that’s what you’re after!” he exclaimed.  “You dear old schemer!”

“With your impulsive, generous nature, racing is sure to ruin you.”

The Colonel looked first at Frank with ardent sympathy aglow in his eyes; then, after a hasty glance at Miss Alathea, he quickly changed the meaning of his look and spoke admonishingly.  “The voice of wisdom!” he exclaimed.  “Ah, Frank, from what I hear I judge you’re too much of a plunger—­like a young fellow I once knew who thought he could win a fortune on the race-track.”  He began, now, to speak very seriously.  “He was in love with the prettiest and sweetest girl in old Kentucky, but he wished to wait till he could get that fortune, and he chased it here and there, looking for it mostly on the race-tracks, until he had more grey hairs than he had ever hoped to have dollars; he chased it till his dream of happiness had slipped by, perhaps forever.  My boy, the race-track is a delusion and a snare.”

Miss Alathea looked at him with pleased surprise.  “Colonel, your sentiments astonish and delight me.”

“How can you refuse,” the Colonel said, “when such a woman asks?  For one who loves you, you should give those pleasures up without a pang.”

In the pause that followed he reflected on the history of the youth to whom he had referred, for that young man was himself.  He had loved Miss Alathea twenty years, but the Goddess Chance had kept him, all that time, too poor to ask her hand in marriage.  His heart beat with elation as he realized that, possibly, the scheme which he had come there to the mountains to propose to Frank, might remedy the evils of the situation.

Frank had been thinking deeply.  “But what certainty is there,” he inquired, “that I can sell Queen Bess at such a price?”