“Nail,” she said briefly.  “It’s been a horse-racing track for years, and we’ve gathered a bushel of horse-shoe nails.”

Aggie and I said nothing, but we looked at each other.  Tish had said “we.”  Evidently Cousin Angeline’s legacy was not going into a mortgage.

The fair-grounds were almost ready.  Peanut and lunch stands had sprung up everywhere.  The oval, save by the tents and the repair pits, was marked off into parking-spaces numbered on tall banners.  Groups of dirty men in overalls, carrying machine wrenches, small boys with buckets of water, onlookers round the tents and track-rollers made the place look busy and interesting.  Some of the excitement, I confess, got into my blood.  Tish, on the contrary, was calm and businesslike.  We were sorry we had sent for Charlie Sands.  She no longer went out in Mr. Ellis’s car, and that evening she went back to the kitchen and made a boiled salad dressing.

We were all deceived.

Charlie Sands came the next morning.  He was on the veranda reading a paper when we got down to breakfast.  Tish’s face was a study.

“Who sent for you?” she demanded.

“Sent for me!  Why, who would send for me?  I’m here to write up the race.  I thought, if you haven’t been out to the track, we’d go out this morning.”

“We’ve been out,” said Tish shortly, and we went in to breakfast.  Once or twice during the meal I caught her eye on me and on Aggie and she was short with us both.  While she was upstairs I had a word with Charlie Sands.

“Well,” he said, “what is it this time?  Is she racing?”

“Worse than that,” I replied.  “I think she’s backing the thing!”

“No!”

“With her cousin Angeline’s legacy.”  With that I told him about our meeting Mr. Ellis and the whole story.  He listened without a word.

“So that’s the situation,” I finished.  “He has her hypnotized, Charlie.  What’s more, I shouldn’t be surprised to see her enter the race under an assumed name.”

Charlie Sands looked at the racing list in the Morris Valley Sun.

“Good cars all of them,” he said.  “She’s not here among the drivers, unless she’s—­Who are these drivers anyhow?  I never heard of any of them.”

“It’s a small race,” I suggested.  “I dare say the big men—­”

“Perhaps.”  He put away his paper and got up.  “I’ll just wander round the town for an hour or two, Aunt Lizzie,” he said.  “I believe there’s a nigger in this woodpile and I’m a right nifty little nigger-chaser.”

When he came back about noon, however, he looked puzzled.  I drew him aside.

“It seems on the level,” he said.  “It’s so darned open it makes me suspicious.  But she’s back of it all right.  I got her bank on the long-distance ’phone.”

We spent that afternoon at the track, with the different cars doing what I think they called “trying out heats.”  It appeared that a car, to qualify, must do a certain distance in a certain time.  It grew monotonous after a while.  All but one entry qualified and Jasper just made it.  The best showing was made by the Bonor car, according to Charlie Sands.