Having failed to enter any bets with
the book-makers of The Pavement in York, I did not care to make
them here. With all my passion for racing, I never know or care
which horse wins; but I tried to enter into the joy of a
diffident young fellow near me at the Grand Stand rail, who was
so proud of having guessed as winner the horse next to the winner
at the first race; it was coming pretty close. By the end of the
third race he had softened into something like confidence toward
me; certainly into conversability; such was the effect of my
being a dead-game sport, or looking it. But how account for the
trustfulness of the young woman on my other hand who wore her
gold watch outside her dress, and who turned to the elderly
stranger for sympathy in a certain supreme moment? This was when
the crowd below crumpled suddenly together like the crushing of
paper and the sense of something tragically mysterious in the
distance clarified itself as the death of one of the horses. It
had dropped from heart-break in its tracks, as if shot, and
presently a string of young men and boys came dragging to some
_spoliarium_ the long, slender body of the pretty creature
over the turf which its hoofs had beaten a moment before.
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