Handicap Day, and true Handicap weather. A warm sun shining from a cloudless sky, a light cool breeze blowing from the west, a track in perfect condition--what more could the heart of horseman desire on the greatest day of the horseman's year? As early as twelve o'clock the long procession began to wind its leisurely way toward the track. By automobile, by coach and carriage, by steam yacht and railroad train and electric car, even by bicycle and on foot the crowds surged and flocked and fought their way, until by two o'clock thirty thousand people crowded grandstand and betting ring and paddock, keen, alert, active, on tiptoe with eagerness to see the Essex run. High up in the grandstand Major McMurtrie, a trifle flushed, more than a trifle excited, eloquent in the extreme, seated himself beside Rose Ashton and Gordon, and with a wealth of gesture fought and refought for their benefit the bygone Handicaps of twenty years. "The race of the year, my dear boy, the race of the year," he repeated for perhaps the fiftieth time. "No race like it, sir, for the true lover of the racehorse, and a more perfect day for it, sir, I have never seen." Rose, looking up from her race-card, nodded assent. "Forty thousand dollars to the winner," she said thoughtfully. "It's a tremendous sum, isn't it?" The Major shook his head vigorously. "No, no, my dear young lady, you mistake me," he cried. "It isn't the money value of the race that makes it. Forty thousand is a snug little sum, of course, but the Metropole is worth fifty, and the Belleview upwards of seventy. But it's the public sentiment, not the cash, that makes this race what it is. The Essex isn't any six furlong scramble for two-year-olds; it's a mile and a quarter for three-year-olds and upwards. It's none of your get-away sprints; it's a horse-race, from start to finish. And more than all that, it's our oldest stake race, with its records for thirty years filled with stories of courage and speed and daring and skill; it's part and parcel of the turf history of the country. Yes, by gad, sir--I beg your pardon, Miss Ashton, I do, indeed--the Essex Handicap's a part of American history itself." Gordon, himself no mean authority on the history of the track, nodded affirmatively. "True, every word of it, Major," he cried. "Why, away back in '78--"